Have you ever met someone who’s always quick to criticize others?
They always need to say something to put another person down and are quick to pass judgment on others.
I don’t know about you but interacting with women like these can be very tiring. They’re also utterly convinced that their opinions are right.
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve ever stopped to think about what others think of them as well. Maybe they’ll understand just how toxic their behavior can be.
Unfortunately, I have had the displeasure of interacting with someone like this, and from our time together, I noted that people like her often exhibit certain traits that make them who they are.
So without further ado, let me share 5 of these personality traits with you.
1) They’re insecure.
Their innate desire to pass quick judgments is a hallmark characteristic of someone who’s highly insecure.
They always want to be better than everyone else and as a result, they may resort to spreading rumors, making snide remarks behind their backs, or even giving backhanded compliments and sarcastic replies.
Insecure people have the tendency to compare their lives with others and are only satisfied if their situation is better than the person on their left and right.
They thrive on the shortcomings and flaws of the people around them because it makes them think they’re better than everyone else.
Take my friend for example. Once, I was talking to her about a colleague who had left his job to pursue his passion (something my friend had wanted to do for a long time but never quite gone into it).
Instead of feeling inspired, she was quick to criticize him, because she wasn’t able to achieve her dreams of going into her passion projects full-time.
While this doesn’t excuse this behavior, it shows that behind every cruel word is someone who may simply be very insecure.
2) Their happiness stems from being better than others.
To them, everything is a competition. They have an irrational need to be better than everyone else in every area of their lives, if possible.
My friend prided herself on her work ethic and ability to live an above-average lifestyle.
Imagine her disappointment when she had a new colleague who was hired (with less experience than her) to run the department she was in. This new colleague was also clearly doing much better than her.
When we met, she only had really negative things to say about her colleague. Although I told her that perhaps her company’s management felt that her colleague was more capable, my friend refused to accept this.
In her mind, the only truth she accepted was that this colleague of hers managed to get the job through connections and not because she was great at her job.
She even shared with her other colleagues about her suspicion, which started a rumor that went around for a little while.
Her desire to outperform everyone else had resulted in this ugly side of her personality taking center stage.
3) They don’t self-reflect.
The reason why these women behave the way they do is because they don’t self-reflect.
In fact, they have poor self-awareness and their identity is skewed in their favor. I once asked her if she’d ever thought about how toxic her behavior was after she had once again judged someone harshly and criticized him heavily.
She was quite upfront about this and said that she didn’t see anything wrong with what she was doing.
Her lack of self-awareness and unwillingness to assess her own biases thus resulted in her turning a blind eye to how she presented herself to others.
I’ve even caught her criticizing people for actions that she’s done in the past because she’s unable to self-reflect and identify her weaknesses and flaws.
4) They think the whole world revolves around them.
And this is why women like my friend think the whole world revolves around them.
They have a deep-seated sense of entitlement that influences the way they perceive the world and others around them.
This makes it harder for them to accept that they are in the wrong.
I was sharing a negative experience I had at my workplace with my friend, who instead of offering her support, was quick to criticize the way I handled the situation.
I was taken aback because I knew she had been in a similar situation before and that she’d be able to relate.
I told her my reasons for sharing this experience with her and brought up once again her toxic behavior of being too quick to judge and criticize.
Instead of apologizing, she brushed this aside and changed the topic, because she didn’t see the need to address the hypocrisy of her actions.
Well, it was then that I decided to rethink this friendship because it was clear that she was incapable of considering the feelings of others.
5) They have deep-seated feelings of envy.
This habit of being overly critical also reveals their envious nature.
Women who are quick to judge are often envious of others.
They tend to scroll through social media to look at the lives of their friends who are seemingly more successful than they are and compare – even though they’re also doing well.
By finding something to nitpick about in the lives of their friends, they feel a sense of superiority, because they cannot stand the idea that someone else is living a much better life than them.
My friend loves to do this – she’d send me profiles of people who were enjoying themselves on a luxurious holiday, eating good food, or dressed in the latest fashion trends.
Then, she’ll make a snide remark about how these people are overly focused on appearances (look who’s talking) and that they shouldn’t flaunt their wealth on social media.
It’s clear that envy drives their actions, along with a deep-seated sense of insecurity.
Concluding thoughts
Hopefully, this article has helped explain the reasons why people are overly critical and quick to judge.
Of course, this doesn’t give them the right to do so, but it’s key to better understanding why they’re behaving this way. People are complex creatures, hence there are usually deep-seated issues that give rise to their actions.
