Are we becoming too harsh without even realizing?

Because words leave marks we can't always see

Last week, I came across two situations where people got really harsh with others. Mostly with strangers or someone they barely knew.

In the first, a writer on Substack shared how hurt she felt after receiving a mean, rude reply on one of her posts. She had always thought of Substack as a safe place to share. She wrote that she could feel that the comment wasn’t feedback. It was just unkind.

The second happened in my Yoga group. Someone posted a harsh message for the Yoga tutor whose class they had been attending for months. They called it feedback, but to me it didn't read like one. It read like a complaint that was too personal. And as if that wasn't enough, they posted the same message across multiple WhatsApp groups, even after the tutor replied calmly on one of them.

Maybe they didn’t realise how it came across. Maybe they genuinely thought they were helping. But the words still left a mark.

What made both moments interesting was what happened next.

On Substack, people rallied around the writer with kind, encouraging comments. In the WhatsApp group, other students chimed in to share how supported they feel by their Yoga teacher, and how much they love the way she teaches. Being a student myself, I couldn’t agree more. She is an amazing teacher. She intends to help us in our Yoga journey, no matter what stage we are at. She guides us through each asana, repeating it as many times as needed, without making us feel like a burden. And that, oddly, was the very thing the person had complained about.

Both situations pointed to the same thing. These weren’t really feedback. And if they were meant to be, something was missing in how they were shared.

I’ll be honest. I am also someone who is still developing this skill. On Substack, I mostly stuck to compliments. “I love what you wrote.” “Beautiful work.” “I like the way you thought about this.”

I noticed these were too surface-level. There wasn’t much depth in them. And I still find myself writing a few such comments when I want to leave a quick appreciation and move on with a long to-do list.

I believe giving quality feedback is a skill we should all have in our life toolkit. Just like we learn to drive, cook, or swim, we should be taught how to give constructive feedback. But most of us never are.

But these two incidents made me think. How do I give constructive feedback when I want to go beyond compliments?

Life has a way of showing up with answers when you start asking questions. I found mine in a course by Lawrence Yeo I recently completed.

It was a month-long intensive writing course where we wrote three long pieces and gave feedback to other cohort members every week. Lawrence might have known that many of us weren’t used to giving feedback. So he gave us three simple guiding questions to think of before writing our feedback.

1. What did you like?

2. What might you do differently?

3. What do you wonder about?

That’s it. Three questions. And yet, they changed how I wrote feedback for others.

The first question asks you to look for what is genuinely working. Not to be polite, but to actually notice. You start your feedback by genuinely appreciating the other person’s work. The second invites you to take a moment to think about what you would do differently if it were your piece, sharing your perspective without imposing it. “Here’s what I might do” sounds very different from “here’s what you should have done.” The third opens a door. It hands the person something to think about and leaves them in charge of what to do with it.

In practice, it looked something like this.

“What did you like: I really liked how you opened your piece with a personal story. It hooked me and made me want to know what happened next.

What might you do differently: I might try to show rather than tell. I remember you mentioning your career break to learn Yoga. That could be a powerful way to show rather than tell.

What do you wonder about: I’m curious what kept you going on this path of self-discovery. What happened that made you stick with it? Most of us start, and then life pulls us back to familiar roads.”

There is so much meaning that can come from this kind of feedback. That kind of response respects the person. It also gives them something real to work with. It helps people grow, rather than making them feel bad enough to stop altogether.

I think about the word “feedback” a lot now. We throw it around casually. But there’s a gap between what we mean to say and what actually lands. Harsh words wrapped in the label of feedback are still just harsh words.

There’s an old idea I’ve always found useful: appreciate in public, criticise in private. But even private criticism needs care. It needs to be offered with the intention of helping, not winning.

Not every comment we write needs to go this deep. But what we can all do is pause and reflect before writing a comment, compliment, or piece of feedback for someone.

Am I actually helping this person? Or am I just playing an ego game?

We talk a lot about kindness in the abstract. But kindness in practice is much smaller. It’s how you word a comment. It’s asking yourself whether your words will leave someone feeling seen or small.

This isn’t a new idea. We’ve all heard versions of it. But in a world that keeps moving faster, these small acts of care are the first things to go.

Maybe we’re not becoming harsh on purpose. Maybe we’re just not pausing long enough to notice.

And that pause, small as it is, might be all it takes.

PS: Registrations for the last live cohort of my bootcamp are ending soon. Today is a good time to block your spot.

Take a Little Pause 🌼

Think of someone you've given feedback to recently. Was it to help them, or to vent out?

I’d love to hear what you have discovered 😊

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