Ouch! that hurts!

You know, the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you receive criticism and you haven't figured out what to do about it...   I get this feeling when I think I have done a reasonable job playing a piece and then discover all the things that are wrong with it, in fact how truly bad it was, it's probably hopeless, perhaps I should give up ...   Yup that's the way my brain goes - ever on the downward spiral.   Even when I have asked for and want this critique, and am truly appreciative that someone is helping me to get better, a primitive part of me wants to burst out crying, run and hide, and give in to negative thoughts. It turns out there is a scientific reason that people respond to criticism differently -  this article talks about studying the way your brain responds to criticism using fMRI to track which areas of the brain are active.  Some can just brush it off, and others of a more neurotic bent have to spend time processing, and this is reflected in different patterns of brain activity.
Of course in order to improve we all need helpful critique.  When I find there is still (unexpectedly) a lot of work to do on a piece,  I've found it best to just leave it alone and sleep on it - sometime in the intervening period my brain climbs up from the abyss and is ready to start working on ways to address the problems.  It seems to do its thing in the background even when I'm not consciously thinking about it.  On the other hand if I rush straight back to the piece,  I've found I'm rarely in a place to carefully analyze the issues and move forward  - I try too hard,  hurry too much, get frustrated and often end up making things worse.   I'm still looking for a way to move straight to this point without the intervening delay, but so far it's just not happening!