I'm a sensitive and mostly well-intentioned person. If I can do something better than I'm doing it now, and I have the time and energy to try, I'm willing to do my best.

My sensitivity and willingness weren't always apparent to my early authority figures, however. Parents, teachers, coaches, and other adults would use practices like yelling, shaming, and guilting to correct my behavior when much milder methods would have worked. Today, I understand that many of those adults were using normal correction methods that weren't harmful to the majority of my classmates. But for me, these methods were over the top. I wasn't just being corrected—I was being overcorrected.

I have bad memories and lingering stress from those days of overcorrection, and the voice of overcorrection still lives in my head. For example, I never seem to make small mistakes. Instead, my inner voice magnifies all mistakes into crimes. Even imagined mistakes, accidental awkwardnesses, or simply not doing something in an ideal way, all become a source of inner shame thanks to internalized overcorrection.

That's why a big part of self-esteem recovery for me has been taking a closer look at my inner voice of correction. I challenge it: is what you're blaming me for really a mistake? If so, is it as serious as you say it is? Sometimes—rarely—the answer is yes, but mostly not.

Slowly, I'm coming to lose the voice of overcorrection. In its place is normal correction, and also self-acceptance: everyone makes mistakes.

Share questions:

• Have you ever experienced overcorrection? What was it like? 
• Did you ever experience "normal" correction from adults as overcorrection? (I.e., "unintentional" overcorrection)
  
• Did autistic traits contribute to your experience of overcorrection, for example: rejection sensitivity, sensory sensitivity (e.g., to raised voices), black-and-white thinking, perfectionism, other? 
• Did you ever experience intentional overcorrection from an adult (their reaction would have been disproportionate even if directed towards a non-autistic child)?
• Do you have an internalized overcorrecting voice? What is its impact on your life? 
• Have you managed to heal from overcorrection? If so, how? If not, what might it take? 
• Any tools, resources, or strategies that helped you? 
• Anything else to add?