Imagine an email has just landed in your inbox from your boss. She’s keen to catch up about a project you recently worked on and give feedback. What’s your initial reaction? Maybe you feel tense and anxious? Or instantly write off your efforts as sub-par even though she has praised your work to the wider team?

Feedback makes many of us uneasy. “It can feel threatening,” London-based career coach and psychologist Dr Perpetua Neo says. “Negative feedback, especially if we’re insecure and sensitive, can feel like an attack on us. And when in threat mode, we tend to amplify how we perceive anything negative. Maybe we ruminate on the more negative parts, or we only hear them selectively because we’re already tense and ready to defend ourselves.”