We humans have often beaten ourselves up based on comparisons that we make of ourselves with others. Comparison, skillfully used, can be highly beneficial. Yet, if unskillfully used, comparison causes enormous self-inflicted pain.
Woody Allen said, “My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.”
Have you ever thought that someone else was inherently better than you? More “deserving” of love and happiness? Can you see that beating yourself up, because you had established a set of rules that judged you harshly as compared to someone else, has been needless suffering?
How about cutting yourself a break and giving up beating yourself up once and for all? You can declare it a behavior that no longer works for you. As situations arise that could degenerate into beating yourself up, you can choose differently. What do you have to lose?