Backhanded criticism

Sounds insulting but it’s really flattering, actually

“Honestly cannot stand all the sincere and thoughtful gestures you keep making. Who do you think you are, caring about your friends “

“Look at this idiot, thinking I’ll be impressed by how they’re good at everything they do.”

useful technique to shortcircuit the kind of thinking that makes people compulsively apologize for existing

my art drawing teacher once did exactly this to me by accident

... art drawing? life drawing.

we were doing a class critique and when he got to me, one of his closing comments was "I can tell you've been practicing"

but I was constantly a ball of rejection-sensitive anxiety in that class, and also I had not been practicing, so I squirmed in automatic shame and confessed as much

and his response was "Jesus, what would happen if you did?!"

and it took me well into the next student's critique to realize that that had actually been a very complimentary thing for him to say

Oh no, that's kind of great.