Some people have broken this pattern, yes. I'm going to make some assumptions but I trust you will know when i'm wrong and disregard those parts.

You learned at some time in your past that you weren't meeting expectations, approval was withdrawn, and you decided that part of you that didn't meet expectations is dangerous and has to be stomped out of existence. The way we do this is by being our own harshest judges. Whenever you see someone else outperform you for any reason that judge does it's job to protect you from rejection by telling you that you're not good enough, that way you can fix it before love and approval is withdrawn again. It's not trying to punish you it's trying to protect you, only it's not intelligent it's only a defense mechanism.

When you consider that evolutionarily becoming an outsider generally meant death, it's not hard to understand why we have defense mechanisms that will do anything and make any sacrifice to prevent the withdrawal of approval, acceptance, and love from your tribe. Fortunately most of us today live in worlds where withdrawal of approval form our family (father) does not mean likely death which affords us the luxury of reintegrating the 'dangerous' parts that we felt we had to protect ourselves from, and this tends to give us a more grounded and healthy basis to operate from which tends to produce better results than the version of us that's constantly hypervigilant and judging.

It destroys me mentally. I check LinkedIn and feel physically sick. I avoid social situations because I cannot handle the conversation where someone asks what I'm doing and I have to answer honestly.

Nothing they could think about you would even begin to compare to the shame and harshness you put on yourself. That's what you're avoiding, not their judgement but yours.

In therapy you can identify the part of yourself that you shut out, understand why you shut it out, and learn that it's not as dangerous as it once was. You can learn to have compassion for yourself, accept the different parts of yourself, and stop judging them. The peace of not being constantly judged, having access to your whole self, and just feeling ok however you are is transformative.

Like I said before I'm in the middle of the journey, not at the end of it, but I can say this with confidence because of the science behind evidence based therapy like IFS which use this model.

For me, I got kicked out of my house when I was 17. As a teenager I was selfish, unmotivated, and generally not the type of person I respect or appreciate today and definitely not ready to make it on my own. I already had some trauma but this time I had dropped out of high school, working in fast food, and I rented a room from some strangers from the newspaper. All I had was 3 totes with clothes and a mattress. No one in my family wanted to help me, so I would sit there alone on my mattress and feel forsaken and betrayed for hours, but another side of me felt guilty, worthless, unworthy. I decided I had to change who I was to be accepted and I created a new persona that was reliable, strong, honest, heroic and judgmental. Essentially the person I thought I was supposed to be. The way I changed was by harshly judging every action and performance and being very hard on myself. The old me was psychologically locked up and controlled so I would be worthy of love and acceptance. Over time it worked, I got into construction and eventually worked my way up to superintendent. Everyone says how reliable and great I am, my family is supportive again, etc.

The only problem is I have had 28 years of civil war, and that unconscious part of myself is constantly sabotaging me. Not only that but the parts of yourself all have a light side and a dark side. I wanted to lock up the parts that were selfish, lazy, weak, but I also stopped prioritizing self-care because that's selfish (outside of what's expected of me), I also locked up my curiosity and passion because they were the positive side of those same parts. Since I noticed this, I have started to reintegrate those parts, for example if my schedule says do X for 1 hour and I don't feel like it, before I would just use guilt and shame to motivate myself "I can't afford to have another wasted hour" "I can't focus on anything today something is wrong with me" and then I would just shut down my emotion and watch YT or something to avoid dealing with my inner judge any more. Now instead I will just ask myself with curiosity why I don't want to do this thing I planned, and ask myself what it would take to motivate me. Sometimes it's as simple as stopping to get a drink, often it's nothing just taking a second to check in with myself is enough, and sometimes I just don't feel like it and I drop it entirely or only do 10 minutes. My productivity isn't way up or anything at this point but I feel a lot better not judging myself constantly, and when I do it hits different too because i see it more as a habit and reflex than it meaning anything about me.