Why do I focus on the harshest feedback?

You gather feedback from several people, and your attention locks onto the harshest voice, letting it drown out all the rest. Nine kind notes and one cutting one, and it is the cutting one you carry home and act on, as if severity were the same as truth. But harsh and true are not the same thing, and confusing them is costing you. There is a quiet assumption underneath this, that the cruelest read is the most honest one, that the person who went hardest saw most clearly. It feels that way, but it usually is not so. Harshness often says more about the critic than the work. Meanwhile the other nine voices are also data, and dismissing them because they were kind is throwing away most of the truth in the room. So weigh feedback by how useful and fair it is, not by how much it stings. Next time, look for the point that shows up across several voices, and give that more weight than the one that simply hurt the most. Let the encouraging notes count as real information too. You are learning to read for truth instead of for pain, and truth is usually spread across the whole room, not concentrated in its sharpest corner.