It is not necessarily insulting in and of itself but you felt insulted by someone saying that to you. That's an important distinction to make because you have a choice how you interpret and react to things to a great extent.

It's naive to look at things like this as black and white, people can get stuck in being negative and it can be good to hear a positive spin, alternatively someone might just want to say the negatives going on for them and have them heard and acknowledged and might feel their feelings are not being validated by trying to put a positive spin on it. That's just two possible avenues of which there are many. If someone is assuming that by putting a positive spin on something they said, that you are not comfortable with their sadness, that's a bit of a dick thing to do to assume that, that is their intention.

I had a similar realisation where it wasn't the work that was making my body and brain say, "enough" but the abuse I would give myself even just by the feelings of anxiety and stress to "must get it done or else." Was what I couldnt tolerate.

These things can become a habit and we often don't realise I think that it is just a habitual way of thinking and not reality a lot of the time. The same can happen with people who wish to lose weight and they can be skinny but they still have the "habit" of seeing themselves as fat (not the same as anorexia but part of that is habituated behaviours for sure).

A great way to find these troublesome thoughts is by looking for when you are saying to yourself, "should" or "should not" and I have found that questioning these shoulds and should nots has lead me to explore whether they are actually benefiting me or just left over unhelpful ways of being left over from childhood.

Wheres the edge like the drop of into space? Thats just a cliff.

I'd want to see the edges personally before I'd believe that.

Not only that, but the way you speak to yourself in the process or "self disciplining." I had a realisation around my own way of treating myself when I thought,

"if I saw someone walking down the street and they had someone walking alongside them speaking to that person the way I speak to myself, what would I think of the person saying those things?"

It suddenly dawned on me how awful I can treat myself and I've been working on it ever since, over 3 years now, and it's made such a difference but I still do it but not as much and stop myself if I am feeling bad about anything unnecessarily, and through working on self compassion, self discipline became something I could stick with because it didn't feel so abusive to myself.

Do you really believe that? I've never come across someone who believes that before.

Something that is often overlooked with self discipline is self compassion, because if you don't have self compassion self discipline will feel very unpleasant and hard to stick at it. Self compassion makes self discipline so much easier.