I got feedback before my novel that it was too much telling, not enough showing. I couldn't for the life of me fathom how to show more, so I asked a writing tutor.

He told me to turn everything to dialogue. To introduce characters when the people were lost in their thoughts, so they had someone to speak to, then make it dialogue.

I was uneasy. I already had plenty of dialogue. But he was the expert. I was an amateur. I followed his advice. And then published because I couldn't find a publisher.

A year later I got critical feedback from a reader who is also a writer: Too much dialogue, not enough description.

Fuck. It went against all my instincts to change it to dialogue. I changed bits that I loved, and would have preferred to leave them as thoughts (which might even have been considered description).

I'm like you, when it comes to difficult feedback. I lost confidence in my novel at that point.

For me, it was after publishing rather than before. Fortunately, there are a lot of people who love it anyway, but the critic hurt. And honestly, I spent years on it and took two months off work to complete it. There's only so much time you should spend on a project, before it's better to publish and start something new.