You sound like a rather sensitive soul. Constructive criticism is valuable and can be taken on board to improve performance and as such should be acceptable. Negative criticism can, if you let it, damage your confidence in your ability - try not to let it if this is what you want to do with your life - it is not acceptable. A good way to address this problem would be to make up a story that includes a character similar to your protagonist that shows him up in a very poor light. Include all of the things that trouble the character who represents yourself and how it makes them feel (fill it out a bit of course) then find an ending that resolves the problem the way you would like it to. Finally, tell the story the next time he is in the audience and see afterwards if the penny has dropped. Failing that choose an expletive that precedes "off" to see him on his way. Good luck.