How do you stop beating yourself up over your mistakes at work?
December 27, 2019 10:18 AM
Whenever I make a mistake in my professional life it sends me into a spiral of terror, anxiety, and self-recrimination. It is deeply unhelpful, and fuels my workaholicism because I then feel like I have to make up for my mistakes. How do I chill out?
I make a mistake, I beat myself up over it, I get afraid I'm going to be fired, and this makes me even more anxious about making mistakes--which I suspect makes me even more likely to make them because I'm so anxious when I do my work! It also leads to me feeling like I have to work harder and longer to make up for my messes, which I also suspect fuels the mistakes because I'm probably getting tired and burned out.
I can't comfort myself with "Everyone makes mistakes" because I know in the working world it doesn't matter if you're trying or mean well, what matters is your output. How do I stop this cycle? What can I tell myself to calm myself down?
I make a mistake, I beat myself up over it, I get afraid I'm going to be fired, and this makes me even more anxious about making mistakes--which I suspect makes me even more likely to make them because I'm so anxious when I do my work! It also leads to me feeling like I have to work harder and longer to make up for my messes, which I also suspect fuels the mistakes because I'm probably getting tired and burned out.
I can't comfort myself with "Everyone makes mistakes" because I know in the working world it doesn't matter if you're trying or mean well, what matters is your output. How do I stop this cycle? What can I tell myself to calm myself down?
At the school my kids attended they would say "We teach failure, because failing is an opportunity to learn." If I screw up at work I own it. I will notify my supervisor so that they hear it from me before hearing it from someone else.
posted by tman99 at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2019
posted by tman99 at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2019
I find it helpful to learn what the actual steps are, where I work, that lead to someone getting fired.
If you're in the US, it's probably legal for anyone to fire you on the spot. But a lot of companies don't actually do that for ordinary run-of-the-mill mistakes or low productivity, and instead have a process that happens first (getting warned, getting put on a performance improvement plan, etc).
When I get the urge to Atone For My Sins by running myself into the ground, a thing I tell myself is "When I've gotten a formal warning, then it'll be time to Atone. Until then, nobody's asking me to, so I don't need to."
This doesn't apply if you're in a precarious role like retail or call center, if your boss has a history of writing people up to get leverage over them, or if your company is the sort of shitshow where people in long-term positions do just up and get fired at random. If that's the situation, honestly, consider looking for a new job, since one like that is terrible for someone with job anxiety (and TBH mostly terrible for anyone).
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2019
If you're in the US, it's probably legal for anyone to fire you on the spot. But a lot of companies don't actually do that for ordinary run-of-the-mill mistakes or low productivity, and instead have a process that happens first (getting warned, getting put on a performance improvement plan, etc).
When I get the urge to Atone For My Sins by running myself into the ground, a thing I tell myself is "When I've gotten a formal warning, then it'll be time to Atone. Until then, nobody's asking me to, so I don't need to."
This doesn't apply if you're in a precarious role like retail or call center, if your boss has a history of writing people up to get leverage over them, or if your company is the sort of shitshow where people in long-term positions do just up and get fired at random. If that's the situation, honestly, consider looking for a new job, since one like that is terrible for someone with job anxiety (and TBH mostly terrible for anyone).
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:47 AM on December 27, 2019
I know in the working world it doesn't matter if you're trying or mean well, what matters is your output.
I don’t know if this is true in the way you’re meaning it though. Yes, we’re all hired to do a job, to produce an output. But, we’re also people. No human being will ever be 100% mistake-free, and any humane workplace will take that into account. It almost sounds like you feel you are in competition with a hypothetical perfect employee who never makes mistakes, but that person doesn’t exist. Your boss, if they are at all a decent manager, knows this.
(If your boss is contributing to this perfectionism and making you feel this way, it might be time to look for a new job.)
I also think this is about capitalism, and how it’s set up to make you feel precarious. For me, it helps to have a plan in mind of what I’ll do if I do lose my job. That way, if I’m freaking out about getting fired (which by the way, has never happened and I have made my share of mistakes), I can remind myself I won’t end up in the gutter.
I think there’s another aspect too, which is precarity of self. I also think this is related to capitalism, where many of us are trained to attach our sense of self-worth to our jobs. I know that for myself, when I began to attach my self-worth to things that had nothing to do with my job, I felt less terrible about job-related failures.
posted by lunasol at 10:48 AM on December 27, 2019
I don’t know if this is true in the way you’re meaning it though. Yes, we’re all hired to do a job, to produce an output. But, we’re also people. No human being will ever be 100% mistake-free, and any humane workplace will take that into account. It almost sounds like you feel you are in competition with a hypothetical perfect employee who never makes mistakes, but that person doesn’t exist. Your boss, if they are at all a decent manager, knows this.
(If your boss is contributing to this perfectionism and making you feel this way, it might be time to look for a new job.)
I also think this is about capitalism, and how it’s set up to make you feel precarious. For me, it helps to have a plan in mind of what I’ll do if I do lose my job. That way, if I’m freaking out about getting fired (which by the way, has never happened and I have made my share of mistakes), I can remind myself I won’t end up in the gutter.
I think there’s another aspect too, which is precarity of self. I also think this is related to capitalism, where many of us are trained to attach our sense of self-worth to our jobs. I know that for myself, when I began to attach my self-worth to things that had nothing to do with my job, I felt less terrible about job-related failures.
posted by lunasol at 10:48 AM on December 27, 2019
It's quite rare to get fired over a single mistake. Depending on the type of workplace you might get yelled at and belittled, or the company might take a long hard look at their processes and figure out how they allowed you to make such a serious mistake as in jozxyqk's example above, or you might be given less responsibility in the future. But in general only the most irresponsible of bosses wants to fire a reasonably competent worker - finding and training workers is hard!
Also you can lose your job even if you do everything 100% perfectly! You could get laid off due to changing priorities at your company/organization. Your company could merge with another and your office moves hundreds of miles away. In the US, at least, you could get fired just because your boss doesn't like you.
So firstly, try to separate out your fear of losing your job and your fear of making a mistake: the two things are only loosely related.
What part are you really afraid of? Is it the financial insecurity of being jobless? That may well be a totally reasonable fear (most people can't afford to not have a job, at least not for long) but it's also something you can prepare for, to some extent - you can think through what you would do if you lost your job, how you would try to find another one, what expenses you could cut back on (either things you could do now, so that you can save up a bit of a financial cushion, or things that you could do at the point that you lose your job), even what public services (if any) you would qualify for.
Or is it the more intangible things: fear of people thinking less of you, fear of looking like a failure, just straight-up plain old perfectionism? Fear of who you would be if you didn't have your job to define that big part of your existence? Fear of people knowing that you're not 100% universally competent all the time? Those ones are probably good fodder for therapy, if you have access, or for working through something like Feeling Good if you don't.
posted by mskyle at 10:48 AM on December 27, 2019
Also you can lose your job even if you do everything 100% perfectly! You could get laid off due to changing priorities at your company/organization. Your company could merge with another and your office moves hundreds of miles away. In the US, at least, you could get fired just because your boss doesn't like you.
So firstly, try to separate out your fear of losing your job and your fear of making a mistake: the two things are only loosely related.
What part are you really afraid of? Is it the financial insecurity of being jobless? That may well be a totally reasonable fear (most people can't afford to not have a job, at least not for long) but it's also something you can prepare for, to some extent - you can think through what you would do if you lost your job, how you would try to find another one, what expenses you could cut back on (either things you could do now, so that you can save up a bit of a financial cushion, or things that you could do at the point that you lose your job), even what public services (if any) you would qualify for.
Or is it the more intangible things: fear of people thinking less of you, fear of looking like a failure, just straight-up plain old perfectionism? Fear of who you would be if you didn't have your job to define that big part of your existence? Fear of people knowing that you're not 100% universally competent all the time? Those ones are probably good fodder for therapy, if you have access, or for working through something like Feeling Good if you don't.
posted by mskyle at 10:48 AM on December 27, 2019
I tell myself "a year from now you won't even remember this so you might as well forget it now." The terror and anxiety part always, always fades, so I just give myself permission to let it fade faster. (Obviously I also do what needs to be done to fix it and prevent it happening again--just addressing the self-recrimination aspect.)
Also, are you youngish? Because in a couple of decades you will have fucked up a countless number of things and seen your friends do it too and the world will have kept spinning and you'll have the sure knowledge that nothing is that big a deal. Example: A few years out of law school my friend was part of a team that screwed up something so huge that it made headlines for years and cost their very large institutional client hundreds of thousands of dollars and an enormous amount of reputational damage. He went on to make partner and now has a very comfortable life as a well-respected attorney. It just wasn't that big a deal.
posted by HotToddy at 10:49 AM on December 27, 2019
Also, are you youngish? Because in a couple of decades you will have fucked up a countless number of things and seen your friends do it too and the world will have kept spinning and you'll have the sure knowledge that nothing is that big a deal. Example: A few years out of law school my friend was part of a team that screwed up something so huge that it made headlines for years and cost their very large institutional client hundreds of thousands of dollars and an enormous amount of reputational damage. He went on to make partner and now has a very comfortable life as a well-respected attorney. It just wasn't that big a deal.
posted by HotToddy at 10:49 AM on December 27, 2019
I also do this. Two things have helped me:
1. What happens when other people at your workplace make mistakes? Are they berated, blamed, publicly shamed? Or do they feel safe admitting they messed up? (because everyone has definitely messed up.) take a hard look at your company culture and see if it’s a safe place, where you learn from mistakes and put in checks to stop these things from escalating. You can help mold company culture with 2.
2. How do you treat others when they make mistakes? Are you forgiving and do you help them work out what happened and how to minimize this happening again, and then also help put in the measures to stop escalation?
posted by umwhat at 10:50 AM on December 27, 2019
1. What happens when other people at your workplace make mistakes? Are they berated, blamed, publicly shamed? Or do they feel safe admitting they messed up? (because everyone has definitely messed up.) take a hard look at your company culture and see if it’s a safe place, where you learn from mistakes and put in checks to stop these things from escalating. You can help mold company culture with 2.
2. How do you treat others when they make mistakes? Are you forgiving and do you help them work out what happened and how to minimize this happening again, and then also help put in the measures to stop escalation?
posted by umwhat at 10:50 AM on December 27, 2019
I have a this problem (link to my own question around this) and no wisdom of my own yet sadly, but I found this previous AskMeFi question and answers from someone else really helpful to me!
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 10:59 AM on December 27, 2019
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 10:59 AM on December 27, 2019
in the working world it doesn't matter if you're trying or mean well, what matters is your output.
Not really.
From a management perspective: mistakes are always going to happen, and most mistakes are a result of procedural problems, not individual incompetence, 95% of the time. It's an organization's problem and purpose and ongoing endeavor to engineer the processes to reduce the opportunity for mistakes.
When you (or someone else in your general chain of responsibility) make a mistake, your priority should be figuring out what caused/allowed it to happen and fixing that problem. I don't say this to make your anxiety worse, but: freaking out and spiralling and wasting a ton of cycles to ritually flog yourself for your personal failure is, frankly, a bigger waste of resources than most mistakes. Terror doesn't fix a damn thing, it doesn't earn you points back, and is likely a little overdramatic unless you're, like, a doctor or structural engineer.
Treat your anxiety. And if your work environment is so toxic that you're expected to take this personally, prioritize finding another work environment.
The appropriate professional response to a mistake is optimization, not flagellation. If the nature of these mistakes are related to accuracy (typos, bad math, inaccurate pick/packing, manufacturing defects, etc) you should start identifying ways to improve quality control. If you're performing precarious tasks - as an example, I often have to go do Not Entirely Advisable But Unavoidable Things in people's databases, something that absolutely goes wrong on a regular basis - I take backups and I get the users out of the system so I can roll back without loss of work instead of magical-thinking I'm some kind of infallible database deity who never fucks up because that's not going to work out for me very well. When I make a mistake, and I make them all the time because I work with both computers and humans and both are unreliable entities (as am I myself), I swear under my breath and then I ask "how can I keep THAT from happening again? How can I set Future Me up for better success?" My team has meetings once a month or more to talk about stuff that didn't go great and how to make it better. We revise and improve our project management and implementation methodology on the regular to minimize every pain someone has recently run across.
And look: I routinely assume I'm about to be fired, largely for imaginary reasons, but that lives separately from whatever accidents and misrepresentations and misunderstandings I deal with on a day to day basis. You are much less likely to get fired for making mistakes if you are using them to figure out how to do better work, how to make those mistakes less likely for everyone involved. You are more likely to get fired for sitting paralyzed at your desk all day just because a thing went wrong, or for demanding extra work from other people to make you feel better and/or cover for you. Deal with it and keep moving.
I keep recommending Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto, which is largely focused on reducing actual life-or-death mistakes (in hospitals, but other industries as well) and the SCIENCE behind learning from mistakes, predicting mistakes and pre-preventing them, and about not relying on memory (the shittiest possible device) to follow best practices, procedures, etc. Here's a short excerpt.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:05 AM on December 27, 2019
Not really.
From a management perspective: mistakes are always going to happen, and most mistakes are a result of procedural problems, not individual incompetence, 95% of the time. It's an organization's problem and purpose and ongoing endeavor to engineer the processes to reduce the opportunity for mistakes.
When you (or someone else in your general chain of responsibility) make a mistake, your priority should be figuring out what caused/allowed it to happen and fixing that problem. I don't say this to make your anxiety worse, but: freaking out and spiralling and wasting a ton of cycles to ritually flog yourself for your personal failure is, frankly, a bigger waste of resources than most mistakes. Terror doesn't fix a damn thing, it doesn't earn you points back, and is likely a little overdramatic unless you're, like, a doctor or structural engineer.
Treat your anxiety. And if your work environment is so toxic that you're expected to take this personally, prioritize finding another work environment.
The appropriate professional response to a mistake is optimization, not flagellation. If the nature of these mistakes are related to accuracy (typos, bad math, inaccurate pick/packing, manufacturing defects, etc) you should start identifying ways to improve quality control. If you're performing precarious tasks - as an example, I often have to go do Not Entirely Advisable But Unavoidable Things in people's databases, something that absolutely goes wrong on a regular basis - I take backups and I get the users out of the system so I can roll back without loss of work instead of magical-thinking I'm some kind of infallible database deity who never fucks up because that's not going to work out for me very well. When I make a mistake, and I make them all the time because I work with both computers and humans and both are unreliable entities (as am I myself), I swear under my breath and then I ask "how can I keep THAT from happening again? How can I set Future Me up for better success?" My team has meetings once a month or more to talk about stuff that didn't go great and how to make it better. We revise and improve our project management and implementation methodology on the regular to minimize every pain someone has recently run across.
And look: I routinely assume I'm about to be fired, largely for imaginary reasons, but that lives separately from whatever accidents and misrepresentations and misunderstandings I deal with on a day to day basis. You are much less likely to get fired for making mistakes if you are using them to figure out how to do better work, how to make those mistakes less likely for everyone involved. You are more likely to get fired for sitting paralyzed at your desk all day just because a thing went wrong, or for demanding extra work from other people to make you feel better and/or cover for you. Deal with it and keep moving.
I keep recommending Atul Gawande's book The Checklist Manifesto, which is largely focused on reducing actual life-or-death mistakes (in hospitals, but other industries as well) and the SCIENCE behind learning from mistakes, predicting mistakes and pre-preventing them, and about not relying on memory (the shittiest possible device) to follow best practices, procedures, etc. Here's a short excerpt.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:05 AM on December 27, 2019
I find it helpful thinking about what's actually required to "make up" for your mistakes, your anxiety is probably lying to you. If it's a reversible mistake, once you've reversed it you're done making up for it! If it's not, once you've done something equivalently better than the baseline expectation you're good. If you're like me you're way overestimating how bad your mistake is and underestimating how good your work is, if you're realistic about it you realize that 5 minutes of work will fully compensate for 99% of mistakes and the rest is anxiety
posted by JZig at 11:09 AM on December 27, 2019
posted by JZig at 11:09 AM on December 27, 2019
I've suffered from a lot of these types of worries. What's helped was reading "The Worry Cure" (and getting myself into therapy). Specifically, the biggest cognitive biases that I've tackled are:
1) personalization - how I feel reflects reality, i.e., I feel like I suck, therefore I must suck, or I feel like everything is going poorly, which means everything actually is going poorly,
2) overly focusing on the negatives / discounting positives - do you only remember the things that go badly at work, what about the things that go well?,
3) double standard in evaluating self vs. others -- if I coworker were having this issue, would I recommend they overly stress out and over-work to make it up?,
4) black and white thinking - if I make one mistake, I am someone who makes ALL of the mistakes, vs. someone who made a mistake once, is learning how to avoid the mistake again,
5) not believing I can survive a negative outcome -- feeling like if my boss perceives my mistake as a bad thing, I can't possibly recover and will lose my job and never find a job again, which is possible, but low possibility vs. lots of other possibilities.
Identifying these "biases" in my thinking helps to reduce the pattern of negative thinking/berating myself. I think the biggest learning I've had, is, my thoughts skew negative (based on genetics / upbringing / habits), but there is no reason why they can't also be more neutral or positive, so I make myself explicitly try to find those thoughts and bring them into the fold.
posted by ellerhodes at 11:13 AM on December 27, 2019
1) personalization - how I feel reflects reality, i.e., I feel like I suck, therefore I must suck, or I feel like everything is going poorly, which means everything actually is going poorly,
2) overly focusing on the negatives / discounting positives - do you only remember the things that go badly at work, what about the things that go well?,
3) double standard in evaluating self vs. others -- if I coworker were having this issue, would I recommend they overly stress out and over-work to make it up?,
4) black and white thinking - if I make one mistake, I am someone who makes ALL of the mistakes, vs. someone who made a mistake once, is learning how to avoid the mistake again,
5) not believing I can survive a negative outcome -- feeling like if my boss perceives my mistake as a bad thing, I can't possibly recover and will lose my job and never find a job again, which is possible, but low possibility vs. lots of other possibilities.
Identifying these "biases" in my thinking helps to reduce the pattern of negative thinking/berating myself. I think the biggest learning I've had, is, my thoughts skew negative (based on genetics / upbringing / habits), but there is no reason why they can't also be more neutral or positive, so I make myself explicitly try to find those thoughts and bring them into the fold.
posted by ellerhodes at 11:13 AM on December 27, 2019
There was an Ask A Manager question (and recent update) that was similar to yours and I thought the advice she gave and the scripts for responding were really good.
posted by helloimjennsco at 11:13 AM on December 27, 2019
posted by helloimjennsco at 11:13 AM on December 27, 2019
Can you flip the storylines so you can see the mistake as opportunity?
* what can you learn from this mistake?
* how can you prevent the mistake in the future? (which may mean changing your patterns and may mean needing to introduce better process, which in the long run often benefits everyone)
* when something you see as a mistake happens, can you get an outside perspective from someone you trust? (just today, i related an old mistake to a coworker and he said he didn't even remember it happening even though he was involved - for me, it was a turning point in the way i approached an aspect of work because i didn't want things to go that way again)
We only learn through 'mistakes' (which I put in quotes because really most things are just a 'mistake' that causes us to adjust our course). You recognize that the anxiety isn't helping. What can you do for yourself to step back from the anxiety so you can see things more clearly and take appropriate actions? (for me this is mediation and breathing/movement exercises that create a little clarity and space - at other times it's been therapy or talking to trusted friends/coworkers)
posted by kokaku at 11:16 AM on December 27, 2019
* what can you learn from this mistake?
* how can you prevent the mistake in the future? (which may mean changing your patterns and may mean needing to introduce better process, which in the long run often benefits everyone)
* when something you see as a mistake happens, can you get an outside perspective from someone you trust? (just today, i related an old mistake to a coworker and he said he didn't even remember it happening even though he was involved - for me, it was a turning point in the way i approached an aspect of work because i didn't want things to go that way again)
We only learn through 'mistakes' (which I put in quotes because really most things are just a 'mistake' that causes us to adjust our course). You recognize that the anxiety isn't helping. What can you do for yourself to step back from the anxiety so you can see things more clearly and take appropriate actions? (for me this is mediation and breathing/movement exercises that create a little clarity and space - at other times it's been therapy or talking to trusted friends/coworkers)
posted by kokaku at 11:16 AM on December 27, 2019
Really, everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. Places where mistakes matter have systems to catch those mistakes (which sometimes work and sometimes don't, ahh mistakes!) but the point is that mistakes are about the entirety of the workplace. Functional output requires multiple parts. When mistakes are caught, the system is working correctly! That means everybody is doing their jobs and things can be fixed. Its when mistakes aren't caught that there's really problems, when something goes under the radar until it is far too late.
Mistakes mean that the workplace is doing its thing. It's fine. And even big mistakes (million dollar plus) mistakes people get through them. Companies keep going. It's going to be okay.
When somebody says that there is something wrong, it's not about you. It's about the job . It really isn't that big of a deal.
posted by AlexiaSky at 11:22 AM on December 27, 2019
Mistakes mean that the workplace is doing its thing. It's fine. And even big mistakes (million dollar plus) mistakes people get through them. Companies keep going. It's going to be okay.
When somebody says that there is something wrong, it's not about you. It's about the job . It really isn't that big of a deal.
posted by AlexiaSky at 11:22 AM on December 27, 2019
Two things.
1. I made an honest mistake that cost my previous employer $17,000. The response was basically, "shit happens."
2. I am in upper management at my current job. A staff member handled a situation extremely poorly a couple of weeks ago, and the director and I would both like to fire them. We don't think they're a good fit for their position. In reality, they will get the first step of that process (a formal conversation), and will then get plenty of time to mend their ways before the next step (a warning letter), after which they will STILL get plenty of time to mend their ways before anything else happens.
I have similar anxieties to yours, so I get it. But generally speaking, a lot of serious mistakes have to pile up before you have to start worrying.
posted by missrachael at 11:30 AM on December 27, 2019
1. I made an honest mistake that cost my previous employer $17,000. The response was basically, "shit happens."
2. I am in upper management at my current job. A staff member handled a situation extremely poorly a couple of weeks ago, and the director and I would both like to fire them. We don't think they're a good fit for their position. In reality, they will get the first step of that process (a formal conversation), and will then get plenty of time to mend their ways before the next step (a warning letter), after which they will STILL get plenty of time to mend their ways before anything else happens.
I have similar anxieties to yours, so I get it. But generally speaking, a lot of serious mistakes have to pile up before you have to start worrying.
posted by missrachael at 11:30 AM on December 27, 2019
I used to go through a similar cycle to you and it was actually career-limiting as well as bad for my mental health. I still do sometimes but I have found One Cool Trick! It will depend a bit on your boss/workplace.
My one true trick goes like this:
Assess the mistake. If it's a small, private mistake, I document it for myself in a file along with anything I need to know to not make it again (if applicable.)
If it's a small mistake that someone else can say/found, I apologies right away and document anything I need to do differently.
If it's a medium mistake, I go through my port-mortem steps and then I let my boss know. The trick to this is that you also need a robust process where your boss ALSO hears what went right, or it might get weird. But letting my boss know in a casual way "hey, just to let you know, I made this mistake, here's how I'll avoid that in the future" helps me. I try to keep this limited in terms of like, once a week max. (If I am making that many mistakes.)
If it's a BIG mistake, I call my boss right away, even if I don't have it sorted out yet, and I start my phone call with "I need your help," if it's applicable. I had a GREAT with mistakes boss who was very insistent on "Bad news best delivered quickly" and it's changed my life.
I actually am mostly the boss and I do not mind legitimate mistakes. What would bother me is the same mistake happening over and over with no recognition of that (and even so, it might be my job as the boss to figure out why that's happening.) If I have staff that never make mistakes, that usually means they're not learning.*
* Our mistakes don't generally kill anyone though, this will be industry-dependent.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:47 AM on December 27, 2019
My one true trick goes like this:
Assess the mistake. If it's a small, private mistake, I document it for myself in a file along with anything I need to know to not make it again (if applicable.)
If it's a small mistake that someone else can say/found, I apologies right away and document anything I need to do differently.
If it's a medium mistake, I go through my port-mortem steps and then I let my boss know. The trick to this is that you also need a robust process where your boss ALSO hears what went right, or it might get weird. But letting my boss know in a casual way "hey, just to let you know, I made this mistake, here's how I'll avoid that in the future" helps me. I try to keep this limited in terms of like, once a week max. (If I am making that many mistakes.)
If it's a BIG mistake, I call my boss right away, even if I don't have it sorted out yet, and I start my phone call with "I need your help," if it's applicable. I had a GREAT with mistakes boss who was very insistent on "Bad news best delivered quickly" and it's changed my life.
I actually am mostly the boss and I do not mind legitimate mistakes. What would bother me is the same mistake happening over and over with no recognition of that (and even so, it might be my job as the boss to figure out why that's happening.) If I have staff that never make mistakes, that usually means they're not learning.*
* Our mistakes don't generally kill anyone though, this will be industry-dependent.
posted by warriorqueen at 11:47 AM on December 27, 2019
Any chance you have ADHD or something on that spectrum? Does rejection sensitive dysphoria sound familiar to you?
I, too, used to react this way. I'm not sure if it was ADHD or the relentless hammering of perfectionism from my parents--the teasing when I failed, their own apparent hypercompetancy (at least through the eyes of a child), the fact that they rarely tried new hobbies, the fact that they would be very focused on my own missteps but rarely acknowledged the hard work or practice I put in to hobbies unless I seemed unusually "gifted" at them. What cured me was, at the age of thirty, to try to start a garden despite the fact that I routinely kill plants. It was viscerally pleasant enough that "practice" was easy, and year by year, I developed a much more successful garden. One day it occurred to me that my child, born in the middle of this process, would never know that I once considered myself to have a "black thumb." It's all a matter of perspective.
Since then I've attempted and succeeded at learning many new things. I'm more quick to ask for advice when I am confused or inexperienced--it no longer feels shameful not to know something. And I've improved rapidly in areas of former competency, too. If I'm having a lot of trouble with something, I can consult new resources, ask for help. I no longer feel the skin-crawling shame of ignorance, because ignorance can be corrected through practice. Making an error means you know what not to do, definitively. I still feel the sting of RSD sometimes, but it passes much more quickly, and with a growth mindset now, I fix my errors, ask for help when I need it, and move on.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:11 PM on December 27, 2019
I, too, used to react this way. I'm not sure if it was ADHD or the relentless hammering of perfectionism from my parents--the teasing when I failed, their own apparent hypercompetancy (at least through the eyes of a child), the fact that they rarely tried new hobbies, the fact that they would be very focused on my own missteps but rarely acknowledged the hard work or practice I put in to hobbies unless I seemed unusually "gifted" at them. What cured me was, at the age of thirty, to try to start a garden despite the fact that I routinely kill plants. It was viscerally pleasant enough that "practice" was easy, and year by year, I developed a much more successful garden. One day it occurred to me that my child, born in the middle of this process, would never know that I once considered myself to have a "black thumb." It's all a matter of perspective.
Since then I've attempted and succeeded at learning many new things. I'm more quick to ask for advice when I am confused or inexperienced--it no longer feels shameful not to know something. And I've improved rapidly in areas of former competency, too. If I'm having a lot of trouble with something, I can consult new resources, ask for help. I no longer feel the skin-crawling shame of ignorance, because ignorance can be corrected through practice. Making an error means you know what not to do, definitively. I still feel the sting of RSD sometimes, but it passes much more quickly, and with a growth mindset now, I fix my errors, ask for help when I need it, and move on.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 12:11 PM on December 27, 2019
I can't comfort myself with "Everyone makes mistakes" because I know in the working world it doesn't matter if you're trying or mean well, what matters is your output.
I had this very same outlook until I started working where I am now. At this job, people can make mistakes and it DOES matter if you're trying or if you mean well. Yes, your output matters and you really shouldn't make the same mistake more than once, but a decent employer knows and accepts that humans just aren't 100% perfect all the time, and they won't expect you to be.
posted by cooker girl at 2:05 PM on December 27, 2019
I had this very same outlook until I started working where I am now. At this job, people can make mistakes and it DOES matter if you're trying or if you mean well. Yes, your output matters and you really shouldn't make the same mistake more than once, but a decent employer knows and accepts that humans just aren't 100% perfect all the time, and they won't expect you to be.
posted by cooker girl at 2:05 PM on December 27, 2019
I can't speak to the anxiety or work aspect, but maybe I can speak to the self-flagellation.
After decades of struggling through increasing self-loathing and recrimination, I recently had a paradigm shift. It happened about a week after a friend's birthday party. I have social anxiety, but I love people, so I manage to muster up the push to get out and be with other humans every once in a while, and then pay for it emotionally for days afterwards. If I misstep - which I frequently feel I do - or drink enough to affect my behavior*, it's much worse. On this occasion, I did both, and oh, the hellfire I rained down on myself.
It’s worth mentioning here: I was abused in my past, and I’ve seen people being abused.
So a few days later, I was sitting quietly, hurting, when an image came up in my head. I saw a man - a boyfriend, husband, father, it didn’t matter - picking apart a woman after a party, tearing apart every sentence, every move. No matter how I had phrased things over the years to try to gain ground on this, it wasn’t until this moment that I finally, fully understood what I was doing to myself, and realized I’ve been perpetuating my abuse long after it stopped coming from the outside. I’ve been victimizing myself, and I could go on victimizing myself for the rest of my life. I could, but I didn’t want to, and I didn’t have to.
I don’t want to be that man to myself anymore. I don’t want to be an abuser, period. And that’s what I tell myself. “I don’t do that anymore.” When I make a mistake, or fall short, or cringe over something I feel embarrassed about, and I feel the urge to pull the whip out, I instead meet it with acknowledgment of the emotion, then compassion. “You are afraid X. It’s okay.” It’s a work in progress; I don’t always catch it, but most of the time I can.
It feels like a tight, tangled mess finally coming loose. I feel lighter and easier than I can remember ever feeling, and so much of my fear is lifting with it. I am finally, finally, giving fewer fucks, and instead of falling apart, things are getting better inside and around me.
Right now, my child is going through an incredibly difficult time, and while this is happening, I have been able to focus on helping them, and us, get through it intact under challenging circumstances. It’s pushing all sorts of personal buttons for me; you can’t imagine the massacre that would have been happening inside my head right now, on top of everything else. It has been painful and exhausting, but I’m not breaking myself down. I’m meeting myself where I’m at.
I won’t pretend to know what your insides look like or what your dialogues are, but I can’t believe that flagellating yourself over mistakes at work is any better than if a boss, coworker, or partner were doing it to you. Would you do it to somebody else? You are creating your very own toxic work environment, or adding generously to it. There is no way to flourish under that.
I don’t know; I’ve acknowledged the self-flagellation as a sort of abuse over the years, and it took making that particular visual association for me to actually get it. Maybe it’s useful to you, maybe it’s not. Regardless, I hope you find a way to be kinder to yourself.
—
* I’m a more extroverted, happy/sentimental/warm drunk, so I’m not actually doing terrible things; I’m just embarrassed.
posted by moira at 7:38 PM on December 29, 2019
After decades of struggling through increasing self-loathing and recrimination, I recently had a paradigm shift. It happened about a week after a friend's birthday party. I have social anxiety, but I love people, so I manage to muster up the push to get out and be with other humans every once in a while, and then pay for it emotionally for days afterwards. If I misstep - which I frequently feel I do - or drink enough to affect my behavior*, it's much worse. On this occasion, I did both, and oh, the hellfire I rained down on myself.
It’s worth mentioning here: I was abused in my past, and I’ve seen people being abused.
So a few days later, I was sitting quietly, hurting, when an image came up in my head. I saw a man - a boyfriend, husband, father, it didn’t matter - picking apart a woman after a party, tearing apart every sentence, every move. No matter how I had phrased things over the years to try to gain ground on this, it wasn’t until this moment that I finally, fully understood what I was doing to myself, and realized I’ve been perpetuating my abuse long after it stopped coming from the outside. I’ve been victimizing myself, and I could go on victimizing myself for the rest of my life. I could, but I didn’t want to, and I didn’t have to.
I don’t want to be that man to myself anymore. I don’t want to be an abuser, period. And that’s what I tell myself. “I don’t do that anymore.” When I make a mistake, or fall short, or cringe over something I feel embarrassed about, and I feel the urge to pull the whip out, I instead meet it with acknowledgment of the emotion, then compassion. “You are afraid X. It’s okay.” It’s a work in progress; I don’t always catch it, but most of the time I can.
It feels like a tight, tangled mess finally coming loose. I feel lighter and easier than I can remember ever feeling, and so much of my fear is lifting with it. I am finally, finally, giving fewer fucks, and instead of falling apart, things are getting better inside and around me.
Right now, my child is going through an incredibly difficult time, and while this is happening, I have been able to focus on helping them, and us, get through it intact under challenging circumstances. It’s pushing all sorts of personal buttons for me; you can’t imagine the massacre that would have been happening inside my head right now, on top of everything else. It has been painful and exhausting, but I’m not breaking myself down. I’m meeting myself where I’m at.
I won’t pretend to know what your insides look like or what your dialogues are, but I can’t believe that flagellating yourself over mistakes at work is any better than if a boss, coworker, or partner were doing it to you. Would you do it to somebody else? You are creating your very own toxic work environment, or adding generously to it. There is no way to flourish under that.
I don’t know; I’ve acknowledged the self-flagellation as a sort of abuse over the years, and it took making that particular visual association for me to actually get it. Maybe it’s useful to you, maybe it’s not. Regardless, I hope you find a way to be kinder to yourself.
—
* I’m a more extroverted, happy/sentimental/warm drunk, so I’m not actually doing terrible things; I’m just embarrassed.
posted by moira at 7:38 PM on December 29, 2019
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I felt so bad. I beat myself up. I even wrote a physical letter of apology and sent it to all of upper management.
You know what happened?
They didn't read the letter.
I didn't even get a slap on the wrist.
They just took it as an opportunity to improve system security.
I'm still at the same job over a decade letter and that mistake is long forgotten.
But I think about it whenever I make other huge errors, or when I see coworkers similarly flub.
We're humans. Shit happens. We fix the problem and we get back on the horse.
posted by jozxyqk at 10:25 AM on December 27, 2019