Almost everyone feels some concern about making mistakes at work. That is normal and probably useful. The version that becomes a problem is different in character: it is disproportionate to actual risk, persists long after a mistake has been corrected, causes you to over-check your work for hours, and sometimes stops you from attempting things at all because getting it wrong feels intolerable.
If that description resonates, you are dealing with anxiety about mistakes rather than healthy professional concern. The distinction matters because they respond to different things.
The anxiety response exists to protect us from threats. For much of human history, serious mistakes had serious consequences. The brain evolved to take mistakes very seriously. For most modern workplace mistakes, the actual consequences are much smaller than the threat response suggests. A wrong figure in a report, an email sent to the wrong person, a task delivered late: these are correctable errors with manageable consequences. But the anxious brain does not automatically scale its response to actual risk. It scales to perceived threat level, which is driven by thoughts rather than facts.
Catastrophising: The mind jumps to the worst plausible outcome and treats it as the likely one. "If I get this wrong, I could lose my job, and then I wouldn't be able to pay rent, and then..." The chain extends far beyond what the situation supports.
All-or-nothing thinking: Mistakes feel like total failure rather than partial errors. "I made a mistake in this presentation" becomes "I am bad at my job." There is no middle ground between perfect and worthless.
Mind reading: "My manager thinks I'm incompetent." These are guesses presented to yourself as facts. The anxiety then responds to the guess as if it were confirmed.
Overgeneralisation: One mistake becomes evidence of a pattern. "I always do this." Single events get treated as proof of a permanent trait.
If you want to see how these patterns show up in your own thinking, the Am I an Overthinker quiz covers several of these patterns directly.
Mistake anxiety often creates avoidance patterns that feel protective but actually maintain the anxiety. Over-checking work, seeking repeated reassurance, avoiding higher-stakes tasks, and procrastinating on anything where being wrong feels threatening: these reduce anxiety short-term but prevent you from accumulating evidence that mistakes are manageable. The anxiety is reinforced rather than reduced.
Separate the error from the interpretation. "I submitted the wrong file" is a fact. "I am incompetent and my manager thinks I'm useless" is an interpretation. Work with the fact. Challenge the interpretation.
Do a realistic consequences audit. Ask yourself: what is the actual, most likely outcome of this mistake? Not the worst plausible outcome, but the realistic one. Most workplace errors are correctable. Running the realistic numbers counteracts the catastrophising.
Set a checking limit and stick to it. Decide in advance how many times you will review something. One review for a routine email. Two for a complex report. Stopping at the agreed limit, even when anxiety pushes you to check again, gradually teaches your brain that the unchecked version was fine.
Process mistakes deliberately rather than ruminating. Give yourself a defined window, say 20 minutes, to think about what went wrong. Then close that window. Rumination loops that run for hours do not produce better learning than deliberate, time-limited reflection.
"Mistake anxiety is particularly common in people who are actually competent and conscientious. The people least concerned about making mistakes are often those with the least self-awareness about their performance."
If anxiety about mistakes at work is significantly affecting your performance, causing you to avoid responsibilities, or producing physical symptoms like sleep disruption and persistent dread, self-help strategies are a useful starting point but not a sufficient endpoint. The thought patterns behind this kind of anxiety are well-treated by CBT, and working through them with a therapist tends to produce faster and more durable change than working through them alone.
This pattern also often overlaps with perfectionism. The perfectionism test can help you see whether that component is present, and the article on perfectionism and anxiety covers the relationship in depth.
💡 Related: Mistake anxiety at work often coexists with broader patterns of overthinking and worry. The anxiety at work guide covers the wider picture, including managing performance pressure and social dynamics at work.
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