I had an interesting realization as I was driving home from work today.
A lot of things make me anxious, often for no discernible reason. I was puzzling over what particular things made me anxious today and remembered a situation with someone who works in another department that occurred today.
When I say "situation" I mean "Absolutely fucking nothing but Katie blows everything out of proportion."
I've been waiting several weeks (a couple months, tbh) for this one individual in this other department to answer some pretty basic questions so that I could wrap up a design job for him. Today, he finally got it to me and I was able to finish it and send him a preview. I'm lucky to have Adobe Stock at work so I sent him some flyers with Adobe Stock photos, still watermarked so that I wouldn't have to license images that wouldn't be used. He said he liked them, so I licensed them, exported them to .pdfs, and sent him the .pdfs.
Or so I thought. I got a strange email not long after from said individual wanting me to "take the writing off the picture on the flyer." Since I had already licensed the pictures, I didn't know what he meant; one of the pictures had extensive code in some coding language (idk, C? C++? Python? Fuck if I know.) so I asked if that's what he was talking about, informing him that that was the picture.
This particular person, I should mention, is deplorable at communicating. When I get emails from him, I often have to ask him to clarify what he means and then still can't understand what he's trying to say. He also often doesn't answer questions or simply ignores them and gives vague responses. So this was nothing new.
His reply explained it, but I couldn't help but question this person's.... er.... ability, let's say, when I got the answers. Apparently, he got flyers that still had the Adobe watermark on them; his response went something like "Well the words 'Adobe Sto' are on one, there's a triangle on another one.... " etc. Since I had just explained that I had to license the images from Adobe Stock, I had to wonder why he didn't just say "I think you sent me the wrong flyers; the images on these still have watermarks on them" or something to that effect. Instead, he was vague, which kinda left me looking like an ass.
I had apparently saved the exported .PDFs in two different locations and had sent him the previous versions by accident.
Well, NBD, you might say, except for the hassle of trying to figure out this person's strange communication style. For me, however, I immediately went into anxiety mode and stayed there for most of the rest of the day. By anxiety mode, I mean in a constant state of mild anxiety triggered by my small mistake.
And therein lies my realization: I can't make any mistakes.
Here's why.
For six and a half years, I worked for someone who was a prime example of a narcissist. She had to have her nose in everything, created her own realities, thought everyone was against her and that she was so much better than them, took credit for everything that happened in my department, treated me like a dog playing fetch (except not so friendly) when important people came in, and, most importantly, yelled at me any time I made a mistake.
Once, for example, she yelled at me because we ran out of coffee. I could tell on this particular occasion that she was having a bad day, so I approached her with caution to let her know. (My days were always kind of touch-and-go with her; if she was having a bad day, I knew she would take it out on me, but if she was having a good day, I knew I was in the clear.) When I told her about our coffee situation, she yelled at me, in front of coworkers, telling me that it was a "pattern" that I "let [the department] run out of things constantly!" and the like.
Another time, probably the worst, she yelled at me in front of coworkers and clients for not picking up someone's check on time.
This was a pretty common pattern with her.
Finally, she left. I won't get into why, but I immediately felt better (for a while; another person came along who tried to sabotage my career, but I won't get into that. She's gone too now, thankfully.)
So as I drove home, wondering why exactly I had anxiety over something kind of silly that most people would get over, I realized this. Much like a dog who's been "gifted" with a choke-chain, I had been conditioned by negative-reinforcement to fear and hate making mistakes.
Even while I thought about the otherwise tiny, insignificant mistake I made, I tried to come up with excuses to explain it, to try to make it okay, make sure I wasn't yelled at, treated like an adult instead of a dog who's peed on the rug. And this lasted, for the most part, for the rest of the day; even when I was thinking about something else, there would be a lingering, mild anxiety, and then I would think about why, remind myself, and get anxious all over again.
Here's the thing: unless it's a really big, intentional mistake, I usually don't care, even a little, when other people make mistakes.
Because it can't be their fault.
It's always my fault.
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