Rumination and Perfectionism

[Lemoncloud77]

Hi 👋

For years I've struggled with anxiety but what I've identified over the last couple is my issues with perfectionism and if I make a mistake or almost make a mistake, it completely debilitates me where I ruminate on the what ifs and catastrophise so I over work etc and people please to ensure I do everything correctly.

Today when closing up, I thought I had locked work up but I always double check. Usually it's my mind playing tricks and everything is ok (I'm the type of person who needs to take photos of their plugs off for reassurance). What has completely floored me today is that when I went to double check the doors after closing, the front door was actually left open!!

It must have been a complete oversight as I've had a stressful day and gone into auto pilot now I can't stop worrying about what would have happened if I hadn't checked again.

Luckily my anxiety makes me over check and thank goodness I did so everything was fine and managed to close up properly before leaving but now I'm beating myself up about a HUGE mistake I may have made and now worried this is only going to heighten my issues 😭

I'm worried that im going to get wrong from my boss about almost not locking up and honestly it's upset me for hours.

Xx

Hi OP

Can you concentrate on the positives?

Because you are conscientious (positive) you double-checked (positive) and found the door was not locked, so you were able to lock it before leaving (positive).

So what you did was GOOD ENOUGH to get the job done, which is what you are paid for and why you are a good employee. And I don’t see why you should be in trouble.

If you re-frame your actions you’ll see that Good Enough is what is needed - not perfection.