How to Stop Making Mistakes When You're Anxious

Your heart is racing. You can feel your manager's eyes on you. The task in front of you should be simple-you've done it dozens of times-but suddenly your brain feels like it's wrapped in fog. You just need to get through this without messing up.

So you move faster. Finish the task. Get it done. Escape the feeling.

Then you see it: the obvious error you missed. The thing you would have caught immediately if you'd been calm. And now the very thing you were trying to avoid-looking incompetent-just happened.

This keeps happening. The more pressure you feel, the more mistakes you make. And you've drawn a conclusion about what this means.

Why You Think It's Your Fault

When you make errors under pressure, your mind immediately supplies an explanation: I'm not good enough at this. I don't know enough. I'm incompetent.

It makes sense. Competent people don't make these mistakes, right? So the solution must be to work harder, learn more, try harder not to mess up.

Maybe if you just focus more intensely, the errors will stop.

Maybe if you can just get through the task quickly enough, you won't have time to fail.

This is what most people assume when anxiety creates errors: the problem is their skill level. Their knowledge. Their capability.

And so they keep trying to fix those things. More training. More preparation. More effort.

But here's what you've probably noticed: you make these errors even on tasks you've mastered. Things you can do perfectly when you're calm suddenly fall apart under pressure. Which means it's not actually about competence, is it?

What Actually Causes the Errors

In the majority of cases I've worked with, the real culprit isn't your skill level at all.

It's what's happening in your brain the moment anxiety spikes.

Your brain has two key players in moments of pressure: the amygdala (your threat detection system) and the prefrontal cortex (your thinking, planning, decision-making center). When you're calm, your prefrontal cortex runs the show. It's why you can execute tasks smoothly, catch errors, make good decisions.

But when anxiety activates-when you feel that surge of "everyone's watching" or "I can't mess this up"-your amygdala interprets this as danger. And in response, it essentially hijacks your prefrontal cortex.

This isn't a metaphor. It's measurable neurobiology.

That brain fog you described? That's your thinking brain going offline. The racing heart, the rushed feeling, the inability to access knowledge you definitely have-these are features of a threat response, not signs of incompetence.

You're not making errors because you lack skill. You're making errors because the part of your brain that executes skilled work is temporarily unavailable.

This explains why conventional solutions don't work. More training doesn't help if you can't access your training in the moment. Trying harder to focus doesn't work when your brain's alarm system is overriding your focus.

The problem isn't what you know. It's what's happening to your nervous system when the stakes feel high.

The Hidden Brain Mechanism Behind Your Mistakes

Here's what most people don't see happening behind the scenes:

Your amygdala is designed to detect threats and activate your body's protection systems before you consciously realize danger is present. This happens in milliseconds. It's automatic.

In genuinely dangerous situations-a car swerving toward you, a physical threat-this system is brilliant. It gets your body ready to fight or flee before your slow, deliberate thinking brain even registers what's happening.

But here's the thing: your amygdala can't tell the difference between physical danger and social danger. Between a genuine threat and the fear of judgment.

When you feel the pressure of being watched, or the fear of appearing incompetent, your amygdala flags this as danger. It activates the same cascade of responses it would for a physical threat:

Heart rate increases (to pump blood to muscles for fighting or running)
Breathing accelerates (to get more oxygen)
Blood flow shifts away from the prefrontal cortex toward the body
Your threat-scanning intensifies (hypervigilance)
Your time perception shifts (everything feels urgent)

And crucially: your access to complex thinking, planning, and careful execution diminishes.

This is why you feel the urge to rush. Your nervous system is literally in "escape danger" mode. The anxiety isn't just an uncomfortable feeling-it's a full-body state that changes how your brain functions.

Now add one more layer: you learned early in life that struggling meant being a burden, and being a burden meant being neglected. In a household with six siblings, two requiring extensive care, and daily chaos, you developed a survival strategy: be invisible, don't add to the problems, don't struggle visibly.

That was intelligent. It worked.

But now, decades later, your amygdala still carries that programming: Struggling in front of others = danger.

So every time you face a challenging task at work, especially with people watching, your threat system activates. Your brain fog isn't incompetence-it's a nervous system that learned to treat visible struggle as a threat to your safety.

This hidden mechanism is why rushing feels like the solution. Your body is trying to escape a threat. But what you're actually escaping isn't dangerous-which means the "solution" creates the exact problem it's trying to prevent.

Why Slowing Down Prevents Mistakes (When Rushing Feels Safer)

The standard approach to anxiety-driven errors goes like this:

Feel anxiety rising
Interpret it as "I might mess this up"
Rush through the task to escape the feeling
Hope the speed prevents errors

But as you've discovered, this creates more errors, not fewer.

Here's the counterintuitive truth that research and clinical practice have proven over and over:

When you reverse the process-when you pause instead of rush, when you name what's happening instead of fighting it, when you slow down instead of speed up-you actually perform better.

Why would the opposite work?

Because of a neurological phenomenon called "affect labeling."

Research using brain imaging has shown that simply putting your emotional state into words-"I'm feeling anxious," "My threat system is activated"-measurably reduces amygdala activity. The act of naming what you're experiencing re-engages your prefrontal cortex.

You're essentially telling your thinking brain: "Hey, I need you online for this."

It sounds too simple to work. But the data is clear: affect labeling reduces the intensity of emotional responses and restores access to executive function.

And there's something else happening when you pause instead of rush: you're breaking the "safety behavior paradox."

A safety behavior is something you do to prevent a feared outcome. In your case, rushing is a safety behavior-you rush to avoid being seen struggling, which feels dangerous.

But safety behaviors have a paradox built into them: they often create the very outcome they're meant to prevent.

By rushing, you make errors. Those errors make you appear less competent. Which confirms the fear that drove the rushing in the first place. The cycle reinforces itself.

When you do the opposite-when you slow down, work carefully, and allow yourself to be seen taking time with a task-you break this cycle. You prevent the errors that rushing creates. And critically, you gather new evidence that contradicts your core belief: Maybe struggling doesn't lead to rejection. Maybe taking time doesn't mean I'm incompetent.

You already have proof this works in another area of your life. Your personal trainer asks you to check in with your body, to notice what's happening, to name what you're experiencing. And you keep showing up twice a week because this approach helps you stay engaged instead of panicking.

The same principle applies to anxiety at work: naming what's happening, pausing to observe, working carefully despite discomfort-these aren't signs of weakness. They're skills that prevent the amygdala hijack from sabotaging your performance.

What You Can No Longer Ignore

If this is accurate-if your errors aren't about incompetence but about a nervous system in threat mode-then here's what you can no longer ignore:

Rushing isn't protecting you. It's creating the exact outcome you fear.

And the feeling of "I need to hurry before they see me struggle"? That feeling isn't giving you accurate information. It's a survival strategy from childhood that no longer matches your reality.

The uncomfortable part is this: the solution requires doing the thing that feels most dangerous. It requires allowing yourself to be seen working through something carefully. To pause visibly. To take time instead of rushing.

It requires trusting that struggling won't lead to neglect or rejection-even though your nervous system learned, in a very real way, that it could.

You can't think your way out of this belief. You have to test it through experience.

What to Do the Next Time Anxiety Hits at Work

Here's what I want you to do this week:

When you're at work and feel that familiar surge-stomach knots, racing heart, the fog rolling in, the urge to rush-I dare you to do the opposite:

Pause. Even for three seconds. Don't touch the task.
Name it out loud or silently: "I'm feeling anxious" or "My threat system just activated."
Ask yourself: "What thought just went through my mind?"
Write it down later-in a notebook, your phone, anywhere you can capture it.

Then, once this week, take one of your walks. During that walk, review what you captured and ask yourself: What would my trainer say about these thoughts?

You already know her voice. She's the one who reminds you that not knowing yet is part of the process. That asking for help is what support is for. That struggling means you're growing, not failing.

Borrow her perspective and apply it to your work anxiety.

This is an experiment. You're testing whether noticing and naming makes things worse, better, or creates no difference. You'll have real data about your own experience instead of just the fear of what might happen.

And here's the stakes: if you don't test this, you'll keep running from a threat that isn't real, creating the very errors that confirm your worst fears about yourself.

But if you do test it-if you're willing to pause just once or twice this week-you might discover that your thinking brain comes back online when you name what's happening. That the errors decrease when you slow down instead of speed up.

The Evidence You'll Have After This Week

If you complete this challenge, here's what you'll have evidence for:

That your errors aren't proof of incompetence-they're proof of an anxious nervous system that hasn't yet learned it's safe to struggle visibly.

That the part of you that rushes isn't weak or flawed-it's trying to protect you using a strategy that worked in childhood but doesn't fit your current reality.

And most importantly: that you can interrupt the amygdala hijack in real-time. That you're not stuck in this pattern forever. That your brain has the capacity to build new pathways-the same way your muscles build new strength through progressive overload at training.

Every time you pause, name, and observe instead of rushing, you're strengthening a new neural circuit. You're teaching your nervous system: This isn't danger. I can slow down. I can be seen working carefully. And I'll be okay.

The proof won't come from understanding this intellectually. It will come from the data you gather this week when you dare to do the opposite of what anxiety demands.

You've survived much harder things than observing your own thoughts. You lived through years of chaos, neglect, and having to stay invisible just to be safe.

This is about giving that strong, resilient person you are some better tools. Tools that work with your nervous system instead of against it. Tools that break the cycle instead of feeding it.

The question is: are you willing to test it?