I have a job I'm not good at, but I don't have any other options right now. I have biweekly 1:1's with my manager and I dread them as if they're a threat to my life. I work in an extremely competitive industry (recruiting). It's very quotas and metrics driven, and I genuinely don't have the social battery to do it for very long. Eventually I burn out, and then the manager notices and it starts coming up in 1:1's (if I'm unlucky they start micromanaging), and at that point there's genuinely nothing I can do but take it because I'm so completely spent.

The moment I get the inkling that my manager is unhappy with my performance, my entire life just comes undone. It makes me anxious, the anxiety impacts my performance, which makes me more anxious about the review, and I just spiral. It's exhausting, and it wreaks havoc on every part of my life.

I realize now that I'm genuinely more afraid of the negative criticism/lecturing from my boss than I am of actually losing my job. I wish I could find comfort in that but I just can't. I'm so afraid of that bad review or criticism because when I finally get it, it's this horrible, suffocating feeling. It's actually torture and it lasts for weeks on end and absolutely nothing helps. It makes me not want to be alive. I end up constructing my entire life around avoiding criticism.

I guess what I'm asking for isn't comfort about the fear of losing my job, but rather how do I handle the physiological response I have when I get criticized, and how do I manage the panic attacks I constantly have when I feel like I'm in danger of receiving criticism?