I want to be angry and punish myself, even though I hate the feeling. I don’t want to go easy on myself and say things to myself like, “It’s okay, everyone makes mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up, just live and learn.” I want to be so mad and remorseful and overthink my error relentlessly because I want to drill it into my stupid brain to not make the same mistake again. I understand that some mistakes are benign, but there are other careless mistakes that have the potential to have negative effects on others and I don’t want to treat myself with kindness when I make those mistakes. I want to punish myself harshly in order to take it as seriously as possible, not just shrug it off and go the forgiveness route. The problem with this line of thinking is that I’m always going to make stupid and careless mistakes, that’s what makes me human. So I’ll never stop being harsh to myself because it’s impossible to reach this idealistic goal of never making a stupid or careless mistake. But even so, it just doesn’t feel right to treat certain mistakes with a self-forgiving ”Oh darn that was unfortunate, but I’ll live and learn” kind of attitude because some of these mistakes can lead to serious consequences. 

Anxiety is exhausting.