Reviewed and updated by Iris Hogan, MSW, LICSW · September 2026
For Most People, Mistakes Are Uncomfortable. For Some, They Feel Overwhelming.
You send an email to a colleague and later notice a typo you missed.
Not your boss. Not an important job application. Just a regular email to someone you work with.
And hours later, you’re still thinking about it.
How did I miss that?
Did she notice?
Does she think I’m careless?
You know, rationally, that it is a typo. You probably would not think twice if someone else made the same mistake.
But somehow, when it is yours, it feels different.
This is something many women bring into therapy.
From the outside, it can look like perfectionism.
Inside, it often feels more like fear.
Not fear of the mistake itself—but fear of what the mistake means.
Fear of disappointing someone. Of being judged or letting people down. Of realizing you are not as capable as everyone thinks you are.
If you have ever wondered why one small mistake can feel so emotionally overwhelming, you are not alone.
And the answer may have less to do with what is happening now than with what getting it wrong has meant earlier in your life.
When Mistakes Feel Dangerous
One of the things I hear from many high-functioning women is:
“I know I’m being hard on myself, but I can’t seem to stop.”
They understand logically that nobody expects perfection. They know everyone makes mistakes. They would never judge a friend as harshly as they judge themselves.
And yet, when they make a mistake, it can feel as though something important is at stake.
That feeling is not always about what is happening in the present moment. Sometimes, it is connected to what similar experiences have meant in the past.
For some people, mistakes were met with criticism.
For others, they brought embarrassment, shame, punishment, rejection, or the withdrawal of affection.
Sometimes the message was explicit:
“You should know better.”
Sometimes it was more subtle:
“Good girls don’t make mistakes.”
“You need to try harder.”
“What will people think?”
And sometimes it was not words at all—just a parent’s face tightening, a room going quiet, or a shift in tone that made your stomach drop.
These messages are often learned in childhood. But they can also take shape later: in relationships, schools, workplaces, or other environments where mistakes were met with blame, ridicule, shame, or real consequences.
Over time, you may come to learn a simple rule:
Getting it right feels safe.
Getting it wrong does not.
The Problem Isn’t High Standards
This is important.
The problem is not caring, wanting to do a good job, or having goals.
Many thoughtful, successful, compassionate people have high standards.
The difficulty begins when self-worth becomes attached to performance—when mistakes start to feel like evidence that something is wrong with you.
When “I made a mistake” quietly turns into:
“I am a mistake.”
That is a very different experience.
And often, a much more painful one.
This overlap between competence, anxiety, and perfectionism can be easy to miss. I wrote more about that in High-Functioning Anxiety in Women: Calm Outside, Chaos Inside.
Why Insight Doesn’t Always Change It
Many women spend years trying to reason with themselves.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Nobody cares.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“I need to stop overthinking.”
Sometimes those reminders help.
Sometimes they do not.
Because understanding a pattern intellectually does not always change what your mind and body learned through experience.
You may know that a typo in an email is not dangerous. No one has ever been carried out of the office because they used “their” instead of “there.”
Just ask my dyslexic self. I have accumulated considerable evidence.
But if mistakes have repeatedly been connected with criticism, humiliation, conflict, or disconnection, your body may still respond as though the stakes are much higher than they are now.
Your chest tightens. Your stomach drops. Your mind starts replaying the moment, searching for what went wrong and how you can prevent it from happening again.
This is why insight alone does not always create lasting change.
You can understand a pattern and still feel caught inside it.
When Perfectionism Becomes Protective
Not everyone who struggles with perfectionism has experienced trauma. And not everyone with painful or difficult experiences develops perfectionism.
But for some people, perfectionism becomes a way of protecting themselves from experiences that once felt painful, unpredictable, or unsafe.
Research has found associations between childhood adversity, difficulties with emotion regulation, and maladaptive perfectionism. That does not mean difficult childhood experiences cause perfectionism in every person, or that everyone who is perfectionistic has a trauma history. But it may help explain why achievement, control, and getting things right can become closely tied to safety, acceptance, or connection for some people.
If criticism felt painful, getting things right may have helped you avoid it.
If unpredictability felt unsettling, control may have created a sense of safety.
If approval felt conditional, achievement may have become a way of securing connection.
The strategy made sense at the time.
In many cases, it may have helped you succeed, earn praise, avoid conflict, stay prepared, or stay one step ahead.
But what once protected you can eventually become exhausting.
Because perfectionism keeps moving the finish line.
You finally get one thing right, and apparently there is now another thing you should have been doing better all along.
No achievement ever feels quite enough, and no success lasts very long before there is something else to get right.
For some people, it can feel as though their nervous system stays on alert—quietly scanning for the next mistake and carrying a constant hum of tension beneath the surface.
If you recognize the larger pattern of continuing to carry, manage, and take responsibility even when you are depleted, you may also find Why It’s So Hard to Stop Overfunctioning — Even When You’re Exhausted helpful.
How EMDR May Help
One of the things that surprises people about EMDR is that therapy does not always require one big, obvious traumatic event to be helpful.
EMDR can be used to work with distressing experiences and memories that may have contributed to beliefs such as:
“I have to get everything right.”
“Mistakes aren’t safe.”
“I need to be perfect to be accepted.”
“If I disappoint people, something bad will happen.”
Rather than focusing only on present-day behavior, EMDR can help identify and process experiences connected to these beliefs and reactions.
EMDR is a structured, trauma-focused therapy with strong evidence for post-traumatic stress disorder. It involves a careful process that includes understanding your history, building preparation and coping resources, identifying treatment targets, processing distressing material at an appropriate pace, and checking in on how the work is integrating over time.
When distressing experiences are processed in therapy, memories may begin to feel less immediate or emotionally charged in the present.
This is not about erasing memories.
It is about changing your relationship to them.
Moments that once felt sharp and immediate may begin to feel more distant. Your body may not react as intensely. The same situation may carry less urgency or emotional charge.
You might still notice the mistake—but without the same drop in your stomach, the same rush of panic, or the same need to replay it over and over.
The mistake still matters.
It just does not have to feel catastrophic.
If you are wondering what actually happens before trauma processing begins, How Do I Know if I Am Ready for EMDR? explains readiness, preparation, and why you do not have to decide on your own that you are “ready.”
You can also learn more about my approach to EMDR therapy for women.
What Healing Often Looks Like
People sometimes assume healing means becoming carefree—never worrying, never caring, never making mistakes.
That is not what I usually see.
What I see is quieter.
A woman receives feedback and does not spiral for three days.
A parent makes a decision and trusts herself afterward.
A professional notices a mistake and corrects it without questioning her worth.
Someone who once replayed every interaction begins, slowly, to let things go.
The mistake still exists.
But it no longer defines them.
Because healing is not about lowering your standards.
It is about separating your worth from your performance.
A Gentle Reflection
Think about the last mistake that stayed with you longer than you wanted it to.
Maybe everyone else had moved on hours ago. Your brain, however, had scheduled a full retrospective.
What made it feel so significant?
What were you afraid it meant about you?
Where do you think you first learned that getting something wrong was dangerous?
You do not need to have the answers right away.
Sometimes these questions open the door to understanding yourself with a little more compassion.
And often, that is where healing begins.
Ready for Support?
If small mistakes regularly trigger shame, panic, self-doubt, or days of rumination, therapy can offer a place to understand the pattern and begin loosening its hold.
I provide online therapy for adult women throughout Washington State, including trauma therapy and EMDR-informed care. You are welcome to reach out to learn more or schedule a consultation.
Research & Sources
Dobos, B., Pikó, B. F., & Mellor, D. (2021). What makes university students perfectionists? The role of childhood trauma, emotional dysregulation, academic anxiety, and social support. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 62(3), 443–447.
Read the study on PubMed
Casale, S., Svicher, A., Fioravanti, G., Hewitt, P. L., Flett, G. L., & Pozza, A. (2024). Perfectionistic self-presentation and psychopathology: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 31(2), e2966.
Read the systematic review and meta-analysis on PubMed
American Psychological Association. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy.
Read the APA overview of EMDR and PTSD
EMDR International Association. What Is EMDR Therapy?
Learn more about EMDR therapy
Until We Meet Again
Until we meet again—breathe gently, walk slowly, and treat yourself with kindness.
— Iris