As a creative professional, I spend a lot of time thinking about criticism. I spend a lot of time criticizing, too – myself in particular.

There’s just something about that moment when your work is being reviewed by a client or employer. It’s a sudden collision of your mental space and your public self. It can be terrifying.

While I believe in the power of stress as a source of motivation, there is a category of anxiety that is anti-motivational – and it’s important that we recognize when stress crosses the line and becomes something dangerous. Seth Godin recently wrote a much-retweeted blog that reads in part,

“Anxiety is nothing but repeatedly re-experiencing failure in advance. What a waste.”

That seems almost too pat, but it’s not. In fact, it knocked the breath right out of me.

Being prone to anxiety in general, and in my working life especially, I realized that every time I log a minute of freakout time, I’m not letting myself succeed. I have already failed, in advance. That’s a strange thing to do to yourself, isn’t it?

An example of failure by anxiety:

At a previous full-time job, I was constantly criticized – and asked to deliver unthinkable criticisms and threats (that I strongly disagreed with) to the team that I was managing. Repeated instances of this caused me to approach every working day with trepidation, anxiety, and fear. As a manager, I felt powerless; as a writer, I felt mocked.

I was racked with anxiety, to the extent that it reflected on my physical person: I dropped weight, stopped eating well, rarely went outside, and, all told, I looked the part of living misery.

In retrospect, however, what really bothered me about this job was that I was being paid to threaten my team members. It was like being a fly on the wall, watching anxiety rule an entire office and dictate the terms of our failure. A malevolent fly.

In other words, I couldn’t live with the responsibility of doing to others what was being done to me.

Even as I tried to devise a glass-half-full way of delivering my boss’ blows, I watched the employees’ attitudes change. I saw them become listless, slow, unproductive workers. I watched the quality of their output diminish. I watched them stumble.

And I knew what was happening: with no positive feedback from their director, just a sense of fear and trepidation, they believed that they had already failed. Anxiety and criticism handily won the war, and I was left with a non-performing team that was splintered and angry – and a boss who couldn’t understand why, in spite of my weak efforts to mend the fence.

To make a long and unpleasant tale much shorter, I did leave that job, but I did not leave it feeling good about myself. I resolved never to lead people by fear or anxiety again. I resolved never to accept that leadership again: it was too risky. It had done no good.

It was not only the most disappointing professional experience of my life, but the least productive. I am not even proud of what I accomplished, because the joy of delivering – and receiving genuine feedback – was stamped out of me.

What’s more, I let it happen.

Freelancers and entrepreneurs need to recognize the difference between crippling anxiety and stress, in order to lead ourselves – and others – to success. Otherwise, we will fail. Perhaps not at first, but if we let anxiety rule, we’re omitting the possibility of success. Even if we succeed, we’re busy anticipating the next possible failure.

It’s a vicious cycle. And a debilitating one. Although part of me wishes I never learned that lesson firsthand, another part of me is grateful; I will never lead a team with the assumption of failure. Ever. Again.

What effect has anxiety had on your professional life?