On being twelve inside

Image depicting how I felt today via

Any time I get feedback from a boss that is less than perfectly positive, I feel like a twelve-year-old who's getting in trouble. Today my boss told me (in a regular one-on-one meeting) that my numbers are totally awesome, but that they're that great at the expense of my accuracy. The people who work on my jobs after me had noted some occasional problems, so my boss wanted to bring it to my attention so I can try to balance the numbers with the accuracy and still be awesome.

My first thought was immediately to start listing mistakes being made by other people that I've noticed. Because I get super-defensive and want to remind her that other people make more slash other mistakes than I do. Then I thought about pointing out that the mistakes she pointed out were weird, or justifiable for this or that reason, or invalid, or something. Because I don't want her to think I'm an idiot. Then I wanted to demand to see figures on other numbers of mistakes made by my coworkers, so I could see where I stand.

Of course, because my inner twelve-year-old is a sissy bitch, I nodded a lot, took notes on the feedback, asked clarifying questions, and promised to slow down a little to try to get things back into shape. Then I spent the day feeling like I had gotten a D on an important test and I was going to have to stay after for detention or something - that awful knot in my stomach and triple-checking everything I did. Ugh.

The best part is, if I were to ask my boss how bad this stuff was, with 1 being "it's totally benign," and 10 being "firing is imminent," it would probably be about a 3.

Thank GOD I'm having awesome people over for delicious dinner and then raucous board game action tonight!

Do you overreact to negative feedback too? Please tell me I'm not the only one!