Workplace stress is quickly getting the better of me. I've made the dumb mistake of forgetting that a major automated job should've been processed for a client over last weekend. While me being based in Europe means I could cover my behind by processing the update on Monday morning and normally everything would still be updated on the client's front-end by business open in the US, a completely unexpected error, that we didn't even think was possible at all, happened which caused the entire update to be stuck. This not only made it look like to the client that I hadn't done anything at all due to me not confirming on Friday that the update was being done, but it was also such an arcane code error that it required calling in lead developers from several different teams to work on resolving it for almost two entire business days, most of which was spent trying to answer the same question to six people asking it separately at the same time and reading increasingly irate e-mails from the client that after a while began to be written in all-caps, accusing me personally of letting down and dropping the ball on a critical industry client even though I have personally guaranteed that it would be online by end of day on Monday.
I'm just ashamed of the whole thing and keep replaying it in my head over and over to see what I could've done differently, even though the nature of the error means it would've happened anyway no matter when I started the update, but mostly about how I immediately lost my cool and panicked over the weight of everything within sight of at least a dozen colleagues and my own manager to the point of repeatedly hitting my head against the wall in a pure helpless rage at myself and the whole situation, and loudly whining that I can't bear this anymore and I'm quitting my job immediately (which luckily wasn't taken seriously by anyone). I'm completely torn between a conviction that I screwed up and it's on me, and knowing it was completely out of my hands, but I'm mostly beating myself up (figuratively this time) over this feeling that I'm just not cut out for it, that I immediately cave under the pressure whenever there's a crisis (and it's always in situations where I'm stuck waiting for a reply from those equipped to assist me while also trying to reassure impatient clients breathing down my neck demanding the same answers I'm waiting for), and that it was a mistake to promote me into a client-facing position to begin with even though I've been covering this part of the job for over six years now. And needless to say, it's always this same client. To make it even worse, I'm the only one in the team with the experience needed to handle this specific client.
My therapist told me last week (ironically, before this incident even happened) that everybody panics every once in a while and I shouldn't be so harsh on myself for doing so, but I can't help but compare myself to all my other coworkers who somehow never seem to have breakdowns like this. Why can't I stay composed and just analyze the problem and do what needs to be done? Why do I have to fire the entire nuclear arsenal the moment something goes the tiniest bit off script?