Mathematics anxiety in primary pre-service teachers' affects their future teaching of mathematics and achievement of students. Data collected via Critical Incident Technique were used to investigate this anxiety as perceived and identified by first year pre-service teachers. This paper proposes the application of the Quality of Life conceptual framework of being, belonging and becoming, as a lens for analysis of these reflections to elucidate the concepts of identity and projective identity. This paper makes a contribution to the frameworks through which primary pre-service teachers' maths anxiety, and its implications for their identity development, might be understood.