Fearing Failure

I have never been comfortable with the thought of failing – most of us probably aren’t. Most people can push through the fear of failure and use it as a motivator for success. I used to think this was a skill I had, but I soon realized it was most certainly not. I probably used to think I used my fear of failure as a motivator, but once I started experiencing actual failure, fear became everything but a motivator – it didn’t take long for me to become the queen of catastrophe. I can take a single event (for example, an assignment, a test or even a social interaction), and twist it into a story of how the next 10 years of my life will be affected if it went poorly. Feeling like 10 years of your life could be derailed by messing up one thing begins to make you feel like your chances of succeeding are non-existent. Succeeding at something doesn’t get rid of this feeling, it simply pushes it onto the next thing you screw up. This kind of stress can break someone – and that is exactly what it did to me. 

I can’t remember a time where I didn’t look so much ahead at how I wanted my life to play out and think of every single way I could screw it up. I have always been someone with a plan B, just in case I needed it as well as a plan C, a plan D, a plan E…. I used to think I was just preparing myself; I didn’t realize how detrimental this kind of overthinking could be until I began to spiral out of control. However, because I was so overprepared, when I finally began to fall apart, I always managed to have a trick up my sleeve to try and stay on track. Although this may have slowed my derailment, it did not make the fall out any less catastrophic. In fact, it made everything worse. On top of that, as someone with a boatload of university stress as well, it made it harder to figure out the underlying cause: a generalized anxiety disorder. 

When I finally got my diagnosis, it was so much easier to understand my fear and what was going on in my brain. I was put on medication to manage my anxiety and started cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to try and understand my mind. When I finally started making progress and the work I put in started to bring me closer to my goals, my fear got worse. I didn’t understand why I was so scared of failing. My work was paying off, and almost everything I put my mind to I succeeded in – yet I couldn’t bring myself to believe that I was ever going to reach my goals. 

I had become so accustomed to failing over the past few years, I wasn’t sure I was able to succeed anymore.This feeling was so draining and heartbreaking. I was not someone who peaked in high school – I may have been successful in my studies but I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin, I struggled with feeling like I was worthy of the friends I had and I just wanted to get out into the world and prove to myself that I was worth something. Yet, after all this, I couldn’t help but think that maybe I had peaked in high school. Maybe that was as good as things were going to get for me. Everything seemed to go downhill once I moved on to university and I had all these big dreams that seemed to remain out of my reach. 

For the past year, I’ve found myself constantly shifting between a “You can do this! You just have to work hard and keep your mental health in check!” and a “You’re riding on luck, don’t get too excited because it can run out any second.” headspace. Although I never really felt good in this mindset, I didn’t usually feel that bad either. I always just felt sort of okay. But after a while, coasting through life in a mindset where the good things don’t feel good just so the bad things don’t feel as bad isn’t fun anymore. So, I finally decided I couldn’t continue like that. I didn’t want to feel like my life was driven by fear. I wanted to succeed, and I wanted to know that when I did, it was because I worked my ass off and earned every bit of it. If I was no longer going to let myself be ruled by fear, I had some serious work to do. 

The first thing I learned about myself was that even when writing in a journal that only I will read, I am so scared of being judged by what I put down on paper. It’s like I have this feeling that the karmic forces of the universe are going to wreak havoc on my life if I admit something that I’m not proud of or struggling with. Instead of working through my thoughts and feelings, I think I just got used to avoiding them the best I could just so I wouldn’t feel as bad all the time. When I finally started putting things down on paper that mattered, it was almost refreshing. I mean, admitting things that I had been hiding from myself really sucked, but it felt like it was something I could manage once it was down on paper. 

The second thing I learned was that once I got comfortable with the thoughts going through my head, I didn’t feel the need to try and drown them out with distractions all the time. Silence used to make me so uncomfortable because I couldn’t control what went through my mind. I usually ended up over analyzing everything which made me unbelievably anxious. Getting those thoughts and feelings out made them feel less daunting, and made it easier to control the narrative inside my mind. Once I realized this, it was so much easier to keep a positive attitude centered in my mind and rationally think through the rest. 

The final, and most important thing I learned was where the underlying fear of failure was coming from. When I first started experiencing failure, it was horrible, but I could almost always rationalize it. I wasn’t sleeping and I was dealing with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. After starting medication and CBT, I began to feel like I wasn’t allowed to be anything other than my best because I no longer had a reason not to be. I know this wasn’t the case and I can’t always expect to be functioning perfectly. However, I realized that I have this fear that no matter how hard I work or how much I try, my best will never be good enough and I still won’t be able to achieve my goals. Without having a ‘reason’ to fail, the idea of just not being good enough scares me more than failure itself. 

The unfortunate thing is that sometimes we have to fail in order to succeed. It took me a while to realize that failing didn’t mean I wasn’t good enough or capable enough, it was just that I had more to learn before I was ready to succeed. This is something that I’ve tried to keep in my mind throughout my time at university, and it is not always easy. However, little by little, it began to stick, and my failures started to become obstacles I had to overcome instead of roadblocks. Seeing them as something I could overcome made everything easier. I know this is a total cliché, but life isn’t linear, and the path to success isn’t either. Embracing failure is a lot easier said than done, especially when you feel like all you do is fail. But failure is a part of life, and in the end what matters is that you got there, not how you got there.

• failure
• lifestyle
• mental health
• success