My Students’ Blog

The Fear of Failure

By Lillian B.

Have you ever withheld doing something because you feared the idea of failing? If you have, you may have something called atychiphobia, which in more simple terms is called the fear of failure. Atychiphobia is the intense fear of failure, which may cause you to avoid an activity or scenario that could have an unsuccessful outcome. If you have this condition this may mean that you are scared to try new things or embrace growth for fear of failure. For some people, the fear is just always there, no matter what they try. 

You may be asking what this is and how you deal with it. Well, almost everyone has this fear at some point in their lives, but sometimes we worry about it so much that it becomes constant, meaning that it lingers for a longer time, and that emotion of it just being there and worrying you may bring on the very failure that you feared. This can bring fear that is strong enough to cause you to take off certain tasks and not take as many risks. This also means that you may not use any of your talents. Some other things that cause this are unrealistic expectations and not knowing what it really takes to succeed. Overall, lowering your expectations and just realizing that you have to fail to succeed is something that is forgotten, which I found interesting during my research.  Some other things that you shouldn’t do when struggling with this fear is talking bad about yourself, along with embracing the fear, since it is a real emotion and we shouldn’t be afraid of fear; we should be using it so we can move along, since that fear will always be there. I found more about this here. 

A common thread to this fear is perfectionism that can also stem from focusing on the bad things that could happen. This is also a fuel for this fear. An example of this is when you’re writing an essay and you are doing it well, but you have that small voice in the back of your head telling you that it’s not good enough. This may make you ask the teacher or parents over and over again for validation so you don’t fail. Some people may think, “Oh, that’s a tool- use it,” or “Don’t worry about that -you just want a good grade,” but they are wrong. This is a sign that you fear failure. This form of fear is harder to identify because most people who suffer from this often keep it to themselves. What we do know is that 1 in 10 adults and about 1 in 5 teens suffer from this at some point in their lives. During an interview, I asked what the fear of failure prevents you from doing, and the person I interviewed stated, “It doesn’t prevent me from doing anything, per se; it just prevents me from enjoying things at times.” This is a prime example of how the fear of failure can take over your life, since most of the time it does prevent you from doing things. 

Accepting your fear may help you realize that failure is inevitable in life, and that it’s, of course, not possible for you to be amazing at something your first time.

It may seem like it’s something easy to deal with, and honestly for some people it may be, but, for others, like myself, it’s hard to deal with the constant fear that I am going to disappoint the people around me or just that I’m going to fail and that they are unhappy with me. But, I have found some ways that I hope will help me, and I hope will help you, too. There are six different ways that you can manage this feeling of fear. One is accepting your fear. Accepting your fear may help you realize that failure is inevitable in life, and that it’s, of course, not possible for you to be amazing at something your first time. You need to understand that sometimes you can’t move forward without failing, because it takes time and work to be able to be good at it. Basically, by just giving yourself a little edge to lean on you can hopefully understand that failure is a part of life.

Another way is to treat your failure as a learning opportunity. By treating this as a learning opportunity, you can immediately go, “Oh, that doesn’t work. Let me go back and try a new way.” This will help you learn that it’s okay to fail, and that it’s just a stepping stone towards success. 

The final way that I thought was important to learn was relaxation techniques, such as deep breathing, doing something you like to do (basically just take a break and do something fun!) or tense and relax your muscle groups. This will help you get away from what you’re doing and just relax, so when you go back to what you were doing you can look at it from a different angle. Some other more simple ways to avoid this is just stop asking yourself the question, “What if I fail?” start thinking more positively, like affirmations or reminding yourself that you’re worthy of your dreams along with your goals. What’s the point in fear of doing something rather than letting fear fuel you and do it anyways, or maybe even do it better? If you want to know more about an individual experience click here. 

During my research I also found out that there are medications and psychotherapy. Psychotherapy helps you address the thoughts and emotions that can contribute to the fear of failure. Medication, however, can be prescribed to help you manage the feelings of anxiety and depression that may occur with this fear. 

 

This is something that I struggle with, and I hope that from this information I will be able to learn and live with my fear of failure, because, overall, I want to be able to enjoy what life has to offer.