The fear of failure haunts almost all people. Each of us experiences anxiety before a performance, meeting the opposite sex, and is afraid to talk about our desires and even dream. Therefore, living in a small world, you are not allowed to go out and try new things.
People limit their actions and endeavors in order not to make a mistake if they have developed atychiphobia, which translated from Greek means “fear of failure.” They are terrified of making a mistake, of not being able to cope with the task, of disgracing themselves. This fear, like many others, has a destructive effect on a person’s lifestyle and influences his intentions. People with phobias see a direct connection between opportunity, failure and competition. To get closer, they believe that it is better not to touch upon problematic issues. To achieve success for them is comparable to an unattainable goal, and to fail is a disaster.
The mechanism of development of fear of failure
Atychiphobia originates in childhood. Many parents do not learn how to raise children and do not know how to regulate emotions. Often, a child, having committed an act that is not correct from the parents’ point of view, is subjected to psychological attack. Phrases addressed to the child: “how many times have I told you”, “now think about what you have done, think about your behavior”, “aren’t you ashamed”, which are reinforced by further punishment or physical violence.
At this moment, parents create strong negative emotional stress, and the child’s consciousness turns off. Only the subconscious is in contact with the parents, where the program for reacting to error and fear is recorded. The child, due to his inexperience, does not know how to get rid of the fear of failure and how to react to actions. He only learns from his elders, from his parents, how to behave. Children learn role models by imitating adults, absorbing the rules of behavior, instructions and attitudes of elders. In this case, parents turn on the self-reflection mode, that is, turning to their emotions.
A person, having committed an act as an adult, will think about how to change the past and what others will think about it, and experience a feeling of shame, guilt, and fear. The mechanism of self-analysis is launched, in simple terms, self-criticism. A person, focusing on emotions, cuts himself off from the outside world, from the fact that the situation can be corrected. People feel paralyzed when making mistakes or stressful situations. This is a sign that parents in childhood emotionally suppressed and reacted, laying down a mechanism of numbness, literally fear.
Another model of parental behavior is important at the moment when the child did something bad or wrong. It is important to appeal not to self-reflection and to what the child is experiencing, but to redirect the child’s thoughts from the internal space to the external, turning to him with a statement of the fact of the action and the question: how can we correct the unsuccessful situation, what do you propose to do? Action must be taken to correct the error. In this case, parents suggest looking for a solution to failure and neutralizing the consequences of the past. Thoughts aimed at finding new opportunities turn a person into a creative person who can cope with any events.
How to stop being afraid of failures
Any fears can be overcome, no matter how strong they may be, you just need to put in some effort.
What you need to do for this:
Understand the reason for fear
Understand your thoughts, sort them out and figure out what is causing your fear. Can this reason come true or is there no need to worry at all?
Lead the day's success
Record the results achieved, carefully document all positive changes and how quickly they were achieved. In this way, you can create the impression of a person who can solve any problem and achieve any goal.
Resist Fear
Find something that can resist fear; these are the personal qualities that prevent unpleasant expectations from being realized.
Understand that failure is a learning experience.
It is important that mistakes are perceived not as terrible failures, but as an accumulation of experience, because they are inevitable, and it is necessary to benefit from them.
Read more: How to learn not to be afraid of anything
Don't be afraid of new things
There is no need to be afraid of something new when achieving results, because this can confirm your own worth. Knowledge must always be updated and improved.
Symptoms
Loss of confidence and motivation lead to depression and then to more serious mental disorders. Those suffering from atychiphobia experience a number of physiological manifestations:
- Nausea.
- Nervousness.
- Shortness of breath.
- Weakness.
- Heavy sweating.
- Stomach upset.
These signs come into play when people are faced with the possibility of failure in a task that they believe cannot be completed successfully.
What is atychiphobia
A certain category of people cannot accept failures in their lives. As a result, they experience a certain fear, they are afraid that the situation may repeat itself again. Such a phobia quickly captures human attention and completely takes over the mind. This causes some physical and mental discomfort.
Fear of failure is one of the most common phobias. Atychiphobia is destructive. Fear is formed through interaction with society. The individual is influenced by the social environment. A person may simply refuse to try to repeat something that could potentially bring health, happiness, or success.
People who have atychiphobia do not want to do anything. They believe that any action leads to failure. Gradually, self-confidence is lost and self-esteem decreases. Such individuals experience a constantly elevated level of anxiety. They are not interested in moving up the career ladder or self-improvement. The combination of such factors inevitably leads to depression.
Ways to overcome fear
Many atychiphobes, dreaming of opening a new business, organizing a hobby, or realizing a dream, are afraid of the opinions of others. How will I appear to others? What will others think? - this is the list of questions that arise in the head of a person who experiences fear of failure. Someone's opinion actually stops you a lot, but no one is interested in your failure. If someone is interested in the collapse and wants to laugh, then these are not the people to whom you should pay attention and react, because by reacting you give them your energy, but do not get rid of fear.
Types of Fear of Failure
Atychiphobia is most often expressed as refusal and self-isolation. Such a person does not want to participate in projects and activities that cause difficulty. In this way, he looks for a comfort zone for himself in order to avoid possible failure and setbacks in life.
When an individual exhibits sabotage, then at the subconscious level he cancels out all his efforts. Deadlines are often missed, and deadlines for completing assignments are delayed.
When immobilized, a person finds complete peace, he is inactive. The personality is not interested in development, there is nothing to strive for. If there is self-doubt and low self-esteem, then people look for an excuse that they simply do not have the skills, talents and abilities.
If a person is a perfectionist, then at the pathological level he wants to be the best, no matter in what area. Serious psychological problems can arise here, the functioning of the nervous system is disrupted, since such situations in life are often associated with stress.
The symptoms of fear of failure are identical to any other phobia. The main ones are:
- difficulty breathing;
- cardiopalmus;
- increased nervous excitability;
- irritability;
- heavy sweating.
When a phobia occurs, a person begins to tremble and may lose consciousness. In some cases, qualified medical assistance is needed.
Dealing with perfectionism, comfort zone and responsibility
How to overcome the fear of failure if it prevents you from moving forward, achieving goals, or you are afraid of what others will think? The first thing to do is to reconsider your beliefs about fear. Fear of failure is based on perfectionism, which stops you from further action. Perfectionism in psychotherapy is a complex, complex process that must be controlled by a specialist. But you can figure out the key points of perfectionism on your own.
They are:
- resentment;
- negative thinking;
- lack of self-confidence;
- worry and anxiety.
It is important to learn to forgive, even if it does not change the past. Think about who suffers from resentment - the offender or you. Try to stop taking the poison and move on. Negative thinking includes gloomy forecasts, screening out the positive, and being judgmental. It is important to develop positive realism, but not to deny problems. Remember that nothing is perfect. Give yourself permission to not be perfect, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Write your fear down on a piece of paper, then tear it up and decide to move on with positive thoughts.
People prone to perfectionism have unpleasant dialogues with themselves. Affirmations can help here. Unflattering epithets about yourself are replaced with the opposite, for example, “I am a loser - I am successful.” To increase confidence, activities that bring pleasure and improve your favorite activity are effective. Worry and anxiety are eliminated by transferring to the present moment, since anxious people exist in the future with a gloomy tint. It's important to stop worrying about what hasn't happened yet.
The second rule that will help eliminate the fear of failure is expanding your comfort zone. This point is important because people with perfectionism like to be in a kind of “soap bubble”. If you don't push the boundaries of comfort, you won't be able to go far. To do this, you need to determine the boundaries of where the comfort zone is and where discomfort manifests itself. Every day, going beyond your comfort zone in different areas of life - business or relationships, the boundaries will be expanded and the world will be multifaceted.
The next barrier that needs to be overcome on the path to dreams is the fear of responsibility. Rule #3 says: By taking responsibility for your own mistakes, the fear of failure will gradually go away. Setting a small task every day, completing it, and taking responsibility for it will help boost your confidence.
The main causes and forms of manifestation of atychiphobia
Fear of failure can be caused by a variety of reasons, among which past negative experiences play a predominant role. In addition, a persistent fear of possible failure is caused by a person’s tendency to draw general conclusions from isolated cases (facts). Thus, some people who have failed in some endeavor may subsequently think that if they failed last time, then they will no longer be able to cope with almost anything. The presence of such stereotypical thinking blocks all subsequent actions and aspirations of a person. Also, fear of failure can be caused by evaluating a person’s activity only by the final result, when the individual qualities and characteristics of a particular person are not taken into account. Thus, the label of “success” or “failure” is attached to a person, and this is done regardless of the amount of effort and desire.
Among the main causes of atychiphobia, the following should also be highlighted:
- negative reaction of adults to the child’s mistakes (most fears arise in childhood);
- ridiculing a person’s failures in a specific group - a children’s educational institution, school, university, clubs and sections (teenagers are most susceptible to the influence of groups and peers);
- the presence of social fears that are imposed by society (a person is afraid of being worse than others, that is, not meeting the standards accepted in a particular social environment);
Fear of failure can have several manifestations. For convenience, these forms of expression are presented in table form.
| Forms of expression of atychiphobia | Characteristic |
| Refusal and self-isolation | a person refuses to participate in complex events and projects, thereby creating a comfort zone for himself (“I won’t do anything and will be able to avoid possible failure”) |
| Self-sabotage | a person on a subconscious level undermines all his efforts, often delays completing assignments |
| Immobilization (in translation from Latin immobilis - motionless) | complete rest, inaction (a person does nothing and, accordingly, does not develop, does not strive for anything) |
| Low self-esteem and uncertainty | a person constantly convinces himself that he doesn’t know anything, doesn’t know how to do anything, doesn’t have any abilities, etc. |
| Perfectionism (translated from the French perfection - improvement) | pathological desire to be the best in everything (this may also be a desire to perform only those activities in which the person is completely confident of success) |
Dealing with errors
Mistakes are a way to achieve success. There is no other way than making mistakes. Atychiphobia occurs in communities where people compete for certain rewards. Those who dream of starting a business are afraid of failure, so they never take action. Fear of failure or failure is a common reason why people don't achieve their goals.
Successful people are those who have made more mistakes than others. In an idealistic mind, a successful person is one who does not make mistakes. This is true now, but before he tried to perform an action many times and made mistakes, and based on his failures he developed a new way to solve the problem, like an athlete in training. Mistakes belong to the learning zone. By making a mistake, a person just learns. It is important to shift the situation from self-reflection to possibilities. The following techniques will help you do this:
- Training to switch consciousness. Catch yourself thinking when you feel shame and guilt. As soon as you begin to catch these states, you will be able to stop and switch from self-criticism to the ability to look for opportunities in the outside world. Become your own parent so you can switch in reverse order.
- Openness of the subconscious. The fear of failure lies deep in the subconscious. It is possible to rewrite the program of the subconscious in the morning immediately after waking up and before going to bed. After awakening, consciousness does not immediately turn on; this is the time for the subconscious to act. At these moments, say phrases out loud to write a new program into the subconscious and form a new attitude towards mistakes. These phrases are: “it’s normal to make mistakes”, “everyone has the right to make mistakes, and I also have the right to make mistakes”, “I’m afraid of mistakes, but admitted mistakes become experience, and experience is valuable”, “I allow myself to gain experience” .
- Cancellation of failure. There are no failures in the world, only experience. On the way to the goal, experience and knowledge are acquired. The more experience, the greater the chances of living a fruitful life. Those who take action get results, so it is important to erase the word “failure.”
Conduct research on the undesirable result, work on mistakes, so that next time you can get the desired result and set the next task.
Focus on what you can control
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus believed that a person should focus on internalities - internal factors that are subject to control. These are, for example, character, values and behavior. He cannot control external factors—externalities—so it is irrational to worry about them. Externalities include the past, most of the natural world, and the thoughts and actions of other people.
There is only one way to peace of mind - to stop worrying about those things that are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus
This thought helps me overcome my fear of failure. Almost every time I get ready to write, a series of unpleasant thoughts fill my head: “Who are you anyway? Nobody will read this. My friend, your lyrics are poor. You simply have nothing to say, right? Quit this and do something else."
In the past, these fears enslaved me. But over time, the understanding came that I am not thoughts, I am the one who hears them. And if so, it means that my thoughts relate to external things. I can't control what's going through my head right now, so there's no point in worrying about it.
On the other hand, my texts belong to internals. I can control them. So I make a decision and continue to improve my skills. I don't look back at doubts and type until I reach my goal.
