dealing with failure....

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I was talked into bowling today, even though I insisted on just watching. I should have insisted harder, because even though I wasn't god awful, I was pretty bad. Most people can just shrug this off but even the smallest failure affects me so much. I get a tightness in my chest and stomach whenever I think about it. I know it's ridiculous too, because I was with kids and everyone had fun but me. I mean everyone did badly, not just me. When I was younger and would fail at anything I would start hitting myself and have meltdowns in public. I don't do that anymore but at the bowling alley, I was very visibly upset. I had to excersise a lot of self control so I would not meltdown (something I've gotten used to doing by now). So my question is; does anyone else have the same reaction to failure?

Yeah, I get really anxious about doing things in front of people in case I do it wrong. Years ago some people from church went bowling and one of the leaders said 'Well that was a fun night for anyone who actually went bowling'. He directed those last few words at me. I'd be so stubborn that I wouldn't want to bowl. I was so anxious about physical education at school too.
My mum wanted me to start going to a cooking class to be more social, but I know I will be the least social and probably manage to mess the ingredients up. I can't just laugh those things off.
So, you're not alone.

I think we (people with AS) are perfectionists. Even when we don't know the outcome we don't want to do something because we feel we'll be bad at it. And we take everything so seriously that we can't just laugh off making a fool of ourselves in front of other people.

I had a bad experience with karaoke once. it's not something you "get" the first time you try it, I guess. anyway it was horrible and I won't ever try it again, but I really don't feel bad about it anymore because I think it's stupid to expect everyone to want to bowl or swim or sing karaoke or whatever.

once upon a time, I did feel bad about it, because so many people expected me to want to do it and told me it would be fun if I gave it a chance. well, it wasn't fun, so I felt like I was flawed.

I seriously wish people wouldn't pressure others to be like them. I don't go around trying to make people play chess or draw, why do they think I should want to sing karaoke or you to bowl?

I can relate to a lot of what's been said so far, and I think it's a great topic. I'm a very competitive person, but when I play games with others, I'm not competing with my opponents--I'm competing with myself! I like to best myself, and that's where the fun of playing games comes in for me. Also, I like to explore the rules or laws of a particular game. So: when I bowl (for example) it's not always "how do I best knock down these pins" but rather "what will my throw be like if I try taking 7 steps instead of 5?" This can land me in trouble in team games. If I'm playing Halo online, the rest of my team will be fragging opponents while I'm having a blast running around seeing how long I can survive without killing anyone.

I digress.

Failure is tough. I'm less fearful of games, and more fearful of whether or not I'll fail at more important things like job interviews or phone calls I need to make. If I know something important is coming up, I'll obsess over whether or not I will do it "wrong", which usually leads to intense procrastination, which is perhaps the worst kind of failure there is.

This is something I used to lament a lot when I was younger. What I came to realize is that when people say things like "come out with us! you'll have a blast! it should be fun!" my literal-mindedness was getting me in trouble, because I actually thought their intentions were along the lines of "you SHOULD like this. you are WRONG if you don't." What I've come to understand (and it took a long time to get there) is that people aren't big jerks, and if they said the exact thing that was actually on their mind, it would look more like: "we're going to go do this. we enjoy doing this more when we have people we like with us. we like you. we therefore believe we'll have a better time with you around. whether or not you actually want to come with us has nothing to do with our belief that we will have a better time if you do come."

But people don't say what they actually mean. NT people, that is.

I do not deal well with failure. It not only kills my self-esteem, but it causes me to go into a "shut down". I start thinking that i am stupid and I even withdraw from the situation (or any situation like it) that brought on that failure. It would last for about a couple of weeks to a few months, or even forever, depending on how bad it is and if it can be prevented and/or fixed. If it can be fixed, i find a away to fix it. I would make some adjustments and if I have to i would prevent certain parts from happening again. Since my adulthood, i had to do more preventing and/or staying away from the situation, rather than just fixing it. That is because my failures were based on faults from other people, who are very ignorant and would not change for anything.

I've failed so many times in life it just is an expected outcome before I try.

I cynically say that after a while, you learn to get used to it.

I do the same thing. I analyze every detail of things. Like even if I would get a strike, if my ball curved slightly instead of going straight down the middle, I would be unhappy. Also like you, I often do my own things in video games; like instead of playing the game, I would run around levels looking for glitches ect.

I love bowling. Mainly because however bad one is, one still makes a lot of strikes, beats me why. I have a lot of fun bowling when I do it and laugh very much at how bad I am. Now being fired from my beloved job, or demoted, that's a completely different story. I obsess looking for the hidden reasons for my constant failure.

HAHAHA! I used to do that. I once played Half-Life (the original) using nothing but a crowbar, to see how far I'd make it. I made it all the way to Residue Processing; the maddening level where Gordon had to jump from conveyor belt to conveyor belt. There was a tripmine on one belt. It had to be cleared with a satchel charge. A crowbar wouldn't suffice. So I used a satchel, and kept on playing with just a crowbar and made it to Gonarch's Lair (giant spider)! There was no way to take that thing on with a crowbar and I had my answer.

But yeah failure is tough. In my world, failure is not an option because generally speaking I'm pretty capable and everyone expects me to do it better than the next guy. I can't let them down, can I?

I used to be the same way; in fact, I was playing the new Ghostbusters video game with my room-mate yesterday on the Wii; I was a freakin' disaster with the controller. Granted, I don't play the Wii that often, but I couldn't for the life of me get used to the controller, and I got extremely frustrated with it.

However, I know my strengths now, and he and I are business owners, and I seem to excel there beyond anything, so I'm not too bothered by it, really...I even kinda made fun of how bad I did in the game yesterday by saying "well, I still can't beat Super Mario Bros, so what'd I expect here?"