How many of you have a fear of failure?

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Apart from a brief attempt at a history A level by correspondence at the tail end of 1975-beginning of 1976 I've not done anything academic since my 1st hospitalisation . There have been attempts to persuade me to do a college course ,but I've never done so.


Part of that has been due to severe social anxiety and memories of being bullied. Another part has been the fear of failure due to unrecognised and therefore unsupported learning difficulty.

My fear of failure leads to my being quite avoidant.

The ironic thing is that you probably would have aced the history A-level.

I have a “fear of failure,” too. I walked out of a GRE exam (used to assess prospective grad students) because my mind went blank owing to anxiety.

I do with maths, it's not really a fear as much as it's a knowing that I'm set up to fail.
Early school experiences with slaps for mistakes definitely made that feeling worse.

Undaignosed dyscalculia, at a time when dyslexia was seen by my teachers as a new fangled "excuse" for laziness.

Got through state exams by memorizing example answers for the most likely questions (based on researching years of past exam papers) and reworking them for the actual exam questions with little to no understanding of what I was writing down.

I've had the blank mind thing on quite a few occasions. Also the "I'll do x next on the internet" and then a few minutes later I'm wondering what I was planning to do.

Now I'm in my early 60s the thought of dementia can cross my mind.

Instead of ruminating on it perhaps try solving it. There are limited days in a human life, don't waste them on fear of the unknown, challenge that fear. Yes you may fail in your course due to any number of circumstances, some out of your control, but you'll never really know if you don't make the attempt. And what you'll realize after you've failed a few times is that it's something everyone experiences, and it's not that big of a deal, and it certainly doesn't define you as a person.

If you're interesting in taking a course, and you really have an interest, as Nike would say: "just do it". You're not looking for any kind of payout from the class: a degree, future financial payout, etc. That means there's no pressure, you're doing it for yourself, which in all honesty is the only way someone truly does learn a subject- personal interest in the subject. From my perspective, you have everything to gain and really nothing to lose. I've read your posts, you're an intelligent person, I think you'll do just fine in the actual course work and the only thing holding you back is fear of fear itself (as FDR would put it).



All the more reason to give a course a try, one of the best things you can do to stave off dementia is to actively exercise your brain. If there's something you need to do and you're forgetful get in the habit of writing it down on a list and look over that list a few times a day to keep you on track. There's nothing wrong with that, if that's what it takes for you to function, that's what it takes.

I'm a perfectionist. But I wouldn't say I fear failure as much as I fear flaws and mistakes. Failure is inevitable and failure si a step on the path to improvement.

I've channeled my fear of failure into a drive to succeed.

An interest of mine has been IQ tests most, but not all, are crap.

Have joined Callidus, 130IQ sd.15, 132IQ sd.16, 148IQ, sd.24 ;Capabilis 135IQ sd.15, 137IQ sd.16, 156IQ, sd.24 ; Magnus 145IQ sd.15, 148IQ sd.16, 172IQ, sd.24 ; Egregius 150IQ sd.15, 153IQ sd.16, 180IQ, sd.24 ; Profundus 160IQ sd.15, 164IQ sd.16, 196IQ, sd.24 .

http://thehighiqsociety.org/







https://psiq.org/

I hasten to add this is all verbal based, as I'm not much good at anything else.

I read recently that the fear of failure is cause by you putting yourself out there for a subject matter you like and being judged poorly because of it and then you'll never do it again for the rest of your life. Try to think that because you like the subject, you'll try your best anyway because you're interested and then you'll succeed. Fear is always worse than the fight.

I'll be honest firemonkey, I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. It's a pity party where there should be a celebration of opportunity. Answer me this: what do you really have to lose by taking a class? Are you going to lose relationships for a poor showing? No. Are you going to lose future money by failing a class? No. Are you going to lose housing, food, the ability to survive by not performing as well as you'd like in the class? No. But what you are losing is precious time by feeling bad about your deficits that you haven't really even tested to see if they are deficits or not. It's been 45 years since you last took a course, you'd be amazed at the skills you've picked up in the mean time, that you probably didn't even know you picked up-- you'll only get to explore those if you jump two feet in.

My fear of failure was caused by my late father's insistence on finding flaws with everything I said or did as a child, and my brief experience with homelessness and hunger after a combination of illness, job loss, and divorce.

I've experienced the critical father, I empathize. That said, you've overcome a lot, why fear failure when you've overcome it already? What you need to tell yourself is: "I've overcome worse, that doesn't scare me". Why? Because it's true. I'm not one for super positivity, and I already know you're not either, but that doesn't mean you can't acknowledge deficits you've overcome, and feel pride that you beat them.

I don't know how my aversion to failure compares with the normal range for the general population. I know I don't like to fail and that I tend to only attempt things for which I can see a fairly clear and reliable path to success, but it depends on the required investment. I hate undergoing discomfort and tedium for nothing. I find it hard to feel good about myself if a day goes by without my achieving a useful or enjoyable result. But like I say, I've no idea how much of that is normal. I would think most people are scared of failing exams and courses.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a matter of how I choose to define the goal. For example, I could define an attempt to bake a loaf as an attempt to create a good loaf, and see it as a failure if I didn't end up with one. Or I could define the activity as an experiment to see what happens if I perform a set of actions, and see it as a success if I only find that it doesn't quite create the good loaf. Of course it's hard to imagine that owning a good loaf wouldn't be the best outcome, but if I've approached the project experimentally without the creation of that loaf being such a strong expectation, then I might well be reasonably satisfied with the experience, I might see the data I've gathered about what went wrong with the process as a success. Things don't always go perfectly the first time. I suppose when I worked in science that attitude was normal enough, because I was always breaking new ground and couldn't reasonably expect everything I touched to turn into gold.

So maybe we'd all be better off if we viewed life more as an experiment than as a test of our ability to attain any pre-set targets - the world isn't testing me, I'm testing the world. Why should we see ourselves as performing animals to be praised for success and blamed for failure anyway? I think it's one of those Zen ideas that we'll feel better if we stop imagining it's all down to us to get all hot and bothered trying to drive things that were never really under our control. Having said that, I tried to adopt just that attitude towards a course I was pretty much forced to do. I couldn't see much benefit in my passing the exam, and didn't expect I'd be able to, and I was correct and I didn't pass, but the experience was nonetheless surprisingly depressing. I suppose courses and exams are so widely and strongly seen as tests of our individual worth that even I, while aloof to scores of social mores, couldn't rise above my cultural background that time.

Why fear open spaces when you know they can't hurt you?  Do the phrases "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" or "Phobia" mean anything to you?  The chronic trauma of my father's behavior and the sudden traumatic shock of becoming homeless (it happened in less than a day) have given me a fear that goes much deeper than just being afraid.You assume that I do not do exactly that.  This is one of the first things I learned after learning about PTSD.  However, like I said, this goes much deeper than simple fear, so I learned to channel it into a drive for success instead.

And no, I am not seeking advice on how to deal with it, either.

Despite that understandable fear you've done very well. That's the true measure of you as a person.

Once I left my father's house and determined to make something of myself, life became easier.  Were it not for that one glitch of homelessness, I might have already retired comfortably.  As it is, it might be another year or two.