Atychiphobia - Understanding the Fear of Failure: How Do You Overcome It?

 

“For one who is seeing this life as a stepping stone for greater possibility, for him there's no failure.”   

        - Sadhguru

Atychiphobia is commonly known as the fear of failure. Atychphobia can be defined as irrational and tenacious anxiety about failing to approach the standards and objectives set by oneself or others. The fear of failure can take place in one's mind or heart over the anxiety of academic standing, job, sexual inadequacy, self-esteem, etc. 

The fear of failure or Atychiphobia can also relate to being a 'perfectionist'. As perfectionists have such high standards and expectations for how things should come out and take place, they might face the fear of failures like what if the outcome is not the same as their expectations and standards. 

This phobia, Atychiphobia, can be so extreme that it can make it extremely difficult for you to carry on your various tasks of school, work, etc. In short, the phobia can entirely paralyse you, if suffering from it. You can even miss out on the most important opportunities of their life. 

Symptoms 

The symptoms faced in this phobia may vary from person to person. Not everyone would experience fear in the same way. The symptoms faced by you in this phobia could be the same as faced by you in some other phobias. Someone might experience these symptoms physically while others emotionally. 

Emotional Symptoms include- 

• Powerful feeling of anxiety

• Panic attacks 

• Feeling weak, hopeless, and powerless 

• Feeling you've already lost 

• Feeling sudden sadness 

• Feeling insecure 

The emotional symptoms of the fear of failure may also include sabotaging yourself. Not taking any initiatives in the future, not wanting to start with some big and important projects of your life, self-sabotaging will ultimately lead to a real big failure, without including your efforts in it. 

The best you can do is to try. It's better to fail by starting with hard work and effort than not starting and failing. 

Physical Symptoms include- 

• Fatigue 

• Sweating 

• Headache 

• Facing difficulty in breathing 

• Shivering 

• Overthinking 

• Sleep deficiency 

Causes 

           

1. Shame: Many psychologists claim that if a person fails at some task, which will then result in shame and embarrassment, the resulting shame and embarrassment can be one of the most prominent reasons for fear of failure. 

2. Rejection: Humans anticipate that if they try something and then be judged by others resulting in their rejection for some task or job. The rejection results in sadness, depression, and causes a fear in their heart to take action in the future, and even if they do take actions they fear failure. 

3. Observational learning: If a person observes someone in their family or knows going through their crucial period of life or going through such phobias may develop these fears of phobias in themselves. 

4. Perfectionism: People struggle to bring perfectionism into their lives, fearing that they might fail.

5. Critical Environment: If a person has grown up in a strict environment where he is forced to achieve his best, then that person is always afraid of failure.

How to Overcome the Fear of Failure? 

 

1. Be optimistic and positive: Being positive is an incredibly powerful way to develop self-confidence and self-esteem. If a person learns to be optimistic and positive he can always stay cheerful, this will help them to enhance their creativity, their creativity will help them to improve their task or job which will lead to overall great performance of their projects and thus this will reduce the fear of failure. 

2. Find out the source of fear: Many people tend to not know the actual source of fear, they fear the unknown. You can get knowledge of the source by realizing the possible outcomes of your decisions and activities. 

3. Examine your actual potential: Realising your actual potential will help you to gain confidence in your work and yourself which will lead to minimizing your fear of failure.

4. Have a backup plan: Even if you fail in some of your projects or tasks at work or school, don't get disheartened. Instead, while planning for your projects and tasks, always frame a backup plan so that even if your one project fails you have another to show up and work on. 

5. Learn from your failures: If you fail in some of your projects, activities, or tasks of your life, do not fear failure then. Instead, always try to learn from your failures and activities. Always try to dig deeper and deeper to learn what was missed in that project that led to your failure. This will help you to learn from it and help you to not repeat the mistake. 

Written by- Tamanna Rathor