‘Failure’ is a loaded word. It can evoke in us a dramatic spectrum of emotional responses. The concept is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that extends far beyond mere disappointment. Facing failure involves a broad gamut of emotions, including shame, frustration, and even fear. Understanding these emotional elements is critical, as they play a significant role in shaping an individual’s self-perception and subsequent perseverance.
Reevaluating What We Call Failure
Unfortunately, many of our clients have experienced phases of accumulated failure. Here is where this concept gets tricky when facing failure. Were these experiences really failures? Perhaps they were perceived as failures, but were actually moderate successes sullied by the expectation of perfection. Perhaps the client failed to execute one element of the task, but succeeded in another. Perhaps the result of the attempt wasn’t tangibly successful, but the client acquired constructive experience to utilize later. As we unpack the rhetoric of this word, we begin to see just how difficult it is to track the perimeter of where a ‘failure’ begins and a ‘success’ ends.
Facing Failure: A Step Toward Growth
Nevertheless, when we gaze behind us, we may see what appears to be a mountain of perceived failures. The shame we associate with that history often motivates us to find a way to ‘undo’ it. Unfortunately, we can’t go back in time, so we frequently seek other ways to ‘cancel out’ our perceived failures. One such common strategy is to accumulate successes in an effort to ‘balance out the scale’. Self-esteem is a strange phenomenon of the human psyche. We tend to unconsciously assign a quantitative nature to these abstract concepts.
Of course, our clients seek to spend their treatment year creating new successes–an honorable endeavor, surely. However, with this venture comes the risk of a particular pitfall. If they perceive their failures as too great or too many, the accordant shame can evoke in them a desperation to resolve it as quickly as possible. This can result in a precarious belief:
‘The size of my next success must proportionately equal the size of my accumulated failures.’
There are several issues with this belief. We know a sense of ‘success’ is built over time, the same way a sense of ‘failure’ is built over time. We can’t simply conjure the self-assurance and security that comes with months or years of successful efforts. When it comes to how we see ourselves, things that take a long time to come take a long time to go. This is also where that quantification of our worth becomes problematic. Ego functioning isn’t governed by algebra. It isn’t a requirement to ‘cancel out’ our failures in order to feel better about ourselves. The tribe-centric human mind has evolved to value ‘fairness’ and ‘justice.’ This is a double-edged blade in a number of ways, but that’s a topic for another blog.
Breaking the Cycle of Numbness and Detachment
Most relevantly to our slice of the treatment world, this phenomenon can lead to clients stagnating in their pursuit of growth. Perhaps best described as a cousin of perfectionism, we anticipate that our next attempted success can’t possibly ‘equal’ that failed college attempt or that hospitalization when we were in a dark place. In fact, taking that next small step toward success feels like such a drop in the bucket, it can actually cause clients to feel more discouraged–faced with a blaring reminder of just how long it’ll take to ‘redeem’ themselves. A much more emotionally tolerable strategy is to simply detach in order to avoid facing failure. We can’t feel hopelessness and shame if we can’t feel anything.
This strategy, while highly effective at what it seeks to accomplish, is a blunt object. The ‘shut down’ switch doesn’t usually discriminate. If we choose to detach from our unpleasant emotions and memories, we’re also likely to be numbing our motivation, our connection, and our metacognition. With those muscles atrophied, we’ve stunted the capacities necessary for climbing ourselves out of this pit. When you consider that this could be perceived as yet another failure, you can see how quickly this becomes a vicious cycle. Throw some self-punishment into the mix and now you’re really cooking with oppression.
Redefining Success and Self-Worth
So what do we do? Math got us into this mess, so no simple equation will get us out. Rather, the answer lies in facing failure and freeing ourselves from these rigid modes of thinking. It takes some doing, but we must seek to reshape the method by which we perceive our self-worth. Meritocracy isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. We’re all deserving of the acceptance that our friends and family want so badly to give us, regardless of our rap sheet. Self-forgiveness may be a therapeutic trope, but for good reason. If we can find a way to open ourselves to the authentic receipt of positive regard, we often suddenly find ourselves more able to accomplish the tasks that have been eluding us for so long.
(Sincere apologies to the math teachers out there).
Dr. Eric Beaudoin is a licensed clinical psychologist in Portland, Maine and Clinical Director at Cornerstones of Maine, a residential transitional living program for young adults. His primary conceptual orientation is psychodynamic, focusing on the conflict that arises when our desires and inhibitions are in opposition. Eric utilizes an integrative approach, as well as a Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) framework to support his clients in building an awareness of their split or fragmented senses of self, the goal of which is to improve ego strength, authenticity, and quality of interpersonal relations.
Cornerstones of Maine – https://cornerstonesofmaine.com/