Fear of failure therapy: for when you're already successful
A while back, I had a conversation with Manon, the owner of a highly successful healthy pizza business. She had a goal she still wanted to achieve, but felt she had a fear of failure—a fear that was holding her back from growing.
Fear of failure therapy can be useful for common fear of failure, such as before exams, but also if you suffer from fear of failure while you are already successful, but still want to grow further.
Something stopping you from growing
Fear of failure is something that holds you back from growing. If you’re successful and you notice that you’re no longer growing, something inside you might be holding you back. You feel like there’s more to you, but for some reason, it just isn’t happening. This could very well be a fear of failure.
Perhaps you still have a goal you’re afraid you won’t be able to achieve. Rather than face disappointment, you suddenly find yourself—completely contrary to your usual nature—engaging in procrastination.
Failure for your team
The feeling of fear of failure when you’re successful can feel very strange. After all, you’ve never suffered from fear of failure before. This may be because you now feel responsible not only for yourself but for your entire team. It’s a very different feeling when you’re the only one facing failure compared to when multiple people are affected by it.
As an executive, whether through your own business or because you hold a managerial position, you want to do well for your team.
Keep in mind, however, that your team has also chosen you and is aware of the risks you’re taking—and that things could go wrong. Ultimately, their success in life is their own responsibility, not yours.
This fear of letting the team down is also seen in athletes who suffer from fear of failure[1].
With expectations, it gets harder
Once you become successful, people often start expecting success from you. Suddenly you have people looking over your shoulder, and you probably remember when a test seemed just a little more difficult when the teacher was standing next to your table.
You can get that feeling again if you are already successful and want to move on to your next goal. Only then, much more depends on it than just the good grade.
Given those expectations, fear of failure can also be the fear that you’ll suddenly feel ashamed because you don’t meet those expectations; this is also something that people with perfectionism may struggle with[2].
Or do you just find it scary when it does succeed
As a successful person, your fear might not be about failure—it could be, for example, the fear that you’ll actually achieve your next goal. Especially when that goal currently feels like reaching the final level to you.
You may then subconsciously feel that there is nothing (left) once you reach your goal. The fear of achieving the goal can then be mistaken for fear of failure.
Fear of failure as the reason everything succeeds
What's also possible is that you are successful precisely because you have fear of failure. Instead of staying in bed, you are so afraid of failure that you do something about it.
You’re doing your very best to make everything work out, but this is still incredibly stressful and not necessarily something that makes you happy.
Fear of failure therapy if you are already successful
As you can see, fear of failure among successful people can be linked to more than just your personal life—such as the lives of your team members, other people’s expectations, and even the feeling that there is no next level.
If you then go for fear of failure therapy, you can find out why you are afraid of achieving your next goal or of failing. Is it really the fear that you won't succeed anyway and that people who now look up to you will suddenly disappear? Or is it the fear that after achieving that goal you will fall into some kind of black hole?
It’s a bit like people who take early retirement only to discover that they actually enjoy their work and find doing nothing to be unfulfilling.
Help to see things from a different angle
Depending on your beliefs about your success, the people you work with, and whether you’re afraid of achieving a goal or doubt your ability to achieve it, a therapist—such as a hypnotherapist—can use a specific technique to help you.
Initially, each therapist will start the conversation with you to find out how you see the world and how you think you should function in that world. In the first part of the blog, we will discuss beliefs that successful people may have.
The therapist can use that input to help you look at your problem in a different way, for example. Such as by asking yourself who is actually responsible for your team's success, you or your team itself?
Sometimes this alone can be enough, but sometimes not.
Visualization against fear of failure
So can using certain feelings if you want to take a different approach to something. With guided visualizations, for example, you can make the feeling of fear of failure disappear. How this is done with such a visualization is different for everyone. Generally, making some kind of shape and doing something with it in your mind is enough to remove anxiety.
But it can also be deeper than that.
Addressing beliefs that cause fear of failure
You may also be held back by beliefs that cause fear of failure. For example, people might think that if they don’t perform well, nobody will love them. That turns underperformance into an existential problem—a problem that threatens your social life—so it’s no wonder you end up suffering from fear of failure.
One way to deal with this is through regression. With regression, you go back to the very first moment you felt the fear you’re experiencing now—or to the moment when the belief that’s now causing your fear of failure first arose.
As you can see, it’s not always clear-cut for people who are already successful, so you may need to revisit a few memories to eliminate that feeling.
When your mind is on a memory, the hypnotherapist helps you interpret that memory in a different way. You then start to update and re-store it, so to speak. This creates new connections, which can make your fear of failure go away.
Interpreting can be redone in many ways. For example, you can empathize with other people present in the situation, you can add your adult self in your mind and have it intervene. A lot of things can be done.
Next, the hypnotherapist will check whether or not your fear of failure feeling is gone. This is a kind of check to see if the problem has been resolved.
The reactions when this succeeds are very nice; people often find it a magical feeling.
Suggestions to keep away fear of failure
Afterward—or even before applying this technique—you can also receive suggestions to build self-confidence, reassure yourself that everything will be all right, and realize that fear of failure is unnecessary. These suggestions are often based on your worldview and the beliefs that initially caused your fear of failure.
You can repeat these at home to properly capture the change in your brain. These can include suggestions such as:
"I am good enough the way I am."
"I get to relax."
"Everyone is responsible for themselves."
"You can always do something or do nothing."
These are just examples. You may receive other suggestions depending on your situation.
Therapy for fear of failure can do an awful lot for you. You can become more relaxed about achieving your goals after this type of therapy, or even determine that you want to pursue entirely different goals.
Hypnotherapy mainly helps you to make the mental change, to be more relaxed about the goals you want to achieve, so that you have less or no fear of failure.
Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.
Or register directly for e and of our training courses if you want to help people who suffer from fear of failure.
Sources:
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10413201003664962
[2] https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jsep/31/5/article-p602.xml