When Failing is an Option

Anxiety will really dick with you and take away your options to grow. For much of my life it has felt like the stakes were just too high to actually take chances even small ones. If I failed at something my anxiety wouldn’t let me forget it and it would haunt me and reply in my mind repeatedly. It would serve as a mocking reminder of how worthless I am and how everyone is better and more worthy than I am. Doesn’t matter that none of that is true. Anxiety creates a false reality around you a ’la The Truman Show. What matters is that it is overwhelming and persistent.

Anxiety is like a clockwork system that someone has spilled molasses into. The gears cannot turn like they should and it becomes slow or stops altogether at times. When you know that failing at something, even something small will create so much pain and dig you further into the pit of self-hatred and you know that you won’t be able to climb out you stop taking that risk. Failing is no longer an option for you it is the end of you.

For years on and off I have attended counseling/therapy whatever you want to specifically call it. As well as done work on my own to figure things out and grow as a human being. Also mixed in were various tries of different anti-anxiety and antidepressant medicines.

I am currently at a point where the medicine I take feels perfect for me and my mental health is great. My medicine seems to disrupt the bulk of the negative bombardment but doesn’t take away what is ‘me’. The amount of worrying about worrying that I do is at an all-time low and I frequently have the ability to ‘let things go’. By that I mean I am actually able to just do a thing and then it’s over. No reviewing the thing a dozen times or dissecting my actions repeatedly looking for ways that I failed. I’ve washed off much of the molasses so my gears can move freely.

Without the threat of that hanging over my head I actually have the option to try things now. Because I know that even if something goes wrong it won’t be on the 6’oclock news in my head for the next month. I will be able to learn from it and move forward. This is something that I think people without anxiety aren’t really aware of.

Since failing became an option I have tried new things and each time I succeed at one my confidence grows so that failing gets even less scary.

When failing is an option, growth becomes possible.

When failing is an option, success becomes possible.