Failure danger.

In the course of my soul searching I have become pretty good at talking to other people about how important it is to be vulnerable and to accept yourself wherever you are on your healing journey. I've read the books. I know it's not linear. In my searching I had even become pretty good at convincing myself that I was doing the work of vulnerability. Then last week I got another rude and unwelcome reminder that in fact I am much better at talking about vulnerability than actually practising it. Consequently I feel like I have IMPOSTER stamped on my forehead this morning. This is my attempt to start scrubbing the imposter off.

I have an overwhelming fear of failure - like most of us in this scarcity driven culture. My therapeutic work requires absolute authenticity and presence in order for it to be effective. When I am not feeling well-regulated in my nervous system I feel like I am failing professionally and personally.

I have held a core belief that if I am not trying hard to become somebody more than I am then I cannot succeed at anything. I have also held a core belief that failure makes you vulnerable and vulnerability is weakness. Intellectually I now know that these beliefs are hindering my road to regulation - but they are proving tricky to shift.

Looking at my relationship with failure makes me realise how incredibly arrogant I can be in this respect. Of course I am going to fail. There are countless failures on every road to success and it is in the failures where we learn the most important lessons. If we aren’t failing we are probably not on the right road. I know this - I preach this. And yet my physiological response to the tiniest failing is that tight hot and cold grip of anxiety that shortens my breath and takes me away from my integrity. This last bout has lasted for 4 days and is still rumbling away with all my other shame-inciting failures that I remember so keenly at times like this. They get replayed in my mind and create this positive shame feedback loop which ramps up the grip of anxiety. Carrying out as many of the things that I can on my mental health checklist is all that can bring me back at this point (see below). 

Our brains learn heavily from failure - we fixate on failures. If you think back to an experience where something went ‘wrong’ - can you remember anything that went ‘right’ on that day? Our neurobiology plays the failure danger over and over again to make sure we don’t miss the snake in the grass the next time. It is there to sharpen our skills as a human being and to keep us alive. Unfortunately our rapidly evolved mental capacities combined with a scarcity-driven culture has equated to this survival mechanism spiralling into a mental health crisis.

I used to be excellent at masking constant anxiety by using addictive, manic and risky behaviours - steep skiing, relationship drama, alcohol, drugs, binge eating, TV marathons, fantasising grand escape plans… Now the IMPOSTER stamp smacks me sharply in the face when I have been subconsciously carrying on to any degree with any of these distraction or numbing tactics. It takes enormous courage to sit, feel the discomfort and ask what it's about. And that courage is vulnerability. The only way out is through.

The outcome of this post is that I am going to build another expectation into the road to regulation. That expectation is failure. If I am not expecting failure then I'm not heading down the right road. If I am not talking openly about my failures and sitting with that discomfort then I am not practising vulnerability.

Mental Health Check-List :

Hydrated?

Ate well?

Avoided toxins?

Vitamins? (B6, B12, Magnesium, GABA)

Forest time?

Sunlight?

Meditation?

Breathing exercises?

Yoga?

Social connection?

Cardio?

Journal?

Introvert / do-nothing time? 

Enough sleep?

Routine?

Practising vulnerability? (recently added!)