When Anxiety Actually Hides A Fear Of Failure
I used to think I was just an anxious person… until I realised anxiety was one of the ways my fear of failure showed up.
It started early. Upset stomach before a test. Before you knew it, it showed up every time there was a “danger” of “screwing up”. A lump in your throat before an interview, heart pounding when you speak to someone you're meant to make a good impression on.
Whole body tense, mind gone blank. Sticky thoughts you can’t escape.
Of course, you thought what you needed to do was calm the F down, right? Because the problem was this wretched anxiety, so you needed to get rid of it and be on your merry way.
Or was it...?
Here's the thing - at the risk of stating the obvious... anxiety (almost) always hides a fear. So, to solve the problem, we need to figure that out first.
Your anxiety says there’s a lot on the line here. And for many high-achievers, what’s on the line isn’t just a project or presentation. It’s you.
What might be that you're scared of, what's the threat?
Is it messing up? Being “found out” as inadequate? Not as smart? Not as knowledgeable as you want to come across as? Being responsible for something terrible?
Fear Of Failure Is Insidious
Once you maybe have an idea as to what your fear is, you might start seeing it everywhere - even though it rarely looks dramatic. It’s subtle. Polite, even.
It looks like offering to take on another piece of work because you can do it faster.
It looks like not sending the draft until it’s been re-read twelve times.
It looks like staying up fixing a presentation that was fine hours ago, checking and rechecking until it “feels right” - and it rarely does.
And it looks like that background hum of “don’t screw this up” that never really switches off.
It’s overthinking, overplanning, overpreparing, doubting yourself.
From the outside, this passes for conscientiousness. Inside, it’s fear. The kind that makes you feel in mortal bloody danger if you send an email with a typo in it. The kind that whispers… “if you get this wrong, they’ll finally see you’re not as capable as they think”.
Double Standards Keep The Fear Of Failure Going
When a colleague misses a deadline you think, “they’re busy, it happens.”
When you do? “I’m unreliable. I should have managed better.”
That’s what I mean when I say (with love) that your fear of failure might have you discriminating against yourself.
You're holding yourself to standards you'd never even dream of applying to anyone else. And it's not that those standards are high - I'm not here to change your entire personality.
It's that they're impossible, and only apply to you. It’s like at some point you decided you don’t get to be human. The rest of the world can make mistakes and still belong. You have to earn your place by never ever slipping.
That's actually, say it with me, a double standard.
And the cherry on top is, those impossible standards just feed the anxiety. Because every time you tell yourself you need to get it all just right to be acceptable, or adequate, or good enough, you're getting yourself stuck in the vicious cycle of “I'm inadequate” - “I have to get everything right to prove myself” - anxiety - “I don't because it's impossible” - anxiety - confirm “I'm inadequate”.
In this belief system, you'll probably never be be good enough. And you'll probably always be stuck.
The Root Of “All Evil”? The “Not Good Enough” Story
You're exhausted from the constant inner voice telling you off or cautioning you that you may mess up at any time. The impossible standards, the feeling that you're always one mistake away from being “found out”. And the more your try to fix it all, the deeper you spiral.
Behind it? Probably this deep-rooted fear of being found out as “not good enough”, in one or another way.
A lot of things can contribute to how we end up seeing ourselves. How we grow up, what we’re told, how we emotionally process certain situations, how the world itself is set up (hello, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and discrimination and oppression of all sorts).
And when how you see yourself is as “not good enough”, “inadequate”, “unworthy”, “unacceptable”… all you do is try to somehow protect yourself from it, and most of all, keep the world from finding out, right?
Yep, you try to prove yourself. You develop a mind that keeps telling you “you should have known better” in the hopes that you will, next time.
Why Quick Fixes Are Plasters Over Bulletholes
You can breathe, meditate, journal, take magnesium, delete social media, reassure yourself - all decent ideas. They might even help... but for how long?
They help you calm your body for a moment. But they don’t touch the part of you that still believes failure equals exposure or shame.
That’s why the calm doesn’t last, and the anxiety comes back full-vengeance. It’s not actually” just” the anxiety - it’s the fear of failure which shows up as double-standards that make you overdo it all, underpinned by the belief you’re not good enough.
It's not about getting rid of the anxiety. It's about working on what's underneath.
That's when the real you can come out. The one who's not constrained by how they feel, but led by what's meaningful.
What We Actually Do In Therapy
When I work with high-achievers, we don’t start with getting rid of anxiety.
And we often don’t focus on this at all, because it just feeds the anxiety more - try the thought experiment of forcing yourself to not feel anxious if your life depended on it… unlikely, right?
So, we start with curiosity about what the anxiety might be hiding. We map out the moments when fear spikes and ask what story it’s telling. If I fail, what happens next?
Usually the answers sound like:
They’ll see I’m not as capable.
I’ll lose respect.
I’ll let someone down.
Once we know that, we figure out how this all shows up for you, specifically (the examples I used above are just common ones, but definitely not universally applicable).
We figure out what you really, deeply value, in your core - so that can guide what we might want to start doing differently.
Then, we might set out to test what happens if you change little bits of the way you do things - to show your brain that maybe, just maybe, the world doesn’t end when you let something be imperfect.
And because those pesky unhelpful thoughts might get in the way, we use mindfulness to spot them and not let them get in the way - and instead make decisions based on what you value.
But really, the deeper work is around redefining the meaning of “failure”. Of “good enough”. Of “acceptable”. It’s about figuring out where these deep beliefs might come from (especially in this Western, neurotypical, heteronormative world), how they paint every aspect of your worldview, and how to relate to them differently. More helpfully. More wisely.
It's not a quick fix. But it's what leads to most lightbulb moments and deep, lasting change.
Change Is Not About “Managing Your Anxiety Better”
It’s also not necessarily fireworks. But it is moments.
You send a piece of work without the extra hour of tweaking.
You let a meeting silence hang for a second instead of filling it.
You ask for clarification instead of pretending you already know.
You say no to social invitations you know would drain you.
The anxiety still flickers, but it stops running your life. You notice it, breathe once, and move on.
And underneath it all, something else grows: trust. Not the super confident kind, but the quieter, steadier kind that says, “I can handle this even if it’s messy”.
The “not good enough” voice gets quieter. It becomes one opinion among many, not the absolute truth.
Fear Doesn’t Get To Make The Rules (Anymore)
Fear of failure doesn’t disappear; it just stops dictating every move. You start acting because something matters to you, not because you’re terrified of doing it wrong.
That’s the part therapy helps with. Not fixing you (there’s nothing to fix!), but freeing you from acting out of fear, and getting you to act in line what you actually care about.
That's when the real you can come out. The one who's not constrained by how they feel, but led by what's meaningful.
Which, for us introverts, is probably some variety of peace, simplicity, and no longer hiding our true nature.
Because, really, I'm guessing you're looking for more than being able to slow down your breathing and “resisting” checking once more. You're looking for that sense of peace and alignment that only comes with living according to what actually matters to you rather than what might prove you're acceptable.
Because you really, in your core, know that who you are is enough.
If that’s work you’d like to do, read more about THERAPY WITH ME, and have a look at INTENSIVE THERAPY too, for an accelerated version.
