When Things Fall Apart: How to Live with Failure
We have many clichés around how to cope with failure - dusting yourself off, getting back on the horse, if at first you don’t succeed. Whilst these emphasise resilience, they often rush us past something important. Failures need to be mourned. Without taking time to acknowledge and process them, our failures can become heavy weights we carry forward, quietly eroding our confidence and making us less willing to take risks in the future.
Failure as a Form of Loss
Failure can be the loss of something we once had, but it may also be the loss of a dream, an imagined future where we felt successful, admired, or proud of ourselves. Perhaps you had worked for years towards a promotion, only to see it be given to someone else. Or you may have invested energy and loyalty into working for a company, only for them to make you redundant.
Moments like these might leave us questioning our worth, our abilities and even our sense of place in the world. Failure can bring a loss of hope and trust in who we thought we were. This is what often makes failure so devastating, and why it deserves space and time for grieving. Like any other loss, it can bring crashing waves of emotion - depression, anger, guilt or even numbness. But failure can be a particularly isolating form of grief because, unfortunately, so much shame surrounds it. In a culture which prizes success and resilience, this shame may become especially entrenched, with social media further intensifying feelings of inadequacy through comparison with others. This can make us withdraw from sharing our failures with others and miss out on receiving much needed support. This is unfortunate, as to fail is so inherently human. And so, rather than seeing failure as something shaped by context and circumstance, we assume it must say something fundamental about us.
Failure Isn’t Always Personal
In many cases, the period following failure can feel destabilising. Someone who has been made redundant may find their confidence feeling diminished in the months that follow, especially if finding another job proves difficult. A person whose business closed may start to question their judgement in other areas of their life. Setbacks such as these can begin to affect our sleep and appetite as well as mental health. Failure has the potential to generate a great deal of self blame, often leading us to turn in on ourselves. Yet failure is rarely the result of our actions or ability alone. The reasons behind these setbacks are often more complex than personal inadequacy. Economic downturns, changing markets and power dynamics can all play a vital role.
As such, failure has a way of revealing how limited our control really is. This can be difficult to accept, especially in a society which tells us that we can achieve anything if we work hard enough. Often, it feels easier to blame ourselves than to face the prospect of an unpredictable world. However, luck and factors outside of our control do play a significant role in whether our plans become reality. Of course, some of these obstacles can be overcome, but acknowledging them can go a long way towards building self-compassion and restoring confidence.
A Framework for Coping With Failure
In grief therapy, one widely used framework is J. William Worden’s ‘Four Tasks of Mourning’. Although originally developed to understand bereavement, it can also be a useful way of understanding how to cope with failure. The ‘tasks’ laid out are not linear stages. Several may occur at once, with each ‘task’ potentially revisited multiple times:
Accepting the Reality of the Loss
Failure can be felt as a huge shock. It often takes time for the reality of what has been lost to sink in and it can be tempting to deny or minimise the loss in order to ‘get over it’. Simply naming the loss out loud can be the first step towards acceptance. Therapy can provide a non-judgemental space where the reality of what has happened can be fully acknowledged and accepted.
Processing the Emotions Associated with the Loss
In a culture which encourages us to ‘move on’ from failure, allowing yourself to feel whatever emotions arise, rather than avoiding or suppressing them, can be crucial to healing. Therapy can provide a space where we have permission to feel all the complex emotions that arise when coping with failure. Naming these emotions and placing them in context can not only help to reduce their intensity, but allow us to understand why we feel this way and make room for greater self-compassion.
Adjusting to your New Reality
Adjustment may involve practical changes, such as looking for another job or retaking an exam. But it could also mean challenging and shifting our perspectives. For example, for someone who has defined themselves as an academic high achiever, failing an exam could make them question their whole identity. And so, following a setback, individuals may need to re-evaluate their values or assumptions about success. This may be unsettling but could present a valuable opportunity for growth.
Integrating the Failure Whilst Continuing to Move Forward
When experiences are integrated rather than avoided, any fears or shame associated with these experiences tend to diminish. Integration involves finding a way to incorporate the experience into your broader life story. Therapy can support this process by helping individuals to find meaning in what has happened. To reflect on what lessons they would like to carry forward, and which elements, such as shame and self blame, they would like to set aside.
It takes courage to risk failure and even more courage to embrace it with acceptance when it occurs. Yet, some of the greatest comfort can come from walking this path alongside other inevitably flawed human beings, in a shared understanding of what it feels like when life doesn’t turn out as we wanted.