Feeling like a failure
Feeling like a failure means seeing a setback as proof about who you are. The job didn't work out, so you're a failure. The relationship ended, so you fail at everything. The verdict has a cost: people learned less from being told they were wrong than from being told they were right, across five experiments, which the researchers put down to failure feeling like a threat.1
- On the wheel: Ashamed, then inadequate, then like a failure
- Nearby: Defeated, not good enough, inferior
- Often sounds like: "I always mess things up."
- Often points to: One setback being read as a sentence about your whole life
One email opens the whole file
It can arrive with a list. The thing that went wrong, and then every other thing: the degree you didn't finish, the money you haven't saved, the age you are now.
"I didn't get the promotion. By that night I'd decided I was 38 with nothing to show for it, a bad parent and a disappointment to my dad. All from one email."
Failure is a poor teacher, at first
The saying goes that failure is the best teacher. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and Ayelet Fishbach ran five experiments with 1,674 people and found the opposite.1 People answered two-choice questions and were told whether they were right or wrong, so either way they learned the correct answer, yet on a follow-up test they had learned less from being wrong than from being right.1
Their explanation was that failure feels like a threat to the self, so people tune out.1 When the failure was someone else's, people learned just as much from it as from a success.1
The lesson is identical. The sting is what gets in the way.
"I'm a failure" turns a setback you could learn from into a threat you'd rather not look at.
Me, always, everything
Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman described three questions people answer, mostly without noticing, when something goes wrong.2
| Question | Explanation that weighs you down | Explanation that leaves room |
|---|---|---|
| Is it about me? | "It's because of who I am." | "It's partly the situation." |
| Will it last? | "It will always be like this." | "This is one round." |
| Does it spread? | "It ruins everything." | "It's about this one area." |
Explaining bad events as about you, lasting and everywhere went with a higher risk of depression in their work.2 Feeling like a failure can be all three at once. Spreading one setback across your life has a name, overgeneralization, and calling yourself "a failure" is labeling.
Rewrite the verdict
- Write the setback in one plain sentence. "I didn't get the promotion." Leave out what it says about you.
- Answer the three questions on purpose. Which part was the situation? What could be different next round? Which parts of your life did this not touch?2
- Read the lesson as if it were a friend's. People learned more from other people's failures than from their own.1 Write what you'd tell a friend this one teaches, and take the advice.
- Write the other column. The list in your head is all losses. Put down what's still standing next to it.
What is the setback, separate from what it seems to say about you? Write the setback in one sentence. Then write what you've been telling yourself it means, and next to it, one fact that doesn't fit.
Answer this with JoyWhen it's more than a setback
Feelings of worthlessness and guilt are among the signs of depression that the National Institute of Mental Health lists.3 If "I'm a failure" has been the background of most days for weeks, it's worth more than a journal page.
Questions people ask about feeling like a failure
What is it called when you feel like a failure?
There's no single clinical name. CBT calls the "I'm a failure" move labeling, and the one-setback-means-everything move overgeneralization.
Is it normal to feel like a failure at 30, or 40?
You're far from the only one. Age makes a convenient yardstick and an unfair one, because the comparison is with a plan you made at 22, or with other people's highlights.
What do I do if I feel like I'm a failure?
Split what happened from what you've decided it means, and then take one small step on something that matters to you, even if it isn't the thing that went wrong.
Related
- Inadequate: feeling you don't measure up.
- Inferior: feeling less than the people around you.
- Disappointment: when one outcome falls short.