Atychiphobia

     Atychiphobia: the fear of failure, usually caused by demeaning parents or traumatic embarrassment early in one’s life. 

   I am shocked when I read this definition of atychiphobia. Fear of failure is the very thing that I suffer from, yet my condition is resulted by the exact opposite of the cause stated above. My parents are always the most supportive of my decisions and are the first to acknowledge my achievements when I succeed. I have no traumatic experience of embarrassment due to failure; in fact, I have never experienced any major failure in my life. Yet the fact that I have little experience of failure is the very reason that I am afraid of failing.

   I see fear as the result of unfamiliarity of something new. I have overcome many kinds of fear just by forcing myself to face them and having experience dealing with them. When my parents told me to go to the grocery store alone for the first time, I was terrified. I was afraid of the ongoing traffic, the strange faces on the sidewalk, and the thundering noise of the busy street. Yet I overcame this fear easily as I went alone more often and had more experience. The same case applies to my fear of failure. I am used to being praised by others and receiving applaud for my success, but I don’t know how to deal with failing. Unfortunately I cannot overcome this fear with my usual method, for I will not intentionally make myself experience failure just to learn how to cope with it. Achieving success appears to be the only way to appease my phobia.

   I remember reading an article suggesting that young people should make mistake while they are young, for they will not repeat themselves after they grow up. Yet as I become older and gain more expectations and responsibilities, I feel even harder to accept failure. A year before I joined a voluntary tutor group that tutors elementary students at their spare time. I soon became the leader of the group and ran the session together with an inexperienced new staff who was not much older than I. Once when I found out that a deck of cards that the group used to entertain the children had gone missing, I was obsessed with finding the cards. I even cried because I thought I failed as a leader and was not being responsible for the group’s supplies. Later the staff told me that she had taken out the cards and forgot to put it back, and that even if the cards were lost I will not take any responsibility for it since I am only a volunteer. Yet the sense of responsibility following my title still haunted me and reminded me that I could not afford to fail. My fear of failure is growing deeper as I grow older and is not lessening with my aging at all.

   The fear of failure can transform into the fear of success, as sometimes the fear will prevent me from even trying to achieve success. One of my philosophies is that I don’t do things that I am not confident to be the best. The statement sounds good as a philosophy, but in fact it is merely a way to hide my cowardliness to fail. One thing that fear has prevented me from doing is playing piano. When I gave up playing piano ten years ago because I don’t have the talent for it, I decided to hide the fact that I failed by claiming that I did not like playing piano. The excuse got me into many fights with my parents, yet it calmed my fear and rejected my failure. I still feel foolish for being obsessive over such a minor failure, yet the fear that causes this obsession is not easy to overcome.

   Phobias are all irrational fears. Yet my fear is not like phobia of concrete objects; fear of an abstract idea is usually stronger and harder to overcome. In my case, my fear of failure can be so strong that it ironically brings about the very failure that I fear. I really hope that I can overcome this fear in time.