We all have bad days when we question our decisions, where we are overtaken by the feeling of being in a rut, where our mistakes make us think of ourselves as a failure.
Occasionally having these episodes and lapses is fine, there will be rainy days along the way. The trouble looms when we are perpetually overtaken by these feelings of the amount of nothing but failure.
You feel as if you have no talent, you are wasting away your life. You constantly compare yourself to others, especially your peers who have a career or life that you envisioned for yourself.
This feeling of being a failure has a grave impact on your mental health. It leads to feelings of stress and anxiety, and they require help from a mental health expert, like those at Shifa International Hospital.
Table of Contents
Common Causes For Feelings Of Failure
Feeling like a failure is not something natural. Considering the impact on your quality of life, it is pertinent to deal with this problem, for which, understanding the causes is very important.
Low Self-Esteem
One of the most common reasons for feeling like a failure is low self-esteem. When you are not convinced of your own talents, it is very easy to then become encompassed with negative self-talk.
People with low self-esteem are also more likely to focus on their failures and tend to disregard their wins. The image of themselves is already very poor; hence, they tend to perceive things, especially the moments of failure, with more negativity.
Past Failures
You may be feeling like a failure before of your past mishaps. We all falter here and there, but for some people, these incidences tend to stick by. They then use these as guiding lights, casting failure for their future endeavors as well.
Negative Spiral
One of the reasons why you be fixated on your failures is because of your tendency to spiral into negative thoughts. For some people, glass is half-full, the mistakes are teaching moments, and hope springs eternal.
However, a certain subset of people doesn’t tend to think with such hopefulness. They fixate on the negative, and that might be the reason why you also constantly think of yourself as a failure, as you think about all the moments you lost only, and not count your wins.
The Rat Race
We are often taught to be competitive and perceive life as a rat race. If you see another person having something in their life together, you start to think of yourself as the loser then.
Social media has certainly not helped. When people document each and every happy moment, you may then become overwhelmed, and start to feel like a failure in comparison.
Traumas
Enduring a traumatic childhood in which your confidence was shattered may also be the reason for you feeling like a failure. If your environment was a composite of negative energy, in which you were always put down instead of being lauded, where your mistakes were highlighted, then that may be the reason why you always feel like a failure.
Moreover, people who fail from dysfunctional and abusive families are also more likely to then feel like a failure.
Social Life
People you surround yourself with play an important role in shaping your subjectivities. If your friends and family are very negative, if they tend to focus on the non-win moments, then you might also then start to take failure personally.
Furthermore, if your partner or friends are tearing you down, making you think as if you are not good enough, you can also then fall into their trap, and think of yourself as a loser.
It’s very important to get out of such abusive relationships, as apart from making you feel bad about yourself, these may also cause emotional trauma and mental health problems that require treatment from a Psychiatrist in Islamabad then.