I have a crippling fear of failure that ironically leads me to fail

[Recursoinominado]

Holy shit, guys, just had a critical insight of my biggest fear and that caused me lots of fails and extremes amount of unnecessary suffering. I fear failure o much that i simply don't do shit, procrastinate a lot and feel large amounts of anxiety during the task IF i overcome the gigantic problem of procrastination. If is especially true with cognitive tasks like read a technical book, study for college or some super important goal. I have this fear since i can remember but i remember a particular event where i took a test to enter in a school, my parents where pressuring me a lot and i kind of said that it was an easy task for me because i was smart (i had like 14), i took preparatory classes all year but i failed the test and my parents freak out, my father almost slapped me (and he never hit me) calling me "smart ass" and stuff like that, it was very traumatizing, i remember vividly the fear i felt that moment. Since then, my academic success just plumbed every year and with it my motivation to study, although i managed to enter in one of the best universities from Brazil i still procrastinate like HELL, give up easily and feel extremely anxious when i am in class or reading a book, especially when i don't understand something right away. But now i understand my dad, he was only projecting in me his insecurities, my parents are both failures, even though my father is SUPER smart, he still kind of failed in life (in his perspective) and i simply feel his sadness every time i see him and it crushes me to see him like this. My mother also failed terribly in life, her life is simply HELL, she is a drug addict with hardcore mental issues, fucked up the WHOLE family, committed several crimes and is responding in justice for it. She wasn't as smart as she thinks she is but still, breaks my heart to even think about her and i don't see any possibility to see some improvement in her situation until she dies. 
What can i do, guys, i feel that this is my biggest block currently, is holding me down in a big way and there are lots of people who counts
and aunt. 
Almost forgot: my root chakra is pulsating a LOT this couple of days, never felt anything like it. 

Suggestions and insights would be great, thanks guys.

Edited August 17, 2018 by Recursoinominado

[Leo Gura]

Sit down with a journal and dig into why you procrastinate. What is really going on there?

Don't speculate. Sit down and contemplate it seriously. You might be surprised what you discover. The root causes are not always what they first appear.

Keep probing this question day after day for at least a week. Get deep with it. Explore your true psyche. Ask yourself why you are doing all this. If it's fear, what do you really fear and why is it so bad?

[Nahm]

@Recursoinominado If now is a means to a happy future, you’ll never be happy, because there will only ever be now. You’re deeply lost in thinking; of past and future, and missing the joy in now. It may help to contemplate meaning. If you can discover that you are the creator of meaning, then you can begin to realize there is no more value in playing a video game than saving the world. 

[Recursoinominado]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sit down with a journal and dig into why you procrastinate. What is really going on there?

Don't speculate. Sit down and contemplate it seriously. You might be surprised what you discover. The root causes are not always what they first appear.

Keep probing this question day after day for at least a week. Get deep with it. Explore your true psyche. Ask yourself why you are doing all this. If it's fear, what do you really fear and why is it so bad?

Awesome, I am going to try although my insight came after a long time of contemplation, I believe that if I am not good enough(aka fail) , I will not receive love (I think this is the core belief). I don't really know what to after that.

 @Nahm

Thanks for your opinion. I consider myself a relatively happy guy, I realized that being happy now its the most important thing since now is all that is but I don't know if I became a homeless or something similar I would still be happy and I notice that I care about my family opinions a lot, they put a lot of expectations on me plus my ego is of someone that suppose to be successful but I am not (mostly because of the unconscious fear I talked about). But the thing is that this belief is not rational, I simple feel a crippling fear/anxiety mix and self sabotage a LOT every time I have high stakes on the line. I "know" that I am a intelligent guy but I don't feel like it and when I try to study some difficult and important topic I notice that my brain just shut down, I became extremely distracted, anxious, procrastinate a lot and every minute that I am sitting trying to do the task I have to be fully present to not give in to the ever-present tentation to give up and do something else.

[NoSelfSelf]

I found that fear of failure is linked with low self esteem you think you are not deserving of sucess so you sabotage it all the time

[Recursoinominado]

1 hour ago, NoSelfSelf said:

I found that fear of failure is linked with low self esteem you think you are not deserving of sucess so you sabotage it all the time

I think you are right, I have come to that conclusion before, researched a lot, did lots of stuff, got out of my confort zone tones of times, got better in so many levels but I still feel like I am not smart/capable/good enough etc. 

[Recursoinominado]

1 hour ago, Caterpillar said:

I think the ultimate solution is to brainwash yourself to think of failure as a good or neutral thing. I'm not sure how to do that yet.

I thought a lot about it since i had this insight and came to the conclusion i have to focus (through visualizations or something like this) on the success to counter my overwhelming worry about failure. I talked with my therapist about the issue and we came to this conclusion. I really believe that thoughts are energy that attracts similar energy, if you think constantly in failure, you will fail and if you think in the success you will succeed. This is a big problem because it was an unconscious automatic pattern of thought, i was assuming that failure was inevitable without even being aware of it and, as consequence, i was manifesting into reality. The thought of success for me is like another reality right now, it's surreal to imagine myself being successful and this is what i am going to focus.

My plan right now is research and create a success visualization routine and habit. Would love some tips on this. 

[robdl]

19 hours ago, Recursoinominado said:

Holy shit, guys, just had a critical insight of my biggest fear and that caused me lots of fails and extremes amount of unnecessary suffering. I fear failure o much that i simply don't do shit, procrastinate a lot and feel large amounts of anxiety during the task IF i overcome the gigantic problem of procrastination. If is especially true with cognitive tasks like read a technical book, study for college or some super important goal. I have this fear since i can remember but i remember a particular event where i took a test to enter in a school, my parents where pressuring me a lot and i kind of said that it was an easy task for me because i was smart (i had like 14), i took preparatory classes all year but i failed the test and my parents freak out, my father almost slapped me (and he never hit me) calling me "smart ass" and stuff like that, it was very traumatizing, i remember vividly the fear i felt that moment. Since then, my academic success just plumbed every year and with it my motivation to study, although i managed to enter in one of the best universities from Brazil i still procrastinate like HELL, give up easily and feel extremely anxious when i am in class or reading a book, especially when i don't understand something right away. But now i understand my dad, he was only projecting in me his insecurities, my parents are both failures, even though my father is SUPER smart, he still kind of failed in life (in his perspective) and i simply feel his sadness every time i see him and it crushes me to see him like this. My mother also failed terribly in life, her life is simply HELL, she is a drug addict with hardcore mental issues, fucked up the WHOLE family, committed several crimes and is responding in justice for it. She wasn't as smart as she thinks she is but still, breaks my heart to even think about her and i don't see any possibility to see some improvement in her situation until she dies. 
What can i do, guys, i feel that this is my biggest block currently, is holding me down in a big way and there are lots of people who counts
and aunt. 
Almost forgot: my root chakra is pulsating a LOT this couple of days, never felt anything like it. 

Suggestions and insights would be great, thanks guys.

"You" think there is an "I" that is apart from "fear."  The false division-distance between this "I" and "fear" will only further nourish conflict, fear, inward division.  

"You" ARE the fear.  The fear is "you".  Both "fear" and "I" being made out of thought and within the self-reactive, self-perpetuating movement of thought. 

When this is realized, then there is no division, no conflict, and therefore no problem. 

But as long as an "I" is standing apart from fear, this conflict will persist.

The "I" is merely made out of accumulated experience/knowledge/memory, and so is "fear."  They are of the same movement.

Both "fear" and "you" are thought's self-illusions.

 

Edited August 17, 2018 by robdl

[robdl]

19 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Sit down with a journal and dig into why you procrastinate. What is really going on there?

Don't speculate. Sit down and contemplate it seriously. You might be surprised what you discover. The root causes are not always what they first appear.

Keep probing this question day after day for at least a week. Get deep with it. Explore your true psyche. Ask yourself why you are doing all this. If it's fear, what do you really fear and why is it so bad?

Is there an analyzer that stands apart from what is being analyzed?  The analyzed being knowledge, memory, fear, experience -- and this too being what constitutes the "analyzer."   The analyzer and the analyzed are one and the same. Conditioned thought analyzing conditioned thought; fear analyzing fear.  So any kind of analysis will be inherently conflicted, biased, conditioned, confused, partial/limited, and so on -- based on a false division of analyzer-analyzed. 

One fragment of thought, as the "analyzer", acting as the judge/censor of the other analyzed thought-fragments.

Edited August 17, 2018 by robdl