Failure And How To Trust Yourself Regardless

I’m diving into the topic of trusting yourself in the face of failure. If my podcast topics recently haven’t made this obvious yet, as HSPs we heavily rely on our intuition and depth of processing.

 

So failure can feel like we’ve been bamboozled.

 

If you’ve ever felt like you were following your intuition yet ended up doing something wrong, literally failing at something, or making someone upset, maybe even yourself – it can leave you feeling like a failure.

 

Highly sensitive people take failure hard, and when you’re developing your relationship with your sensitivity, it can feel confusing if you believe you’ve been listening pretty intently to your intuition only for it to steer you wrong.

 

So in this article, I’m going to share:

• How you can remain rooted in self-trust even when things don’t go as planned and failure feels pretty evident
• How you can navigate failure through your emotional intelligence
• How, in some cases, you might not be “failing” at all but simply experiencing your intuition in a completely different way.

 

Let’s get into it!

 

Approaching Failure Through Emotional Intelligence Building

I think it’s fair to say that approaching failure not as failure but as progress is beautifully said, extremely wise, and easier said than done when you are facing failure in real-time.

 

Whether you feel you’re facing struggles in a relationship, or at work, within your social life, your dating life, or even within the pursuit of a personal goal of yours – it hurts when it feels like you’ve failed.

 

I remember connecting with a highly sensitive woman who shared how she was feeling about the holidays. She told me that because there were relationships that were strained within her family, she was always left to make the final decisions about what the family did over the holidays.

 

It’s very stressful because she never pleases everyone all the time. Even if things go moderately well – it’s usually at the expense of her mental, emotional, and physical energy. She was always afraid of making the wrong choices.

 

Maybe that’s not the first example you’d think of when thinking of failure, but the fear of failure is very real there. I bring this up often because it’s just true, our greater capacity for awareness, both of the self and socially, can feel like a burden if you don’t know what to do with all that information.

 

Something that makes experiencing failure in real-time difficult is when it doesn’t feel singular, but compounding. So you’re not just facing this one failure, this one mistake, this one situation gone wrong, but you’re facing the present failure plus your last 5 failures too.

 

The reason I’m big on teaching my clients CBT is because our cognitive distortions are really sneaky and our limiting beliefs survive off of them. I mean, we survived off of them for a very long time.

 

Emotional intelligence is having a reliable relationship between your emotional and logical mind. But when your brain is saying, “Oh well look at that, you failed again! Based on the results of your past attempts, your many failures indicate that you don’t actually know what you’re doing/you’re bad at this/you’re unreliable, so the best decision is to quit. Take the L, drop out, and accept the fact that you’re a failure because it’s clear that you indeed are.”

 

If you’re looking at a piece of paper with all of your failures listed on it, it would be logical to come to these conclusions. That’s what your logical brain will do, especially if you struggle with trusting yourself as you fail.

 

It sounds super smart, it sounds unbiased, but the problem is it omits key emotional details that completely change that narrative.

 

Logical thinking is pretty unreliable without emotional thinking, and vice versa. The world doesn’t work in cold hard facts, as much as arrogant science-bros would want you to think so. It’s simply not reality, and it’s why people with high IQs and low emotional intelligence struggle with making important life decisions.

 

I mention this to tell you, if your thoughts sound cold and matter-of-fact against you, it’s a trick. Your brain is processing this failure the best way it knows how, and it’s not doing the best job, so it’s up to you to change that processing.

 

I can easily say that it’s great when you’re able to look back on your failures and be able to see the part they’ve played along your journey. However, when you’re in the middle of it and have to continue to move forward – you don’t have the luxury of being able to look back and connect the dots. 

 

And that hurts. It makes you feel stuck, like your options are limited. This is why approaching failure with emotional intelligence is key.

 

Here’s what you want to do to remain rooted in self-trust when you’re in the process of failing:

1. Stop The Momentum Of Negativity
2. Create Positive Triggers To Redirect Your Emotions

 

It’s doing these two things that are going to get you to put a stop to your energy leaks because you do not want to waste energy in a mental and emotional state that drains you. If you don’t stop the momentum, you get to a place where you believe you don’t deserve to feel good because you identify as a failure.

 

And those things just aren’t true.

 

It’s also going to build your emotional resilience. Being highly sensitive means you experience emotions at great levels, and being able to feel negative emotional responses without becoming crippled by them is so important  – and yes, it is possible!

 

Remaining Rooted In Self-Trust – Tips and Tools

Stopping the momentum of negative emotions looks different depending on the type of momentum you’re faced with.

 

But first, what do I mean by momentum? Well, some emotions are naturally easier to deal with than others. And despite what many will suggest, changing your perspective or thought pattern just isn’t going to work across the board for every emotion.

 

Think of momentum as a small snowball rolling down a snowy hill. It’s easy to stop it at the top of the hill because it hasn’t grown in size much, but if you try to stop it at the bottom of the hill, the size and the speed at which it’s moving will have increased exponentially. If it doesn’t knock you down, you’ll at least be buried in snow.

 

Some emotions have less momentum than others. For example, uncertainty has little momentum compared to fear. One emotion is easier to get in front of and stop than the other.

 

With higher momentum emotions, stopping it isn’t going to be your goal anymore, but what you want to do is slow down the momentum.

 

The 3 Degrees Of Emotion

There’s a system to identify emotions, intensity, and interventions that are taught to 6 year old children on the autism spectrum that I think is super helpful for this topic because I am talking about emotional management. Here’s the resource paper I’m referring to, written by Aubrey Cooper of the University Of Utah.

 

In this system, there are 3 degrees of emotion, with accompanying phrases that researchers recognize children would say when experiencing each degree.

 

1st degree sounds like: “I am calm and in control.”

2nd degree sounds like: “I am having some strong feelings, but I can still control my emotions.”

3rd degree sounds like: “I cannot control my emotions right now, I need to calm down.”

 

I don’t know about you, but coming up I was not taught how to self-regulate, my family didn’t know how to do it, and resources like counseling and therapy were not accessible options for me growing up. I didn’t learn these things until later on in my life, and as HSP, we are neurodivergent, so this system just makes the most sense (in my opinion – take what works for you and leave what does not).

 

High Momentum Emotions Through Failure

How do you slow down the momentum of fear, or anger, or panic?

 

You work backward to lower the intensity.

 

Do not think about going from fear to confidence. That’s way too big of a jump and it’s not realistic. Why do you think the worst thing to say to someone who’s freaking out is “calm down?” It’s so far from your current emotional state that it’s number 1, super unhelpful to say and number 2, it can increase the momentum of that negative emotion because it highlights your situation as impossible to get out of, which can also support you feeling like a failure.

 

Instead, going from fear to anxious is way easier. If you’ve ever thought, “How can I feel good right now when I feel like shit?” The answer is always to start by feeling a little less shitty.

 

Start by grounding and then practicing self-compassion. You feel like an infinite failure and panicking right now? Okay. You have every right to fail. You’re not too good to fail, you’re not too much of a failure to continue failing – you have every right to get things wrong. Feeling like a failure sucks, and you probably feel like you can’t afford to fail right now.

 

The good news? Even when things are going well, you’ll still fail. So, no need to panic about it, right?

 

THIS is how you need to be speaking to yourself when you’re at the 3rd degree. Sure, failure feels bad and inconvenient, but as long as you’re breathing, you can try again. You can try differently. You can understand your situation in a way you couldn’t before you failed.

 

Now for some grounding techniques:

 

Focusing on your breath, hand over heart for 30 seconds, going for a walk, sitting down and squeezing a ball, or even playing with a fidget spinner; these are all techniques that can get you out of your head to find presence.

 

Awareness of your physical body for enough time to get through high intensity emotions is going to serve you greatly. Not to be mistaken with mindless mental distraction!

 

On Spiritual Bypassing: You’re Allowed To Feel Bad

There are no rules against feeling bad. If you consider yourself to be a religious/spiritual person, however that word resonates with you, you might have experienced something called ‘spiritual bypassing’, which is, in other words, toxic positivity.

 

Maybe you’ve been told that if you’re healed, (which – who is completely, anyway?), that you’re not supposed to feel bad because it’s “low-vibrational.”

 

Or that if you experience fear or anger, that it’s the devil or you have a demon inside of you. It’s only spiritual bypassing if it has you feeling ashamed for feeling emotions.

 

Remember that to feel emotions, especially as a highly sensitive person, is simply what makes you human – so there’s no need for the shame.  You can feel the entire range of your emotions without having them control you.

 

I figure this is important to note in case you struggle with self-compassion!

 

Medium Level Momentum Emotions Through Failure

Alright, you’ve taken the 60 seconds, the 5 minutes, the full hour or day to ground yourself and practice self-compassion. Now you’re thinking of your failure and it’s still making you anxious, maybe discouraged or annoyance, but your breathing is balanced, your heart rate is lower, and your blood is oxygenated.

 

What’s happening now is your hippocampus is apart of the picture in the processing of your emotions. Your amygdala is not in the driver’s seat anymore, but different parts of your brain are working together at this point.

 

This is much easier to approach. Anxiety is approachable, annoyance is approachable, sadness is approachable, because you can feel them strongly and still be in control. Now, you can stop the momentum.

 

A great way to stop medium level momentum is by relying on your support system!

 

This looks like finding someone you trust to share what’s troubling you. You’re in a state where you can receive support and maybe even guidance now because you have access to your discernment.

 

This is also the time to consider what your feelings about failure really are. A journal entry, or consistently journaling about your feelings around failure in general, and the failure you find yourself facing, is going to help shed light on what limiting beliefs are still embedded in your foundation. It’s hard to know these things until you’re dealing with failure in real time, so I highly recommend these methods!

 

Low Momentum Emotions Through Failure

Low momentum emotions are the easiest to navigate, and even so, they can be unsettling.

 

This is where you’re going to practice your CBT therapy, your growth mindset, whatever you need you to do to actively reframe your way of thinking to offer yourself some expansion, to debunk your cognitive distortions.

 

If you need help with that, I highly recommend you grab your Free Emotional Intelligence Self-Reflection workbook, which you can find in the description to get you started on doing so.

 

I also have an entire resource dedicated to teaching you the different distortions you can face and how to work through through them in the Foundation To Success Bundle.

 

Create Positive Triggers To Redirect Your Emotions

I actually believe the 3 statements in the 3 Degrees Of Emotion system also work great for doubling as positive triggers, at least to start, right?

 

Using the statements, “I am calm and in control of my emotions.”; “I am feeling strong emotions but I’m still in control.”; and “I am not in control, I need to calm down.” are also great to say out loud or to yourself as a method of grounding as well.

 

This is when your self awareness can become grounding – also, stating what is going on around and within you can allow you to healthily detach from your emotional state. You’re essentially taking a step back to look at the whole picture of you and where you are, which can immediately relieve some of that intensity.

 

What Is A Positive Trigger

Essentially a positive trigger is a quick action or word or phrase that immediately creates a positive response or reaction from you. So it can be anything. Also, affirmations are wonderful for creating positive triggers to redirect your emotions.

 

I know how cheesy they can be, and I am in no way advocating that staring at yourself in the mirror speaking affirmations all day will fix all your problems, but when you need to relieve the ton of bricks on your chest or whatever energy leaks are overwhelming at the time, those affirmations are chef’s kiss.

 

My favorite positive trigger when I’m overwhelmed, particularly by the idea of failure, if I’m experiencing it in the moment, is one of the 7 universal laws, which is The Law Of Rhythm.

 

To explain quickly, this law explains that “the swing of the pendulum manifests in everything.” If you think of a pendulum swinging back and forth, the measurement of the swing to one side will be the same going the other way.

 

That comforts me specifically because I can apply it to everything, especially failure. As bad as I feel in the face of failure, that pendulum is eventually going to swing the other way, and I’m going to experience satisfaction and contentment of the same caliber.

 

This is my favorite article on The 7 Universal Laws, in case you would like to learn more about them, which I highly recommend that you do, particularly the 2nd law; the Law Of Vibration.

 

Think of it as learning exactly how to use affirmations the right way so that they create real change within you instead of you trying them out and crossing your fingers.

 

Experiencing Intuition In A New Way

I want to talk about how your intuition shows up in unexpected ways because it’s something not many people instinctively think about.

 

In my Distinguishing Your Anxiety From Your Intuition video, which you want to watch by clicking here – or you can listen to the audio-only version below this article – I mention how anxiety can tag along in the experience of intuition, but I want to make it clear that you can feel all types of feelings when you’re following your intuition.

 

Because intuition isn’t a feeling, it’s a knowing. Experiencing intuition can take a split second. When I say it’s the tiny voice in your head guiding you towards expansion, I mean tiny. It’s never the loud, fearful thoughts in your head, but the quiet one in the back.

 

The voice in your head that you heard, but will not rush you. Will not try to persuade you, because it’s knowing, you’re not questioning it, you’re questioning yourself for trusting it. But it never sounds like a question, or a maybe.

 

I want to share a time in which I experienced intuition that didn’t feel like intuition at all, because the experience of it felt chaotic and uncertain.

 

My Experience With Intuition As Perceived “Failure”

I was commuting to work, and I felt a bit disoriented and flowy. Like my head was in the clouds and I wasn’t necessarily focused, which is usually not how I start my days or how I feel commuting in a busy city. You have to be alert and aware of your surroundings for safety reasons. But that morning, I was out of it.

 

I comfortably sat in a small seat in between people who were probably very uncomfortable, I almost got off the bus at the wrong stop twice that morning, and ended up riding solo on a city bus with only one other passenger. This passenger was a woman who happened to not speak English very well.

 

She ended up asking me for directions, and it was clear to me she was very unfamiliar with the area. It felt like she grounded me that morning, because I became focused on making sure she got to where she needed to be. Meaning, I told her where she was, how many stops away we were, and I alerted her when it was her stop.

 

Nothing special or groundbreaking. Living in a busy city, it’s normal to get asked for directions. Her not knowing English motivated me to be as helpful as possible. What was perplexing was how I felt after the encounter. If I was walking around aimlessly in a cloud of confusion before that interaction, it was like someone gave me a pair of glasses and I could orient myself again afterwards.

 

After she exited the us, all I could think was, “The universe really needed her to be somewhere, huh?”

 

Intuition As A Spiral

Tarot Reader. fellow podcaster and teacher Lindsey Mack talks about how we can experience intuition, and these are her words, “as a spiral.” And I can’t help but feel this phrase to be genius.

 

Because sometimes, it truly feels like your intuition is taking you for a ride, where the future is very cloudy because it’s calling you to be extremely in the present.

 

That’s how it felt for me that morning. I didn’t feel anxious about feeling so… essentially airheaded and unfocused that morning. Any other day, I would’ve at least had some energy leaks, like anxiousness or confusion or even a bit self-conscious about rushing off my bus to hop back on when I realized my mistake.

 

But I didn’t feel any of that. Just comfortable in the uncertainty. Extremely present in my body without overthinking anything.

 

Intuition will get you to where you need to be, even if it feels odd and unfamiliar.

 

The reason I mention this story is to highlight that, in the end, I was late to work that day, I had missed my first bus, and all the decisions I made that morning didn’t actually serve me well at all. And I could’ve been annoyed or disappointed with myself, apologetic to my boss, a bunch of things – and to be honest, I would’ve.

 

But, for some reason, I knew I didn’t have to be. That feeling that way would be a waste of my energy, actually, and that my “mistakes” served a purpose that morning that had nothing to do with me.

 

A lot of you are going to hear that story and find it ridiculous, pointless. A smaller portion of you are going to read this and have seemingly insignificant memories pop up for you that sound like my story too, and this is going to be confirming for you.

 

I’m talking about those moments when you thought to yourself, “Why did I do that? That was weird” or “I don’t know why I felt this way, but I still believe that was right for me to do.”

 

I want to tell you that those little moments were not moments of failure or mistakes, but your intuition uniquely guiding you. You experienced your intuition taking you on a journey, and maybe you still don’t have clarity around it, but that’s okay because you’re not concerned or worried for a reason.

 

You’re more than right to remain rooted in self-trust even in the mysterious knowing that is your intuition.

 

And I’m going to leave you with that.