Getting to know ourselves is part of what therapy attempts to offer; thorough becoming aware of what drives us, our wishes and our fears, we can experience the wider spectrum of who we are. As I see it, psychotherapy’s role is not only to broaden this spectrum but also to enable us to navigate it more freely.
This means a journey to the edges of the spectrum of who we are. this can be painful, it takes us to where we are most uncomfortable and most vulnerable; this is also where our hopes and ambitions lie.
The painful experience of discovering the limits of the breadth of our ability can be made up for in discovering new depth – we can take time to meet who we are and appreciate what we are doing. Few are the experiences that can offer us a visit to the edges of who we are – none more powerful than failure.
As painful as failure can be, it can also be liberating because we can acknowledge the aims and goals we were unable to meet – some we have set ourselves, some decided for us by others. Goals, as much as they can drive us to meet new capacities, can also be tyrannical leaving us feeling not good enough.
To me, this is a matter of personal choice; some people thrive on setting new goals and meeting them (go a few shades darker you risk ongoing anxiety). For others, goals mean constant loss (go a few shades darker and you risk depression). The key is to recognise what goals mean to us and failure can help us do just that.
And we fail, whether we are willing to admit or not; we fail often enough that it is worth acknowledging that failure is part of what makes us human, it is what we do. Not just as a stepping stone to success but as part part of life.
Failing can teach us humility and above all it can teach us how to build sound and enduring relationships with ourselves and others because when we embrace more fully who we are, our successes and our failures we can be more available to embrace others for who they are.
Today I failed and there is a good chance that tomorrow I will fail again.
