Fear of failure

Mary,

Thanks for sending in this question.

Imagine a little kid learning to walk, who - every time she tries to take a step, gets hurt badly.

Imagine, too, that - because she has such bad learning-to-walk-luck, her parents carry her wherever she needs to go.

The double-whammy of trying-to-walk-injuries and parent-rescues will probably ensure that this child will be a very late walker, indeed!

This is where you are, Mary, realizing that your efforts to grow and change and individuate from your parents may yield more of the failure you have experienced before, as you attempt, one more time, to become financially independent from them.

In other words, this is not about getting a job, Mary; this is about getting a life.

The fact that you wrote to a counselor about your situation is a great sign. You realize something is wrong "with this picture." If your development had been irrevocably arrested by the dynamic in your family (where adult children can continue to live at home for fifteen years or more past what is considered to be the legal age for adulthood), then you would not care about getting a job and becoming self-supporting.

My recommendation to you is that you get involved in a support group, like CoDA , which can help you identify and acknowledge your own goals and dreams as distinct from your parents'. Therapy might also help you, in that a therapeutic relationship will expect certain commitments and investments of you. Friends, too, can challenge your expectations of yourself. Counseling, support groups and socialization on the whole will all offer you venues for successful relating, in service to finding out what you want and need out of life.

Finding out what you want and need from life necessarily comes before figuring out how to get what you want and need.

A little kid learns to walk despite almost constant bumps and bruises because - more than anything else - she knows she wants to walk.

Sincerely,

Margaret "Peg" Burr , MA, MFT