The Biological Reason Failure Hurts & What You Can Do About It
Failure.
Just reading that word makes some of you anxious. If you’re aware of your body, you may feel it manifest as an upset stomach, faster heart beat, or a desire to physically move.
Have you ever wondered why we respond that way?
I recently had the opportunity to attend Fail Fest a conference that celebrates failure and what we can learn from it. The day consisted of entrepreneurs, educators, and artists getting up on stage in front of hundreds of people (and video cameras that will share their stories with thousands) to share some of their greatest failures. At times, the stories were gut-wrenching.
What struck me was the way the speakers described the physical, psychological, and emotional toll of their, in many cases, public failures. Stress, anxiety, and depression often followed failure. The reactions were similar enough to make it clear that something universal happens inside of us when we experience failure.
Our Biological Response to Failure
Some scientists believe we developed our impressive cognitive abilities to help us cooperate. From birth, we can interpret facial expressions because they can provide information about resource availability. Infants are particularly sensitive to the facial expressions of their primary caregiver. We need each other to survive.
Historically, going it alone was a difficult and dangerous choice. Abandonment or social exclusion had very real, very negative consequences. In recognition of that fact, our brains became very good at monitoring for perceived social threats. It can be one of the reasons you may ruminate on a fight with a friend or whether or not people respect you at work.
Experiments using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans have identified areas of the brain that are active when we believe that we are excluded. An area of the brain called the anterior-cingulate cortex (ACC) becomes active when we experience social distress. It triggers our feelings of pain when we feel rejected. The ACC is also involved when we experience physical pain and it looks like physical and social pain shares some of the same circuitry in the brain. So when we say that rejection can hurt it is because it actually can cause us to feel a type of pain.
So, how does this relate to failure?
Well, failure is often interpreted as a rejection by the person that experienced failure. The brain can interpret rejection as a threat to our safety, and this can cause us to feel distressed. The brain’s primary job is to keep you alive. If you understand that fact, it will take you a long way toward understanding what’s behind many of your unwanted thoughts and feelings. The brain can use our feelings as a “stick” to get us to do what it interprets as the action that will lead to safety. Distress isn’t the brain’s only tool to get our attention.
The brain can also employ anxiety and depression to try to get you to pay attention to the situation and do something about it. There is some evidence that depression (if it is not sustained for long periods) may actually be adaptive because depression can help you sustain concentration on complex problems4. Depressed people typically ruminate on the perceived source of their depression to the exclusion of other thoughts and activities. At low levels if it isn’t prolonged that behavior can be helpful because it can lead to solutions to the challenge you face.
“Accepting the mind is sometimes the most useful strategy. When the mind believes safety is at risk, it won’t be outmaneuvered. But that doesn’t mean we need to suffer. In a tug-of-war against an immovable force, it makes sense to drop the rope.”
— Shawn Smith, Psy D
I’ve had friends confide in me about their personal struggles with depression following challenging life events. In several cases, they felt ashamed to admit they were depressed. They don’t need to feel that way because their depression could be a sign that their brain was doing what it should to help them work through the situation.
The key is that you have to perceive failure as a threat to something important to you. If you don’t believe failure puts you at risk, you’re unlikely to experience distress, depression, or anxiety. This is the reason losing a game of Monopoly doesn’t lead most people into depression.
When we experience failure in addition to unpleasant feelings, we may also be subject to unpleasant thoughts. I’m talking about negative and self-critical thoughts like “why can’t I get things to work?” or “it must mean there is something wrong with me.” Those thoughts are your brain at work trying to protect you. You don’t have to agree with negative thoughts, but it is important to understand why you may be having them.
It is often tempting to either try to suppress those thoughts or to try to distract ourselves instead of dealing with them. Think about the people you may know that use television, video games, shopping, or alcohol as coping mechanisms. It’s pretty obvious that running from a problem doesn’t make it better. So what can we do?
Working With Our Biology
Based on the research, I suggest four ways we can work with our biology to shorten the unpleasant period while helping us work on the underlying issue.
First, don’t try to suppress unwanted thoughts. It is counter-intuitive, but the way to get unwanted thoughts to stop eventually is first to accept that you have them. Remember, your brain’s primary job is to keep you alive. If it thinks your safety is at risk, it can use unpleasant thoughts and feelings to get your attention.
Trying to suppress thoughts and feelings can actually make you feel worse over time. When you suppress unwanted thoughts and feelings, you’re not addressing a situation your brain believes is dangerous. You don’t have to agree with unwanted thoughts. Just notice them, accept them, and then move forward. Several studies found that people that accept unwanted thoughts and emotions cope better and have lower rates of depression following stressful life events
You don’t have to agree with unwanted thoughts. Just notice them, accept them, and then move forward. Several studies found that people that accept unwanted thoughts and emotions cope better and have lower rates of depression following stressful life events.
If we step back for a second, most training in conflict resolution instructs the parties first to let the other party speak and give them an opportunity to be heard and understood. Only after the other party’s perspective is heard are you instructed to provide an alternative viewpoint. Given what we know about the brain, that sounds like pretty sound advice.
Next begin to reframe your experience. A study of coping mechanisms employed by failed entrepreneurs linked adaptive strategies like acceptance, putting the situation into perspective, refocusing on planning, and positive reappraisal of what was learned from the failure to better mental health and higher self-esteem post failure.
Third, stay connected to others as you work through your experience of failure. Staying connected to others reinforces the belief that you won’t be abandoned or ostracized. Multiple studies have validated the benefits social support provides during stressful events.
Finally, exercise is one of the best things you can do to work through failure. It is considered an approved treatment option for depression and may be recommended either with or without anti-depressants. Given the benefits exercise provides for executive function, brain health, and stress relief it should be a part of your normal weekly routine irrespective of life events.
Moving Forward
We are all going to have things in our lives that don’t work out. The world we live in is highly interdependent and as a result, it can be complex, uncertain and at times confusing.
Today, most of our perceived threats are social. Most of us can’t do much about terrorism, mass shootings, or the state of the economy in our day-to-day lives. But we can understand how we interpret the day-to-day stress in our lives, understand what that does to us, and learn to work with and through our brain’s response.
If you can look at failure as merely a setback, you can use failure to help you succeed. I know that the failures in my life, while at times painful, engineered the successes that came afterward.
If you learned something valuable or this was helpful to you, please share it with others.
Footnotes:
1. Colvin, Geoff “Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will.” New York: Portfolio, 2015.
2.Eisenberger, N. I., and M.D. Lieberman. “Why Rejection Hurts: A Common Neural Alarm System for Physical and Social Pain.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8 (2004): 294–300.
3. Smith, Shawn T. The User’s Guide to the Human Mind: Why Our Brains Make Us Unhappy, Anxious, and Neurotic and What We Can Do About It. Oakland: New Harbinger, 2011.
4. Andrews, Paul and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. “The Bright Side of Being Blue: Depression as an Adaptation for Analyzing Complex Problems.” Psychological Review. 116.3 (2009): 620–654
5. Shallcross, A.J., A.S. Troy, M. Boland, and I.B. Iris “Let It Be: Accepting Negative Emotional Experiences Predicts Decreased Negative Affect and Depressive Symptoms.” Behaviour Research and Therapy 48 (2010): 921–29.
6. Subramanian, S. and Vinoth M. Kumar “Coping with Failure, Mental Health and Career Intentions among Failed Entrepreneurs.” Asia-Pacific Business Review. 5.1 (2009)
