I daydream about being a failure

[bluepaintcan123]

There are times when I do pretty much anything and I say something that I regret after. Usually it was something that is selfish, rude, or just me forgetting to be polite. After that I get into a mental rant where I point out everything that went wrong in that conversation and how I was rude to the person I was talking to. I will start thinking about the future and these different scenarios where the way I act now ruins my life. (The one I have the most often is when I'm in a job interview and the interviewer is asking me what my worst quality is, but I am forced to take a truth serum to answer. I start talking about all of my worst qualities and saying that they shouldn't hire me because I would be terrible for the job, and I always end up crying at the end of the interview.) In real life I start to cry and almost an hour passes before I've calmed down (which just happened now, actually.)
Whenever I feel sad I always think about myself being a failure, or if I don't I think about the people around me realizing what a terrible person I am and leaving me.

(I guess there wasn't really a purpose to this but whatever...)

[aml0017]

Hey you know I do this too! For me I just imagine that people in my life reject me in some cruel way and I am alone and I have to move away to escape. I think anxiety brings all our low self esteem and self hatred to the surface in a bad way. You have to remind yourself that these things aren't really happening. Seems obvious but you are reacting as if it is really happening. It is just the anxiety telling you lies, doesn't mean you have to believe them. Don't allow these scenarios to play out in your head. Recognize when you start to imagine them and stop it by any means. Tell yourself "Stop! This is not real!". Take some deep breaths and distract your mind - get up and move, take a brisk walk, talk to someone else, listen to music, whatever.

[Kirk]

Just remember you are NOT IN ANY WAY a failure.

[Kirk]

NOT ONE of us on this forum are failures. At most we just have various issues that have to be dealt with.

[Anne1221]

My therapist told me that whenever I start having horrible fantasies, then that's anxiety. So now I just recognize it as another one of my "horrible fantasies", I tell myself, "That's just your anxiety" and I move on. No one will ever give you a truth serum for a job interview so that's one worry you don't need to have!

[magicmarcus]

i like what anne said... that helps me as well to separate myself from my anxiety.

if i define myself by my anxiety and my thoughts... i get messed up.

if i separate and say... well thats just thoughts doing thier thing and feelings getting all feely... then i am free to live and watch them rather than being IN them.

also... i feel like a failure probably 3-4 times a day... when i don't get things done, when things don't go my way... ect... the difference is i do not believe it.

bottom line... I as a person am not the sum of my thoughts, what i have done, or what has been done to me... i am something more.

to say one is a failure is to judge a book before its over... your book is still open and anything can happen... as quick as things can go south... they can go north too... as quick as we can get in a rut... we can dig out.

and... when society defines what success is... its usually money or job or status... which is not the definition of success at all... i had "worldy" success but was a total mess inside and suicidal... so - so much for that :-)

right now... you can choose to define yourself however you like... and i believe you are a person trying... and if you try... you aren't a failure :-)

props for being here and asking.

ps: i used to have a hard time with going back thru my day and dissecting everything i said and did... for me it was a form of control... but it was an illusion because i can't change anything i did in the past... only move forward... tomorrow is a new day.