Due to this, I’m afraid of working on my own projects. This fear especially intensifies when I’m reaching some kind of milestone or personal goal (e.g. implementing a feature in software, or going to the next phase of a drawing), and end up procrastinating instead. Even worse is that I believe if I could get them finished, I could probably fix my current financial state.
Please note that in my country (Hungary), public mental health care is nearly nonexistent, and they’re only existing so the state can point to it. I don’t have any money for the private stuff, and I have higher priority health concerns that would benefit from higher-quality care (e.g. switching anti-seizure medications as my current doctor ignores its side effects).
For me, I overcame fear of failure by failing. I have tried all sorts of things: create, develop skills, complete major tasks, etc. Lots of them failed, while some were successful. What I learned was in most cases, unless the matter is detrimental to well-being, failure is fine. If I want to learn to play the solo for …And Justice for All, but all I was able to get to was the solo for Nutshell by Alice in Chains, that’s fine. I learned a lot in the process and still was able to play a solo, even if not the one I wanted. I also found a talent for learning scales and improvising lead guitar, something I had no intention of doing from the start. In this, I also learned to appreciate mistakes. While some mistakes can be harmful or embarrassing, others are pretty cool. They let me learn knew ways of doing things that I wouldn’t have come up with by just thinking. Using the guitar example again, I wanted to see if I could imitate Smashing Pumpkins’ distortion because I love it. I wasn’t able to, but in the process, I learned a lot about sound effects and came up with a distortion of my own that I really like. I wouldn’t have been able to create that or even know I wanted it without just making an attempt.
A recent “failure” I had was to start going to the gym and gain 15 lbs. I failed because I got overwhelmed with other matters and even got bronchitis for 1.5 weeks. However, there are lessons in this failure. I learned about my capacities and motivations, and can now develop strategies to try the next time I make an attempt to do the same thing again. There was no serious harm that came from the attempt and failure, just lessons.
Maybe reframing it in a way that says, “I’m going to try and see what happens,” rather than saying, “I am going to succeed or fail,” could help. I’m going to try allows for a lot of possibilities, some that you might not even have considered. I’m going to succeed or fail is limiting you to only two options, and the good one (succeed) is improbable because there is only one way to succeed, but there are infinity ways to fail.
In fact, getting meta, I don’t know if this comment will succeed at helping you, or fail to do so. However, I made an attempt and got to review my experience with failures, learning more about myself. Maybe other people will comment and I could learn even more, or maybe I’ll keep thinking about this and develop a more helpful perspective. Perhaps something good and unexpected will come from it. Either way, it’s a net positive.