Navigating failure

stuck and sinking, or daring to dive

Feb 07, 2025

Content note: anxiety, therapy, difficulties with work/life balance

Dear friends,

It's been a month since I last wrote to you. Please make yourself a cup of coffee or tea while you take some time to be with me. I'd like to pick up where I left off in my last letter (not my 2025 book list, of course).

I started the year with a panic attack, and I mean that literally. On the first night of January in a hotel room in Berlin, I started doing jumping jacks because exercise usually helps, except this time I was beyond the usual level of daily anxiety I live with and apart from hurting my calves, jumping wasn't doing me much good.

The next day, we travelled back home, and I had 8 hours on the train to think about what I was going to do with all these feelings that came to the surface. I decided that I didn't want to push everything back to the back of my heart. There is no room. The feelings are pressing against my lungs and chest. They want out, and I want air.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to my psychiatrist, the one who diagnosed me with ADHD three years back and with whom I am in regular contact via email. I tell her about my anxiety, and that it is becoming too much in my day-to-day life for me to keep ignoring, and I need some support. She’s booked until March, but gets me in contact with a psychologist specialised in ADHD. I met this person last Wednesday.

If you've ever been in therapy, you probably know that not much happens in the first meeting: you introduce yourself to whoever is in front of you and try to give as much information about yourself and why you're there as you can in an hour. On the way there, I thought I'd dread it. How was I going to fit it all in in an hour? I thought I'd rather talk to someone who already knew my background, so I could just fast-forward to the present. I was wrong. I could just start with the present and what made me decide to seek outside support, and so I began, as I have done in this letter, by telling her about what happened in Berlin, then about my job and all the (negative) elements that go with it and that have accumulated over the past few years and that have left me feeling more out of breath than not on most days.

She took notes and filled an entire A4 page in small, precise handwriting. She asked me to go back to the beginning, to my panic attack, and try to remember what happened as accurately as possible: what was I thinking? What was I doing? What did I feel?

The first feeling was anger, then the second was embarrassment, the third was fear and the fourth was guilt.

She also asked me if I had ever been to therapy. I had been for two years. I stopped shortly after I started the job because of a lack of time, and then I said, trying to be precise, that I had gone to therapy before for something else and that it had to do with my family situation and that it was very different from now.

The hour went by quickly, and I decided to keep seeing her, so we scheduled two more appointments, every two weeks. Until the next time, my homework is to observe and note what is going on internally when I get anxious.

If you have ever been in therapy, you probably know that most of the therapy takes place outside the therapy room. You talk for an hour every week or tw,o and then you work on yourself every other hour of the day, sometimes without realising it.

After that hour, I travelled to the other side of the city and went to work. I had a very long day with the last meeting ending at 9 pm. I was exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep, but I couldn’t switch off my brain.

Anger, embarrassment, fear and guilt.

The feelings that brought me to therapy the first time. It's no different. I thought I had already dealt with those feelings and that I was done feeling them, but instead, it seems I have just transferred them to another area of my life: work.

It’s not my first episode of insomnia, but this time I decided to give in. I got up and spent my sleepless night in the living room.

Anger, embarrassment, fear and guilt.

The best way I can describe how I have felt since I started this job is to use this rather clichéd image: I have been swimming and trying my best to keep my head above water. It's hard when you're a bad swimmer and the water is cold and dark and you're not sure you can trust what's underneath.

On Wednesday night, just for the night, I stopped swimming and let my head go under the surface and then I even dared to open my eyes. It’s just an image there is no chlorine.

I saw failure.

Me? Why? I am the person who has written, published and marketed my poetry books on my own, without the slightest fear of failure. Fear of failure has nothing to do with me!

I almost did it again: close my eyes and swim quickly to the surface. But I didn't. I couldn't sleep anyway, so I looked more closely and realised that my impulsive reaction had little to do with what was in front of me.

That was not fear of failure.

I was seeing failure.

If it was fear of failure, I'd fight it. I am not one to shy away from a learning opportunity or a challenge. It's not fear, it's a feeling of surrender, or in other words: I have already failed.

I mentally went back to the list of things I have mentioned in therapy about my job and that have been contributing to my anxiety and rephrased them accordingly.

I failed to become fluent in German.
I failed at being Swiss.
I failed multiple times at networking and making myself known.
I failed to secure our salary long-term; or: I failed to land a new sponsor.
I failed at creating an Italian version of our website.
And more.

Notoriously, I am bad at giving myself some grace and looking at things with context. This list is brutal, and while it is factually correct, much of the truth is missing.

I am not fluent in German, but I have a solid knowledge of the language, which is enough to do my job.
The fact that many people in the Swiss film industry have openly assumed and/or pointed out my background says more about the person they are than it does about me.
I am an introverted neurodivergent person and navigating social situations has always been hard. Having to present myself anew to the same people every time and facing discrimination doesn’t help. I did and do what is in my capacity.
It's absurd that I (someone who studied art and not marketing or economics or whatever degree would be useful here) am responsible for the financial status of an organisation that is growing exponentially. We got the amount we needed for the year and I did and do what I can with the resources I have.
I gave myself a rather absurd deadline for that: I haven’t failed, I am simply still working on it.
And more. I am more than my job, and over the past three years, I have been dealing with and doing much more than my job.

Breathe, Jo. Breathe. It’s morning already. Another day of work.

Seeing failure surprised me - I didn’t know that beneath the surface I was thinking/feeling of myself with such harshness - and it also relieved me. Now I know what it is and am looking forward to bringing it to therapy and figuring out what to do with it.

I hope to get some scuba equipment.

Have you been swimming? Tips and tools for better coping with a sense of failure are welcome. Please don't hesitate to leave a comment or email / text me.

Take care and warm hugs from Zürich

Your friend,

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JO’s notes is a publication by Jo Bahdo. I’m a queer slow writer, with bees in my head. Learn more about me here and if you would like to support me, I never say no to coffee

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