As I mentioned in my last post on the perfectionistic cheerleader, those athletes who have more Perfectionistic Concerns also have more fear of failure.  This term is another one that is thrown around a lot and not surprisingly, it is more complicated that you might think! 

 Why should someone have a fear of failure?  Of course no one likes to fail but for some people, the fear of failing is excessive and it can lead to sub-par performances and mental blocks.  They associate failure with aversive consequences – not just feeling bad but with real or imagined negative consequences.  

And what are those consequences?  It seems there are 5: 

1. Fear of experiencing shame and embarrassment
2. Fear of devaluing one’s self-estimate (“I’m not as good as I thought.”)
3. Fear of having an uncertain future (“Will I be able to stay on the team?”)
4. Fear of important others (parents/coaches) losing interest
5. Fear of upsetting important others (parents/coaches) 

Fear of failure can lead to avoidance behavior.  The thinking is something like this: “If I don’t try, I can’t fail.”   The motivation is to avoid failure because of anticipatory shame (of failing). 

Sport psychology research shows that fear of experiencing shame and embarrassmentis central to understanding the relationship between perfectionism and fear of failure. In other words, shame is an emotion at the core of fear of failure and it involves a negative scrutiny of one’s self along with feelings of incompetence.  The experience is a painful one especially because the athlete feels that his or her entire self is a failure.   

But reader – do not despair!  I’ll be telling you what to do about this in my next posting! 

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Tags: cheerleader, cheerleaders, Cheerleading, cheerleading coach, fear of failure

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 2:11 pm by Dr. Pam and is filed under mental game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.