Practicing Failure with Dr. Amanda Cassil

I am excited to introduce my new podcast to you all! Practicing Failure with Dr. Amanda Cassil will feature uplifting, conversational interviews with mental health providers where we learn about mental health, celebrate mistakes, and learn how failure helps us grow.

I hope to accomplish a few different goals with this podcast: a) to highlight incredible work being done by my colleagues, b) model how we can hold easy and hard, good and bad things together at the same time, c) give examples of how failure and growth can look many different ways, and d) provide quality, nuanced education from experts who are in the field doing this work every day.

The podcast is set to run June through August with 10 episodes and will be available anywhere you get your podcasts. There is potential for a few bonus episodes depending on how the summer goes. If you have questions as you listen, you can send the show an email at practicingfailurepodcast@gmail.com.

We will hear from mental health experts in areas such as complex chronic health issues, masculinity, compulsive sexual behavior, immigration, DEI, and more!

Why “Practicing Failure?”

In my work with STEM individuals, the theme of perfectionism comes up a lot. When we expect ourselves to be perfect, or others to be perfect, it leads to disappointment, frustration, anger, and avoidance. “If I can’t be good at something, I don’t want to try.” Or “If this other person (or system) is not perfect, then I don’t want to be in relationship with them anymore.” And to be clear, there can be good reasons to walk away from tasks or relationships, depending on the context and what you need at a given time. But if we avoid things that lead to hard emotion, our world starts to get very small.

So what do we do? Using a framework of non-judgmental awareness, we start to explore what is working and what is not working toward our goals. This is separate from your worth as a person. Instead, non-judgmental awareness looks at the effectiveness of a given set of behaviors, whether those behaviors are aligned with your values, and if they are achieving the outcomes you want. We make space to process the emotions as they arise and to discern whether to keep trying and how.

I invite clients to reflect on failure the same way they would a science experiment—if you are not getting the outcome you desire, what variable needs to change? What can we try differently? And how do we adjust variables mindfully so we can discern what is contributing to success or failure of that goal. This doesn’t remove the hard emotions, but it gives us a productive outlet alongside the emotions and a way to build wins along the way (e.g., success, self-esteem, hope).

As we practice failure, we essentially engage in exposure therapy—stepping into distress in manageable ways to learn that we can tolerate discomfort, what our threshold for discomfort is (allowing us to stay engaged with the task), and that our skillset and problem solving abilities can expand over time.

Fear of failure and associated shame may look different based on the contexts and cultures we are in, but they also connect us to a shared human experience. Each clinician I speak with frames failure and growth in a different way, which I love, because all of our brains work differently. This science experiment analogy will resonate with some people and make little to no sense to others—this is a great example of why we need different points of view in psychology and mental health. There is no single path to healing that works for everyone and there is no going through life without experiencing hard things. So we have to keep trying different approaches and practicing failure to find what works and what doesn’t.

As you are on your path to growth and healing, my hope is that you find grace and compassion along the way because these help open our brains to learning (literally changes which areas of the brain light up when learning). When we start with criticism and judgment, our brains register threat and become less receptive to change, as it is trying to guide us to safety (hence our avoidance of scary things). But when we learn that we can fail and be safe, our brains become more receptive and we get to experience more adventure, novelty, and satisfaction in life.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform today (Apple, Spotify, Amazon, and more) and join me this summer as we practice failure!