Successful people, motivational speakers, all those dregs, commonly refer to the supreme importance of failure in teaching them the lessons responsible for their eventual success as businessmen, inventors, artists and the like.
But for me, and I think the same might go for most Borderlines, failure doesn't give me renewed drive, it doesn't motivate me to work harder or remind me with a smart what I did wrong so I will never make the same mistake again. No, rather it discourages, weakens my resolve, banishes the last vestiges of confidence that I clung to and kills my hopes. When I fail I don't feel like I can do better. I feel ashamed, wanting never to try again, undeserving, unfit, inferior. It ruins my confidence and self-esteem.

All my life, as I can remember it, I have scorned the people who one after another recite that same refrain. But now it feels like just one more piece of the puzzle fitting into place -- the puzzle entitled: "Borderline".
Have you truly gleaned something useful or felt the positive effects of failure? I have not, and I fear it so much that such fear has become perhaps the hallmark of my disorder, in all its self-handicapping, self-righteous glory.