I fear failure. I fear the disapproval of others if I get to fail. I constantly question my sanity and intelligence level, and any mistake I make makes me fear that I may have an intellectual disability, despite the fact that I get straight A's in college.
I am scared of being cognitively disabled. For example, the other day I forgot my wallet, and after noticing I began to question my IQ and whether that psychologist who said I was gifted was right at all.
I constantly check facts on books and the web to make sure I got it correct. I don't want to have the wrong facts stored as memories, because once a memory forms, it often can interfere in something called "retroactive interference".
Even when I am barely starting to learn something, I attribute my mistakes to some form of mental deficiency, when obviously, my left side of the brain knows I am just a beginner.
And that makes me either quit, or continue until I achieved what I wanted. And sometimes it isn't enough for me.
What brought me to post this here is this. Today I forgot one step in a trigonometry problem, which was a square root. I know that I haven't encountered such problems for three years already, but I started to loath myself, asking how is it possible that I couldn't remember that. My dad even was kind enough to say that I was stupid. Stupid! Ugh... I remember that a few days ago he asked me this: "If you think you are so smart, answer me how is it that birds can navigate in flocks and never collide?" I quickly answered that birds have a magnetic sensor that enables them to navigate using the Earth's magnetic field. He just kept silent and continued eating his food.
The point here is that I forget about my own victories, the times I am successful, and just remember the little all too human failures and interpret them neurotically.
This literally interferes with my reading, since I am constantly thinking about not failing. The worst part is that I can't tell my parents, because they would never understand, and always come up with vapid answers such as "well, just think positive, son!". I can't think positive.