Several years ago there was a tv commercial which portrayed a man tethered to a monstrous, rusted-out boat. He was trying to haul it out of the sea and up onto the beach, but the boat looked too heavy. It seemed fated to slide back into the water where it would inevitably sink pulling the man under. He was doomed to drown.
Much of my career has been spent working with struggling (what we used to call 'remedial' or 'modified') math students. I used to tell them that story -- likening their history of awful math experiences to the rusted hulk. What I was there to do, I would say, was show them another possibility: they could cut it loose. They could learn the skills and bob to the surface. They might never like math, but they would no longer have to fear being drowned by it.
The most important thing about my teaching is that it has given me the opportunity to help these kinds of learners free themselves from having to drag their load of past math failures into the future. Schooling shouldn't teach people that they can't do stuff. It should affirm to them, over and over and over, that they can.