Why You May Think You Are Stupid
You may be familiar with one of these situations:
- You are sitting in a group, and suddenly those gathered begin to discuss a topic about which you understand nothing. It doesn’t matter what it is: nuclear physics, the politics of Turkmenistan or the influence of memes on modern culture. The interlocutors argue heatedly, throwing out terms and facts. You have nothing to add, so you sit silently and think: “What kind of dumbass am I? I do not know anything!"
- You accidentally mixed up Manet and Monet, Kant and Comte, or Bebel and Hegel in a conversation and then lamented for weeks: “How was that possible? What nonsense!
- You have found a vacancy in your dream company. But we read the description and decided not to send our resume. The list of responsibilities is quite large, and you think that you cannot cope: “There will still be many candidates better than me. Eh, if I were smarter, I would...”
Often such thoughts interfere with life. But stupidity is a relative concept and depends on what exactly you put into it. For example, is lack of erudition in some area stupidity? No, you're just bad at one topic, but you might be brilliant at another. Therefore, if you consider yourself stupid, there are more questions about self-esteem than about intelligence.
Each of us has ideas about ourselves, about others and about the world as a whole. How our lives turn out largely depends on these attitudes. There are positive beliefs that help us cope with life's difficulties and support us. And there are negative ones, which, on the contrary, make you weaker and less self-confident. The thought “I’m stupid” is a negative attitude.
Anna Erkina, psychologist
There may be several reasons for the idea of one’s own stupidity.
Childhood experience
The child accepts what significant adults say and broadcast as the pure truth. If his parents tell him that he is stupid because smart children only get straight A's, or refuse to listen because he is "talking nonsense", it is not surprising that as he gets older he will consider himself not smart enough.
Illustration: Anna Guridova / Lifehacker
Adult experience
Many attitudes are formed in childhood, but this does not mean that an adult is not subject to them. For example, the classic tactic of an abuser is to convince the victim that she is stupid, untalented and is not capable of anything without him. Naturally, this is a radical example. Less systemic and painful things can also leave their mark. For example, your boss cursed you in front of everyone, and now you doubt your own abilities.
Dunning-Kruger effect
This is a cognitive distortion: Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments, which is as follows: the less competent a person is, the more inclined he is to exaggerate his skills. And vice versa: the more a person knows and can do, the more modestly he evaluates his experience. In other words, stupid people do not tend to doubt their intelligence; this is precisely the characteristic of those who are smarter.
Imposter syndrome
It is based on the Dunning-Kruger effect, but everything is complicated by anxiety and fear of failure. A fairly successful person may constantly doubt his abilities. It seems to him that his achievements are connected not with personal qualities, but with luck and other circumstances beyond his control. But the deception will definitely be revealed, and everyone will see that in fact he is stupid. And it keeps you in constant tension.
Habit of comparison
People tend to compare. For example, research shows Instagram #Instasad?: Exploring Associations Among Instagram Use, Depressive Symptoms, Negative Social Comparison, and Strangers Followed that Instagram can negatively impact psychological well-being. The reason for this is precisely social comparison: the user thinks that the people from his feed are more beautiful, more successful, and live a fuller life. It’s the same with intelligence: you can meet smart people and, in contrast, consider yourself stupid. Although the second does not follow from the first: someone’s beauty, intelligence, success do not devalue the beauty, intelligence, success of other people.
How to get rid of the state of learned helplessness
Learned helplessness is not a death sentence, and it can be overcome. In each specific case, the path to overcoming it may vary, but there are two main ways.
Use cognitive behavioral therapy methods
The best solution would be to go through Leonard J. What is learned helplessness? MedicalNewsToday a course of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that will help you change your style of action and perception of the world. It is best to visit a psychologist for this purpose. But some things can be done Seligman ME Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage, 2006 do it yourself:
- Find someone who will listen and support you.
- Understand the causes of learned helplessness and find the negative thoughts that accompany it. You can write them down.
- Determine what actions you take that reinforce learned helplessness. For example, viewing the pages of “successful people” on social networks, which leads to conclusions like “I’m just a loser.”
- Try to become more optimistic in your behavior and thoughts. For example, come up with a physical action, such as slapping the table or shaking your head, that will signal an end to negative rumination.
- Work on your self-esteem. Let's say, after a failure, analyze it a few days later in order to identify the reasons for the failure without emotions. You can also remember your achievements to overcome thoughts of your own powerlessness.
- Don't cling to the worst cause of your anxiety, but identify the real one. For example, “Girls don't like me” is the worst reason, but “I had a bad relationship experience” is the real one.
- To the extent possible, get rid of the circumstances that lead to learned helplessness. For example, limit communication with people who treat you with disdain.
- Define your goals and plan specific tasks to achieve them.
Physical exercises can help with this Greenwood BN, Fleshner M. Exercise, Learned Helplessness, and the Stress‑Resistant Brain. NeuroMolecular Medicine, healthy eating and meditation. They develop Learned Helplessness. Psychology Today resilience and a sense of control are important for combating learned helplessness.
Develop learned, or selective, optimism.
Martin Seligman also developed Seligman ME Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage, 2006 concept of “learned optimism”. According to it, in order to break out of the cycle of helplessness, you need to learn to perceive events constructively, to give yourself arguments in favor of the fact that in unpleasant situations it is not your fault. This concept is also known as flexible optimism.
To realize his idea, Seligman, together with psychologist Albert Ellis, created Seligman ME Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage, 2006 ABCDE method (Adversity, Belief, Consequence, Disputation, Energization). To apply it, you first need to understand what difficulties or adversities (Adversity) you are facing. Then determine how you interpret them (Belief) and what feelings and actions they cause (Consequence). Having done this, you can give a counter-argument (Disputation), which will also remind you of the benefits of positive thoughts. This, Seligman believes, will give you energy (Energization) for further achievements.
Martin Seligman's lecture on positive psychology at TED‑Ed
As an example, we can cite the different reactions of an optimist and a pessimist to the fact that they failed to do something on time. If a pessimist gets upset and perhaps thinks that he can’t do anything, then an optimist will say to himself: “I didn’t manage to complete the task on time. I had too little time, just a little more and I would have done it.” In fact, this statement reveals the ABCDE model.
Nastasya Solomina
The way out of a state of learned helplessness is through action. But in order to take the necessary actions, to break out of the cage of circumstances, you need to find resources and sources of hope that change is still possible.
And here it is already difficult to name a universal strategy suitable for everyone: for some, rest, a “reset” and inspiring books or films will be enough; someone is best cheered up by the help of loved ones; someone will need specialist help.
After all, nothing works better to overcome learned helplessness than the experience of success. Start small and do what you know you can do: clear up the clutter on your desk, wash the windows, go for a run. This will begin your journey to a sense of control and overcoming stress.
How to stop thinking you're stupid
Analyze data
Try to find evidence that you are stupid and refutations of this. Psychologist Anna Erkina advises avoiding the formulations “I think” and “It seems to me.” You need facts.
For example, your team lost in a bar quiz and your self-esteem is shaken. But if you think about it, you can remember that third place out of 52 teams is not so bad. Yes, and you got overwhelmed with questions like “Guess how many times the phrase Ya-ya-ya coco jambo was heard in the song Coco Jambo.” So there's nothing to worry about.
Find an alternative explanation
Most likely, the situation is not worth labeling yourself a fool at all. Surely there is another interpretation. Let's look at three examples of circumstances from the beginning of the text:
- I don't understand nuclear physics, I'm stupid. → I don't understand nuclear physics.
- I know the difference between Bebel and Hegel, what a dumbass I am. → It was awkward. Confused about who it doesn't happen to.
- They definitely won’t hire me for this position because I’m stupid. → The list of responsibilities is long. I can handle half of them well. Another quarter is familiar to me. I haven't had to deal with the rest yet.
It doesn't sound so radical, and therefore not so destructive.
Form a new belief
Let's say you really don't see the difference between Manet and Monet. You can consider yourself stupid. Or you can remember that you are just a person who cannot know everything.
Negative attitudes are not something innate, which means they can be changed. Therefore, the thought “I’m stupid and I won’t succeed” needs to be reformulated so that it stops holding you back and demotivating you. For example, changing it to “I don’t know everything, but I have the opportunity to learn new things and become more erudite.”
Illustration: Anna Guridova / Lifehacker
Approach the problem constructively. Self-flagellation has no prospects. But if you move from thinking “I'm stupid” to looking for gaps in your knowledge and filling them, it can help you, for example, in your career. The main thing to remember is the Dunning-Kruger effect: the more you know, the more clearly you will understand how little you actually know.
I feel like the dumbest person in the world: what should I do?
Hello, I don’t know if I’m asking the question at the right address, but I have no one else to contact. My problem is that I can't think logically. I haven't been able to since childhood. Maybe my parents’ upbringing influenced me, since I was always forced to do something and discouraged from doing everything.
I studied well, but not for myself, but for my mother. At school I always had problems with mathematics, I can solve easy examples, but I can’t solve the more difficult ones by 5. Geometry was not given at all. I also always had problems with drawing; I couldn’t imagine, for example, what a figure looked like in three views, etc.
It’s the same thing at the institute, one teacher always said: you’ve memorized this, but you don’t understand. Other guys didn’t even study notes, but thanks to the fact that they knew how to think, they studied well. I also studied well, but because I studied all the time.
I tried to solve logical problems - nothing worked. In Charles Phillips’ book “The Super Brain Trainer,” where he first gives easy problems and then moves on to difficult ones, I couldn’t even solve the first one.
I work, it’s the same there, I’m the dumbest there. At the same time, everyone began to learn a new program on the computer, so the guys themselves “got it”, what was there and how, and I ran around and asked. Help me please, is it possible to change something? I am 24 years old.
Olga, St. Petersburg
Psychologist's comment:
Hello Olga.
I am not a specialist in the field of neuropsychology, but if you were able to finish school well and then college, this means that you obviously do not have any severe brain damage. And certainly not all people are able to understand geometry, solve mathematics with an A+ and master new computer programs without turning to anyone for help. I would even say that few people can do this.
But the fact that you have a strong complex because of your supposedly weak mathematical and logical abilities attracts my attention as a psychologist. Are your, as you put it, “logic problems” really hindering your career advancement or greatly affecting your interactions with other people? You write that you tried to solve logical problems, read various books about the development and “pumping” of your brain... Tell me, why do you need all this? Are you trying to prove something to someone? To whom and what exactly?
You indicated that you are 24 years old. Young men and women at this age are often preoccupied with finding relationships and developing a career, but I did not get the impression that studying the book "The Super Brain Trainer" is intended to move you up the career ladder. Therefore, I would suggest that you think about why you are so interested in a problem that, of course, for some reason is very important to you, but at the same time does not have a destructive effect on your life - that you are supposedly “the dumbest.”
I can offer you one of the possible versions of why a similar situation has arisen in your life. You write that you studied not for yourself, but for your mother. When a person does something not for himself, but for another, albeit significant person for him - something that he himself does not really like, then over time he may form a subconscious protest to such activity, or internal strength to carry out uninteresting activities simply end.
And when, for example, it is impossible to protest openly for some reason, such a protest can be expressed in the form of “dullness,” when the child’s learning abilities gradually deteriorate. Of course, such a mental mechanism is activated unconsciously: the child is not aware of what is happening and is not to blame for what is happening.
And if a child turns out to be incapable, as it seems to him, of solving complex examples or doing geometry, then what to take from him? You can just leave him alone. You may have been abandoned, but your vision of yourself as the “dumbest” remains and continues to influence your daily life and your sense of self to the extent that it degrades your quality of life.
Do you think the above is similar to what happened to you?
If you don’t have any guesses about the origin of your “intellectual problems”, and the version proposed above resonates with you, perhaps you should discuss the current situation with a psychologist and psychotherapist in person. With its help, you will be able to understand why so much of your mental energy, your attention and strength is directed to this zone, this special idea of yourself, and what can be done to release these forces and direct them to those areas of your life where this the energy you put in will bring you more benefit and joy.
Psychotherapist, family psychologist Evgeny Makhlin
Truly appreciate and enjoy your holiday
Spending time just doing nothing helps me relax and recharge, and it makes me happy. But if I do it too often, it becomes less healthy for me. This:
- It's starting to frustrate me because I'm not moving forward towards what I want.
- Creates stress instead of relaxing me because I'm not getting what's important and it can have negative consequences pretty quickly.
However, in moderation, spending some time being lazy is actually very beneficial for me. And I've found that when you think about how you want to spend your downtime—whether it's a 10-minute break or a lazy Sunday—it's best to use that time to do something you actually enjoy. For example, reading your favorite book, rather than aimlessly watching TV shows.
I've also learned that when I spend my time off more mindfully, I'm more motivated and energized to get back to work later. So I make sure to appreciate and fully enjoy the time off I create for myself because I know it will benefit me in several important ways.
