Why Do You Feel Dumb? How To Overcome That Feeling

Ana Ramos
4 min readDec 22, 2023
Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash

I’m sure we’ve all had those moments where we feel stupid or dumb because, either we don’t understand a joke, we can’t discuss a certain topic or we’re making a lot of mistakes, and it feels we can’t do anything right. It is frustrating and it can make you feel embarrassed and very insecure about yourself. There are a lot of factors that can cause this feeling but most of the time it stems from a lack of self-esteem.

I will give you my example:

Sometimes when I had conversations with other people about certain topics, I would often end up feeling dumb and insecure because I felt like they were viewing me differently when my knowledge about that topic wasn’t as good as theirs. Especially when a lot of it is considered general knowledge. I knew that I learned some of it in school or simply by experiencing life but at that moment, I just didn’t remember it well enough to maintain a discussion.

I remember this time that I was talking with some friends about movies, even though we were talking about some popular movies that I knew I had watched (a lot of them many years ago), either I didn’t remember the main story, or some characters or any iconic scenes or quotes that were famous.

What bothered me and made me feel stupid and kind of embarrassed wasn’t the fact that I…

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Ana Ramos

Introvert and writer enthusiast | Writing about: the struggles and beauty of adulthood | personal growth | mental health