SUMMARY: I don’t feel comfortable around gatherings/ coffee time with people, I stay quiet and only listen to their conversations, I don’t add anything to it because I feel inferior compared to them regarding being intelligent. I lack the knowledge in the topics they talk about most of the time and don’t know where to bring in solving this issue.
I’m not sure how to formulate this question but I will try my best. Personally, whenever I am in a group of newl met “friends”, which most of the time are friends if my brother, I tend to sit back and just listen to their conversations. I don’t add much to the conversation and that spirals down to a couple of reasons, that I tried to understand about myself:
1. I’m an introvert. I can be extroverted/an ambivert but that only happened with people that I connect with and that I don’t mind judging me. So I stay quiet in gatherings with strangers and that boils down to new reasons (below)
2. I stay quiet because I have this thought about myself that I’m not as intelligent as anyone in the group, I feel inferior compared to them regarding having a great grasp of knowledge, mostly in any topic they are talking about, so I would rather stay quiet since I see myself below them and.
3. I try to avoid asking questions because I will end up looking really, really dumb and with me being 25, I compare myself to these people who are also my age & know so much more than I do about politics in example, or economy, or history of some country (the list can go on forever, because I’m too aware of the topics I’m not well versed at), so, I stay quiet and understand very little from the topic being talked to.
4. I had previous experiences where I did talk and asked something which embarrassed me (these situations were with my family), or I had said something and couldn’t keep the conversation going because I didn’t have as much background info memorised for that topic.
I tried to solve these points by being more relaxed, remind myself to TALK instead of listen only, not to compare myself to anyone else around me & lastly, start my journey in learning everything from scratch (recently started, so not much progress in this).
But after all of this, I still feel like I don’t belong with anyone who knows so much or more than I do in certain topics, so I end up having this exact pov of myself, which is summarised in me being below average about my general knowledge/ intelligence. This affects my thoughts, feelings, moods, confidence & work performance on a daily basis. I tried to snap out of it from time to time but It feels like its a “fact” more than a thought now. I feel like I have the “looks” but not much intelligence. Like I just have a face and that’s it.
My question is, did you ever feel this way, especially being 25 years old or older, and are you trying to solve it?
Sorry for the long post, and thank you for reading all of it.
2 comments
If you feel you don’t know a lot, you can always acquire the knowledge through reading news or watching YT or following some people on twitter. You don’t have to know everything or delve into topics of no interest to you but perhaps learn some of the stuff your friends talk about.
The people I find interesting are usually those who are well read or well travelled. They offer different perspectives and are sometimes the source of my learning as well.
But yea, if you don’t read widely, you can’t really find anything interesting to say.
It sounds like you have done your best to understand your position and where it comes from, which is an important step in solving this dilemma. Are there any methods or strategies that you have found helpful in trying to increase your knowledge base around conversations? Have you tried anything like reading, podcasts, or lectures to help expand your intellectual horizon?