How to lose the fear of seeming funny. How to avoid feeling “stupid” Incorrect use of words and phrases

I'M AFRAID OF INTIMA I'm afraid of serious relationships with men. I'm dating - everything is fine. But as soon as the conversation comes about staying overnight or living, that’s it, I can’t. I'm scared as hell of what's going to happen next. What will happen in the morning, in a week, a month, and then what? I'm already 26 years old and that's it

It happens that, compared to our colleagues, we feel somehow stupid, slow, insufficiently competent, or even half-educated. It’s as if we are trying to appear to be something we are not. This often happens to people who, due to their occupation, are forced to constantly learn something new, constantly broaden their horizons - for example, in the IT field. And there comes a moment when it seems to us that we know nothing at all about our work, we don’t understand the market, clients, new trends, that we are zero in our business.

Here are a few useful tips about how to overcome such moments of crisis.

Remember everything you know

Take a piece of paper or create a document in an editor, if that’s more familiar to you. Write down everything you can actually do. Write articles or programs, draw, multiply large numbers in your head, edit texts - list as many skills as possible that you at least somehow possess. When you're done, make four additional columns to the right of this list. Title them something like: “beginner”, “intermediate”, “advanced”, “expert”. Check the appropriate box next to each item of your skills. Now look carefully at your table. This is your real resume: who you are, who you are not, which areas urgently need to be improved, and which ones you are already good at.

Drop the negativity

So you look at your list of skills and continue to mope. Take a closer look and note: which of this you really need, and which at this stage of life is unimportant. Let's be constructive.

Nothing special. Everyone has crises, and you've had them before. You managed it before, you can handle it now. You just need to choose the right strategy. “By concentrating on something, we expand and strengthen it. If you focus on the positive, the positive will become more positive. If it’s negative, then, accordingly, the negative multiplies” (c) Julia Cameron.

Some negative thoughts are still useful

Not all negative experiences are useless. If you look at your list of skills and sadly realize that in some specific area you really need to “pump up” for work, then this is just useful. The desire for progress is constructive. This is where motivation and work on yourself begins.

A little bit everywhere, but overall a pro

The author remembers well how, back in his student days, he told his supervisor: “The IT field is so complex and diverse that I will never be able to cover it. All the time I will understand a little here, a little here, but overall I won’t understand anything.” He replied: “Well, something like that. A little bit of everything, but overall a real pro.” Take another look at your list of skills. If there are points in which you have already succeeded enough and you are pleased to continue to grow in this direction, then you are on the right track. Choose a niche for yourself, a small set of specific skills and abilities that you will systematically and with pleasure develop - and in the end you will get a good result.

Get ready for change

Well, now you have soberly assessed the situation and chosen specific topics for work. It's time to prepare for the next step. Remember: a person grows above himself only when he risks changing something in the current state of affairs. If you clearly see the goal, are open to change and are actively working on yourself, then you simply cannot, have no right to feel like a fool. Be honest with yourself - don’t artificially inflate or lower your self-esteem. It's hard, don't lie to yourself. It’s hard in all areas of life, not just at work. But as soon as you realize who you really are, what you really want to do and who you want to become, everything around you will calm down in an amazing way. You will feel free. And you will see that in front of you is not a dead end at all, but simply an alternative exit.

Don't worry about seeming stupid

May 28 1952 in American Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology An article by George Mandler and Seymour Sarason was published, without references to which not a single serious manual on psychodiagnostics can do since then. The article was called “A Study of Anxiety and Learning” and was devoted to the problem of so-called test anxiety. Many researchers had noticed long before that the success of implementation psychological tests, primarily intelligence tests, are influenced by a number of factors that are only indirectly related to the quality being assessed, or even not related at all. It has been shown that so-called test sophistication plays an important role: more good results shows someone who already has experience solving test problems. An appropriate procedure was even proposed - the so-called pretest, or trial, introductory testing, which allows the test subject to orient himself in the situation, so that later, during real testing, he does not experience uncertainty. However, this was not enough to achieve objective results. It has been suggested that the success of testing is largely mediated by the subject’s self-esteem, his level of aspirations, and the entire structure of his motivational sphere. Many studies that are ongoing to this day have been devoted to testing these hypotheses. Their very contradictory results so far allow us to unambiguously draw only one general conclusion: it is almost impossible to measure intelligence “in its pure form”, since too many side factors are involved in the execution of the measurement procedure itself.

Mandler and Sarason were the first to attempt to study the dependence of test results on the degree of mental balance of the test takers. They found that there is an inversely proportional relationship between the level of anxiety and performance on intelligence tests and achievement tests, which is observed in both adults and children. In other words, the more anxious the test taker, the lower his chances of appearing smart according to the test results. Subsequently, S. Sarason at Yale University carried out several more studies (published in the early sixties), which generally confirmed the identified pattern. Similar data were obtained by K. Hill et al. (1964, 1966), as well as I. Gaudry and C. Spielberger (1974). The latter even developed a corresponding questionnaire that allows quantitative assessment of the degree of situational anxiety, which gave research in this area statistical credibility.

However, among the studies that have developed on a wide front since the early fifties, after the pioneering work of Mandler and Sarason, not all have unequivocally supported their conclusions. Thus, D. French (1962) did not find significant differences in the test results of college students in a tense and calm environment. In addition, it was noted that in the identified interdependence it is impossible to determine the direction of cause-and-effect relationships. It is possible that children experience test anxiety because they once performed poorly on a test and retained the impression of previous failure and disappointment. This explanation is supported by the fact that in subjects with high scores on intelligence tests, the inverse relationship between the level of anxiety and success disappears.

As a result of a long discussion, the prevailing opinion of A. Anastasi (1982), supported by various studies, was that the relationship between anxiety and the quality of test performance is most likely nonlinear. “A little anxiety is beneficial, but a lot of anxiety is harmful,” Anastasi writes. – Individuals with a low level of anxiety benefit from test conditions that cause a state of some anxiety, while people with high level anxiety, it is better to perform the test in calmer conditions.”

One way or another, we have to admit that the procedure for measuring mental abilities is by no means as unambiguous as some practitioners would like. The factor of emotional tension turns out to be quite significant in it, and its assessment in itself seems to be a difficult procedure. Probably, moderate anxiety for fairly balanced people even acts as a kind of incentive for high achievements. However, in practice, one often encounters heightened anxiety and increased anxiety in connection with the testing procedure, and this factor cannot be underestimated. Psychodiagnostic manuals recommend that the psychologist take measures to reduce the level of tension in the testing situation. Interpretation of the examination results should be carried out taking into account the individual level of test anxiety of specific subjects. Information about test anxiety can be obtained both from survey and observation data, and using special diagnostic techniques. So when conducting a test, a real professional must know a lot of things besides the instructions.