Is your question a stupid question?

A lot of times when I’m sitting in class or around friends or something I do have the worry that I will be asking a stupid question and people will make fun of me. At school and at home, I don’t think that I have a specific story that I could talk about but growing up, the friend group that I had was very toxic and mean. It was a group of about 4 girls and I constantly always felt like whatever I said would be stupid and not valid. We had our nice moments together and they were all super nice people but I don’t think that they realized what they were doing. I can remember when we used to hang out at each others houses and at school and things and I would feel so awkward being around them and I would mostly just stay quiet and try not to say anything that would make them laugh at me or be rude. I never really realized that it was like that until now because I just never thought about it and I kinda just put up with it because I wanted to be friends with them. A lot of times I would just laugh with them about it but I really didn’t understand what was so funny to them. I think it was just their way to tease me ,or maybe it was them purposely just trying to make me feel bad. I would always be scared to ask a question or even say anything because I knew how they were.

I also feel like this a lot with my sister because she truly is just trying to tease me and make me feel bad because that’s how she is. We are very close in age but she is the older one between us so I feel like she needs to make me feel like that to make herself feel like the older sister. For example if we are around friends and I was saying something or talking at all I always feel like I should just keep quiet so she can’t make fun of me or even like make me feel stupid. She might say something to me like “Why would you even say that, are you stupid” most of the time I felt like I was going to be wrong. It might come with a sense of anxiety or something because of the fear of not saying or doing the right thing.

I would feel scared or fearful to talk in class. I’m sure that nobody would actually make fun of me but I still would feel scared to talk because of the fear of being made fun of or being wrong and it being embarrassing a lot of the time. That is hypothetically the biggest reason why I did not talk in class when I was younger. It’s a real problem for people in the world and I’m sure that a lot of people struggle with it and I’m not sure if there is any other explanation to it than just being either shy or having anxiety. Maybe confidence plays a key in it but you would never know until you face the problem that you’re dealing with head on and fix it. It was a real worry for me, especially in school . Even talking aloud to the class caused a lot of worry for me and It made me embarrassed.

As I get older and mature more and take more public speaking classes I feel that this problem goes away, I don’t feel like that as much anymore in class, at my LRTC class there is all new kids I’ve never even met before and I feel comfortable enough to talk in front of the class, that’s a big accomplishment for me. I present in that class and we do group activities. I think it comes along with growing up and growing confidence in myself to be able to speak publicly and not feel bad about it. With the whole friend situation I learned what true friends were and I no longer speak to those people. I realized that no question is a stupid question because everyone has them. Everyone doesn’t understand some things as others do. Overall this is a problem that I feel a lot of people have but for me like I said once I matured and got over the fact that I don’t care what people think about me it was all okay and I haven’t felt like that since.

“QUESTION” by Fred Seibert is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.