Embracing the Fog: Why Do I Feel Confused and Why It Matters

Hong-hui Lin
Aug 14
6 min read

Confusion has a bad reputation. Most people treat it as evidence of not being clever enough, or as time lost before a real answer comes to mind. Researchers in psychology take a different view.

Is confusion an emotion in psychology, or just a gap in what you know? Well, it is both.

Researchers classify confusion as an epistemic emotion, one of a group of feelings produced by the act of thinking itself, alongside curiosity, surprise, and awe1. It carries information. It tells you that what you are encountering does not fit what you already know. The feeling of confusion is called cognitive disequilibrium2 in the research literature, and far from being a problem, it turns out to be the precondition for learning anything new.

Feeling confused is rarely a sign that something is wrong with your thinking. It is that what you already know cannot account for what is in front of you, and your brain has registered the gap. Admitting that, and dropping the performance of confidence you do not have, is where genuine inquiry starts.

Identifying the Roots of Mental Perplexity

Confusion is the natural response to encountering something complex, counterintuitive or unlike anything in your experience. When your existing knowledge cannot accommodate new information, the process of assimilation3 halts. Psychologists describe this as a cognitive impasse4: a point where prior knowledge is not sufficient to make sense of the material in front of you.

The Impact of Excessive Data in a Digital Age

A cognitive impasse only produces learning if you remain with it long enough to think through the problem. Modern access to information makes this increasingly unlikely. Almost any question can be answered within seconds, prompting most people to search for an explanation before they have had the opportunity to develop one themselves.

When you resolve a difficulty instantly, you skip the mental effort involved in consolidating information into memory. Research on "desirable difficulties"5 shows that material acquired with effort is retained better than material acquired easily. This means that outsourcing that effort to a search engine or AI removes an important part of the learning process.

The Influence of Underlying Fear and Anxiety

Not all confusion is cognitive. Some of it is protective.

"I don't know what I want" is often the safest thing to tell yourself when you actually do know, but acting on that knowledge would cost you something. Fear and shame are harder to tolerate than vagueness, so confusion functions as cover. It delays the decision, protects you from failing at something you cared about, and removes the need to take responsibility for a choice. If clarity would mean leaving a relationship, speaking up at work, or changing direction, mental disarray can feel less threatening than confronting what you already know.

Internal Conflict Arising from Contradictory Convictions

A third kind of confusion arises when you hold multiple incompatible beliefs at once6. This creates cognitive dissonance: the tension that occurs when new information challenges a belief tied closely to your identity. The difficulty is rarely the new information itself. It is the possibility that accepting it would mean admitting you were wrong.

Faced with that discomfort, the mind may defend the original belief more fiercely than examining the evidence since being right can feel safer than staying uninformed.

Distinguishing Between Beneficial and Stagnant Mental States

Confusion can either support deeper thinking or keep you stuck. Separating the three types of confusion matters because each calls for a different response.

Productive Confusion: Confusion can support learning when it arises from a manageable contradiction or gap in understanding and is eventually resolved. Research suggests that learners who successfully work through such confusion may perform better on later assessments than those who do not experience it7.
Unproductive Confusion: This takes over when the obstacle is too large or persists too long. Effort stops producing progress, frustration builds, motivation drops, and the person disengages. It’s not intelligence that is the deciding factor, but whether a path to resolution existed, and if there was support to find it.
Confusion With a Physical Cause: Brain fog that accompanies poor sleep, illness, hormonal change, or medication is not an epistemic emotion at all. Sudden confusion is a medical concern. Abrupt confusion, especially alongside changes in speech, vision, or alertness, warrants urgent medical assessment8.

Detecting the Markers of a Clouded Mind

Confusion is easier to work with once you admit to it. Most people do not, because not-knowing is socially coded as “stupidity”, so they fake certainty instead. That pretence is what keeps the state fixed.

1. Paralysed Choice and In-Decision

One of the clearest markers is circling a decision without resolving it, sometimes for weeks, sometimes over something small. Not knowing gives way to doubting yourself, and doubting yourself gives way to feeling powerless, until the decision is no longer the hard part. Your faith in your own judgement is.

2. The Sensation of Being Emotionally Fragmented

Competing emotions pull you toward something and away from it at the same time, which leaves your attention divided and your thinking difficult to organise.

Outside advice often makes this worse. Each additional perspective moves your reasoning further from your own instinctive response, until you can no longer tell which reaction was originally yours.

3. Avoidance Habits Masking Unresolved Thoughts

Procrastination is seldom about the task and more about the emotion the task provokes and the relief of avoiding it. Productive procrastination is harder to detect, because clearing your inbox and tidying your desk produce visible output, so the avoidance looks like work.

Both keep you away from the discomfort. Both also prevent you from developing the capacity that would resolve it, which is the ability to concentrate on something while it still feels uncomfortable.

4. Physical Responses to Prolonged Uncertainty

Uncertainty about a possible threat can affect more than your thoughts. When an outcome remains unpredictable, the body may show heightened physiological reactivity and sustained anxious anticipation9. This response can also consume attentional resources, making it harder to think clearly and respond effectively to the situation.

Shifting Your Perspective to Value Uncertainty

Confusion does not need to be enjoyable to be useful. What matters is how you interpret and respond to it.

Embrace the Struggle: Treat the discomfort as data. It indicates your brain has encountered something that requires proper processing.
Tune In To Yourself: Label what you are feeling with specificity. "I am confused" frequently turns out to be disappointment, dread, or grief that has not been identified. Research suggests that more precise emotion differentiation can support emotional regulation and reduce distress10.
Practise Intellectual Humility: Develop the capacity to say, "I used to believe that, and I no longer do." Your opinions are positions you occupy. They are not your identity, and changing them does not diminish who you are.
Follow the Lead: When something surprises you or fails to make sense, resist the urge to search for an immediate answer. Stay with the question longer and let it guide your thinking.

Confusion that resolves once you have thought something through is functioning normally. Confusion that persists, particularly alongside low mood, exhaustion, or a history of difficult experiences, usually indicates something else requiring attention.

If your confusion has become persistent, speaking with a clinical psychologist and counsellor can help you work out what it has been protecting you from. At The Psychology Atelier, our therapists provide trauma counselling and depression therapy in Singapore, working with you without judgement as you find your own clarity.