Why This Feels Confusing

Confusion is often treated as a lack of clarity or effort. In practice, it is usually a sign that the brain is operating near — or beyond — its reliable limits.

Human cognition is powerful, but it is not designed to process unlimited complexity at once. Understanding depends on conditions, not just intelligence or motivation.

The brain works with limited working memory

At the center of human reasoning is working memory — the system responsible for holding information temporarily so it can be compared, updated, and evaluated.

Decades of research show that working memory capacity is sharply limited, even under ideal conditions.¹ Most people can actively hold only a small number of elements at a time.

When situations involve multiple variables, uncertainty, or delayed consequences, those limits are reached quickly. When that happens, understanding does not slowly degrade. It often collapses.

Stress narrows thinking before it feels emotional

Under stress, the brain reallocates resources away from reflective, flexible thinking toward faster, more reactive processing.² This shift is automatic and often occurs before a person consciously feels stressed.

As a result:

• nuance becomes harder to hold
• alternative interpretations disappear
• previously clear ideas feel inaccessible

Importantly, these effects occur even in experienced and highly capable individuals.³ They are not signs of weakness or poor discipline.

More information can increase confusion

When confusion appears, people often respond by gathering more information. This is understandable — and frequently counterproductive.

Research on cognitive load shows that adding information to an already taxed system can further degrade understanding, especially when that information is abstract, conflicting, or emotionally charged.⁴

At a certain point, the brain is no longer integrating information. It is prioritizing what to discard.

This is why explanations that felt clear yesterday can feel unusable today, even when nothing obvious has changed.

Understanding is state-dependent

Understanding is often treated as something a person either has or lacks. Cognitive research suggests otherwise.

Access to understanding depends on:

• available mental bandwidth
• emotional load
• time pressure
• environmental stability

When these conditions shift, understanding shifts with them.⁵ This does not mean understanding was false. It means it was context-bound.

Confusion is feedback, not failure

From a cognitive perspective, confusion is not an error state. It is feedback.

It often indicates that:

• a mental model no longer fits the situation
• information exceeds processing capacity
• conditions have changed faster than adaptation allows

In these cases, confusion is not something to override. It is something to interpret.⁶

What this means — and what it does not

This does not mean clarity is impossible, or that effort and intelligence do not matter.

It means that clarity depends on conditions. When those conditions are not present, confusion is a predictable response — not evidence that something is wrong.

References

1. Baddeley, A. (2007). Working Memory, Thought, and Action. Oxford University Press.
2. Arnsten, A. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422.
3. Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.
4. Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. Springer.
5. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
6. Klein, G. (1998). Sources of Power. MIT Press.