In our weekly mental health spot, a few words on the challenges of brain fog, and trying to cope with it. More right here.
Brain fog is very real. Especially for this writer. So writing about brain fog while having brain fog is not easy. (Seriously – I wrote this this bit last, and still accidentally typed ‘fog’ as ‘gof’ twice.)
It is no longer possible for me to determine if my brain fog is connected to my mental health, mental illness, or many other medical issues. Or perhaps it is part and parcel of my insomnia. It could be a side effect of the many medications I take. Whatever the cause, the forecast in my head is the same every day; fog, with the chance of more fog.
It can take on many forms, during the day. From moments of forgetfulness to the complete shutdown of any conscious thought process. I don’t just lose a train of thought – I lose an entire rail network without a single announcement.
Frustration, embarrassment, confusion and anxiety are ever present because there is always something that is supposed to be happening in the moments when your brain just stops and shrugs. Whether you have appointments or meetings arranged and the times and locations have eluded you, or whether you are trying to write your usual weekly article and begin to wonder why the notes you made a suddenly read like Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. (What does eye-scarab-wiggly line-feather mean, again?)
Worse still is those times when you’re mid-conversation – nay, mid-sentence – and your intellect suddenly vanishes as if through a stage trapdoor. We’ve all been there; mouth open, eyes cast northeast, a strangled ‘uh’ escaping the back of our throats, and the search party in our head finding not a single clue. Frozen in a moment of humiliating stupor, before we are forced to admit defeat.
Why, oh why, must that always happen at the most inopportune moments?
But fear not. While I have no advice or tips on how to overcome this mental protest, what I can offer you is this; you are not alone. When I say ‘we’ve all been there’, I really mean it. I have seen it happen to other people at least half as often as it happens to me, and it happens to me a lot.
The severity of this fog can also differ, person to person, or episode to episode. But the age old ‘what was I coming into this room for?’ is not something we need to worry about, for the most part.
What we need is to give ourselves a break. If our phone dies because its battery power ran out, do we blame the phone for doing what it was supposed to do? No, we plug it in and give it time to recharge.
Brain fog and brain farts are all annoying symptoms of having a brain, and we don’t need to beat ourselves up when it becomes a little overwhelmed. Allow the frustration and temporary embarrassment play themselves out quickly, because stressing yourself out and/or forcing a return of your thought process is more likely to make it worse. As I often say, take a step back and a deep breath in, and just accept that shit happens. If it is important, it will come back to you.
If you ever do become worried about the regularity or severity of brain fog, then by all means go see a doctor. But for the most part it is often caused by other ongoing conditions, stress, sleep deprivation, or over-stimulation. It is annoying as all Hell, absolutely. But don’t fret.
Now…
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…what is the point I was trying to make?
