Spoonie Diaries #1: Brain Fog

Friday, July 25, 2014
This week I want to talk about brain fog - and I might not make a huge amount of sense while I do it, as I actually am experiencing some pretty heavy brain fog right now due to a virus I seem to have caught. (Honestly, I am having to bribe myself to push through this with chocolate and booktube videos, because blergghhh.)

Here's a general definition (that I found here) just for your reference: "Brain fog may be described as feelings of mental confusion or lack of mental clarity." Basically, to me, brain fog feels like standing on a cliff of some kind (bear with me here) and looking out over a beautiful ocean filled with my thoughts, but I can't really quite access my thoughts because there is just fog and cloud everywhere kind of blocking it.

Yes, it's frustrating as heck sometimes. No, I haven't found anything that genuinely lifts it once it descends. Aside from rest, but that's something that helps only occasionally... it's not terribly reliable. I will say that I have found paracetamol helps sometimes, but not always (again), and also it depends how I'm going in general, because if I've been taking a lot of paracetamol for something else, then I kind of become desensitised to it's assistance... Fun!

Now, to those that haven't had brain fog, it may sound relatively okay. To be honest, it's not the worst thing ever - it's just freaking frustrating. The thing you need to remember is that brain fog often turns up with other symptoms - like a headache, or body aches, or something like that. It feels a lot like having a really bad head cold and then trying to work through all that mucus and ick.

For someone who not only adores writing and reading, but also kind of relies on them for her (hopeful) future career, brain fog is just rage-inducing. Imagine you are sitting down to write something - say, an essay for work or university, or a blog post, and then you realise that all your thoughts are flitting about and really hard to grasp. You feel a general ache in your head, and find yourself furrowing your brow and trying to remember how to spell simple words like 'blast' or 'blue'. You may laugh at yourself a few times when this happens, until it starts to get a bit more frustrating. You sat down over an hour ago to write a page long assignment, for goodness sake.

Yes. Having brain fog is a practice in patience - with yourself. Brain fog consistently brings me back to myself and reminds me how lucky I am to be able to read and write normally, and also reminds me to slow down and just recognise that rest is one of the most important things in my life.

When brain fog appears, slow down. Drink more water, take your time to do things, stretch your body a bit. Get some fresh air. All of these things help, even if they don't relieve it. If it keeps getting worse, you may need to lie down for a while and get out a comfort tv series or youtuber (no, don't trap your favourite youtuber for your own benefit, you strange person, I mean get on to their channel and watch some old videos. like I do.) and just take some time for yourself. If brain fog happens while you're out - at work, or school, or whatever else normal human beans get up to - just do what you can to support yourself. That will probably end up being the main message of this series of blog posts - look after yourselffff.

Do you get brain fog sometimes? How do you cope with it? See you next week for the next Spoonie Diary entry! :3

2 comments:

  1. Loved the image of standing on a cliff and watching an ocean of thoughts that are not clear or accessible enough due to fog. It describes it perfectly and beautifully. Well done.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you. It actually didn't come into my mind until I started writing, but it felt like it fit well. :)

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