How to Cope With "Brain Fog" When You're Sick or in Pain |
Chronic pain and illness are often accompanied by cognitive difficulties known as “brain fog.” Typically, it’s characterized by an inability to focus or remember things, from where to left your keys to what you watched on TV the night before, to the task you decided to undertake only moments before. Many people recovering from COVID-19 report brain fog as a lingering symptom.
You may also have trouble with reading comprehension, going over the same paragraph again and again. It may even be difficult to carry on a coherent conversation.
Here are six strategies I’ve developed (after almost 24 years of chronic pain and illness) to help cope with brain fog. I’m not a therapist, so I write from personal experience.
If you’re experiencing brain fog, it’s not your fault, just as being sick or in pain is not your fault. Health problems come with the human condition. Everyone faces them at some time in life.
I still get sad that I often suffer from brain fog, but I’ve learned not to blame myself.
Sadness versus self-blame are different responses to chronic pain and illness. Sadness hopefully gives rise to self-compassion. Self-blame cannot.
Try to find patterns regarding when it kicks in or becomes more intense. At certain times of the day? After certain activities? When you’re experiencing a flare in symptoms? (On this latter issue, see my post “7 Ways to Survive a Flare When You’re Chronically Ill.”)
For me, one trigger is extra stress. Another is having overdone it the day before. I know that if either is the case, I’ll have to do something other than try to concentrate on a difficult task.
I’ll say to myself: “You know you overdid it yesterday, so this is not a day you should expect to write. That’s OK.” Pointing to a cause like this also reassures me that my cognitive faculties will improve when conditions change.
Learning what triggers your brain fog can bring some predictability to your life and keep you from getting frustrated or angry if you’re unable to engage in tasks that require concentration.
(I recognize that cognitive difficulties can arise for no discernable reason. When this happens to me, I have no choice but to stop, for example, working on an article. I’m not happy about it, but I can’t force my mind to be clear when it’s foggy.)
If I need to use my brain at a time when it’s foggy, my best friend is pen and paper. It becomes essential to keep track of things in writing. (You may prefer to use a computer.) Taking notes instead of trying to memorize things also calms my mind, and that can help the fog to clear a bit.
For example, if I have a doctor’s appointment and can’t concentrate enough to remember what I wanted to bring up, I make a list. Even if, as I begin the list, I can’t remember everything I wanted to raise, as soon as I write one thing down, I’m likely to remember the rest.
Before I got sick, I was a dean of students at U.C. Davis. Students frequently sought my advice when they couldn’t make a decision, whether it was a relatively minor one (“Should I stay in this class or drop it?”) or a major one (“Should I stay in school at all?”).
I learned that the best way to help them was to draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper and, on one side, have them list the “pros” of deciding, for example, to stay in school and, on the other side, list the “cons.” This almost always made it clear to them what the best decision was.
I use this technique to cope with brain fog. If I can’t think clearly enough to make a decision, I take pen and paper, draw that line down the middle, and start listing “pros” and “cons.”
If something requires a lot of concentration, don’t attempt to do it all at once. Make a list of what’s involved, and then spread the task out over as long a time as you can.
And if, on a given day, your brain fog is too intense to perform the part of the task you allocated for that day, move it to the next day. Even if you have to keep moving things forward, eventually you’ll have a day when your brain is clear enough that you can make up for lost days by doing more than one part of the task on that day.
I think of this as exercising my brain to help keep my cognitive abilities as strong as possible. I play a game on my smartphone called Wordscapes. I’m shown a set of letters from which I have to make words that I use to fill in crossword squares. Sometimes the letters are easy for me and sometimes they’re a challenge. I like this game because there’s no “timer,” so it’s not stressful to play.
I think of games such as Wordscapes, Wordle, Scrabble, and even jigsaw puzzles as “brain food.” Incorporating them into your life might even reduce the frequency and intensity of your brain fog.
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I hope these strategies have been helpful. From my foggy brain to yours, I send my warmest good wishes.