Poll Swiss Cheese Brain a PTSD Side Effect?

[Dylan]

I'm wondering if this is PTSD related or if there might be actual cause for concern (that this issue may actually be organic in nature).

I understand that, when under stress, my neocortex (higher reasoning) gets hijacked by my amygdala (emotional responses, especially fear and anger). However, I've noticed that even when using Inderal/propranolol, which prevents the CNS stress response, my brain still does this strange blankness thing.

A person can say something (e.g. The ball is yellow)
Then they say another thing (The ball has spots and rolled away)
Then another thing (The ball turned green and blue and red)
They ask me where the ball is and I can't remember much of anything except that there is a ball and I should know something about it.

It's as though my brain freezes (EVEN WHEN I have a drug that's blocking the CNS response!!) and can't retain anything. Now, of course, we're not really talking about something as simple as details about a ball (I might be able to remember something that simple), but that's the gist. I can't remember the first thing...and then I've lost the thread holding the whole topic together and it's like a beaded necklace with a broken string; everything just flies apart.

I lose the....relationship of it. "Ball? What's a ball? OH...a ball is a round thing. Now what else...oh it was a color....I should know this...ach...why don't I know this...this is simple stuff....I'm intelligent....OK, back to it then: Ball?....What was a ball again?...."

It's similar to compartmentalization (a characteristic I do have to the extreme), but this way the information doesn't actually GET into a box/file...it's just out in the cosmos somewhere.

Does anyone else experience this? If so, do you have any tools that have worked for you?

TIA,
Dylan

 

[TLight]

YEs, MOst of the time I feel like a complete boob. I'm highly intelligent and can absorb a lecture into my brain and then regurgitate it practically precisely...........but when interacting with others........I'm mush.

It's just really hard to follow what they are saying. I don't know if it is because I'm struggling with the dissociation at the time........or I'm struggling with the fear that I have to interact and I may do or say something wrong........

I'm not sure........but a lot of the time I feel like my poor, used-to-be so talented brain is now somehow disrupted.

It is scary.

 

[dust]

Yes,

I have terrible comprehension and retention problems when I get stressed.

When the freeze response happens, I try to make myself conscious of putting my body into flight mode (ie. getting out of freeze). That doesn't help for the frozen brain cheese moments per se, but it helps to get me out of it. It's a bit like juggling... constantly keeping things in flow.

dust

 

[Deleted member 541]

When I am having anxiety/stress(more than normal for me)I can not retain anything. I have a problem focusing on conversations, I find it difficult to talk in complete sentences and to be understood. My speech becomes fragmented as do my thoughts.

Memory?????? It's like in one ear, out the other, nothing up there to catch it....But I write everything down, anyway, otherwise I forget.....

 

[Grama-Herc]

Conversation around my house is a joke, literally. Here I am in my mental state of confusions, and I am caring for and trying to hold an intelligent conversation with an 85 yo woman who can't remember shit either.

We argue all the time because we can not communicate properly with each other. Now the fights aren't all that bad, but it can get very funny when neither one of us can keep up what subject is being discussed.

 

[kers]

I get it a lot. I think it happens whenever something triggers the slightest fear in me, even if it's only momentary. So it's stress-related, but not restricted to only high stress.

It's a total pain in the rear. I hate acting like I know what's going on when I don't. Maybe a better way to deal would be to admit that I don't know what's going on, scary as that sounds.

 

[Julia_]

I so relate. And it seems to be that the more important the information... the more I really need to remember it... the quicker I forget it. And the aphasia... almost like I can hear myself talking in my head.. but nothing is coming out of my mouth. Or I can be staring at the garden, and trying to say the word garden... and I have *absolutely* no idea what the word for garden is. Definitely frustrating. Especially when it ends up putting you in MORE stressful situations and the freak out cycle is perpetuated.

 

[trapped]

I get that a lot too... I'm quite nervous about a final I am taking this coming Tuesday actually. The quarter already ended, but three of my four instructors gave me incompletes, so that I could spread out taking the finals, as soon as I take them the grades will be changed to whatever I end up earning. But what you mentioned is the exact reason they had to do that for me- it was such a stressful quarter, but especially the last month of it. I know I went to the lectures. I know we were supposed to cover certain theories... but I have no idea where my brain was during most of it, because there's no recollection. Luckily I tape record all my lectures anyway, but I've listened to some of them this week, and was shocked at the things we covered, when I was apparently spaced out or something.

In conversations, I can be even worse sometimes too.

 

[Marlene]

When I'm stressed, I have trouble remembering even simple, everyday words. There was one time I was trying to say something to my daughter and I couldn't find the word I was looking for. All I could think of was words about it...in this case 'green' and 'out front' came to mind. When she looked at me and said 'Do you mean grass?' (yes I meant grass) I felt like an idiot because I couldn't find that word in my brain. I'll forget what I was talking about in conversations mid-sentence. It's like the light switch got thrown to 'off' in my brain.

I repeat myself a lot. Even when my stress levels are down. It's like it takes my brain two or three times of saying something and hearing the answer before it sticks. Last week I had a phone interview. The woman was asking me questions about my skills and experience and one question was a two part question. I answered them, but could only remember the last part of the question. I knew the answer was 'no' to the first part of the question, but I couldn't remember the question!

Swiss cheese is a very apt description of my brain.

Lisa

 

[trapped]

The simple every day words get me too! I've been typing papers for school and all of a sudden have had to look at a friend for help with a word (I do this frequently)... there was one time, I felt like the biggest idiot, I had typed the letter "b" and I knew there were at least two more letters, and I couldn't figure out what they were or what the word was. I was telling my friend "it's big, and yellow, and people ride in it..." and he asked "do you mean bus?" Yes, I meant bus... then I had to ask how to spell "bus". I got the b, couldn't figure out those last two letters even after the word was given to me >.< By far the worst is probably for exams though, when I'm really stressed, I've actually had to have my instructors write my name on my exams for me, because I couldn't for the life of me remember how to write that one out!

 

[Anton]

Comprehension is never a problem, but retention lately is, mostly with subjects that have to do with the PTSD thing.
I need to write stuff down more often.

 

[lrs]

Very good poll question, I commend you. I know what it is like.
I remember reporting this to a counselor and a psychiatrist, during a very difficult 2 year period, from 2000 - 2002.
Nobody seemed to pay it much mind.
Then in about March, 2002, I was in a rehab facility. I went through the psyche evaluation thing.
When the head shrink went over this with me, he told me I did this.
I remember to this day telling him how I had told others of this and they just kind of blew it off.

I don't know the cause of this.
I'm not sure if anyone can offer an explanation.
Once again, good question.