brokenpony
Gold Member
i experience some variation of brain fogginess that i’m currently interpreting as dissociation or stress-related symptoms almost every day. i feel some kind of: cloudy, woolly, fuzzy, blocked, soupy, lagging, glitching, like head is a balloon, brain is only partially attached, head pressure (tension headache?). it is almost more somatic than mental, though obviously it affects processing. it is like an actual feeling of thick foggy pressure soup static behind my eyes and sometimes it is accompanied by DPDR symptoms and sometimes just itself. my therapist has said she can almost feel it like a barrier between us and our connection when it is bad. it blocks my creativity more than anything. i’m an artist and i get blocked. that causes me a lot of distress.
it’s there more times than not, as an actual feeling. in my head. i keep getting it in my mind that it has to be physical but my bloodwork has always been fine, MRI from 5 years ago fine. i do have tmj problems also and catch myself clenching and try to be mindful but it is ofc challenging. no alcohol or drugs besides caffeine. maybe more water (i’m rarely thirsty)? but i can see in journals from 15 years ago that i am writing about this feeling to some degree, along with DPDR symptoms. so i feel like it has to be the trauma dissociation problem at least in part but there is no clear trigger for it i can tell. it just sets in and stays for awhile, sometimes days, i try to clear it with walking or something and that can sometimes help. i feel like there must be triggers i am missing besides therapy.
i also just don’t know if it is “brain fog” in the way people usually mean it. it’s not that i can’t think at all through basic tasks and am actually not all that cognitively impaired, i don’t think?, i mean, i can write this post! but that i can’t think the way i need to think in the moment, the way i can when i am not in it, which is less and less often these days. i can’t do MY work. i can’t connect. i can’t think the way i need to. i am not physically tired but brain feels so burnt out and glitching like a computer program that needs to be reset. it feels like a literal blockage. a drain that needs to be unplugged, a barrier that needs to be torn down so i can feel and think and see the world clearly. like everything is through a glass, darkly. it’s foggy rain like when clouds are on the ground and the sun needs to part it.
i think i am just under immense (cptsd related) stress but i can’t find anything that helps me. maybe i can’t shut brain off so it’s running on fumes. (fyi meditation and such makes things worse for me which i read is normal in some books about severe dissociation, need other ways to relax and be present.)
is this something you have experienced to such a degree and fixed for real?
it’s there more times than not, as an actual feeling. in my head. i keep getting it in my mind that it has to be physical but my bloodwork has always been fine, MRI from 5 years ago fine. i do have tmj problems also and catch myself clenching and try to be mindful but it is ofc challenging. no alcohol or drugs besides caffeine. maybe more water (i’m rarely thirsty)? but i can see in journals from 15 years ago that i am writing about this feeling to some degree, along with DPDR symptoms. so i feel like it has to be the trauma dissociation problem at least in part but there is no clear trigger for it i can tell. it just sets in and stays for awhile, sometimes days, i try to clear it with walking or something and that can sometimes help. i feel like there must be triggers i am missing besides therapy.
i also just don’t know if it is “brain fog” in the way people usually mean it. it’s not that i can’t think at all through basic tasks and am actually not all that cognitively impaired, i don’t think?, i mean, i can write this post! but that i can’t think the way i need to think in the moment, the way i can when i am not in it, which is less and less often these days. i can’t do MY work. i can’t connect. i can’t think the way i need to. i am not physically tired but brain feels so burnt out and glitching like a computer program that needs to be reset. it feels like a literal blockage. a drain that needs to be unplugged, a barrier that needs to be torn down so i can feel and think and see the world clearly. like everything is through a glass, darkly. it’s foggy rain like when clouds are on the ground and the sun needs to part it.
i think i am just under immense (cptsd related) stress but i can’t find anything that helps me. maybe i can’t shut brain off so it’s running on fumes. (fyi meditation and such makes things worse for me which i read is normal in some books about severe dissociation, need other ways to relax and be present.)
is this something you have experienced to such a degree and fixed for real?
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