Brain on misfire? ctl/alt/del but it's the pause before restarting that helps
Just when we thought it couldn’t get more stressful, people are experiencing brain over whelm. Why now? Most likely a year of adrenal fatigue from pandemic stress and homeschool parenting and working remotely in a non remote job and 24X7 with your most irritating beloveds. This can manifest as brain fog, difficulty concentrating or word finding. It’s really scary. Googling takes you down the rabbit hole of stroke, seizure, early dementia. This does not help with the PANDEMICX1YRSTRESS. So, stop the google, actually stop the screen (once you finished this post). Here are some things to help:
Reclaim word free time in your day. There are activities we preform mindlessly, while ruminating, obsessing, stressing with internal verbal barrage the whole time. Hello, the shower, tooth brushing, dish washing, dog walking and driving. If you can’t melt into mindfulness, give your monkey mind something to do, eg. hum. Humming is one of the simplest and yet most profound sounds we can make. If you have a voice and can speak, you can hum. Research has shown humming to be much more than a self-soothing sound: it affects us on a physical level, reducing stress, inducing calmness, and enhancing sleep as well as lowering heart rate and blood pressure and producing powerful neurochemicals such as oxytocin, the “love” hormone.
Listen to nature. Clear your internal babble and wash your mind with the sounds of a stream. There are many reported health benefits from exposure to natural sounds such as identification of alterations to autonomic activity, heart rate and alteration of the default mode network. Here’s some good babbling brook; warning there is an ad first.
Give yourself a break. Make a sign to “tell the world” what’s going on, maybe “on break back in 5 minutes”. Call it confession, acknowledgement, surrender, art therapy or creativity use a different part of your brain. Every experience we encounter is first processed in the right brain as an image. This image is then interpreted or misinterpreted by the left-brain in the form of words. Art can bypass that last and sometimes unreliable step in the communication process, because it taps into the emotional areas of the brain that words are unable to access. An unspoken language, in the form of images, exists within each of us that tells the true depth and breadth of who we are as individuals.
Of course, people often want to know if they can just take a test at home to assess their cognitive functioning. If you want to briefly evaluate your thinking ability, there is test is for you. It's called the SAGE (Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam) test and was developed by the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
There is a maximum score of 22 on the SAGE test and points are given for correct answers. The researchers suggest adding one point to the score when the participant is over the age of 80 and another point if the participant has less than 12 years of education.
SAGE Scoring
Scores of 17-22 are in the normal range.
Scores of 15-16 indicate mild cognitive impairment is likely.
Scores of 14 and below is indicative of a more serious cognitive problem, such as dementia.
https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/brain-spine-neuro/memory-disorders/sage
If you want to talk about this more or have worries contact me at www.illnessdoula.com