Glimpse into brain fog

Something that a lot of people ask me about or don’t understand, is the feeling of “brain fog”, which is so prevalent in conditions like Myalgic Encephalmyeltis. Obviously, brain fog is not a scientific term, but it so clearly depicts the feeling.

 Pic taken from here

Your mind is blanketed with London-like, pea soup fog; so heavy and thick that basic thoughts and processing are as difficult as tightrope walking with all four limbs tied behind your back. Some days you can have clearer moments (in these I take the chance to write my thoughts down for this blog!), and other days, you are embarrassed by the lack of coherent brain function. There is a physical feeling of thickness in your head too; not a headache, but a thick, slow, sludgy feeling.

I regularly am faced with situations when I can’t find the word I want and so can not explain myself well, or sound vague or uneducated. I find basic comprehension and memory tasks mind blowingly difficult. Reading a small piece of information on one page and then writing it on another seconds later is impossible, because the information has floated away on a cloud, no matter how hard I concentrate on memorising it. I have been talking to friends and asked a question, and as the friend is answering, I find myself madly trying to remember what I asked!