Brain fog can coincide with medical conditions like anxiety, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. It also strikes independently, often when you need your cognitive abilities at their keenest. So what can you do to regain mental clarity?
One modern technique involves turning to ancient practices to harness the power of higher thinking and metacognition to recognize and troubleshoot your problems. Here’s how mindfulness and meditation can help you beat brain fog.
Learn your limits
Your brain operates like a computer in many ways. While it uses electrochemical impulses instead of electricity, it fires off random patterns to create a complete picture, much like programmers enter seemingly meaningless patterns of ones and zeroes to design programs.
Here’s the thing, though—your computer might technically function with five programs and 20 tabs open. However, it doesn’t work as efficiently, and neither do you. If you hope to be effective, you can only do so many things at once, typically one at a time.
Multiple factors influence how much of your cognitive capacity a task takes:
Fluency
How intricate is the work you’re trying to do? For example, reading a Dr. Seuss book to your child might rank at a one on a 10-point scale. Deciphering an intricate medical article in the Journal of the American Medical Association might be an eight or a nine.
Amount
Your brain can only store so much information in its short-term memory at once, much like a computer’s RAM. If you have 20 tabs open—when you’re trying to focus on work, while rising rents and child care concerns compete for your attention—you won’t be able to concentrate on any one item efficiently.
Coherence
How much of your present task relates to your prior knowledge? For example, an experienced carpenter might knock out and reframe a wall on a single Saturday, while it would take a DIYer the entire weekend.
Time
How much time do you have to complete each task on your to-do list, and how much do you realistically need? Increased stress from time pressure makes it more difficult to concentrate.
Use meditation to evaluate your cognitive capacity and assess how much you can realistically accomplish. For instance, if you’re dealing with divorce, relocation or illness on the home front, can you talk to your employer about temporarily decreasing your workload?
Once you spend time in meditation, contemplating the factors that are frustrating you, use them to arrange your schedule for maximum efficiency and reduced stress. Give yourself generous time estimates when completing projects you’ve never done before, as you’re making your weekly to-do list. If you’re in school, devote more study time to your challenging courses for which you don’t have much of a prior knowledge base.
End rumination
You can’t change the past. You know this—yet, ask yourself how often you waste time thinking, “If only I’d ____.”
Meditation can help you end the rumination cycle by letting you process life events, learn necessary lessons from your experiences, and let them go. Often, people’s thoughts keep cycling back to the same circumstances because they struggle to repress the negative emotions associated with the events. However, this behavior can result in recurring thoughts and even physical ailments, as the stress from keeping the lid on these steam-pot feelings builds.
One meditation technique you can use is reliving the event as it’s a movie playing on a screen in your head. You play the starring role and that of an objective third-party audience member, allowing yourself to feel what’s playing out in your mental cinema like you’d watch a tearjerker.
This technique can be incredibly healing, but overwhelming in its power. Only attempt it with the help of a skilled therapist. If that’s not possible, phone a friend and ask them to be there for you. They might not know what to say, but they can embrace you and restore your sense of safety.
Breathe in oxygen
Oxygen revitalizes brain cells. Try an experiment now by inhaling as deeply as possible, holding your breath for a few moments at the top and then exhaling. You can almost feel the mental fog blow away, like the sun’s rays dissipating the morning dew along the seashore.
Deep breathing can even help when tackling new information, so if you’re a student, keep this pro-tip in mind when studying for finals. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health divided study participants into two groups, one that rested after learning a new motor skill and another that completed a 30-minute deep breathing exercise. Those who focused on their inhales and exhales did remarkably better at retaining the fresh information after 24 hours.
Quell panic
Panic can make it impossible to think clearly, especially if you have a history of trauma. It all boils down to science and a little thing called your hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. Your HPA axis consists of three hormone-secreting glands that also influence your neurotransmitters.
Panic strikes when your body consciously or unconsciously encounters a stressor. This triggers your hypothalamus to release corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), which signals your pituitary to produce adrenocorticotropic hormone. Finally, your adrenal glands will release cortisol, a stress hormone that braces you for a prolonged battle but causes trouble when you make too much, too often.
For example, cortisol causes your heart rate and pressure to increase, in order to carry more blood to your muscles and help you flee. At the same time, your body interprets your racing heartbeat as another trigger—a sure sign of trouble—which increases your fear. It also ups your likelihood of choosing maladaptive coping strategies, like drinking too much or binge-eating to self-soothe.
Instead, sit in meditation. Focusing on your breath and consciously calming it using two-to-one breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which you can think of as opposing HPA axis activation. It’s the side that tells you it’s OK to rest and digest.
Please note that the process isn’t instantaneous. Taking a deep breath will help somewhat, but you might need to breathe deeply for several minutes before your body calms enough to clear your thoughts. Practice also makes perfect. Over time, you’ll become more adept at slipping into a semi-hypnotic state, falling more naturally from beta to alpha waves, which will lend you greater clarity.
Practice acceptance and gratitude
Toxic positivity grates on many people’s nerves for good reason—it denies reality. Some things in life are simply terrible. War is evil. A bad diagnosis can devastate your family’s finances and change your plans. Achieving financial stability is a pipe dream for many hard-working Americans, as housing costs have outstripped wages for well over 40 years, with no sign of relief coming.
Despite how awful these realities may be, the sad truth is that you have to learn to live and thrive despite them, or give up in despair. Meditation can help by teaching you to differentiate between things you can change and those you can’t. It reminds you that your ultimate freedom lies in choosing your attitude and how you project your energy, despite what the world throws at you.
Meditation also draws your awareness to the things you can be grateful for. Gratitude is the opposite of toxic positivity, because it stems from a genuine appreciation of what you have.
Are you struggling to find anything to feel thankful for? Try this experiment to give yourself a kick in the meditative fanny. Go camping for a weekend—then mindfully pay attention to how good the simple act of taking a shower feels when you return home. When you realize how many people can’t even enjoy this luxury, you’ll recognize how fortunate you are.
Beat that brain fog
Brain fog makes it more challenging to get things done, and it causes difficulties at work and at home, regardless of the underlying cause.
Fortunately, you can use mindfulness and meditation to remedy this condition. Try out the techniques above the next time you need to achieve mental clarity.
Medical disclaimer: This page is for educational and informational purposes only and may not be construed as medical advice. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by physicians. Please refer to the full text of our medical disclaimer.
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