7 Strategies for when your mind has gone to mush

‘Listening to yourself and your desires is very important always,’ says Rebecca. ‘We should always aim to tap into our thoughts and feelings daily. Nadia says she practices mindfulness throughout the day to make sure her head is where she wants it to be. ‘Often, something will pop into your head mid-task – and we have the urge to go and check that thing out right there and then. Rebecca says it’s important to give yourself time to reset, and to not try to push yourself too far. One common symptom of lockdown appears to be a complete inability to concentrate on anything.

If you’re having a hard time finding focus or feeling pulled in a bunch of different directions — welcome to the virtual party. The first year of menopause brain is likely to be the worst, and memory and learning ability generally rebound to normal after the menopause process is complete. One person described a more intense dissociative experience in a swimming pool, where they could no longer feel the water around them.

[NeedAdvice] My brain has turned to mush. How do I get it back to what it once was?

The amygdala is far less concerned with subtlety and far more concerned with survival. It can make us far more reactive and far less pleasant to be around. If you feel exhausted the minute you start studying, consider moving your session somewhere else. Your bedroom may not be the best place to study, especially if you mainly use it for sleeping.

Make sure to book in restorative breaks well ahead, so that you don’t get stuck on the treadmill of constant doing. And if it’s not possible to get away, have a proper staycation where you focus on rest, relaxation and doing the things you love. When we normalise working this way and feeling this way, we put ourselves at great risk of experiencing serious mental and physical health problems. We have biological limits and there comes a point where working longer hours, sleeping less and squeezing in more simply doesn’t work.

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If this all seems extremely scary, it may also be time to stop measuring your self-worth by your level of productivity. Hospital emergency rooms are full of people who have made mushy-brained mistakes. In the waiting room you will find exhausted parents with dropped babies, exhausted chefs with sliced fingers and exhausted motorists with air-bag blackened eyes.

If you need help, just hope your doctor isn’t at the end of an epic shift and feeling mushy-brained themself. It can help relieve stress, improve your mood, and may help you get better sleep. Connecting intimately with a romantic partner can also help remind you that you have support, which can help reduce the strain of any emotionally taxing things you’re dealing with. Another well-known fact is that exercise can also enhance your cognitive abilities.

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Some people have estimated it would cover an area the size of one to two pages of a newspaper. That’s why it is so important to wear a helmet when you are being mush brain an adventurous rock climber, bicyclist, or playing football. A client of mine with ADHD recently bemoaned how exhausted she is after a long day at school.

We weren’t all multi-tasking maniacs, madly scrambling to get 38% of our stuff done before our eyelids finally gave out on us. Some challenges, like a graduate thesis, big deadline, or a restructure at work, are temporary, and you may need to devote a little extra time to them for a while. If you focus on one and exclude the other, both might end up suffering. Moving forward, there are things you can do to avoid becoming overwhelmed the next time life gets busy.

Try not to think ahead to the next step while you’re working. This can help prevent panic and make it easier to move smoothly from task to task. Sure, you could spend those 15 minutes getting more stuff done, but you’ll probably be able to work more efficiently if you give yourself a break. “It’s easy to get so busy juggling everything you have on your plates that you fail to recognize when you’re headed toward mental exhaustion or burnout,” says Megan MacCutcheon, LPC. Mentally exhausted, burned out, brain fried — whatever you want to call it, it happens to all of us at some point.

• And if it’s not possible to get away, have a proper staycation where you focus on rest, relaxation and doing the things you love.
• Feeling mushy-brained, exhausted and overwhelmed is not the norm that you, I or anyone else wants.

After 5 months of intensive language study, their proficiency in German had increased — and so had the density of gray matter in their brain. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that acquiring a new language improves cognitive function. Multi-tasking is really just divided attention and constantly switching back and forth puts a rather large strain on the brain.

For example, if you’re 25 years old, you want to be at around 137 beats per minute. If you’re 55 years old, you want to be in or around 115 beats per minute. A foggy brain isn’t always the result of internal factors, but sometimes also caused by external factors, such as your working environment. While you are waiting for menopause to run its course, there are things you can do to manage the situation. Bear in mind that menopause is also a time to reflect on all of your health habits and make adjustments that will take you into healthier middle and older age. There will also always be people at Supportiv who understand what zoning out feels like.