Complex Trauma, Brain Fog, Memory & Focus Problems

Are they actually the same brain? Like what is happening? So today, we're talking about what I'm going to very loosely call the trauma brain, okay? And before we get into it, what I want to say is that I don't love how we talk about the trauma brain online.

There's a lot of really neat graphics floating around telling you that trauma rewired your brain, that your amygdala is overactive, your prefrontal cortex has gone offline, and now your nervous system thinks that an email from your boss is like a tiger lurking around the corner about to eat you.

And listen, I've made one of these graphics before, so I'm not hating on all the trauma therapists out there providing education.

But human brains are so much more complicated than what a single graphic or a single slide or a single blog can actually hold.

But I'm going to do my best to give you some information today to try to connect some of the dots.

So let's do it.

But before we get into it, there's a lot of research that I'm pulling from today on PTSD and trauma exposure that I'm going to speak to broadly because we have a whole lot less research looking at cognition and complex PTSD.

So here's the thing.

I don't want to take an association we see across a large group of people directly.

and turn it into some like tidy explanation for your one very specific brain.

So as always, instead of asking what's wrong with me, what I think is much more useful to ask is what your brain was actually trying to do.

What did it learn to pay attention to? What did it learn to prioritize? What information became non-negotiable? What capacities did it get asked to use over and over and over again over time? And what might happen cognitively when a brain has spent years and years pouring resources into anticipating, adapting, monitoring, managing, and surviving.

Once we start there, some of the stuff that you spent years judging yourself for might make a hell of a lot more sense.

I'm going to say the questions again.

So if you don't want to hear them again, go ahead and skip forward.

But instead of asking what's wrong with me, I think it's more useful to ask what your brain has actually been trying to do.

What did it learn to pay attention to? What did it learn to prioritize? What information became non-negotiable? What capacities did it get asked to use over and over again? and what might happen cognitively when a brain has spent years pouring resources into anticipating, adapting, monitoring, managing, and surviving.

So now I'm going to give you a little answer to that, and then we're going to dive into the rest of the episode.

There probably isn't one single reason why your brain actually feels this way.

What we call brain fog or executive dysfunction can be the end result of a bunch of different things happening underneath of it.

Your attention may get pulled somewhere else.

You may have less working memory available to you when you're stressed or overwhelmed.

You may be dissociating.

Your processing may slow down.

Perfectionism might be turning a simple task into 15 different tasks.