LB: https://mastodon.social/@ChronicIllnessHumor/113952408513111163
That humourous bit of advice made me think about something that's kinda haunted me for ages. I relate very much with being unable to recall certain words on the fly (or even names of people I've known for years). And I notice this blames it on "brain fog."
I don't think I have brain fog? I sure don't know what it's supposed to feel like, and all I have to go on is the name. Maybe others call "brain fog" what I just take for granted as routine existence. π§΅
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Similarly: many antidepressant medications are associated with a side effect colloquially known as "brain zaps." I've used (and experienced withdrawal from) many different antidepressants over the years, and I can't say I've ever felt a "zap" or shock-like sensation; I have experienced (on my current meds, even) sensations more like a brain "pause" or "reset," along with what feels almost like a pressure on all of my sensesβlasting less than a second every time. Is that a "zap?"
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What I'm getting at here is that we're all experiencing various sensations, sometimes without even realizing it, which are simply hard to name. Maybe I do experience the specific phenomenon known as "brain zaps," but to me they just don't feel like what I think of for the word "zap."
Well, like, duh, we all have our own subjective perceptions, and none of this should be a surprise. The problem is when I use a term that means one thing to me but means something different to you.
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If you asked me if I experience "brain zaps," I would say "no." But I could very well have what you call brain zaps, I just call them "brain pauses." So we've just come to completely opposite conclusions.
Now imagine you're a doctor, and I'm your patient. You ask me if I experience "brain zaps." I say "no."
I mentioned this is an issue that haunts me, and it's because of a psychiatry referral I had maybe 15 years ago...
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The wait for a psychiatrist was 6 months, for a one-time 30 minute appointment. He asked me a bunch of questions, as a doctor does. One of them was, "do you experience anxiety?"
And to me, the concept of an "anxious" person was someone unable to function normally, completely distracted from normal everyday life; maybe even physically jittery. That wasn't me at all; I'd done my utmost to always appear outwardly functional, in control, and normal.
So I said, "no."
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Turns out that anxiety was my constant, default state, but I didn't call that "anxiety," I called it "normal everyday life full of hardships that everyone has to overcome one way or another except I must not be trying hard enough because I'm not overcoming them." Boy, things could have been a lot different if, in that miniscule moment, I happened to know the same word that the psychiatrist knew.
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@jsstaedtler I feel you on this one. I only just got diagnosed with anxiety because to me having anxiety meant panic attacks and the like. I've never had a panic attack (that I know of, perhaps this is another failure of language) so I must not have anxiety, right? π€¦ Doesn't help that my anxiety manifests as gastrointestinal distress, so I just always thought there was something wrong with my intestines. Thought I had IBS.
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