How severe has anxiety affected YOUR memory?

[GiantMogwai]

I have all of the things you describe on a daily basis. Further, my most severe panic attacks or meltdowns result in an inability to form thoughts, talk coherently, and/or screaming.

Additionally bare in mind that some of the things you describe are just normal. Knowledge and skill will never be constant and you will forget stuff, and some days this will cause anxiety, and some days anxiety will cause this.

---------- Post added at 11:02 ---------- Previous post was at 10:59 ----------

Also Etymology can be useful for word confusion. You will find that meanings of words are even less clear cut than you think. https://www.etymonline.com/word/engine

[jcd_gad]

Yeah I ended up in a disciplinary cos of it. Went on to break law.

Best thing you can do is rest, and stop everything. Take time out.

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[Meriland30]

My anxiety is at an all-time high. I am seeing things sometimes that are literally there, but I mistake them for something else at first. For example, I was downstairs and for a millisecond thought I saw a person laying down...until I realized it was a stack of coats on the sofa. Or glancing at a word and initially for a split second reading 'xray' and realizing it says 'keys'.



Am I going crazy or is this common??????

[GiantMogwai]

Common. Nothing to worry about and not hallucinations.

[Meriland30]

I just feel like I am losing it, and myself. I find it extremely hard to convince myself that anxiety can do all of this...all of it. My age, coupled with these symptoms, specifically these...illusions and memory issues along with paranoia about it make me wary of degenerative brain diseases. I mean it is seriously freaking me out. The thought of CJD has completely taken over me.

[GiantMogwai]

I know the feeling. I often feel like the world is one of those strange houses of mirrors that distort everything.

Think though. You are very clear in describing things in your forum posts. Isn't this a good sign?

[Meriland30]

I would hope so. I find myself seldomly replacing with the wrong word, but then fixing it. This is not often though. I hope that is a good sign. Anything I can run with to help me get out of this feeling of doom and gloom. It is just so bad. I am not on any pills either.

[GiantMogwai]

Is something else at the root of you doubting yourself do you think?

[Meriland30]

Just the depersonalization coupled with everything else. I feel confused, like everything is too much when it is usually normal. It is like doing a million things at once and mixing things up in the process because of it...but I am not really doing much.

Everyone and everything seems otherworldly, and I am hyperfocused on everything...words, conversations, sounds, imagery. I keep mixing up homographic words...like I will read "and the mouse went away" imagining a computer mouse, not an actual mouse. I feel more euphoric, philosophic in thought and speech and that is unlike me. Everything looks euphoric and not usual.

My incredible worry of neurodegenerative diseases is fueled by these feelings..especially knowing they are possible symptoms. I have spats through the day when I am able to look at the situation from an outside perspective...like "all this is assumed in 3 days over what, a bout of depersonalization, followed by questioning CJD and then an hour later you suddenly notice you arent familiar with 3 terms that are technically odd alternatives anyway? C'mon " and then after that, I feel less on edge...but still depersonalized...then something happens and it shoots back up again...be that flash, a person walking beside me in the corner of my eye but it is really a ladder, a sound that didn't happen, or just being in public and suddenly feeling strange...worrying I will forget I am married, that my husbands face will be a stranger to me. Things like that. I just want to relax, I want to feel confident that this is ALL anxiety related and I can flow through these instances without it sidetracking me. I want to feel like "dude, CJD is incredibly rare. You could count the number of people your age that have had it in the US on your fingers and toes." but then I see things that say it is not rare, often misdiagnosed, or underreported so the number of people that carry it could be thousands(?) then I fight with myself saying "but surely anyone in their 30s with severe dementia and death would be autopsied more often than elders who usually get dementia...so the prevelance in my age group should be accurate" but then my bad side says "autopsy yes, but it isn't required to report the finding for study...therefore who knows how many files are out there that haven't been included in study"


I hate this.....

[Sparky16]

This is totally normal when you are stressed or anxious. I have definitely done the 100 vs 60 thing on minutes in an hour and come up with some silly answers as a result. It's like your brain is so preoccupied it can't focus on basic facts like that. It can also happen if your flat out not paying attention. If I try to do a math problem and watch TV at the same time, I mix up my multiplication and addition facts.

Interestingly, I've had the same thing happen during non threatening stress, like playing a game. I notice when I play video games I get over focused on the task at hand and miss details around me. The funniest one was when I helped another player in a game defeat a creature, and then turned my character around and fell down a hill inside the game! It was so embarrassing. You do not want me on your team.

Edited to add:

Everyone has the experience of looking at a stack of coats or a ladder or some other object and seeing a person for a second. Our brain is primed to look for certain things, and make sense of unknown objects in familiar ways. There's some interesting research on this phenomenon.