Great Minds: Hamish and Kyle – On dealing with brain fog

Hamish and Kyle discuss post-covid brain fog and how to combat it. Video / NZ Herald

In this web series, psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald and Nutters Club co-host Hamish Williams look at mental health and how to navigate some of the more challenging parts of modern life. Today they talk about brain fog.

Every social media platform seems to have its time in the sun, whether it be the rantings on Twitter of former US Presidents, occupations of parliamentary lawns thanks to Facebook groups or the celebration of capturing criminal activity on TikTok.

There’s one however that continues to lurk in the shadows and has become the one I’ve been most active on over lockdowns and through to today: LinkedIn.

Primarily aimed at the business crowd it’s best summarised as Facebook for professionals. Personally I enjoy seeing industry types share insights and remain entertained/perplexed as people celebrate when they leave a job with happy photos talking about how great their team was. Why leave then!?

That aside it’s also become a place where people share their experiences with work related pressures, which inevitably leads to talking about commonly experienced mental health related topics. One which has been popping up in my feed more and more across multiple types has been people talking about, “brain fog”.

Some attribute it to being a post-Covid related symptom, others a sign of burnout. Either way I thought it might be time to sound the figurative fog horn on the topic and get some clinical clarity.

“Brain fog generally relates to finding it hard to concentrate, be productive and focus on what we night previously have found to be simple tasks” explains psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald. “It’s been attributed to Covid but it can come after experiencing any kind of virus, even the general exhaustion of the challenges from the last couple of years.”

Without doubt we’ve had more to think about, more to attend to, change has been thrust on us at a demanding rate. It takes energy from us and with this comes a feeling of being overwhelmed and, in all fairness, it’s to be expected.

“Importantly don’t fear brain fog, listen to it” says MacDonald. “It could be that the level of output is too high for what you can realistically deal with. Trying to push through it can bring about this brain fog feeling and worse, takes us closer to burnout territory.”

The best advice he can give is to take it easy on yourself, and if you are feeling something that sounds similar to this then take time to focus on your sleep, healthy eating and more outside movement.

Additional to this is make sure you turn off work-related activities to give your brain a break. That means if you happen to be reading this on LinkedIn and relate to these symptoms it could be time to log off for a bit. But if you have the energy to like and share first, I’d be most grateful. No pressure.