What causes strange phobias – and what can we do about them?

Phobias 

 

I’m ashamed to say that when my husband told me he was terrified of cooked eggs, I mocked him and made jokes, from pretending that there was an egg in something he had just bitten into and waving my egg-based dishes under his nose.

I thought that his reactions of horror were a little exaggerated. There are plenty of foods I don’t like but I’m certainly not terrified at the thought of a kidney bean.

It turns out that my reaction was wrong – and I still feel pangs of guilt for it.

The fact is, my husband has a phobia. He doesn’t just hate eggs, they cause him trauma. He probably won’t read this as even the word egg is vile to him.

He won’t go to cafes due to the risk that a pan his breakfast has been cooked on had previously contained an egg. He has been physically sick at the smell of cooking eggs. If food he had ordered contained even a sliver of egg, he would not touch the entire dish, even parts that weren’t touching it.

Many people will be able to relate to his experience – or mine. It’s possible to have a phobia of anything, despite many believing only the obviously scary things – think spiders, flying, snakes – constitute a real, genuine fear.

My sister has a fear of patterns; particularly dotted but any kind of repetitive pattern. Anything with hectic shapes, lines, dots or colours whether a piece of art, wallpaper or packaging terrifies her.

Other ‘weird’ phobias can include arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. Octophobia is the fear of the number eight and hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is, ironically, the fear of long words.

Celebrity phobias include Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘crippling’ fear of antique furniture, Kylie Minogue’s phobia of clothes hangers, Matthew McConaughey’s fear of revolving doors, and Khloe Kardashian’s horror at belly buttons.

My husband was satisfied at the feeling of vindication when he found out the name of his own phobia, which is ovophobia.

Where do these phobias originate? Are they just innate? Or are they linked to childhood experiences that may have been forgotten, but which triggered a connection to the item of fear?

When does a fear become a phobia?

Fear is a normal part of human life. But it becomes a phobia when this fear is overwhelming and debilitating.

Someone with a phobia will have an extreme or unrealistic sense of danger about a particular situation, sensation, animal, or object. It might not make sense to other people, because the focus of the phobia isn’t obviously dangerous.

Phobias come under the umbrella of anxiety disorders, and can cause physical symptoms such as:

• unsteadiness, dizziness and lightheadedness
• nausea
• sweating
• increased heart rate or palpitations
• shortness of breath
• trembling or shaking
• an upset stomach

My husband recently recalled, after years of trying to figure his egg fear out, that he was always terrified of visiting a relative’s house as a toddler. This relative had a booming voice, slammed his fist on the table without warning and threatened to lock him in the coal shed, as well as saying that there was a monster living inside the sink.

His mum recalls how she could feel both him and his brother physically sweating with fear while on her knee and the one consistent thing that was in that kitchen was fried eggs being cooked. It’s clear that he associates that smell of eggs and the sight of them with frightening times as a child. It makes perfect sense why that phobia has manifested itself into something like this.

According to Clinical Partners, who specialise in the treatment of phobias, around 5% of children and 16% of teenagers in the UK suffer from a phobia, with most phobias developing before the age of 10.

Children and teenagers with phobias often feel ashamed about their fears and keep them secret from their friends in case they are teased. This will be the same for adults in a workplace or social setting. I’m frightened of patterns, bananas, beards or the colour yellow is hardly a comfortable ice breaker.

And yet, working alongside a new colleague with a beard or all memos coming on yellow paper would be triggering for those suffering with said phobias; making for a very uncomfortable environment both for the sufferer and the colleagues who have no idea they’re causing alarm.

Therapy can be an effective tool in overcoming a phobia, so don’t be afraid to seek professional support (Picture: Getty Images)

Clinical Partners explains: ‘Phobias arise for different reasons but a bad experience in early years can trigger a pattern of thoughts that result in a powerful fear of a situation – for instance if your child falls ill after having an injection, they may develop an ongoing fear to injections, which can get worse over time.

‘Children may also “learn” to have a phobia – for instance if a close family member is afraid of spiders and the child witnesses them screaming when they see one, they may also develop that fear.’

There are a lot of environmental factors at play here but for the less common phobias, we have to dig deeper to try and work out the source.

There is no guarantee that discovering that source will erase your phobia but if the phobia is seriously impacting your life to the point where you can’t work, go out, become ill and even fear dying, it’s a valid starting point to understand the root of it.

Healing the Brain and Body From Trauma Often Goes Beyond Talk Therapy—Here’s Why

Healing 

 

 

Emily Laurence・July 6, 2021

 

There's no question that talk therapy—in its many forms—can play a crucial role in trauma healing. It's why there's such a dire need for trained, psychological therapists right now: Who hasn't experienced some sort of trauma in the last 18 months?

Psychotherapists are the pillars of mental health support. They are our sounding boards and voices of reason. They offer coping mechanisms and help us process difficult emotions. There's no doubt that talk therapy has saved lives. But something else we know about trauma, whether it's inherited or from a personal experience, is that it can become deep-rooted in the brain and body.

Many people who experience trauma find that there are healing modalities that work hand-in-hand with talk therapy. Some of these practices—like reiki, yoga, and trauma-sensitive massage—have rich histories and have existed for hundreds of years. Others, like virtual reality therapy, are relatively new. What's clear is that there's no one set way to heal. Learning how trauma takes root in the brain and body may lead to discovering a practice that resonates with you. Here, mental health experts, researchers, and healers share exactly how trauma affects both, highlighting several ways of healing that could be helpful to explore.

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What exactly is trauma?

The American Psychological Association defines trauma as "an emotional response to a terrible event like an accident, rape, or natural disaster." While this is certainly true, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine founder, psychiatrist, and Transforming Trauma: The Path To Hope and Healing ($18) author  James S. Gordon, MD, says trauma can also be inherited. "The [medical] field of epigenetics has shown that if someone's parents or grandparents suffered significant trauma, it can cause chromosomal changes that can affect the way our genes are expressed," he explains. "These changes can be inherited and what it means is that someone's response to stress isn't as prompt; they aren't as resilient."

"Trauma takes root in the brain and body, so both require care." —James S. Gordon, MD, founder of The Center for Mind-Body Medicine

Natalie McGreal, a trauma-sensitive massage therapist and certified trauma-sensitive yoga teacher, says that the more she studied trauma, the more she realized it's hard to escape. "To be a human being alive in this world is to experience trauma," she says. "Even just the process of being born can be pretty traumatizing. We go from this warm, safe [womb] to somewhere bright and cold, and for some people, they were held upside down by their ankles and given a smack." Of course, she also honors that there are vastly different degrees of trauma. Some have experienced harrowing personal experiences—such as physical or sexual abuse, war, or food insecurity; our trauma stories differ greatly from one another.

About ready for some positive news? "Just like trauma can be inherited, it can also be reversed and resiliency can be inherited, too," Dr. Gordon says. "What's important to understand is that every part of our body is connected to each other. That means, every thought and feeling can affect every organ, cell, and every biological process in the body." This is exactly why Dr. Gordon says trauma healing should go deeper than talk therapy on its own. For example, he says the longest chapter in his book is about a trauma-healing diet because many people have a compromised digestive system as a result of trauma. (If you've ever experienced tummy troubles because you're stressed, you've experienced a taste of this first-hand.) He emphasizes that trauma takes root in the brain and body, so both require care.

Ways of healing the brain

As Dr. Gordon pointed out, trauma can affect your entire system, and that of course includes the brain. He explains that whenever we're confronted with something that's either physically or mentally distressing, it jump-starts the fight, flight, or freeze response. "In this state, heart rate goes up, stress hormones go up, and our digestive system doesn't work as well," he explains. "The amygdala, the emotional center of our brain and the center of fear and anger, is firing off madly and the frontal part of the cerebral cortex [which plays vital roles in memory, attention, motivation, and numerous other daily tasks] is suppressed."

But this doesn't just happen during the traumatic event itself. Whenever there's a situation or image that resembles the trauma, it can re-activate that fight, flight, or freeze response, according to Dr. Gordon. This is exactly why someone who has been involved in a shooting may instinctively drop to the ground when they hear a loud noise.

Psychologist and researcher Deborah Korn, PsyD has extensively studied how trauma affects the brain, and one way of healing she's a proponent of is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). She recently co-wrote a book about EMDR as trauma healing, Every Memory Deserves Respect ($16). "Trauma is truly an injury to the brain, and its overwhelming nature is what activates the fight, flight, or freeze response. What can also happen is that it can cause someone to shut down completely, which can lead to feeling depressed and not motivated to participate in life," she says. "What EMDR is focused on is getting the brain to work functionally again. Because it can't function properly when it's stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown mode."

She explains that EMDR was developed in 1987 by a psychologist named Francine Shapiro, PhD. Dr. Shapiro was walking in the park reflecting on some traumatic events that happened to her in the past, and she realized that, as these memories came flooding back, her eyes started moving rapidly back and forth, looking between two trees. She also noticed that, as her eyes moved back and forth, the negative emotions associated with the disturbing memories subsided. Intrigued, she started conducting research studies to see if there was a connection. EMDR is still controversial, but numerous studies in the four decades since its introduction have shown it can play an important role in healing.

EMDR therapy

Here's how it works: During a session, a client is asked to focus internally on a traumatic memory or trigger. At the same time, they're asked to focus their eyes on something—typically the therapist's fingers or a light—moving their eyes bilaterally back and forth. "This creates a condition of 'dual attention'—a simultaneous focus on an external activity and an internal memory or experience—that seems to jump-start and support processing of the memory," Dr. Korn writes in her book. "When clients reprocess traumatic memories and triggers, they are able to reduce distress and come to terms with significant guilt, shame, unmet needs, grief, and anger while addressing their sense of effectiveness, vulnerability, and powerlessness." If someone has diagnosable trauma—such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—it takes three to four sessions to start seeing results, Dr. Korn tells me.

Dr. Korn emphasizes that talk therapy plays a big part in EMDR—someone should never just be thrown back into their traumatic memories. "A therapeutic relationship between the therapist and client needs to be established first, and then you work collaboratively on a treatment plan," she says. EMDR is just one part of that, and there are conversations beforehand about what the client needs to feel safe.

Maria Olsen, who experienced trauma in the form of sexual assault during childhood, says she has had both positive and negative experiences with EMDR. "I was in a black hole of depression that I was desperate to get out of," she says. "Holding on to my trauma was like trying to hold a beach ball underwater; it took a tremendous amount of energy." She says even 20 years after the assault occurred, she was still triggered by memories, so she sought out EMDR as part of her treatment.

The first time she tried it, she says the therapist spent very little time talking to her beforehand; they didn't have an established relationship. As Olsen moved her eyes back and forth, tracking the therapist's finger, she said it felt hypnotizing. "I was brought right back to the scene. I could smell the room and see the fibers in the carpet. It was so vivid," she says. Afterward, she felt angry, and she says the therapist let her channel that anger by beating the couch with a baseball bat. "I had all this pent of rage I didn't realize," she says.

But overall, she says it was not a good experience for her because the therapist didn't spend enough time making her feel safe as the memories so vividly surfaced or afterward. "I get very upset when I hear stories like this because it reflects poor treatment," Dr. Korn says, of Olsen's experience. "No matter what profession you are talking about, there are always going to be people who don't do a good job," she says. Her advice is to seek out an EMDR therapist who is credentialed, and emphasizes again that it shouldn't be the start of treatment—you should have a trusting relationship with the therapist, as well as a game plan before doing it.

Fortunately, Olsen says the second time she did EMDR, she it was healing for her. "It was with someone with more training—a therapist specifically for people who had been sexually traumatized—and it was a much better experience," she says. "We spent much more time talking." She believes the EMDR was helpful in making the memories of her sexual assault less anxiety-inducing when they surface, but she also says speaking out about her experience—with therapists and in general—also tremendously helps.

Virtual reality therapy

Similar to with EMDR, Debra Boeldt, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and researcher whose work centers around evidence-based approaches for mental health and technology, says using virtual reality in exposure therapy is a way to rewire the brain, making distressing memories less traumatic. She co-authored a scientific paper about how virtual reality can help someone overcome anxiety. "For the past three decades, there has been research done on using virtual reality for exposure therapy, anxiety, and PTSD," she says.

Dr. Boeldt explains that virtual reality provides a way for someone to be put in a computer-generated simulation that's similar to the traumatic situation they've experienced. There, they may feel fearful, but in a safe way, and in the presence of a trained therapist. "Virtual reality is really good at tricking your brain," she says. "People can put themselves in an immersive experience but it's very controlled, and the therapist knows exactly what the client is seeing."

Also like EMDR, Dr. Boeldt says virtual reality therapy is done in steps; no one is ever just thrown a headset and put in a situation that's mentally distressing. For example, if someone was in a car accident, they may be scared to get into a car again. A therapist can help them work up to that. First, they may spend time around cars, just touching them. Then, they can use virtual reality to have the experience of being in a car without actually doing so. It's used as a way to work up to actually driving again, all while under the careful watch of a trained therapist. Another example Dr. Boeldt gives is using virtual reality to get over a fear of heights. Virtual reality can provide the feeling of being high up without actually doing so—a helpful step for someone who isn't ready to experience it IRL.

As with the other ways of healing, Dr. Boeldt says virtual reality therapy is done in conjunction with talk therapy, not in place of it. "Also, during the virtual reality experience, the therapist is talking you through it and perhaps assisting with techniques like breathing exercises if anxiety reaches a certain level," she says. "The other cool thing about VR is that if the experience gets too intense, you just have to close your eyes and it all disappears."

Of course, creating virtual reality worlds can be expensive—especially since they're being used clinically and not just as a form of gaming. But Dr. Boeldt says as VR headsets become more affordable, the actual equipment is more accessible. "Some therapists are also using YouTube as a cheaper way to do it," she says. As with any type of therapy, finding someone specifically trained in virtual reality is important, so Dr. Boeldt says to make sure whoever you are thinking of seeing is credentialed specifically in this type of therapy.

Healing the body

While EMDR and virtual reality therapy focus specifically on healing the brain from trauma, other modalities, like reiki, trauma-sensitive yoga, and trauma-sensitive massage focus more on the body. Dr. Gordon says trauma can manifest in many different physical symptoms. Fatigue, trouble sleeping, aches and pains, and digestive issues can all be tied to trauma. "Often, people are unaware of the connection even within themselves," he says. It's not until they try a way of physical healing that they see their symptoms dissipate and they make the connection.

Trauma-sensitive massage and yoga

McGreal (who is trained in trauma-sensitive massage and yoga) says the way this type of massage is different from other modalities is that there is an emphasis on working within the client's comfort zone and a lot more communication. "As a practitioner, I don't have to know what someone's specific trauma is to treat them," she says. "It's truly up to them how much they want to share." Sometimes, she says, someone does want to open up about their trauma experience, and in those cases, McGreal lends a compassionate ear before the massage starts. But typically, she starts by asking what their expectations are for the massage, and communicates that they are in control over their own body and what happens in the session.

"For some survivors of trauma, this may be their first time experiencing a safe touch," McGreal says. "In these cases, the massage is a powerful way to teach their nervous system that touch can be powerful and safe." This is in addition to the benefits a massage can give in general, releasing tension in places the body may be holding trauma. Similarly, McGreal says trauma-sensitive yoga can also release tension from the body; she says the poses are specifically meant to do just that. It's also used to help build a positive relationship with the body.

Reiki

A form of energy healing that originated in Japan in the early 1900s, reiki is another way of healing many find powerful. Sydney Rae Chin, a queer sexuality education guide, says it certainly was for her. For many years, she says she carried around a sense of shame for identifying as queer and also experienced trauma from being in an abusive relationship. "It was actually my talk therapist who recommended I try reiki," Chin says. "What reiki did for me was that it helped me feel more comfortable in my body."

In her session, the reiki practitioner gave her the option of lying on a table or in a hammock. Chin opted for the hammock. She remembers soft music playing and incense. "Then, she sat down with me, and we talked about what was going to happen next. That way, there wouldn't be any surprises," Chin says. During the session, the reiki practitioner wrapped Chin in blankets. "I could just feel the energy running through my body. I feel like it helped release the negative energy," Chin says. She has done several reiki sessions since, including a virtual reiki session during the pandemic.

How to figure out which form of healing is most beneficial for you

As you can see, there are so many different ways to heal from trauma—and the ones highlighted here are just a few. Figuring out not only what to try, as well as finding a space where you feel safe doing so, is part of what inspired partners McKenzie Angelo Martinez and Joss Martinez (who is a doctoral student at Pacific College for Health and Science and learning Traditional Chinese Medicine) to found metaDEN, a healing incubator for the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.

"We wanted to create a space where people can come together and heal, and at the time [2018], there weren't a lot of spaces centering people of color or queer folks," McKenzie says. They opened a physical space in Brooklyn, New York that offered reiki, trauma-sensitive massage, and workshops led by BIPOC healers that incorporated creativity, spirituality, and movement in different ways (such as yoga and dance). When they were forced to close up shop due to COVID-19 financial strains, they took it online.

Their advice for someone who isn't sure what type of healing to try is to focus on what you're drawn to. They suggest asking questions like, what sounds interesting to you? What are you drawn to? If you do a body scan meditation, where is your trauma being held and what feels like a good way for you to release that? Then, just go for it. "Some people find healing through something creative, like writing or art; others want to let it out of their physical body; someone else may want to talk about it at length," McKenzie says. These ways of healing also, they say, can complement each other. "Trauma doesn't just show up in one way—you get to tailor your healing experience for what will work for you," Joss says.

Joss also points out that healing from trauma is a journey; it doesn't just result from one workshop, massage, or reiki session. (Or EMDR or virtual reality session for that matter.) Healing is something we keep coming back to, and they says the type of healing that resonates may change over time.

Whatever way of healing you explore, all the experts interviewed say it's important to make sure you're working with a credentialed professional. This is someone you're trusting with your mind and body, so it's worth doing your homework to learn about them first. If you are seeking out a healing method with a rich cultural history, like reiki or yoga, find a practitioner that honors those roots as well.

Taking steps toward healing is the beginning of building resiliency—and there's immense power in that. "Not only can you heal from trauma, but you can pass that healing down," Dr. Gordon says. "Trauma isn't all that can be inherited; healing and resiliency can be inherited, too."

Experts Referenced

Deborah Korn, PsyD

Psychologist and EMDR Expert

Debra Boeldt, PhD

Licensed Psychologist and Researcher

James Gordon, MD

Founder, The Center of Mind-Body Medicine

Joss Martinez

Co-founder, MetaDEN

McKenzie Angela Martinez

Co-founder, MetaDEN

Natalie McGreal

Body Work Healer

Sydney Rae Chin

Sex Educator and Healer

Tags: Healthy Mind, Mental Challenges

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Brain fog: how trauma, uncertainty and isolation have affected our minds and memory

Our minds and memory 

 

After a year of lockdown, many of us are finding it hard to think clearly, or remember what happened when. Neuroscientists and behavioural experts explain why

Moya Sarner

Wed 14 Apr 2021 06.00 BST

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unslash

Before the pandemic, psychoanalyst Josh Cohen’s patients might come into his consulting room, lie down on the couch and talk about the traffic or the weather, or the rude person on the tube. Now they appear on his computer screen and tell him about brain fog. They talk with urgency of feeling unable to concentrate in meetings, to read, to follow intricately plotted television programmes. “There’s this sense of debilitation, of losing ordinary facility with everyday life; a forgetfulness and a kind of deskilling,” says Cohen, author of the self-help book How to Live. What to Do. Although restrictions are now easing across the UK, with greater freedom to circulate and socialise, he says lockdown for many of us has been “a contraction of life, and an almost parallel contraction of mental capacity”.

This dulled, useless state of mind – epitomised by the act of going into a room and then forgetting why we are there – is so boring, so lifeless. But researchers believe it is far more interesting than it feels: even that this common experience can be explained by cutting-edge neuroscience theories, and that studying it could further scientific understanding of the brain and how it changes. I ask Jon Simons, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, could it really be something “sciencey”? “Yes, it’s definitely something sciencey – and it’s helpful to understand that this feeling isn’t unusual or weird,” he says. “There isn’t something wrong with us. It’s a completely normal reaction to this quite traumatic experience we’ve collectively had over the last 12 months or so.”

What we call brain fog, Catherine Loveday, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster, calls poor “cognitive function”. That covers “everything from our memory, our attention and our ability to problem-solve to our capacity to be creative. Essentially, it’s thinking.” And recently, she’s heard a lot of complaints about it: “Because I’m a memory scientist, so many people are telling me their memory is really poor, and reporting this cognitive fog,” she says. She knows of only two studies exploring the phenomenon as it relates to lockdown (as opposed to what some people report as a symptom of Covid-19, or long Covid): one from Italy, in which participants subjectively reported these sorts of problems with attention, time perception and organisation; another in Scotland which objectively measured participants’ cognitive function across a range of tasks at particular times during the first lockdown and into the summer. Results showed that people performed worse when lockdown started, but improved as restrictions loosened, with those who continued shielding improving more slowly than those who went out more.

It’s likely that in a year or two, we’ll look back on some event this year and say, when on earth did that happen?

Loveday and Simons are not surprised. Given the isolation and stasis we have had to endure until very recently, these complaints are exactly what they expected – and they provide the opportunity to test their theories as to why such brain fog might come about. There is no one explanation, no single source, Simons says: “There are bound to be a lot of different factors that are coming together, interacting with each other, to cause these memory impairments, attentional deficits and other processing difficulties.”

One powerful factor could be the fact that everything is so samey. Loveday explains that the brain is stimulated by the new, the different, and this is known as the orienting response: “From the minute we’re born – in fact, from before we’re born – when there is a new stimulus, a baby will turn its head towards it. And if as adults we are watching a boring lecture and someone walks into the room, it will stir our brain back into action.”

Most of us are likely to feel that nobody new has walked into our room for quite some time, which might help to explain this sluggish feeling neurologically: “We have effectively evolved to stop paying attention when nothing changes, but to pay particular attention when things do change,” she says. Loveday suggests that if we can attend a work meeting by phone while walking in a park, we might find we are more awake and better able to concentrate, thanks to the changing scenery and the exercise; she is recording some lectures as podcasts, rather than videos, so students can walk while listening. She also suggests spending time in different rooms at home – or if you only have one room, try “changing what the room looks like. I’m not saying redecorate – but you could change the pictures on the walls or move things around for variety, even in the smallest space.”

Brain fog has resulted partly from ‘degraded social interaction’. Illustration: Franz Lang/The Guardian

The blending of one day into the next with no commute, no change of scene, no change of cast, could also have an important impact on the way the brain processes memories, Simons explains. Experiences under lockdown lack “distinctiveness” – a crucial factor in “pattern separation”. This process, which takes place in the hippocampus, at the centre of the brain, allows individual memories to be successfully encoded, ensuring there are few overlapping features, so we can distinguish one memory from another and retrieve them efficiently. The fuggy, confused sensation that many of us will recognise, of not being able to remember whether something happened last week or last month, may well be with us for a while, Simons says: “Our memories are going to be so difficult to differentiate. It’s highly likely that in a year or two, we’re still going to look back on some particular event from this last year and say, when on earth did that happen?”

Perhaps one of the most important features of this period for brain fog has been what Loveday calls the “degraded social interaction” we have endured. “It’s not the same as natural social interaction that we would have,” she says. “Our brains wake up in the presence of other people – being with others is stimulating.” We each have our own optimum level of stimulation – some might feel better able to function in lockdown with less socialising; others are left feeling dozy, deadened. Loveday is investigating the science of how levels of social interaction, among other factors, have affected memory function in lockdown. She also wonders if our alternative to face-to-face communication – platforms such as Zoom – could have an impact on concentration and attention. She theorises – and is conducting a study to explore this – that the lower audio-visual quality could “create a bigger cognitive load for the brain, which has to fill in the gaps, so you have to concentrate much harder.” If this is more cognitively demanding, as she thinks, we could be left feeling foggier, with “less brain space available to actually listen to what people are saying and process it, or to concentrate on anything else.”

It is the cognitive equivalent of feeling emotionally distressed – it’s almost the way the brain expresses sadness

Carmine Pariante, professor of biological psychiatry at King’s College London, is also intrigued by brain fog. “It’s a common experience, but it’s very complex,” he says. “I think it is the cognitive equivalent of feeling emotionally distressed; it’s almost the way the brain expresses sadness, beyond the emotion.” He takes a psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinological approach to the phenomenon – which is even more fascinating than it is difficult to say. He believes we need to think about the mind, the brain, the immune and the hormonal systems to understand the various mental and physical processes that might underlie this lockdown haze, which he sees as a consequence of stress.

We might all agree that the uncertainty of the last year has been quite stressful – more so for some than for others. When our mind appraises a situation as stressful, Pariante explains, our brain immediately transmits the message to our immune and endocrine systems. These systems respond in exactly the same way they did in early humans two million years ago on the African savannah, when stress did not relate to home schooling, but to fear of being eaten by a large animal. The heart beats faster so we can run away, inflammation is initiated by the immune system to protect against bacterial infection in case we are bitten, the hormone cortisol is released to focus our attention on the predator in front of us and nothing else. Studies have demonstrated that a dose of cortisol will lower a person’s attention, concentration and memory for their immediate environment. Pariante explains: “This fog that people feel is just one manifestation of this mechanism. We’ve lost the function of these mechanisms, but they are still there.” Useful for fighting a lion – not for remembering where we put our glasses.

When I have experienced brain fog, I have seen it as a distraction, a kind of laziness, and tried to push through, to force myself to concentrate. But listening to Loveday, Simons and Pariante, I’m starting to think about it differently; perhaps brain fog is a signal we should listen to. “Absolutely, I think it’s exactly that,” says Pariante. “It’s our body and our brain telling us that we’re pushing it too much at the moment. It’s definitely a signal – an alarm bell.” When we hear this alarm, he says, we should stop and ask ourselves, “Why is my brain fog worse today than yesterday?” – and take as much time off as we can, rather than pushing ourselves harder and risking further emotional suffering, and even burnout.

People are finding themselves more sluggish – their physical and mental weight is somehow heavier, hard to carry around

For Cohen, the phenomenon of brain fog is an experience of one of the most disturbing aspects of the unconscious. He talks of Freud’s theory of drives – the idea that we have one force inside us that propels us towards life; another that pulls us towards death. The life drive, Cohen explains, impels us to create, make connections with others, seek “the expansion of life”. The death drive, by contrast, urges “a kind of contraction. It’s a move away from life and into a kind of stasis or entropy”. Lockdown – which, paradoxically, has done so much to preserve life – is like the death drive made lifestyle. With brain fog, he says, we are seeing “an atrophy of liveliness. People are finding themselves to be more sluggish, that their physical and mental weight is somehow heavier, it’s hard to carry around – to drag.” Freud has a word for this: trägheit – translated as a “sluggishness”, but which Cohen says literally translates as “draggyness”. We could understand brain fog as an encounter with our death drive – with the part of us which, in Cohen’s words, is “going in the opposite direction of awareness and sparkiness, and in the direction of inanimacy and shutting down”.

This brings to mind another psychoanalyst: Wilfred Bion. He theorised that we have – at some moments – a will to know something about ourselves and our lives, even when that knowledge is profoundly painful. This, he called being in “K”. But there is also a powerful will not to know, a wish to defend against this awareness so that we can continue to live cosseted by lies; this is to be in “–K” (spoken as “minus K”). I wonder if the pandemic has been a reality some of us feel is too horrific to bear. The uncertainty, the deaths, the trauma, the precarity; perhaps we have unconsciously chosen to live in the misty, murky brain fog of –K rather than to face, to suffer, the true pain and horror of our situation. Perhaps we are having problems with our thinking because the truth of the experience, for many of us, is simply unthinkable.

I ask Simons if, after the pandemic, he thinks the structure of our brains will look different on a brain scan: “Probably not,” he says. For some of us, brain fog will be a temporary state, and will clear as we begin to live more varied lives. But, he says, “It’s possible for some people – and we are particularly concerned about older adults – that where there is natural neurological decline, it will be accelerated.”

Simons and a team of colleagues are running a study to investigate the impact of lockdown on memory in people aged over 65 – participants from a memory study that took place shortly before the pandemic, who have now agreed to sit the same tests a year on, and answer questions about life in the interim. One aim of this study is to test the hypothesis of cognitive reserve – the idea that having a rich and varied social life, filled with intellectual stimulation, challenging, novel experiences and fulfilling relationships, might help to keep the brain stimulated and protect against age-related cognitive decline. Simons’ advice to us all is to get out into the world, to have as rich and varied experiences and interactions as we can, to maximise our cognitive reserve within the remaining restrictions. The more we do, the more the brain fog should clear, he says: “We all experience grief, times in our lives where we feel like we can’t function at all,” he says. “These things are mercifully temporary, and we do recover.”

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