god yeah i feel like ive become stupid, which is in and of itself a stupid thing to be worried about, but combined with my "gifted smart kid" complex i feel worthless _(:3」∠)_
i dont feel that way about anyone else with various types of brain fog, i don't talk to many people (you can count the people i interact with regularly on 1 hand) but my language tutor is a double stroke patient who has her own brain fog, and the idea of considering her as somehow lesser because of it feels absurd and irritating... especially because i understand the feeling even if its surely quite different as an experience... she forgets words or what shes doing all the time! and i just offer the word if i can come up with it. theres no judgement or anything, just being glad i can understand, and glad she's less likely to judge me for forgetting basic words... but when it comes to my feelings about myself? im just always terrified its because i took too many medicines/drugs and that, now that i want to see my life happen, i'm too late in starting to care about myself... something strange like that. the way i've been isolated because of my illness, my experiences being shamed by doctors who couldn't understand them, and all the awful experiences being shamed for not performing well enough as i grew up all combine to make a self-doubt self-hatred monster.
i hate that it ebbs and flows, too. some days i have good days and can actually get things done. my head clears up enough that i can process doing tasks without forgetting (adhd combined with dissociation and on top of it, fog is... an experience) and actually get them done within a reasonable timeframe. like, when i was growing up, i had dissociative memory issues, adhd concentration and derailed train of thought issues, and i learned to tell them apart. and now i have a third experience that feels like head pressure, fatigue of the mind, and my brain just generally not sending signals.
forgetting things 5 seconds after i think of them because i can barely even hold one thought in my head at a time, much less anything else in my environment. feeling like a fool when talking to people because i have to focus hard on what i'm saying to get a coherent if somewhat choppy/slow thought across. having to describe things with more than one word because i can't even think of enough of the word i want to find it as a synonym to one of the words i can think of. (and as someone whos bilingual, only remembering the word or term in my second language and not my first. lol) its why i like writing to communicate, because i can go back and review my message for mistaken words or bad sentences as many times as i need, take my time looking for the right words, rephrase things that didn't get the right meaning across... and i can ponder what i actually want to get across for much longer too, get distracted and/or forget what i was saying as many times as i need, go back and check what i wrote to remind myself. it feels like i can use an art to express myself in the ways that i otherwise can no longer do most of the time.
its as unfortunate as it is affirming to see that others struggle with the same thing. especially the aphasia, because i feel so much shame around it. knowing that it's really not just me lifts some of that shame