Anxiety & Brain Fog: Understanding the Connection

Can Anxiety Cause Brain Fog?

Anxiety can cause brain fog for many different reasons. Focusing on a task when you are having anxious thoughts, combined with self-doubt, can cause a lot of mental fatigue. Additionally, when a person experiences anxiety, their body enters fight-or-flight mode, triggering the release of adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine. These hormones can exhaust the brain, leading to difficulties with concentration and short-term memory, resulting in anxiety and brain fog.¹

Here are some reasons that anxiety can cause brain fog:

Rumination

Rumination is an anxiety-based thinking pattern that tries to help you cope with something you perceive as stressful or threatening. When someone is ruminating, they are often focused on things that have happened in the past, walking through negative outcomes from this, and determining how things might have gone differently. Rumination is often hard for a person to disengage from while they’re in the rumination-thinking spiral.

When your brain runs through imaginary outcomes and replays the situation for alternate choices, it is essentially running itself through other scenarios that can also be stressful. This prevents your brain from getting a break from stress in general, and the wear and tear of this stress can leave your brain feeling foggy and rundown.

Sleep Problems

If you’re consistently not getting enough good quality sleep, your brain isn’t getting the opportunity to power down and go through the essential elements of sleep that help to keep your brain sharp. Lack of sleep can begin to impact your brain functioning, make your thinking feel foggy, and make it more difficult to perform your typical tasks.

Sleep problems and anxiety have a bidirectional impact on each other, meaning each can make the other one better or worse. Anxious racing thoughts at night can keep a person awake and prevent them from sleeping. A lack of sleep can also lead to anxiety by forcing your brain to work harder on everyday tasks, increasing irritability that can negatively impact relationships, and increasing the chances that you miss work or important obligations.

Not Eating Well

Food is the fuel that powers our life and our energy. If you are not eating enough or getting a variety of nutrients, your body and your brain do not have the fuel to operate effectively. Without proper nutrition, your brain may have to work harder to do the things you need it to do, which often shows up as brain fog.

Anxiety can impact a person’s ability to eat well and often enough, which can lead to brain fog. Anxiety often has physical manifestations, such as stomachaches, which can make it difficult to eat and can lead to nausea at the thought of eating. Anxiety can also be exhausting and draining, which can lead you to choose convenient and low-nutrition-value foods or to skip meals altogether. All of these can lead to and worsen brain fog.

Lack of Movement

Physical activity is an essential part of anxiety management. It aids in the essential functions of our body and helps us process our emotional experiences. Without regular movement in your day, your body and mind can both begin to feel sluggish and foggy.

The fatigue that can accompany anxiety can make getting daily movement feel like a monumental task that feels easier to skip. There is also a lot of societal messaging about the “right” way to get physical movement in, and anxious thinking often hones in on this all-or-nothing mentality and increases the sense that this is an impossible task.

Not Managing Stress Levels

Stress comes with stress chemicals being released in the body, including cortisol and adrenaline. These chemicals are meant to help aid in survival and not in daily functioning and rational thinking. Unmanaged stress levels mean that your brain has to work to overcome the inhibitions that your survival instincts create to focus on safety, which can be exhausting and lead to brain fog as well.

The root of anxiety is fear, and it focuses on any situations that anxiety perceives as a potential threat to our well-being. Because anxiety is always watching out for potential anxiety-provoking situations, as well as being hyper-aware in those situations, a person with an anxiety disorder typically has higher stress levels than someone without an anxiety disorder. This increases the stress hormones that the brain and nervous system are having to process, which increases the likelihood of experiencing brain fog as well.

Physical Stress

Anxiety disorders often come with physical symptoms, such as increased heart rate and breathing, sweating, and anxiety shivers. This is because the brain perceives danger and activates the body to prepare to respond to that danger by pumping adrenaline and cortisol into the body. With anxiety, the brain is constantly “scaring” the body into this response with false alarms.

Being in survival mode takes a huge toll on your body because the stress hormones are heavy hitters meant to hold nothing back in moments of survival. Flushing these out of your system takes a great deal of work from your body, and being repeatedly and constantly exposed to these wears down your overall energy levels, which often leads to brain fog because you depleted your reserves by reacting to danger.

Symptoms of Anxiety Brain Fog

Anxiety-induced brain fog encompasses a variety of symptoms that affect daily functioning. These symptoms can be highly frustrating and challenging to handle. For individuals with an anxiety disorder, brain fog can significantly contribute to a decline in their overall functioning.

Cognitive symptoms of depression-related brain fog include:

• Difficulty concentrating on tasks or conversations
• Memory Issues or anxiety-induced memory loss
• Feeling mentally exhausted or drained
• Struggling to think clearly or feeling disoriented
• Difficulty making decisions
• Feeling mental cloudiness or fuzziness
• Difficulty with analyzing information or solving problems
• Trouble planning, organizing, or managing tasks
• Reduced productivity
• Dizzy spells
• Headaches

Can Brain Fog Make Anxiety Worse?

Brain fog absolutely has the ability to make your anxiety worse. Brain fog means that your brain has to work harder than normal to do daily tasks because it has to overcome the fogginess that you’re experiencing. Because anxiety is always on the lookout for worst-case scenarios, brain fog may trick you into thinking that you have something seriously wrong with you, such as a brain tumor or neurological condition, which can worsen your underlying anxiety.

Anxiety Medication & Brain Fog

Anxiety medication can cause brain fog, which is sometimes referred to as “medication fog.” If you notice that you start experiencing brain fog after beginning to take a medication, start tracking when you’re taking your medication, whether you’re taking your medication with food, and the specifics of your brain fog (short-term vs. long-term memory struggles, details, how long it lasts, etc.). Based on these details, your prescriber may decide to switch your medication, change your dosage, or change the timing/details of how you take your medication. It is important not to go off the medication without consulting with your prescriber.

Some anxiety medications that have been reported to cause brain fog include:

• Benzodiazepines, such as Xanax, Klonopin, Valium and Ativan, and others.
• Antihistamines, including Benadryl, Dimetan, and others.
• Sedative hypnotics, such as Lunesta, Sonata, and Ambien.
• Tricyclic antidepressants, including Elavil, Anafranil, Norpramin, and others.

How to Cope With Anxiety Brain Fog

Anxiety-induced brain fog can be an exhausting and disruptive symptom to deal with in your day-to-day functioning, but there are things that you can do to minimize its impact. Focusing on managing your overall anxiety and stress levels is important, as is managing any specific contributing factors that are exacerbating your brain fog.

Here are ten ways to cope with anxiety brain fog:

1. Find the Source

There are a lot of possibilities as to why you are experiencing anxiety brain fog, and it is important to identify and address the root cause. Address your concerns with your medical doctor or any mental health professionals you may be working with, and remain open to any of the possibilities of potential underlying causes for your anxiety-induced brain fog until you have definitively ruled them out.

2. Get More Sleep

Not getting enough sleep impacts thinking, concentration, attention, ability to retain information, and reaction time. Prioritize getting enough sleep and improving the quality of your sleep. Developing a wind-down routine, sticking to a sleep schedule, improving your sleep environment, managing stress around bedtime, and managing any underlying medical sleep conditions could help manage or reduce your brain fog during the day.

3. Spend Time Doing Things You Enjoy

While it’s important to focus on reducing or eliminating things that could be causing stress and anxiety, it’s also important to add things into your daily routine that increase enjoyment in your life. Engaging with hobbies that you enjoy has been shown to reduce stress and cortisol levels, as well as an overall sense of improved well-being. This could include creative outlets of painting and writing, physical things like a walking club or team sport, or solo things such as reading and baking.

4. Meditate

Meditation for anxiety is the practice of mental mindfulness that focuses attention on a particular thought or activity to induce an emotionally calm and stable state. There is research evidence that suggests regular meditation practice can reduce a person’s experience of anxiety, which means that it can also help reduce anxiety-based brain fog.¹⁰ The key to meditation being helpful in reducing symptoms is consistent daily practice.

5. Get Some Exercise

Getting regular exercise has been shown to decrease anxiety and improve overall brain functioning.¹¹ The CDC recommends 150 minutes of movement a week and 2 days of muscle-strengthening activities per week, but ultimately, getting any level of movement is better than none. Walking, swimming, biking, and yoga are all viable options, and your options are virtually limitless.

6. Develop A Stress Management Plan

Stress is a normal part of life and cannot be avoided altogether, but having a stress management plan to deal with stress regularly and in moments of high stress can help manage anxiety and the brain fog that may come with it. Identifying your anxiety triggers, regularly engaging in stress-releasing activities, and nourishing your body and relationships are all helpful things to include in your stress management plan.

7. Rule Out Medical Issues

While brain fog can be a symptom of underlying anxiety, it is important to ensure that you rule out other underlying medical issues. Speaking with a medical provider about differential diagnosis can help to rule out other medical conditions that may be causing brain fog, such as dementia, sleep apnea, or autoimmune disease, among others.¹³

8. Take a Break

Focusing on tasks for extended periods without taking breaks can result in fatigue and increased stress that may trigger or worsen brain fog. Planning regular breaks throughout your day – even if they are microbreaks – can make a huge difference in managing anxiety and brain fog. Use your break to engage in something totally different than your task that feels soothing. In addition to a regular frequency of breaks, try to listen to your body and also take breaks when you are feeling anxiety spike.

9. Moderate Substances (Such as Caffeine & Alcohol)

While caffeine may temporarily increase focus, and alcohol may temporarily reduce feelings of anxiety, these substances can actually end up increasing brain fog – particularly if you are drinking consistently and/or in large amounts. If you are experiencing brain fog, working to reduce your intake of mood-altering substances over time can help you reduce or target treatment of your anxiety-based brain fog.

10. Get Social

Although anxiety and brain fog can make it feel difficult to engage in and stay present when you’re around others, maintaining contact with safe social contacts is incredibly important. Being around trusted support people can help reduce a person’s feelings of isolation and lack of support, which can help to reduce anxiety and the brain fog that may accompany it.

When to Seek Professional Support

If you have managed or eliminated residual factors that could be causing your brain fog and it is still negatively impacting your ability to function every day, it may be time to work with a professional on the anxiety that may be causing your brain fog.

If you are ready and open to begin addressing your anxiety, finding the right mental health professional(s) is key. To begin searching for a therapist, use an online therapist directory to find mental health professionals who specialize in anxiety treatment. If you prefer to see a therapist remotely, online therapy services such as Talkspace or BetterHelp can provide you with an experienced therapist. It’s possible that medication could also be helpful in managing your anxiety, and there are many online psychiatrist options to help you in your search.

Other Conditions That Can Cause Brain Fog

While brain fog can be a symptom of anxiety, it can result from a variety of other mental health conditions and medical conditions. Anxiety and brain fog are symptoms that often trouble people who have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.² It has also been shown that anxiety and brain fog are often the long-term effects of a COVID-19 infection.³

Depression often coexists with anxiety and can cause depression-induced brain fog through fatigue and low mood and motivation. Insomnia and anxiety disorder often occur together and can contribute to brain fog because of lack of sleep. Managing co-occurring disorders is also important in reducing brain fog’s impact.

Other possible causes of brain fog include:

• Lack of sleep^{4, 5}
• Diet⁶
• Hormonal changes^{7, 8}
• Medications⁹
• COVID & Long COVID
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome²
• Fibromyalgia²
• Dementia
• Sleep apnea
• Autoimmune disorders
• Depression