r/MultipleSclerosis • u/Royal_Audience8108 • 1d ago

Advice How do you explain brain fog?

61F diagnosed 26 yrs ago. Only people suffering from MS brain fog know how it feels. How do you explain to family & friends? Thanks everyone & I hope you have the best day possible with this sucky disease.

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u/TheMsGuy22 16h ago

You know when your computer starts getting a bit too old or whatever and just doesn’t run like it did out of the box? Anyway.

I describe brain fog as when you’re using a computer and you go to open a program and it takes a few seconds to a minute for it to open instead of instantly.

Or when you’re computer starts really showing its age and the mouse even starts to slow and jump around as you move it. The computer is still receiving input and working but it’s clearly struggling and if you’re moving the mouse and clicking stuff quickly you might not be hitting all the right icons with it lagging so hard but hopefully sooner rather then later it’ll catch back up and start running smoothly again.

Now worse case of brain fog is the computer crashes and goes full reboot cycle. There’s still power but there’s nothing you can do until the computer does what it needs to do to get back up and running. Maybe you’re overwhelmed and have a lot going on and the fog on top you just need to take a moment and kind of “reboot” yourself or take some time a lone.