Have you ever been in a situation where you knew exactly what you wanted to talk about, but when the moment arrived, you couldn’t think of what you had planned to say?
That’s what happened to Jen* when she made her first big presentation at a new job. She practiced the talk repeatedly, to the point at which she felt confident that she could make it without a mistake. Yet when a senior colleague interrupted her to ask her to clarify what she had just said, her brain went blank.
“I felt so stupid,” she said. “It was a simple question. I knew the answer. But my mind left the room. My brain froze completely.”
Many factors can contribute to this kind of “brain freeze,” which fits into a category of cognitive problems called “word retrieval difficulties.” There are a number of possible causes, both physiological and psychological, but there is also the odd and amazing role of unconscious dynamics that can make our brains stop working just when we need them to work at top capacity.
The brain is a complex organ that controls thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, and every process that regulates our body. When any of these factors is in play, the complex system of neurons through which the brain stores and recovers words may not be firing as quickly as you would like.
When something is going on behind the scenes in your psyche
Anxiety—already a complex emotion—can be a lot more complicated when unconscious thoughts and feelings play a role. These are thoughts and feelings that go on outside of our awareness. They are often behind behaviors that we can’t explain to ourselves.
For instance, Jen’s brain freeze during her presentation could certainly have been caused by her anxiety about proving herself to her new colleagues and bosses. But contributing to her anxiety may have been some thoughts and feelings that she kept hidden away, even from herself. It’s very hard for us to uncover these hidden emotions on our own, because we push them out of our minds and into what Freud called the “unconscious” mind.
Today we think of these ideas as “split off” or “dissociated” from awareness.
Protecting ourselves by splitting, forgetting, and not-thinking
The psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas gave the name “unthought known” to the thoughts and feelings, memories, and ideas about ourselves that we don’t let ourselves know about.
Sometimes we relegate information, without realizing it, to the unknown part of ourselves, to protect ourselves from old, painful memories. But we can also use this powerful tool to step away from a side of ourselves that we don’t like. This emotional process almost always happens outside of our awareness.
The presence of unconscious thoughts and feelings does not necessarily rule out physiological causes for memory loss. If it happens to you on a regular basis, it may still not be a cause for concern, but it’s important to have a medical professional check to make sure it’s not a symptom of a medical problem.
Finding patterns to solve the puzzle of behind-the-scenes causes of brain fog
If this type of memory loss happens only on occasion, even if you aren’t in psychotherapy, you can start to look for some patterns that reveal unconscious reasons for behaviors and feelings that you can’t explain. And once you understand what’s going on behind the scenes in your psyche, it’s much easier to do something about it.
Unconscious Essential Reads
If you consistently go blank at work, for example, you can start to track the specific moments when it happens. When do you forget? Is it with a particular person or group of people? Does it happen in certain situations?
Are you putting undue pressure on yourself? Or are you secretly trying to sabotage yourself?
As Jen began to sort through some of her unacknowledged thoughts and feelings about the presentation, she realized that she was not only trying to prove herself to her new colleagues, but also secretly trying to prove to her family how well she was doing.
She wanted to impress them, particularly her father and her older sister. “I imagined telling them how well I had done,” she said. “I love the expression on my dad’s face when he tells me he’s proud of me. But that’s something I know and think about all the time. Maybe I’m too much of a daddy’s girl.”
After a few minutes of talking and thinking, Jen said, “I think maybe part of the problem is that a secret part of me also wanted to make my sister feel bad. She always does well at everything, and I’m always feeling like I can’t quite match up to her. I wanted her to feel the same way for once.”
Facing the unconscious reasons we forget can lead to changes in our behavior, thoughts, and feelings
As Jen talked about this dynamic with her sister, something she knew but did not like to think about, she had to face her competitiveness head-on. “It’s something I don’t like about myself,” she said. “I mean, it’s OK to be competitive. But it’s not OK to want to hurt the person you’re competing with. It makes me feel so bad about myself.”
We suspected that Jen had shut down just as she was beginning to show off. Of course, we can’t know, but it seemed likely that her internal dialogue connected showing off at work with a wish to hurt her sister by rubbing her success in. Because Jen was so critical of this part of herself, she may have shut it down, stopping her brain in the process.
Once we had talked out the meaning of Jen’s brain fog, we began to explore Jen’s competition with her sister. It had many different components, and it took a while, but eventually Jen realized that she could succeed without hurting her sister. The next time she made a presentation, she did not fog up.
It’s not always easy to know what your unconscious mind is thinking. But if you decide to do some internal exploration, start with the idea that the “unthought known” is something you don’t like about yourself. Once you’ve located the difficult thoughts, it’s easier to change your behavior. And the “unthought known” is much less likely to sabotage you.
*Names and identifying info changed for privacy
