How Anxiety Impacts Memory and Focus

Anxiety is no fun. It causes increased worrying, feelings of irritability, tense muscles, and even sweating, trembling, or shaking. But did you also know that anxiety can affect things like memory and focus? The feelings of impending doom and worry about the future that anxiety causes force you out of the present in the moment and into an unknown and often catastrophized future.

Anxiety affects specific critical response systems that engage your flight or fight responses. These systems take up a considerable amount of mental and physical energy which affects memory and focus. Slowing these systems down and de-escalating them can increase your ability to focus and remember.

Why Does Anxiety Impact Memory And Focus?

Anxiety impacts memory and focus by affecting your stress response, mental resources, and your body.

Stress Response

When your body reacts to a threat, it produces adrenaline and cortisol. These are chemical reactions in the body that drive stress and the urge to run away from difficult situations or situations that your mind perceives as a threat. Adrenaline and cortisol directly impact your brain’s ability to give resources over to memory.

Mental Resources

When going through anxiety, it often feels like the anxiety is taking over your brain. In a way, that is what it is doing. Anxiety takes up your mental resources, making it harder to focus on what you need to. It becomes harder to direct your focus because your mind is too focused on a perceived threat.

The Body

Some people with anxiety disorders experience physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, shaking, or even an increased heartbeat. These responses make the body hypersensitive. This increased hypersensitivity is what causes memory fog. This is all aside from the anxiety that continues to live in the body and can cause long-term issues like chronic pain or digestive issues. These chronic issues continue to sap your mental energy even after anxiety has gone away on the surface.

What Does Hindered Memory And Focus Look Like?

Negatively impacted memory and focus can manifest as symptoms like slower processing, impaired working memory, being easily distracted, brain fog, and memory loss.

Slower Processing

Anxiety can make it much harder to process new information and access older memories. The brain moves much slower in its responses, thus making work or school seem like an impossible task.

Impaired Working Memory

Working memory performance is what keeps you going on your daily tasks at work or school. Anxiety can cause lower working memory performance, which makes even the simplest tasks you do every day seem like a tall order.

Brain Fog

Brain fog is when thinking clearly and concentrating on tasks becomes difficult. We all go through it from time to time. It’s when it happens on a daily basis that brain fog becomes a problem.

Memory Loss

Frequent anxiety can cause memory loss, especially if the anxiety is left untreated for long periods of time. Memory loss can affect your ability to complete everyday tasks and could make your work suffer. There is still a great deal to be learned about the relationship between anxiety and memory loss, however, there is a link between the two.

Stopping The Cycle

Anxiety isn’t something to just sit around with and hope it gets better. It can have long-term effects if left to fester. The long-term effects can negatively impact your memory and focus and your ability to keep up your performance in everyday life. If you have been suffering from anxiety and have been experiencing any of these symptoms, it would be a good idea to seek the help of a professional anxiety therapist. If you would like to learn more about anxiety and how it affects memory and focus, feel free to contact me.