So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

The brain exploits these powers all the time. The most well known example is the blind spot, but that's just the beginning of it.

Our wiring is incredibly improvised throughout and the brain works hard to paper it all over.

A generous reading of Kahneman and Tversky suggests your brain even hides its own workings from itself.

This is a weird edge case, for sure. Seems like it's still far from understood. It could be any combination of psychosomatic issues, trauma triggering, lifestyle factors, and undiagnosed organic issues, as not all diagnosticians are great when it comes to edge cases.

Just a thought to those who assume the brain diagnostics would have shown any seizures: There is something called "cognitive kindling." If a particular type and duration of mental activity can induce partial seizures, to confirm this any functional diagnostics (such as an EEG or fMRI) may have to be run during that type (and duration) of cognitive activity.

I've felt something similar to what the poster described -- subjectively or phenomenologically. It began to effect me in the 1990s at QCOM, where I did mostly troubleshooting of embedded real-time systems. I tried to get a leave of absence but (despite having won two performance awards, each with additional stock options) my last (new) manager accused me of being lazy, so, rather than keep getting paid to show up and produce nothing of value (despite racking my brain) I quit. I wanted to leave before I jeopardized my good reputation, and given that the scope of my project was months, it could have been many months before I'd have received my first performance review below 3 (of 5).

Thankfully, the last 50% of my initial set of QCOM employee stock options, plus 20% and 40% of my second two sets, vested near QCOM's all-time peak in 1999-2000. Thanks to that windfall, I was able to self-fund a deep dive into the peer-reviewed medical literature (because my own MD-PhD internist challenged me to do so*), see doctors who are good enough not to need to deal with insurance companies, and pay out of pocket for their diagnostics and treatments.

(*Even though medicine does generate so much research that reading the research and making sense of it might need to be partially crowdsourced to the set of people with sufficient means, motive (pain point) and opportunity -- which is what I had -- even so, society, please do not rely on the edge cases of partially-disabled, semi independently wealthy engineers to come up with our own solutions.)

Unfortunately, I don't take fools lightly, and I quickly label as fools non-Bayesian thinkers who can't see zebras because horses are so much more prevalent -- and make false assumptions about my history, motivations, and inner life. So I steered clear of perfunctory "show up in a white coat and get paid well" types who perform "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" standard of insurer-covered care. I ended up hiring mostly "alternative" doctors, and while their treatments (and ones I found myself, including illegal ones) were the ones that ended up helping me, their diagnoses are not useful in proving anything to conventional doctors nor to the government.

Thanks to QCOM stock options and then profits on precious metals after the 2008 crash, plus my wife's support and a few entry-level jobs, I did not apply for Disability benefits until many years later. I was not approved for benefits, despite my psychiatric practitioner and case manager recommending it (for chronic PTSD, finally diagnosed after I suggested it myself), and an acquaintance who works for SSDI (US government Disability insurance) saying I'm "as disabled as most who qualify." Based on my experience, despite being a former Libertarian I believe the US social safety net has huge holes.

Eventually I found some relief with a keto-ish diet and then, since spring 2018, microdosing LSD or psilocybin in the morning. Cannabis or delta-8 THC I sometimes also use in a normal (non-micro) recreational dose at bedtime, which seems to prevent subsequent days of effort from accumulating toward a burnout. This allows me to work a normal entry-level job, as long as there's no drug screen. For the latter, microdosing LSD or psilocybin are more practical (though more-often fully-illegal) because they are less likely to be detected by standard drug screens ordered by current or prospective employers.

By the way, though I have been substitute teaching since October 2016, recently held a full-time factory job with mandatory overtime (48 to 56 hours per week) for 13 months (with a promotion to Electrician at $20/hr), and recently landed a full-time WFH customer service job to start May 17, this requires me to stay within 2.5 hours drive of the office, and I am looking for fully-remote work that pays a bit better than this $15.50/hour. I can do customer service just fine, and given my history in software development (mostly embedded, mostly the 5 years at QCOM, with degree in electrical and computer engineering) I think I could earn a premium doing a similar role, or perhaps some kind of technical writing, in a more specialized technical or scientific niche. (Along the way I did 40% of a Master of Public Health and later did most of Coursera/JHU data science course.)

If anyone has job or career ideas for me (who still has been unable to do software engineering beyond the hobby level without burnout) I welcome them at (see my profile for email adress).

Reducing stress is something a lot of us could benefit from, but there are also some underlying medical issues that can be exacerbated by stress.

If you are still getting migraines you might want to see another doctor. They aren't super well understood yet, but there are pretty clear physiological signs and there are also some prophylactic treatment options. Chronic migraines are a very real neurological disorder, and for some people severe enough to be disabling.

In general I think it's a very hard line to walk to avoid over-pathologizing things while also not missing actual medical issues. Nobody really understands the brain, and the entire discourse around phenomenon like "brain fog" kinda bums me out. It's both easy for doctors to unfairly dismiss and easy for internet forums to spin pseudoscience about. The two reinforce each other even.

Keep hanging in there, and best of luck sorting out these issues.

Burnout and stress related disorders are very real, but trying to explain them away as purely physical illnesses isn’t accurate, nor does it help with finding a resolution.

> It is a physical thing. I’m not sure it’s caused by burning out all the glucose or whatever (as that is short term addressable). Dopamine, that’s possible.

No, you don’t simply run out of dopamine, nor can you use it up by thinking too hard. The body is extremely good at keeping the brain fed and stocked with neurotransmitters, even between meals.

This pop-science concept of running out of dopamine isn’t real.

The real problem here is that mental illness still carries too much stigma. Some people are so resistant to accepting a mental health diagnosis and treatment that they will go to great lengths to reframe their problems in physical terms, thereby dodging what they feel (incorrectly) would be an admission of mental weakness.

Even this Tweet author’s doctor diagnosed him with a mental illness, and he even cites the diagnosis from the DSM. However, for some reason he still tries to reframe it as what he calls a “physical” thing.

That physiological (it seems phy to my lay self) snap at the onset is really interesting.

Is the understanding that it is a TIA/mini stroke?