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Comment by kayodelycaon | Hacker News Reader

> Perhaps burnout is as traumatic to the brain as a massive brain injury

Wouldn’t surprise me.

I had a massive psychotic break 5 years ago. I’m pretty sure it came with physical brain damage. My memory isn’t what it used to be. There are holes in it. Apparently some of it is so completely gone, I don’t know I’ve forgotten it. Usually I know if I forgot something because there is a dangling pointer to it.

Brain damage feels distinctly different. The problems from being bipolar has very sharp lines in my brain. It’s known territory. Damage is foggy, indistinct.

Things have definitely healed and I’m getting function and a few memories back. The foggy areas have mostly cleared up. It’s been an odd experience.

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After a bout of psychosis I was told by a psychiatrist treating me that acute psychotic episodes are physical events with lasting structural consequences in the brain. The more you have the more likely you are to have more of them.

Which all makes sense, but I don't think is part of the general awareness of these conditions. I get the feeling that most people think of them as "only" mental experiences.

I've often felt this way about depression, but it's hard to tease apart the long-term after-effects of a depressive episode, the probability that my current symptoms might just be the beginnings of an episode, and the long-term (after-)effects of the medication I took/take for it.

I'm pretty sure in my case because my moods move around in predictable ways. Medication has been a significant improvement to that. The major side-effect of one medication lines up with a genetic mutation I have. As a result, a supplement has significantly improved my short-term memory.

Neither medication nor moods have affected the brain fog that I was referring to, only time.

I often feel as if the brain is deliberately culling memories around psychotic episodes as a means for survival/optimisation.

Either that or the memories are treated no differently by the brain. Because one remembers the time as being so significant it seems disproportionate for it to be forgotten. But this could just be what happens to all memories.

Oh, I remember the episode very well. It’s stuff from my past that’s gone.

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