Brain Fog Makes Me Stupid. Why I Think The S Word Is The Right Word For Brain Fog.
The S Word
If you are abled you might not have batted an eye at the title slide of this post. But if you are disabled you probably cringed. "Stupid" is a word that has long been used to out down people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and is rarely used according to its definition: lacking general intelligence.
Stupid is inappropriate to use in many cases where it is because stupid implies that your mistake was something you _are_. Not something you have done.
Example: Someone with discalcula does poorly on a math test and is called stupid.
This places the fault for a very specific mistake onto the abilities as a person overall, and by implications of ableism, tells them that they are less than, their humanity is not as valuable as the kid who got an A.
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Brain fog Makes Me Stupid
The reason the title is used as it is, is because I truly believe that the best way to describe how brain fog affects me is it makes me stupid. It causes me lack of intelligence and common sense, not just moment to moment, but consistently. It may cause slip-ups, but it is not the slip-ups, it is the underlying loss of intelligence.
Brain fog, unlike most intellectual and developmental disabilities, is not particularly pointy. It does not specifically affect my ability to calculate, to write, to remember, it affects every single thing I think about. It affects my ability to think. While it may affect some areas more visibly, or more than others, it affects everything. I cannot find a more generally understood term for overall loss of intelligence than stupid. So I repeat: brain fog makes me stupid.
Disclaimer: I started out very intelligent. On standardized tests, I always scored in the top percent or 2. I never had to study. I excelled in creative problem-solving and writing. Despite loss of intelligence, if you were to IQ test me right now, I would most likely do well. But as this post will elaborate, IQ tests are flawed, stupid is not an objective benchmark, and I am stupid in comparison to my healthy self.
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Controversy!
When I asked my followers to talk about brain fog I got two very different responses:
Some said they wished people knew "I am not stupid"
While others said, "I think I lost some IQ points."
But how can these both be true? Are they experiencing two completely different things? I think not. I believe that the issue comes with our poor understanding of intelligence and internalized ableism.
The people saying "I am not stupid" are often saying: "I still excel at some intellectual tasks."
The people saying "I think I lost some IQ points" are often saying: "Every part of using my brain is harder."
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Stupid People Are Disabled. Not Less Valuable.
Stupidity is an invisible disability. In the same way that intelligence is an invisible privilege. We all knew that kid in school who never had to study, who always had extra time to do whatever they wanted, heck, I was that kid.
But the opposite existed too. The kid who always had to work a bit harder than everyone else. The kid who didn't get it when everyone else did. The kid who stayed up all night studying because they just couldn't memorize the cards.
Many of those kids didn't have intellectual disabilities. Not diagnosable ones. They weren't bad enough at one specific testable thing to get that label, with its stigma but also legal rights. The only label they ended up with was "stupid."
But they did nothing wrong. It doesn't make them less worthy as a person. It doesn't change their values and choices. They were never "bad students" or "lazy" they studied twice as hard! They were never less valuable, because their only fault was being less able. Disability is not a personal failure.
Chronically ill people who have been sick since childhood can likely relate to this. Being blamed for constant absences. Working twice as hard to do your homework despite the fatigue. How is it different? And did adults telling you to not "identify as disabled" make it any easier?
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Everyones a little bit stupid sometimes!
Intelligence like all ability is not a binary. Just as a marathon runner could get the flu and still run a mile (they shouldn't, it's a great way to get ME!), if Noam Chompsky suddenly developed Alzheimer's he would probably keep writing very articulate academic papers for many years.
The problem with intelligence is that, with the exception of extremes, if is extremely hard to measure. Because it is very diverse. Someone can be awful at one thing like executive functioning, and amazing at another like music. Someone else might be the reverse.
Both of these things require intelligence, but the person with more executive functioning probably does better in school. Is the person with bad grades stupid in comparison? No.
In comparison is the keyword here. Intelligence is hard to measure because it is always in comparison. Stupid is only stupid compared to someone smarter. Compared to a goldfish we are all geniuses. Compared to hyper-intelligent aliens we are all stupid.
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Comparison Makes Brain fog The Best Use Of Stupid
If stupid only exists as a comparative term, and because of the diversity of intelligence we cannot generally compare ourselves to others intellectually unless there is a massive difference (ie. Severe intellectual disability or extreme genius) then really the only place it is logical to use the term stupid is when comparing to ourselves.
When I say brain fog makes me stupid I mean that I can pinpoint numerous ways I have lost brain function compared to my past self. I can pinpoint none it has improved. Therefore, brain fog has made me stupid, compared to my past self, the only comparison point that makes any sense.
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You Can Be Stupid And Intellectually Gifted
I believe this is another reason many people wanted the world to know that "I'm not stupid" despite brain fog. Brain fog affects all areas of intelligence. But most people who are "gifted" at something have a very pointy bit of intelligence. That is to say, there is one thing they are exceptionally good at, far more so than their general level of intelligence.
Using completely made-up points here let's say that 10 is average skill level. If you are 50pts good at painting than a 5 point loss is negligible. But say you are only 14 points good at writing, and you are bad at math with only 8 points. Brain fog takes 5 points everywhere. So it has a much much larger effect on things you are bad at than things you are good at. You might even be diagnosed with discalcula.
In short, brain fog takes many people who were average intelligence with a special skill and makes them neurodiverse. It causes them to have intellectual disability in areas they were average at but still above average intelligence at things they were good at. Neurodiverse people are often inappropriately called stupid when in reality their overall intelligence is not below average it's just spread out differently. Thus "I am not stupid."
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Growth Mindset
In case it was not clear: being stupid is not a personal failing. In the same way that accepting my physical disability, being bedbound, does not make me less worthy as a person and is not "self-hating" neither is accepting my brain fog and newfound stupidity.
I also believe strongly in the growth mindset approach to intelligence. This states that intelligence is not fixed. You can learn to be smarter. For example, taking a class on logic may teach you to identify your own logical fallacies.
I believe this also applies in reverse, use it or lose it, continuing to practice mathematics, writing, and so one will help you retain your intelligence in opposition to brain fog. So identifying that brain fog makes us stupid doesn't mean resignation, it means accepting we need to compensate.
Just as I got away with not taking notes and with not studying for years, now I do the opposite. I have a dozen executive functioning aids, write down everything, focus on logical fallacies and argument construction, etc. Without these coping skills, my brain fog would be far more disruptive.
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Key Takeaways
Stupid means lack of general intelligence. This word is usually inapplicable and insulting to someone making a mistake or who has a specific intellectual impairment.
Brain fog causes loss of general intelligence, thus making you stupid compared to your past self.
Being less intelligent doesn't make you less valuable. Being stupid is not a personal failing it is a disability.
Stupid only exists in comparison. Comparing people's intelligence is almost impossible unless they are on the very tail ends of the bell curve.*
People who were gifted before brain fog often end up neurodiverse after brain fog. Neurodiverse people are not "stupid" in comparison to average intelligence. They just have a different distribution of intelligence.
A growth mindset is important to exercising our control and adaptive abilities in response to stupidity caused by brain fog.
*This post doesn't even get into the eugenical mess that is IQ testing!
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Intellectual Ableism is real and our response to brain fog often shows it. Which is why I am proud to have reached a point where I am not ashamed to say that: brain fog makes me stupid.
Brain fog aka Cognitive Dysfunction is one of the most common and disabling symptoms of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or MECFS and other chronic Illness. It is also an intellectual disability. Something many of us would rather not admit.
But the truth is, there is no reason to be ashamed of intellectual disability in the same way there is no reason to be ashamed of physical disability. Neither is our fault, and admitting the ways they make our lives more challenging only empowers us to take steps towards the accommodation and support that we need.
Now about the s word. Stupid. This word has a bad rap in the #disability and neurodivergent community. That is because it is often misapplied. Stupid means having a general lack of intelligence. Having specific intellectual shortcomings does not make you stupid. Making mistakes does not make you stupid. General intelligence is not even truly definable. So how can anything make you stupid?
Well... brain fog might just be the one place that makes sense. The reason it's called brain fog is that it is a fog, a friction and slowing of every thought you have. A general loss of intelligence. We become stupid compared to the only person who we can truly compare our intelligence to: ourselves.
This doesn't make us worthless. For multiple reasons. First:
Intellectual disability is not a personal failing.
Second:
Just because overall intelligence is reduced doesn't mean we don't still have particular strengths and specialties.
For example, I have always been good at writing. My hyperfocus kicks in when I research and I can info dump with the best of them. But at the same time, things I always struggled with being autistic like reading people and processing emotions are even more difficult than ever.
So I hope this makes you feel a little more comfortable to say: brain fog makes me stupid. But also my worth is not my intelligence.
