#200 It's Not Hormones or Perimenopause Brain Fog. It’s Your Body Protecting You

I can still see the look on her face. Another woman in her forties, sitting across from me, was convinced something was wrong. She couldn’t focus. She lost words mid-sentence. Everything felt foggy. She was sure it had to be her hormones or her thyroid. Some worried it was early dementia.

These were capable, intelligent women, mothers, business owners, professionals, who ran entire households and teams. When their focus and drive started slipping, they panicked. I understood completely. I had been there myself.

I remember mornings when I could barely think. Everything felt slow, like I was moving through water. I had built a successful women’s health clinic. People traveled from other countries to see me. I used to love solving complex cases. But during that time, I could barely get through simple tasks.

Of course, I ran the tests: hormones, thyroid, and inflammatory markers. Some numbers were off. My hormones showed signs of imbalance. But even after treating those things, the fog didn’t fully lift. Something deeper was happening. What I eventually learned is that sometimes brain fog is not a medical problem; it’s a survival response.

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When Brain Fog Isn’t Hormonal

The women I work with are high-achieving women with what I call super traits: empathy, responsibility, tolerance, hard work, and forgiveness. These traits help us build families, businesses, and careers, but they also make us vulnerable.

Women with super traits often end up in relationships or environments where they are constantly misunderstood. They explain how they feel, and someone picks apart their tone or timing. They clarify again, and the other person twists their words. Eventually, they start to question themselves.

Over time, the nervous system learns that clarity brings conflict. Speaking your truth feels unsafe. So the body steps in to protect you. It dulls the signals. You stop asking questions, stop trusting your own perception, and you live inside a fog that feels like safety.

The Coercive Control Connection

Coercive control is a pattern of domination that uses fear, manipulation, and confusion to remove a person’s freedom and sense of self. It doesn’t always look abusive from the outside. It can be quiet, subtle, and easy to excuse.

When you live in that dynamic: being corrected, blamed, or ignored, your body goes into constant alert. Cortisol rises. The amygdala fires. But there’s no clear threat to fight or flee. The body freezes.

That freeze shows up as brain fog. You forget what you were saying. You go blank mid-conversation. You feel detached and slow. It’s not dementia. It’s protection.

Many of the women I see have been told their symptoms are from perimenopause, ADHD, or anxiety. Those things can all exist, but often they’re not the full story. What we’re really seeing is the psychological cost of living in chronic survival mode.

The Hidden Cost of Being the Responsible One

When you have super traits, you learn early that it’s your job to keep the peace. You carry the emotional load for everyone around you. You explain and re-explain yourself to avoid conflict. You forgive easily and work harder when things go wrong.

Empathy makes you justify instead of confront. Responsibility makes you take on more than is yours. Tolerance keeps you in relationships that drain you. Hard work convinces you that trying harder is love.

Every clarification and apology becomes an act of self-abandonment. You tell yourself you’re being mature or taking the high road, but what you’re really doing is disconnecting from yourself. The pattern leaves you exhausted and confused.

When Clarity Feels Dangerous

If you’ve ever gone blank during an argument or struggled to remember your own point, your body was doing exactly what it needed to survive. That fog isn’t a weakness. It’s intelligence.

When the person across from you uses misunderstanding or tone policing to maintain control, your nervous system senses danger. The logical part of your brain goes offline, and your body freezes.

Over time, that state becomes familiar. You live in a constant low-grade fog that feels normal. You might call it burnout or hormone imbalance, but it’s really your body saying it’s tired of surviving.

The Moment the Fog Lifts

When I stopped participating in coercive control dynamics, my brain fog disappeared. My hormones are balanced. My focus returned. What changed wasn’t my supplements; it was my sense of safety.

When women begin to heal, their clarity and desire come back. Their energy returns. They stop apologizing for existing. Their nervous systems finally relax enough to regain clarity.

Truth feels safe. Accountability feels safe. Clarity feels safe. That is when connection and pleasure become possible again.

Reclaiming Your Clarity

If you’ve been questioning your memory or wondering if you’re losing your mind, you’re not. You’re probably finally starting to find it.

Your body is not broken. It has been protecting you from a system that asked too much and gave too little. The confusion you feel is not a flaw.

It’s evidence of endurance.

Start noticing when the fog rolls in. Ask yourself what truth you just swallowed or what emotion you dismissed. Your clarity isn’t gone. It’s waiting beneath the layers of survival.

You are not fragile. You are wise. That fog is your body’s way of saying it’s time to stop adapting and start healing.

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Take the Super Traits Quiz to learn how your empathy, tolerance, and responsibility have shaped your health and your relationships. Understanding these patterns is the first step toward lifting the fog and reclaiming your power.

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