Oh, those “senior moments.” The term has become a catch phrase for having your mind go blank when you’re trying to recall a specific detail, and the stress from your emetophobia may be to blame.
The “senior moment” name derives from people’s fear that they are showing early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease, two conditions typically reserved for the elderly. But those memory lapses may not be linked to dementia at all, regardless of your age.
A major factor in those lapses in memory is stress, according to an article in the Huffington Post, and stress can be a major byproduct of emetophobia.
The article explains:
“When you’re stressed, you’re not as able to focus on what you’re doing. If you’re not attending to an experience (such as putting your keys down on a table), you’ll never get the information you need into memory storage. As we say in psychology, ‘If you don’t encode, you can’t retrieve.’ In other words, to remember something you have to pay attention to it in the first place. Stress distracts your attention from what you’re doing while you attend, instead, to the other problems and concerns swirling around in your mind.”
While stress alone can induce forgetfulness, it can also work in tandem with other factors to create an even greater chance of a memory lapse. Add lack of sleep, depression and certain medications to the mix, and you’ve got yourself a full-fledged recipe for forgetting things – which is certainly a far cry from dementia.
Check out the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-krauss-whitbourne/memory-loss-senior-moments_b_2338547.html
