How I Got My Brain Back: Recovering Cognitive Function

There was no cinematic moment of enlightenment, no slow-motion goodbye to my phone, and definitely no triumphant splash as it hit the ocean. It was less poetic than that. One day I simply realised that I was slowly recovering cognitive function and wondering when my brain had turned into dial-up internet. My attention span had quietly deteriorated into something resembling that of a slightly nervous goldfish, and I was tired of feeling like my thoughts were permanently buffering, half-connected to everything, including myself.

So, I deleted it all. Instagram, gone. TikTok, gone. Twitter, which I still refuse to call X, also gone. WhatsApp barely survived the purge, but I muted it completely, like an ex I wasn’t ready to block but didn’t want to hear from either. Suddenly my phone looked calm, almost suspiciously so, as if it had entered witness protection.

The Digital Detox Nobody Clapped For

Honestly, it was hard. Not “I miss my apps” hard, but the kind of hard where your brain doesn’t know what to do with itself. I kept picking up my phone out of habit, unlocking it like a nervous tick, staring at the blank screen, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Then I sighed, put it down, and did it again five minutes later.

My husband, bless him, endured the worst of it. Every time he asked something normal like “Do you want coffee?” I snapped, “I don’t know, do you want coffee?” in a tone suggesting I was about to lose it. It wasn’t personal, it was withdrawal. Apparently, when you remove my steady drip of dopamine, I become the human version of a buffering icon.

Silence, Then Space

Then something unexpected happened. The noise stopped. And not just notifications, the mental noise too, the hum of opinions, updates, and strangers explaining things I never asked to know. At first, the quiet felt eerie, like walking into a silent room and wondering who died. But gradually, that silence became space. I could feel myself recovering cognitive function, piece by piece, as my thoughts started to finish their own sentences again.

Without the endless scroll, I noticed how much time I had been donating to the digital void. Hours, whole evenings, gone to videos of people organising drawers or giving life advice they clearly didn’t follow themselves. Now I read again. Real books, the kind without comment sections. I listen to entire albums without checking who just posted a story. Sometimes I even get bored, which turns out to be surprisingly refreshing, like finding a muscle you forgot existed.

Rediscovering Boredom and Curiosity

That boredom slowly became curiosity. One night I fell down a rabbit hole of shark documentaries, then articles on their evolution, and three Wikipedia tabs later I was convinced I could lecture on hammerheads. Did you know sharks existed before trees? I didn’t. But it is the kind of beautiful, unnecessary fact my brain never had room for when it was busy surviving the algorithm.

Less Noise, More Mind

I used to think I had a focus problem. Turns out I had a noise problem. Every ping and vibration was like someone poking my brain with a stick just to see what would happen. Without them, my thoughts stretched out and began to feel like they belonged to me again, a slow, quiet kind of cognitive recovery I hadn’t realised I needed.

The Brain, Reclaimed

I’m not anti-technology. I love the internet, I really do. I just love that my phone no longer behaves like a needy toddler demanding attention every three seconds. The world doesn’t collapse if I answer messages later. The people who matter can wait an hour. And for the first time in years, I can think in full paragraphs without checking whether someone liked one of them.

So yes, my brain is back. A little weird, slightly twitchy, still easily distracted by sharks, but definitely mine again. And if that means I now spend Saturday nights reading about ancient sea predators instead of scrolling through other people’s weekends, I’ll take the fins over the feeds every time.

Angela

I’m a mental health nurse, part-time student, and full-time overthinker fueled by coffee and music. This blog began somewhere between a night shift and a creative crisis. It's a small space for thoughts about life, learning, and everything in between.