Episode 1: What Do You Do When Your Mind Goes Blank?

Episode 1: When Your Mind Goes Blank

Greg and Rich kick off The Support and Kindness Podcast with a real, practical talk about those moments when your mind suddenly blanks. They share quick ways to reorient (ask “What was I doing?”), use context clues (tabs, browsing history, 15-second rewind), and calm anxiety with simple breathing and sensory grounding. Big message: it happens to everyone—be gentle with yourself.

Resources and updates: https://kindnessRX.org

Greg
00:00 - 00:23
Hello, my name is Greg and I welcome you to the support and kindness podcast with Greg and Rich. We created this podcast to share some real stories and practical ideas and heartfelt conversations to remind you that you're not alone and that what you do matters. So the first question, and this is a new podcast, and we'll give a little bit of background, Rich, if that's OK. My name's Greg.

Greg
00:23 - 00:41
I live in Columbus, Ohio. And I have a history of mental health and brain injury, anxiety, and some other things. And I just wanted to make that help available for some other people and Rich can share a little bit about him. Rich, do you want to share a little bit about yourself?

Rich
00:41 - 00:55
Yeah, I've got a history of traumatic brain injuries. seizures, depression, and this helps. Yeah, I'm glad to be here and I'm excited to do this podcast today.

Greg
00:55 - 01:06
Thanks Rich. So we'll be coming at you once a week. These will be very short podcasts, but we would welcome your feedback. I'll put a website together for this and I'll get that information to you.

Greg
01:06 - 01:30
But being on the vein of brain injury and not just brain injury, but ADHD, and lots of other things oftentimes your mind goes blank when you've got a brain injury that can be very scary and disconcerting at least for me because i think oh you know is my condition deteriorating so i thought we would discuss today what do you do when your mind goes blank Rich, you got any thoughts on that?

Rich
01:31 - 01:42
I do, I do. I suffer from that quite a bit. Things that I do when my mind goes blank. The toughest thing to do but the most helpful thing to do is to just ask what's going on.

Rich
01:43 - 01:52
To just ask those around you what's going on when you space out or you don't know what it is. To just ask people for a refresher. You could ask

Greg
01:52 - 01:55
yourself the same thing, right? What's going on? Where am I? What am I doing?

Greg
01:55 - 01:56
Where was I?

Rich
01:56 - 02:17
Yeah, to just be brought up to speed, whether it's looking at your computer, hitting the back button on your browser or hitting the, you know, 15 second back button on the YouTube video or whatever it was to try and refresh where your mind was when it went blank.

Greg
02:17 - 02:26
Yeah, so that's that. Any other tips or tricks that you particularly use or that you've heard of that you might want to try?

Rich
02:26 - 03:01
I try and pick it up through context clues, the things that are going on. So if the conversation is, I pick it up through the subject matter, the conversation around me or the program that I'm watching or the paper that I'm reading. I will pick it up through the through the context clues of the subject matter to better understand what's going on to better understand what was going on when my mind went blank.

Greg
03:01 - 03:39
Some good tips right here. You know, I didn't rehearse for this. And first I have to apologize for the lisp. that I'm But what do you do when your mind goes blank?

Greg
03:39 - 03:50
I like some of the stuff Rich was saying, going back and getting in context and seeing where you were. That might even be looking at your browsing history, right? To see what websites were you looking at? Oh, that's right.

Greg
03:50 - 03:54
I was looking at Aerials. Ah, yeah. Aerials. Oh, yeah.

Greg
03:54 - 04:08
Shortwave radio. That's right. I meant to download that program from my radio equipment and stuff like that. I like the idea as well as what Richard is just taking stock, you know, where am I, what was I doing, centre myself.

Greg
04:08 - 04:55
And I think too that what can be helpful is, you know, breathing, just centre yourself, close your eyes, picture, there's one of the best meditations I've heard that I like, it goes something like, you know, breathe in through your nose and hold it for a few seconds as you do and breathe out. But just picture a place in your mind's eye that's, it's safe, it's calm, it's peaceful, it's a place that only you can go to no one can go there without your permission and it can be a real place or it can be an imagined place and while you're you're there just pay attention to what's around you do you feel the breeze on your skin and you feel the sunlight maybe a bit of a ray from the ocean is there any sounds you know the distant sound of a carnival or the ocean battling baroque rustling leaves

Greg
04:55 - 05:36
do you do you taste anything the saltiness in the air because you're near the ocean and do you see anything do you see mountains do you see the sky and just engage those senses because when your mind goes blank and you can't think sometimes it can cause a lot of anxiety and when you have anxiety you kind of clam up your muscles clam up and it makes it worse so you hold on tighter at least i think you hold on tighter to that stuff And if you can kind of just slow down for a second and just let things relax again, I think that can really help. But Rich, any other thoughts on this podcast or what you hope that people will get from listening to this?

Greg
05:36 - 05:42
If there was one thing that you hope that people might get from listening to us talk, what might that be?

Rich
05:42 - 06:44
confidence that other people other people's minds go blank also that other people with and without brain injuries suffer complete brain freezing or brain I've heard them called all sorts of things appropriate and inappropriate but brain lapses where you lose the thought that you had where your mind goes blank and you have a train of thought crash and it's more common than people think. I've got a teenage kid who blames it on their current hormones and life changes. I've got an aging parent, grandparent, parent who's blaming it on growing old and being in their 80s and what that does to them.

Rich
06:44 - 07:15
I've got myself who's doing it and blames it on TBIs and the reality is It happens to all of us. It's a it's a human condition for the mind to go blank. It's a human fact. It's a it's a part of life to have a brain lapse have a momentary slip or absolutely pause and to judge oneself harshly for it or to get down on yourself.

Rich
07:16 - 07:32
the way I see myself do because of my brain injury, or I see my mother do because of her age. We should be careful to judge ourselves. Yeah, we should be careful.

Greg
07:32 - 07:43
It's a very valid point because it is normal for your mind to go blank. And yeah, like I said earlier, I think maybe it's my condition deteriorating. But it is normal, right? Don't get down on yourself.

Greg
07:43 - 07:50
It really does happen to everybody. Yeah, it's a very valid point. You know, I mentioned earlier, we're going to have a website, but we've already got one. I don't know what I was thinking of.

Greg
07:50 - 08:01
For a moment, I forgot. You know, we already have the website. We're going to use kindnessrx.org, which is another project that we're working on to bring kindness. and be more mindful about being kind.

Greg
08:01 - 08:17
So it's kindnessrx.org. You can find more information. I'll put a page on there about it. And of course there will be show notes that you can look at and I'll put some resources in the show notes each week as well.

Greg
08:18 - 08:20
Yeah, that's all I've got. Rich, any

Rich
08:20 - 08:30
closing thoughts? No, not really. I guess the one other thing that I had in my note was that you can leave and excuse yourself when your mind goes blank. Oh, I love that one.

Greg
08:30 - 08:32
Say that again. Say that again. That's golden.

Rich
08:33 - 08:53
The other thing that you can do is you can leave and excuse yourself when your mind goes blank. It's a easy way to excuse yourself from the awkwardness or the tension or the humiliation that you may feel in the moment is to just stand up and

Greg
08:53 - 09:13
excuse yourself and walk away. I just got to go to the you know the bathroom or something or I saw a movie and you know mind going blank I can't remember what the movie line was but it was some advice for if people and I think they were like they were like breaking into people's houses or whatever and said if someone doesn't recognize you the fifth

Rich
09:30 - 09:30
Right,

Greg
09:30 - 09:49
right. So on that note, I'll say thanks for joining us on the Supporting Kindness podcast. If this episode resonated with you or someone that you think might need it, you can connect with us and find more resources at kindnessstarrx.org. Until next time, take care of yourself.

Greg
09:49 - 09:53
And let's keep building a kinder world together. Remember, you're not alone...