What Do You Do When Your Mind Goes Blank?
Content advisory: This episode discusses brain injury, anxiety, seizures, and depression, and it may be distressing for some listeners.
Note: This episode shares personal reflections and is not a substitute for professional advice.
Short Lead / Introduction
The Support and Kindness Podcast with Greg and Rich launches with a brief, practical conversation about those sudden moments when your mind goes blank. Drawing on lived experience with brain injury, anxiety, seizures, and depression, the hosts share simple strategies to reorient, calm the nervous system, and move forward with self-compassion.
Hosts: Greg and Rich.
Why Minds Go Blank — and Why That’s Normal
Greg and Rich open by framing blank moments not as personal failures but as common human experiences.
Rich emphasizes perspective:
“It happens to us. It’s the human condition. Minds go blank.”
He notes this affects people across ages and conditions — teens, aging parents, and people with traumatic brain injuries alike — and urges listeners to avoid harsh self-judgment.
Greg echoes that reassurance:
“It really does happen to everybody,”
and reminds listeners that blank moments often stem from stress or overload, not necessarily deterioration of health.
Quick Ways to Reorient
Both hosts offer fast, practical steps to regain context when you freeze.
Ask orienting questions or others for help.
Rich recommends asking simple orienting questions and seeking a quick refresher from others:“The toughest thing to do but the most helpful thing to do is to just ask what's going on.”
Use self-orienting questions.
Greg suggests asking yourself:“What was I doing?”
“Where am I?”
Use tech-based refresh moves.
Greg also recommends using tech-based refresh moves — for example:tapping back 15 seconds in a video, or
checking browsing history —
to recover the thread:
> “Go back and get the context—what was I doing, and where was I?” (Greg).
Using Context Clues and Small Practical Moves
Rich describes relying on context clues — the subject matter of a conversation, what’s on the screen, or the paper in front of you — to piece the moment back together:
“I pick it up through the subject matter, the conversation around me or the program that I'm watching.”
Greg gives practical examples like checking recent tabs or notes and hitting the browser back button to retrace steps.
They also endorse simple social scripts to reduce awkwardness:
“It’s okay to use, ‘My mind went blank—can you catch me up?’” (Rich).
Grounding, Breathing, and Releasing Tension
To calm anxiety when a blank moment triggers panic, Greg guides a short sensory grounding exercise:
Breathe in through the nose.
Hold briefly.
Exhale slowly while imagining a safe place.
Engage all your senses in that safe place — sight, sound, touch, smell, taste — to re-anchor the body and mind.
Greg adds an important physiological observation:
“Sometimes anxiety makes us clamp down. Softening and breathing helps more than gripping tighter.”
He also advises noticing and relaxing clenched muscles rather than tightening them.
Permission to Pause — and Leave Gracefully
Both hosts validate taking a break when needed.
Rich suggests that leaving the room is a legitimate option to avoid humiliation or tension:
“You can leave and excuse yourself when your mind goes blank.”
Greg affirms that a brief pause — stepping away to reset — can be a simple, effective strategy to regain composure and context.
Key Takeaways
Minds go blank for many reasons; it’s common and not a personal failure.
Ask orienting questions:
“What’s going on?”
“Where am I?”
“What was I doing?”
Use context clues (screen, conversation, notes) or quick tech moves (15-second rewind, back button) to retrace your steps.
Use grounding breath and sensory visualization to calm anxiety and relax muscles.
Release the urge to “grip harder” when anxious — softening often helps more.
It’s okay to ask for a quick summary or to excuse yourself briefly to reset.
Compassion toward yourself is more helpful than harsh self-judgment.
Closing / Conclusion
This short episode reminds listeners that blank moments happen to everyone and that simple, compassionate strategies — asking for context, using cues, grounding breath, and giving yourself permission to pause — can help you recover. We invite Hive readers to share their experiences or tips in the comments and to support one another with kindness.
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Listen to the Podcast
Listen to the episode here:
https://podopshost.com/68bb1f4767d04/48431
#kindness, #CWH, #podcast, #mentalhealth, #anxiety, #depression, #braininjury, #tbi, #chronicillness, #neurodivergent
Edited with the help of GPT-5 and Image GPT-5, for which I hold a license.
Congratulations @gregscloud!
We invite you drop your Hive post on the day it's published into the # todays-posts channel in the "CWH for Hive" Discord server. 🎆
Nice... counselling with ChatGPT helped earlier... I had a period to recover from physical and mental exhausion, overload...this year. I did recover... I documented about it as well... long process ...(: ... anyway. Hopeful this helps people suffering emotional pain...
keeping hope is difficult in trauma situations... celebrating small achiements is important...as small as able to type, reflect, talk, rest, feel better... developing a routine.
I lost my routine... execise plus meditation. Affirmations help...it did... its important to condition your mind and prepare your brain as well... for tasks... planning...organizing. Letting ideas take shape... songs and music help.
Its very hard to take help actually, but the soul cries and screams...and there is for many people no safe place to express these things without shame, and feeling weak...so support groups help.
I have not faced brain injury, but I had a bleeding forehead...and wrote creative articles... after treatment... I cried for a month... and stopped to get into action mode. I had my dimensions of humorous self, my writing self... I made space for that inspite of severe work load and emotional distress... I still go through emotional distress, I did have brain fog... but I some how write articles still...
so I actually have small remedies... healing is hard... self awareness helps for people like me who can digest truth not many can but it helps...anyway...
here is my story of recovery then - https://ecency.com/hive-155221/@mintymile/from-struggle-to-survival-my ...that recovery meant getting my energy back and ability to write(: ...but full recovery from emotional distress is different.
Anyway sharing thoughts makes things lighter... I guess Loop distress has to be broken...through engaging activities but if distress is so acute that it prevents doing activity...lightening load helps... and counselling...I had with chatgpt then... give permission to rest, have peace and pause... let sunlight be a opputinity to bask inspite the trauma or pain. Anyway
its a good initiate to make others feel better... because you say they have value and they matter...and it gives them strenght to hope again... or try live a better life atleast.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I’m really glad that counselling chat helped you get some space to recover. ChatGPT can help with many things for sure! Celebrating tiny wins, being able to type, rest, or even smile really matters more than people think.
I love how you made room for your writing and humor even with injury, brain fog, and hard days and for sharing your heart, your determination and your blog post. Your honesty will mean a lot to others who feel alone. You’re right that routine, affirmations, music, and small habits can slowly bring things back. Music is so powerful in many ways.
I love music but have to be careful as sometimes it could also be a trigger. Asking for help is so hard, and support groups can make a big difference. That is why I started the peer support groups and also the podcast. We have recorded 13 episodes so far, this week will make 14, but I have only just started to post on Hive. This was my first post, episode number one.
I will share the others, one every 2 or 3 days until I am caught up. I do not want to post all at once!
If you want, I can share a few simple grounding exercises and tiny routines that have helped people in our groups. Either way, thank you, your story gives hope.
Greg
Hello!
What great ideas!
I think what you're sharing is fantastic. Thank you!
Sending you a big hug full of light!
I have some other recordings. This week, we will record episode 14. They are getting better every week and cover a variety of topics such as kindness, mental health, depression, anxiety, neurodivergence, ADHD, holiday stress, etc.
Each week will be something different but relevant. I will be posting one every two or three days until I am caught up, so that I’m not posting them all at once. I was unsure about sharing them as Hive posts at first.
Anyway, I wanted to give a better reply than the earlier one; I was just kind of busy the other day. I hope you have a great weekend, and thank you again for your encouragement, it is genuinely appreciated.
Many Thanks for your kind comments!