What Do I Do If I'm Experiencing Cognitive Challenges?

cognitive-challenges

Experiencing cognitive challenges can be overwhelming and frustrating. These challenges can impact daily life and overall well-being.

 

People can experience deficits in any cognitive skill, for example they may have impaired memory, attention, or executive function skills. These deficits can occur for a variety of reasons, and the best steps to take will depend on the cause and severity of the cognitive deficits. On this page, we’ll explore options to help you navigate this journey.

Are you experiencing cognitive deficits that severely impact your daily life?

Certain medical conditions can cause significant impairments to cognitive function. These conditions may include:

 

  • Brain injury
  • Stroke
  • Psychosis
  • Schizophrenia
  • Severe mental illness
  • Aging
  • Dementia
  • Alzheimer’s

 

Depending on how much trouble these cognitive challenges cause you, you may want to pursue cognitive therapy.

happyneuron exercises for remediation

Cognitive therapy can help you develop strategies to cope with cognitive challenges and potentially improve cognitive skills. This therapy involves working with a trained professional, who can provide cognitive exercise programs such as HappyNeuron Pro. Regular therapeutic intervention along including a cognitive exercise program may improve specific cognitive skills such as memory, attention, problem-solving, visual-spatial skills, and much more. 

 

If you are dealing with cognitive deficits that are impacting your daily life and aren’t sure what steps to take next, reach out to us. While we cannot provide cognitive therapy ourselves (we just make the software used in many cognitive therapy practices!), we can conduct a provider search to find clinicians near you who may be able to help.

Do you feel like you have a deficit, but it isn't severely impacting your daily life?

This can occur for a variety of reasons. Individuals with a minor deficit may have recovered from an injury or illness a long time ago and still feel some lingering cognitive effects. Or, you may have a learning disability, or simply not be particularly strong in a certain cognitive area. There is nothing wrong with this! However, if you would like to work on a cognitive skill that you want to strengthen, there are some options.

 

The issue may not be severe enough to require working with a clinician. However, there are some options you can try at home. While our tool HappyNeuron Pro requires a clinician to use, our worksheets do not! Anyone can use our worksheets, and in fact, you can subscribe to our Worksheets newsletter to get free worksheets in your inbox each month!  

 

You can also work on lifestyle factors that may help to improve cognition, such as eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep, and completing cognitively stimulating activities like crossword puzzles, reading, and socializing. Check out our blog to get tips on improving your cognitive health.

Do you want to improve your cognition, and you aren't experiencing any deficits?

Many people are interested in improving their cognitive skills, however they aren’t experiencing any significant deficits that impact their life. For cognitively healthy individuals who are not experiencing an impairment, but simply want to work on their cognitive skills, you can try our individual program, My HappyNeuron

 

Please note that this program is very challenging! It is not intended to be used by individuals who are experiencing a deficit.

 

It is very different from HappyNeuron Pro, the primary version of our program which is used by clinicians to help patients with deficits. My HappyNeuron is designed to be extremely challenging, intended only for individuals who are cognitively healthy and looking to rigorously exercise their cognition.

Quick summary

  • There are many reasons why someone may want to work on cognitive skills. Depending on the cause and severity of any deficits, there are different options one can take to work on cognitive skills.
  • If you have a severe impairment, pursuing cognitive therapy with a qualified clinician is likely needed.
  • If you are experiencing minor cognitive challenges that don’t severely affect your daily life, you may want to work on cognitive skills on your own through lifestyle changes, worksheets, and cognitively stimulating activities like crossword puzzles and reading.
  • If you aren’t experiencing an impairment and want to challenge your cognitive skills, highly challenging activities like My HappyNeuron or advanced games and puzzles may be just what you’re looking for.

 

If you aren’t sure which option is for you, reach out to our team for recommendations!

Interested in trying our digital tools?

Pulling from our decades of experience in Cognitive Therapeutics, we aim to help you enrich your practice through the use of digital and paper tools.