How Stress Impacts Your Memory and Focus

Key Takeaways

• Holiday chaos can impact your memory and focus for the short term and the long term.
• Physical alterations in your body caused by stress can affect your brain function and structure.
• Helpful strategies can reduce your stress and prevent the impact that stress has on cognition. 

The stress and chaos of holiday seasons can make it hard to remember things and concentrate. Sometimes that holiday stress can even contribute to long-term challenges with thinking, memory, and problem-solving. You can learn ways to calm the holiday pandemonium to reduce the impact of all that pressure on your focus and thinking. 

Holiday Stress Affects Memory

Holidays can cause stress due to expectations, calendars filled with events, overeating, more alcohol than usual, responsibilities, work schedules, expenses, and uncomfortable social and family interactions.

Stress can affect your cognitive skills, which include:

• Thinking 
• Concentrating 
• Staying focused 
• Memory 
• Planning 
• Problem-solving
• Doing calculations
• Understanding complex concepts

Long-term instability and emotional turmoil—often referred to as chronic stress—can have a lasting effect on cognition. Research also shows that short-term stress in an experimental setting, even without a strong emotional component, can have a harmful and sustained effect on cognitive skills.

How Stress Impacts Cognition

Stress triggers fluctuations in your:

• Hormones 
• Blood pressure
• Neurotransmitters (messenger chemicals between nerve cells)
• Inflammation 
• Digestive function
• Immunity

These stress-induced physical changes interfere with your cognition in many ways, causing fatigue, distraction, and irritability. And even after the pressure resolves, the impact can lead to lasting changes in your brain—potentially affecting your cognitive function in the long term.

How Long Does Cognitive Impairment From Stress Last?

Stress and impact on cognition include:

• Short-term stress causes immediate cognitive impairment
• Short-term stress causes lasting cognitive decline
• Chronic stress causes long-term cognitive decline 

Strategies for Managing Holiday Stress

The good news when it comes to holiday stress and its effect on your thinking skills is that there are proven ways to prevent and counteract the damage to your memory and cognition.

Here are some strategies you can use:

• Keep up healthy life habits: Get enough sleep, eat right, and stay active.
• Deep breathing: Deep breathing helps to regulate your blood pressure and hormones. Additionally, you can use deep breathing to focus on your body and feelings, which lowers feelings of anxiety.
• Planning ahead: If you have a lot to do during the holiday season, planning your tasks in advance can help you prioritize and get things done. You might even decide that some tasks are just not important or doable for you—and take them off your list.
• Time blocking: Multitasking can be distracting and inefficient. Time blocking is the opposite- you can focus on similar tasks for a specified time without constantly stopping to manage unnecessary interruptions—like emails, laundry, etc.

These techniques can also prevent you from becoming stressed out about holiday challenges in the first place.

Use Positive Thinking

Ruminating can affect your stress level before, during, and after an event. Positive thinking is the opposite.

This isn’t the same as being in denial. Working more shifts than you want to during the holidays or getting together with a family member who criticizes you can cause anxiety, and it’s not good to ignore reality or to deny your feelings.

But if you identify the stress and its actual consequences in your life, you can reduce negative feelings and their impact on your brain.

This leaves room for the happy memories about previous holidays. It can help you picture the new memories you want to make in the current holiday season, whether it’s:

• Selecting gifts
• Picking outfits for photos
• Quiet time alone with a cup of cocoa
• Spending time with others
• Enjoying decorations in your neighborhood
• Watching a movie

Thinking about these pleasant past, present, and future experiences can help lower your stress. 

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

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By Heidi Moawad, MD

Heidi Moawad is a neurologist and expert in the field of brain health and neurological disorders. Dr. Moawad regularly writes and edits health and career content for medical books and publications.  

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