The guide / Part 12

Stress and memory: why you forget more when you are anxious

By The Prolongeva Editorial Team Written from the published research cited in each article Updated October 2026

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You walk into a room and forget why. You reread the same email three times. You lose a name you have known for years, right when you are most anxious about getting it wrong. If you are in your late 40s or 50s and under pressure, it is natural to wonder whether stress is the cause, or a sign of something else.

How can stress make you forget things?

The NHS lists "difficulty concentrating" and "being forgetful" among the mental symptoms of stress, and lists difficulty concentrating among the symptoms of anxiety. So the link is not an invention of the internet. It is a recognised everyday pattern.

In our reading, the simplest explanation is attention. A mind running a worry loop has less room for the thing in front of it. If a name, a plan or a place never gets properly noticed, it cannot be recalled later. That can feel exactly like forgetting.

This is our interpretation, not a measured fact about you. Researchers also study biological routes, which we cover below, and they are less settled.

What does the research actually show?

Two kinds of evidence are worth separating: experiments on acute stress, and studies of stress hormones in people.

Working memory is the mental scratchpad you use to hold a phone number or a train of thought. That is different from the long-term memory that stores your wedding day, and the review is mostly about the first.

In our reading, this fits a possible link but does not show that stress damaged anyone's memory. Cortisol is a stress-related hormone, not a direct measure of how stressed someone feels.

Does long-term stress raise dementia risk?

The evidence is mixed, and this is the part where headlines tend to overreach. Three studies show why.

• Anxiety. A meta-analysis of six prospective cohorts with 10,394 participants found a pooled relative risk of 1.29 for dementia (95% CI 1.01–1.66). The authors say more research is needed to learn whether anxiety is a cause or an early marker (Santabarbara et al., Maturitas, 2019).
• Diagnosed chronic stress. A Stockholm register study of 1,362,548 people aged 18–65 defined chronic stress as a diagnosis of stress-induced exhaustion disorder, a condition caused by more than six months of intensive stress without enough recovery. It reported higher odds of later Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment, higher still alongside depression. The authors note it cannot tell whether symptoms were an early sign of dementia rather than an independent risk (Wallensten et al., Alzheimer's Research & Therapy, 2023).
• Mid-life distress. A pooled analysis of five UK cohorts (24,564 people) found psychological distress at ages 65–75 and 55–64 was associated with dementia, but distress at ages 45–54 was not (Stafford et al., Alzheimer's & Dementia, 2026). It also found no association with the rate of later cognitive change.

In our reading, these studies describe groups, not you. A stressful year does not mean you are on a path to dementia, and we found no study that says it does.

Is it stress, or something else?

We cannot tell you from an article. In our reading, these are common but not diagnostic clues that a doctor may weigh up:

• It is worse in busy or anxious periods and eases when things calm down.
• It comes with other stress symptoms such as tension, poor sleep or racing thoughts.
• It is mostly lapses of attention, such as missing what was said, rather than facts or routines disappearing.

Signs worth raising with a clinician whatever the cause: getting lost in familiar places, repeating the same questions, trouble with tasks you have always done, or changes other people notice. Sleep, mood, medicines and other health problems can also affect memory. See sleep and memory and brain fog in your 40s and 50s, and for the wider picture, normal aging vs. early dementia.

What do people try?

The NHS says to see a GP if you are struggling to cope with stress and the self-help strategies you are trying are not working. NIMH says that if your symptoms will not go away, it may be time to talk to a professional, and lists signs such as symptoms that interfere with everyday life, cause you to avoid doing things, or seem to be always present.

Beyond that, these are common suggestions. We found no strong evidence that any of them improves memory specifically, and we cannot promise they will work for you:

• Write things down when you are under pressure, so your memory is not carrying everything.
• Do one thing at a time when you need to remember it, such as a name or where you put the keys.
• Talk to someone, whether a friend or a clinician, about what is driving the worry.
• Look at the basics such as sleep and daily habits. See 7 daily habits that protect your memory.

When should you see a doctor?

Book an appointment if forgetfulness is new and clearly different from your usual self, is getting worse, or is worrying you or the people close to you. Also go if stress or anxiety is hard to cope with, because those are worth treating in their own right, whatever they do to memory.

A clinician can look at mood, sleep, medicines and other causes together. If you are in immediate distress or thinking about hurting yourself, in the US you can call or text 988, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, which its website says is available 24/7 and is free and confidential.

This article is general information, not medical advice, and cannot diagnose anything. Only a qualified clinician who knows your history can assess memory changes, stress or anxiety. If you are worried, please book an appointment. If you are in crisis in the US, call or text 988.