About 35 years ago I was talking to a friend of mine who had done two tours of duty in Vietnam. He said to me that I had been through a war on account of my brain injury. I was blown away, hearing it from him. I listened, and trusted what he said, knowing he had first hand experience with a brain injury, having been injured in combat.
He was right. This is a war, in a sense, and it’s being fought nearly every minute of every day. This is a war for our lives; a war to recapture our pride and then our independence.
We are out there every day fighting the battle so we can be successful, feel good about ourselves, and so that we can be proud of ourselves and feel independent. Although some of us may be able to perform the daily tasks that allow us to live independently, we don’t always feel independent because we lose the ability to function as a self-reliant human being in society.
We lose the pride and the self confidence we need to enable us able to function in our daily lives, and this hampers our drive to feel independent. Even the subtle, and what others might call “minor”, effects of a brain injury can take away our ability to be self-reliant by affecting our judgment, the way we act and react in situations, and how we manage ourselves.
The end result is: although we may be able to live independently, we are not fully independent.
We lose abilities and skills that contribute to not being able to live our lives the way we did before our brain injury, and that makes it hard to feel pride in what we do or who we are. We have seen that, quite often, even when a survivor is able to live on their own and perform the day to day functions they need to survive, we often feel a tremendous loss because we don’t feel good enough about ourselves, or confident enough to consider ourselves a truly “independent”, functioning human.
How we approach our lives after brain injury goes a long way in determining whether or not we regain our personal pride and feelings of being independent. Although we suffer real losses that can be very difficult to adjust to and live with, it is not the losses themselves, but how we choose to relate to our losses that determines how we feel about ourselves, the quality of our lives.
The first step to being independent is to feel pride in who we are, and we can start to do this and begin to take more control of our life by preparing for the battle we find ourselves in. We must sharpen our sword. We have to put on armor. We have to prepare, both mentally and physically, for a long, all encompassing siege.
When I was in the rehabilitation hospital, and my physical therapist was holding my belt loop as I staggered down the hall in front of her, doing my best at walking, she asked me, “Aren’t you amazed at what you can do?”
I answered stubbornly, “No. I’m amazed at what I can’t do.”
Was that pride? I’m not sure. These were fighting words from me, and at the time they showed my ego was involved and it was pushing me to get better, which was a good thing. In the long run, however, focusing on the losses, on the negative, and on the things that take away our independence is not the best thing, and sidetracks us from focusing on what needs to be done and what can be done.
However, my words were the start of something. I needed to build a foundation of accomplishing and feeling good about myself, and then continue on that path so I grew to value what I was, and what I was able to do. Taking control of my TBI involves how I accept it, how I act towards it, and what role in my life I allow it to play; all the while not looking at it in terms of “what it has done to me”.
We all have constraints, both mental and physical, we have to live within, but we can still strive to have pride in what we are. Perhaps we can use the power of our minds to keep pushing forward as we try to break barriers: the first step to improving our life is simply by appreciating ourselves for what we are so that we feel pride, and by not dwelling on the losses we suffered due to our brain injury. I know we have that power, and I challenge you to feel pride in who you are now, and take control so that you can feel truly independent.
Thanks for reading.
Jeff
It was really hard for me to read this entire post-ive had several concussions throughout my life, but things have been a lot different since i got a 9″ iron skillet thrown in my face-it fractured my skull and took a plastic surgeon to put my nose back on. That was 10 years ago, but im still different -i have gone to the doctor but i think that the anxiety and the getting things backwards and my lack of patience has been misdiagnosed as psychological ailments and not a physical result of tbi. Im at a loss as to how to change that-i know myself, and i know my body, and its hard to explain how im different. Any help on this would be great, as it is a big confidence killer! Thank you, Caroline
Caroline,
Thanks for reading. You’re right, it’s very hard to explain to others what’s going on with us. There are a variety of reasons we want other people to know what’s going on. If you really take a hard look at what the situation is though, it may not be necessary except for the fact that we just want other people to know. The way I dealt with that was by first asking myself if the other person really needed to know. This didn’t solve the problem you are talking about, but it made it something that I dealt with less often, while also giving me a new perspective.
Jeff
thank you for sharing this. I am 2 yrs post head on collision at 65 mph. While I have healed physically, my emotions started going haywire a couple of months ago and have continuously increased to days at a time. I sit on the fence between wanting to rip someone’s head off and curling up in bed crying my eyes out.
I once managed a staff of 5 and 100 volunteers. I feel I am of absolutely no use to anyone. Fatigued all the time and no motivation. Doc is adding a new med – seroquel. I sure hope it works.
I’m encouraged to know I’m not the only who feels like this. Thanks again for sharing this.
I will be 30 years post TBI come November 9th. I found that with the care I was getting by a psychiatrist here in the mid-west, he had me on too many percription medications. I found that as I stopped taking these, the reactions I was having was from the medication not my TBI. My husband noticed that I was getting worse instead of better. He went with me to my nest appointment and we asked if there would be any side effects if I stopped taking the pills. He said ‘no’ but that ‘if I stopped I would be needing him to prescribe me more’. So we left that day I haven’t needed to see him again nor have I had any psychological problems since. When I did go a month later to see DR. my husband told him that he had the woman he married back, not a woman who was on pills and couldn’t function daily chores.
Now, I am not saying this is for everyone, but it worked for me. I’m glad that my husband went with me to that Doctor.
I used to self injure, and I kept it a secret for a number of years, so none of my docs knew to think brain injury. The first thought adhd and asd; the second thought I was schizophrenic. My life has been like a particularly stupid fan fiction ever since a certain point.