****************Scene 24 - My Sister’s Story*********************
You may have noticed, that I haven’t spoken much about my sister -
At the start of the story, I dropped her off at school and then…
well, she hasn’t been hardly mentioned
Now she was a large part of my recovery, and involved in the process,
but,
her story is just so different, it doesn’t easily fit into the frame of my story that we’ve been using,
but I want to highlight her story here,
because my sister tells the story of a girl -
- a young woman -
who witnessed her brother’s accident and rehabilitation.
Witnessed.
I was half way through my eighth grade year,
he - my brother - had just dropped me off at school,
when it happened.
And I witnessed the whirlwind of action and drama surrounding the accident.
Witnessed how hard both my parents worked - I hardly saw either of them for two months.
And I witnessed the explosion of joy with my brother’s return
from the hospital.
He was coming Home from the hospital, that must mean that he’s better, right?
maybe now things could return to normal,
Maybe even a better normal.
And I witnessed the return.
Inconsistency of his moods -
anger.
I remember getting into fights,
being afraid I was going to be hit…
The hand would raise,
pause,
and I witnessed the struggle between rage and reason.
You could see it on his face -
And he did hit me,
once,
not hard, but it hurt.
and I wanted to help -
to be part of the recovery process.
I wanted to bring my brother back.
because That, was not my bother,
but I never knew what I could do,
what my job could be,
I felt I was always just getting in the way
Until, one day, it was a Saturday afternoon, and I heard my brother and my father fighting downstairs.
and it was loud, so I stayed upstairs,
but after the fight was over -
the screaming had stopped -
I went down,
and I saw my father,
curled up, on the red couch, like…
Crying.
And my father saw me, pulled himself together, carried on…
and that’s when I knew my job.
I had to be strong.
I had to be, Independent.
I had to Stay out of the way so that my parents could take care of my…older…brother.
It didn’t make sense, but I knew what I had to do.
And my sister took on that job.
Displaying maturity beyond her years.
Finding solace in her friends, her community.
Remaining True to Who She Is,
and becoming an inspiration for her older brother.
************************Commentary*************************
My sister and I do not have the closest of relationships. That’s not to say we’re absent from each other’s lives, just distant.
In the scene above my sister expresses how she felt about her role in my recovery — that she had to “stay out of the way so that my parents could take care of my older brother.”
When my sister first shared this sentiment with me almost a decade ago — as the storytelling piece was being composed — I heard her words as inspirational. As I narrated the story, I felt that this moment showed my sister taking on remarkable dignity and responsibility. But now, as I take the time to reexamine these moments with a matured scrutiny, I recognize deeper layers of emotion tied into my sister’s words — not to diminish her aforementioned dignity and responsibility, I now see that with her recognition of a need for independence, she also needed to get distance from me. She was seeking to be independent not only to relieve our parents, but — and perhaps more importantly — to give herself the space for personal growth and youthful enjoyment. For years I have viewed her claiming a need to be independent as her attempt to assist in my recovery, and it’s only now that I recognize her actions may have been personal sanity and safety.
I will acknowledge that these thoughts are mine — I attempted to contact my sister multiple times, but she has not responded — I believe she has been too busy, as she is a new mother.
Also, as stated above, my sister and I are not close — though sometimes I wish that we were — or at least closer — that we could keep regular contact — and when I softly mourn not having this connection, I tend to select the time period during my early recovery as the reason why we are not closer. This reasoning presents itself as a mishmash…me piecing together an argument…digging into the logic of events …citing created causes for our relationship beginning to dissolve following my accident — and I tumble down a rabbit hole of self-blame and pity, placing the initial blame for the loss of our relationship on my accident. It’s an argument along the lines of — my sister had trouble understanding and adapting to my new mental state while I had difficulties with emotional control, and thus a rift began to develop between us. This rift grew over time and is now what often feels to be a canyon.
When I began trying to write this article, this was the habit of my thought process — and as I began to reexamin the scene, my mind circled like a vulture around the idea that the accident was the cause — seeking to snarf up any scraps that confirmed my hypothesis. Dozens of hours were spent creating cause and effect charts, beginning drafts that outlined the relationship’s decline, yet my writing did not feel honest. Words and emotional confessions were forced onto an outline that supported what I had convinced myself to believe, and these words rang hollow — and so I begin again — back to sketching outlines in notebooks — back to not finding the honesty I hope to share in these writings…And damn me if it wasn’t frustrating!
And then an epiphany — my accident is part of my life.
To adjust the emphasis of that epiphany, my accident is Part of my life.
Part Of
Life is a jigsaw, and my accident — along with the attached recovery — is but a section of the puzzle — to grant one segment too much importance is to not see the entirety of the picture. Perhaps the distance in the relationship between my sister and I grew with my emotional instability following the accident — perhaps my sister’s fear for self-preservation created a fissure that has not yet fully healed — perhaps it is even likely that the abundant snags in the recovery process marred our relationship — but the accident cannot be the entirety of our story. As I realized the truth held in the words “part of”, I found a release — to grant the accident as the thing that caused a distance between us is to grant an undeserved power to that accident — to events that have passed. Furthermore, granting this power to the accident presents the consequences of the changes that came from the accident as finite — and this is simply not true.
My accident happened — that is a truth — and to some degree the effects will resonate within my brain and body for all my life — but that does not mean I must accept difficulties that come from these effects as “consequences of my accident”. Instead, I must recognize what limitations these effects may have created, and — if I choose — work within my current abilities to alleviate the consequences of such effects.
Notice what I’m doing — separating “effects” from “consequences”. “Effects”, as termed here, are the physical changes to one’s body and brain that come after a traumatic event. While modern medicine is consistently finding new ways to heal the body, some physical “effects” from injuries are not yet able to be fully remedied. These effects, however, are not “consequences”. I hold that “consequences” are how we allow the effects to affect us.
To explain with a hypothetical, Sandra broke her spine and lost the use of her legs — that is a tragic effect of the accident — and due to her impaired ability to walk, Sandra has not left her house for the past three years — this is a consequence that Sandra allowed the accident. Granted, without the use of her legs traversing the world is now much more complicated, but with technological and/or human assistance, remaining stationary is in no way necessary. For her to claim, “I cannot leave the house because of my trauma,” is false. It can be viewed as a consequence of the injury, but that consequence is a choice.
The emotional instability was an effect of my accident, and it may have encouraged a distance between my sister and I. As the years passed — with this distance unaddressed — we may have continued to drift apart — not maliciously, but ignorantly — and this is a consequence.
Working on this entry helped me to realize how easy it is to become hyper-focused on a traumatic incident as THE creator of consequences — it is the creator only if we allow it to be so. To blame negative consequences on the effects of a trauma is a choice, but to embrace life and direct it toward healthy goals is also a choice.
My sister and I don’t have don’t have the closest of relationships — now — but there is the possibility of change. The consequences of the future will come from the choices we make.
Please note, the scenes appear in reverse order and may cause confusion. To get a clearer understanding of the story, please start with the early entries in the blog. Thanks - enjoy.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Does Brain Injury Change Personality?
Brain injury causes changes in personality.
Big claim - but it seems to be generally agreed upon by much of the post-TBI rehabilitation community. In relatively recent articles for this blog, I have alluded to changes of this sort in my own recovery - and while discussing these articles with my girlfriend, she asked me, “But what does it mean - to change personality? What you’re talking about doesn’t sound like a change in personality as much as a…a…an intensified personality. Is this really a change?”
Well this question surprised me - and I tried to splutter out a response about my research over the past several weeks/months and how this has led me to the belief that personality changes after TBI are accepted… but I found that none of the words that fell out of my mouth fully satisfied her — or me. And so, for this entry I have decided to relook at what I understand such a big claim to mean.
What does it mean to “change personality” after brain injury?
To quickly review some of what we’ve discussed in the above mentioned articles - when brain injury occurs, one relatively common effect is that a survivor will have his or her “emotional control center” of the brain damaged - and as a result, the survivor has difficulty regulating which, how, and to what extent emotions are expressed.
In the article “Can a Brain Injury Change Who You Are” - posted at www.theconversation.com - Dr. Leanne Rowlands shares three examples - two historical and one relatively contemporary - of personality changes related to brain injury - the stories of Phineas Gage in 1848, Eadweard Muybridge in 1860, and finally the more contemporary story of a school teacher (name not given) in 2000. In all three of these of these cases, the person who received the injury is said to have developed previously unknown personality traits — Phineas Gage developed powerful aggression, Eadweard Muybridge developed emotional instability, and the school teacher developed a tendency toward sexually assertive pedophilia. Thus, as Rowlands argues, this demonstrates the relation of the brain to personality - particularly the prefrontal cortex region of the brain — this being the area all three of these individuals received brain damage. Please note, I cite this article because it clearly states a historical recognition of such changes, but comparable examples are discussed in much of what I read - search “personality changes after brain injury” on the internet.
It is also important to recognize that a survivor is going through a major traumatic experience, and as a part of this experience he or she must learn to apply a new set of mental and physical skills - those available post-trauma - to the life that the survivor previously understood. Let’s be honest - this is a level of stress most people cannot realistically comprehend. Even I - after having experienced this as a survivor of TBI - I have difficulty recalling the magnitude of this stress level. I remember and acknowledge that it happened, that it was… painful, confounding, debilitating… but I recognize that — for the self preservation of my personal sanity — my mind has muted much of the true pain and frustration that resides within these memories.
This sort of stress, coupled with the damage to the “emotional regulation centers”, causes a survivor to react to situations in a new way. He or she may develop a fast and/or unpredictable temper, become sexually withdrawn or hyper aggressive, find the creation of new memories difficult, lose an ability or desire to stay focused tasks…the list can continue, but I think its important to recognize that the majority of these changes tend to be viewed as negative. Changes in personality that are viewed as positive after brain injury —while not unheard of — are rare.
So let’s look at the claim we started with again - “Brain injury causes changes in personality.” I suggest these are not really changes, but simply tendencies that had been perviously constrained by an adherence to societal standards that are now splorging1 out in unacceptable displays. Furthermore, I propose that when a colleague, friend, or family member says that brain injury causes a “personality change”, the truth behind that statement is — brain injury makes it harder to enjoy interacting with the survivor and we don’t understand why. It’s not that brain injury changes one’s personality - it’s that the unfiltered behavioral impulses of nearly anyone are not easily enjoyable or socially acceptable, and because of the psychological and physical situation — the stress of rehabilitation combined with damage to the frontal lobe region of the brain — a survivor is more likely to act upon impulses and create uncomfortable social situations. This does not mean a survivor has a different or new personality, but that the survivor is re-learning how to regulate impulses and interact with the world.
That’s my big claim, so I’ll repeat it - a person does not get a new personality because of brain injury.
Furthermore, survivors, supports, and caregivers should not attempt to write off social follies or abrasive behavior as part of a personality change, but must accept that a brain injury survivor is in the process of reestablishing his or her self-regulation process. Granted, this is difficult for all parties involved, and will undoubtably involve having to navigate embarrassing public social situations, but re-learning social control as part of the healing process needs to be recognized and respected - a person who has lost his or her legs should not be chided for needing to learn new ways to move by him or herself, nor should a brain injury survivor be shunned for needing to discover new methods for controlling impulses and moderating actions.
To look at why recognition of this part of the healing process is so important — the separate things of “personality” and “personhood” are — at least in English, Russian, Croatian, French, German and several other languages (still need to research Asian languages) semantically linked (linked through language) — and because of this, it is easy to equate a change in personality to a change in person-ness — especially for a survivor working on establishing his or her way of living with new skills. Therefore, stating that there has been a “personality change” invites identity confusion for a survivor, raising questions about a consistency in one’s self-personality. As stated by survivor Mac Fedge in an interview with NBC news, “It feels like part of me has disappeared since the accident and trying to get that aspect of me back and that’s probably one of the toughest aspects of the recovery…”.
The linking of “personality” with “person-hood” may be a side effect of language — but regardless, questions of self-identity do exist after brain injury. Recalling from my experience, these sort questions are damningly hard. The title of my storytelling work is the question Who Am I, Again? — and I named it this because I found variations of this question dominating many of my thoughts during the early years of my recovery —
Am I the same person?
Was I reborn?
Can I have any of the same hopes or dreams as before?
Is the person I was before my injury no more?
After brain injury, questions such as this will likely already exist within a survivor — and many of these are questions that cannot be answered — to encourage further impossible questioning of this sort by claiming one’s personality has changed is at best unproductive and — perhaps more likely — can quickly lead to dangerous thought patterns.
But for now, returning to the statement that began this entry - “Brain injury causes changes in personality” - I have examined this claim, and I cannot agree with it. This disagreement is a conclusion I reached as part of writing this entry — I played and pondered with the research and reasoning, and now feel that to claim a personality change is - in the majority of cases - more accurately a way to explain away the social discomfort that often exists around a survivor. The expression of one’s personality may have changed — and this may make it more difficult be socially engaged with such a survivor — but the personality is constant.
In my performance, I bookend the storytelling by stating “I am Lethan.” After brain injury, a survivor - though learning to adapt to a new set of skills - is the same person. You are You - and that includes all the personality that comes with You.
***************************************************************************
Footnote - 1 Yes, this is a made-up word, but I believe it best depicts the action I want to describe. Definition of “Splorging” — verb. — the sound and motion of a gelatin substance when it is squeezed by a person’s hand and it escapes compression by seeping through said person’s fingers.
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Types of Relationships after TBI
This article will continue with the idea of a person having multiple “circles of friends” as presented in the previous posting.
In the previous article, I suggested five categories into which relationships can be divided. Again, this is NOT intended as any sort of definitive list, but as a tool to help generalize relationships into a recognizable manner that is easer to discuss.
These five categories are:
Immediate Family
Close Friendships
Casual Friendships
Acquaintances
Strangers
First, I must eliminate the final two categories as unimportant for this article. These are - 4) Acquaintances and 5) Strangers - and are people who were not strongly affected by my accident. Living in a small town, some people I would group into these categories may have been aware of pieces of the drama, but it had no recognizable impact upon their lives - we will not discuss these categories for this entry. Also, in the last posting I spent a long time explaining how my relationship with “close friends” was affected after my accident, so in the first we will not focus on the specifics of this of sort of relationship except as a point of comparison.
That leaves two other relationship types - 1) Immediate Family and 3) Casual Friendships - this article looks at how these relationships differ from relationships of 2) Close Friendships and then goes on to suggest that these Close Friendships are the relationships most affected by brain injury and why this is so.
Let’s start by looking at category 1) Immediate Family. This was the group with which I was most involved on a daily basis - specifically, my parents and my sister. I am fortunate to have a loving, supportive, proactive family that has always made a conscious effort to provide the support and guidance I need - in all aspects of life as well as the time of my accident - yet the extremities of emotion that grew from my recovery made even these relationships tense. My parents, however, took on the responsibility of continuing to find ways to work with me through the hardships. This was due, in part, to the living situation. Please note, I recognize that my parents went far beyond providing any minimal support in my recovery, and I am deeply grateful for their dedication to helping me heal, but that said - the close quarters and immediacy of the living situation encouraged my parents to be active in my recovery - it is a lot harder to exclude someone from social interaction when he lives under your roof. My sister is a slightly different story - and I will present more of her story in an upcoming posting - but she also, in part due to the living conditions, was forced to deal with me on a near daily basis.
With this living situation as the setting, combined with a commitment to helping me heal, my “immediate family” took a direct role in my recovery - actively seeking therapies, adjusting schedules to make time for doctor’s appointments, confronting my anger and helping find new ways to express frustration. While close friends could step away from the “Lethan drama” of the moment, my family had to find a way to adapt life to the needs at the time.
Not to diminish the extensive extra work my parents - and my sister - did as part of my recovery process, but they were encouraged by social responsibility and societal expectations to take up the mantel of assisting in my recovery. My close friends, however, did not have the same set of social and familial pressures.
Now, to category 3) Casual friendships. These are people that I have a friendly relationship with, but we do not often go out of our way to interact - friends I pass in school, people involved in similar activities (sports, chorus, theatre, etc…), friends of the family I know through my parents. These are people who casually care about me and my family, but usually make no attempt to be involved in our family affairs.
I make it a point to highlight this group of friendships because - at the time of my early recovery - many people from this category quickly became more active in the lives of my family and sought ways to support the recovery process - yet I separate them from the category of “Close Friends” because they were not involved in day to day interactions that caused them to witness the process of my recovery - news of my progress would get out and these “Casual Friendships” could be appropriately happy or sad while - for the large part - remaining unaffected by and/or unaware of the emotional confusion I demonstrated with closer relationships.
To quickly summarize the parameters of social interaction for these categories - Immediate Family relationships were required to deal with me because of the living situation, while Casual Friendships - being further removed from daily interaction - were not often affected by the social confusion that grew as part of my recovery. That leaves Close Friendships stuck between the other two in a strange social neither-zone - the changes and social difficulties that come as a part of recovery are apparent and DO affect the lives of these close friends, but by most standards they are not socially obligated to deal with this uncomfortable behavior. It can leave these friends saying uncomfortable phrases, such as - “I mean, yeah, he’s a friend, but he’s acting really weird now, let’s…I guess…not invite him.” Close friends want to help, but they also have to worry about their own lives.
Dr. Mariann Young speaks very clearly about this on the “Brainline” YouTube channel - How to Deal with Friends Falling Away After a Brain Injury. In this video, she suggests that it is important to educate friends about the changes that will likely occur as the brain injury survivor is returning to the community - it is important to recognize that the survivor has changed and there will be a new set of challenges - Dr. Young doesn’t use the word “storytelling” - as I suggested in the previous entry - but I believe the intent is the same. By hearing stories of recovery from survivors and caregivers, healing supporters who are new the experience can be better educated and more fully psychologically prepare for any changes that occur in the survivor.
Retaining former friendships after brain injury is not an easy task. It requires commitment by both the survivor and the friends - I will even suggest that “Close Friendships” are the hardest relationships to retain after an injury because they exist in that strange in the in-between-neither-zone described above, and there’s the rub. Pulling from my experience, I remember trying to hold onto these friendships as one of the most important things after my accident - and therefore, as some of these friendships drifted away, these became some of the most difficult loses. Recognize, this is MY experience, and I do not claim to speak for other survivors, but these friendships came to represent - in a very personal manner - the progress of my recovery - a fantasy scale that measured how well I was doing. I felt that if I could retain these close friendships - or forge a new, similarly close group of friends - that would prove that I had recovered successfully and was still the same person - that some core social aspect of me remained constant. Was this just me? Do other survivors place the same sense of the importance in former friends?
Friendships come and go, yet the sudden nature of brain trauma clearly highlights this inevitable change - and so, this is another example of the difficult job a survivor has of acknowledging the pains of change in all its slow and sudden forms.
Having shared those thoughts, I’m eager to read your ideas. The reaction of close friends after brain injury is a topic I’m interested in, and I would love any leads to readings about this. So far, most of what I have found discusses the survivor’s perspective of losing friends and how to accept and prepare for these changes - understanding the survivors story is important, but I’m curious to find any information from the perspective of the friends - why do they feel the urge to pull away from a survivor? How do friends see their role during a survivor’s recovery process? Any leads you can pass my way will be greatly appreciated.
Chat soon.
In the previous article, I suggested five categories into which relationships can be divided. Again, this is NOT intended as any sort of definitive list, but as a tool to help generalize relationships into a recognizable manner that is easer to discuss.
These five categories are:
Immediate Family
Close Friendships
Casual Friendships
Acquaintances
Strangers
First, I must eliminate the final two categories as unimportant for this article. These are - 4) Acquaintances and 5) Strangers - and are people who were not strongly affected by my accident. Living in a small town, some people I would group into these categories may have been aware of pieces of the drama, but it had no recognizable impact upon their lives - we will not discuss these categories for this entry. Also, in the last posting I spent a long time explaining how my relationship with “close friends” was affected after my accident, so in the first we will not focus on the specifics of this of sort of relationship except as a point of comparison.
That leaves two other relationship types - 1) Immediate Family and 3) Casual Friendships - this article looks at how these relationships differ from relationships of 2) Close Friendships and then goes on to suggest that these Close Friendships are the relationships most affected by brain injury and why this is so.
Let’s start by looking at category 1) Immediate Family. This was the group with which I was most involved on a daily basis - specifically, my parents and my sister. I am fortunate to have a loving, supportive, proactive family that has always made a conscious effort to provide the support and guidance I need - in all aspects of life as well as the time of my accident - yet the extremities of emotion that grew from my recovery made even these relationships tense. My parents, however, took on the responsibility of continuing to find ways to work with me through the hardships. This was due, in part, to the living situation. Please note, I recognize that my parents went far beyond providing any minimal support in my recovery, and I am deeply grateful for their dedication to helping me heal, but that said - the close quarters and immediacy of the living situation encouraged my parents to be active in my recovery - it is a lot harder to exclude someone from social interaction when he lives under your roof. My sister is a slightly different story - and I will present more of her story in an upcoming posting - but she also, in part due to the living conditions, was forced to deal with me on a near daily basis.
With this living situation as the setting, combined with a commitment to helping me heal, my “immediate family” took a direct role in my recovery - actively seeking therapies, adjusting schedules to make time for doctor’s appointments, confronting my anger and helping find new ways to express frustration. While close friends could step away from the “Lethan drama” of the moment, my family had to find a way to adapt life to the needs at the time.
Not to diminish the extensive extra work my parents - and my sister - did as part of my recovery process, but they were encouraged by social responsibility and societal expectations to take up the mantel of assisting in my recovery. My close friends, however, did not have the same set of social and familial pressures.
Now, to category 3) Casual friendships. These are people that I have a friendly relationship with, but we do not often go out of our way to interact - friends I pass in school, people involved in similar activities (sports, chorus, theatre, etc…), friends of the family I know through my parents. These are people who casually care about me and my family, but usually make no attempt to be involved in our family affairs.
I make it a point to highlight this group of friendships because - at the time of my early recovery - many people from this category quickly became more active in the lives of my family and sought ways to support the recovery process - yet I separate them from the category of “Close Friends” because they were not involved in day to day interactions that caused them to witness the process of my recovery - news of my progress would get out and these “Casual Friendships” could be appropriately happy or sad while - for the large part - remaining unaffected by and/or unaware of the emotional confusion I demonstrated with closer relationships.
To quickly summarize the parameters of social interaction for these categories - Immediate Family relationships were required to deal with me because of the living situation, while Casual Friendships - being further removed from daily interaction - were not often affected by the social confusion that grew as part of my recovery. That leaves Close Friendships stuck between the other two in a strange social neither-zone - the changes and social difficulties that come as a part of recovery are apparent and DO affect the lives of these close friends, but by most standards they are not socially obligated to deal with this uncomfortable behavior. It can leave these friends saying uncomfortable phrases, such as - “I mean, yeah, he’s a friend, but he’s acting really weird now, let’s…I guess…not invite him.” Close friends want to help, but they also have to worry about their own lives.
Dr. Mariann Young speaks very clearly about this on the “Brainline” YouTube channel - How to Deal with Friends Falling Away After a Brain Injury. In this video, she suggests that it is important to educate friends about the changes that will likely occur as the brain injury survivor is returning to the community - it is important to recognize that the survivor has changed and there will be a new set of challenges - Dr. Young doesn’t use the word “storytelling” - as I suggested in the previous entry - but I believe the intent is the same. By hearing stories of recovery from survivors and caregivers, healing supporters who are new the experience can be better educated and more fully psychologically prepare for any changes that occur in the survivor.
Retaining former friendships after brain injury is not an easy task. It requires commitment by both the survivor and the friends - I will even suggest that “Close Friendships” are the hardest relationships to retain after an injury because they exist in that strange in the in-between-neither-zone described above, and there’s the rub. Pulling from my experience, I remember trying to hold onto these friendships as one of the most important things after my accident - and therefore, as some of these friendships drifted away, these became some of the most difficult loses. Recognize, this is MY experience, and I do not claim to speak for other survivors, but these friendships came to represent - in a very personal manner - the progress of my recovery - a fantasy scale that measured how well I was doing. I felt that if I could retain these close friendships - or forge a new, similarly close group of friends - that would prove that I had recovered successfully and was still the same person - that some core social aspect of me remained constant. Was this just me? Do other survivors place the same sense of the importance in former friends?
Friendships come and go, yet the sudden nature of brain trauma clearly highlights this inevitable change - and so, this is another example of the difficult job a survivor has of acknowledging the pains of change in all its slow and sudden forms.
Having shared those thoughts, I’m eager to read your ideas. The reaction of close friends after brain injury is a topic I’m interested in, and I would love any leads to readings about this. So far, most of what I have found discusses the survivor’s perspective of losing friends and how to accept and prepare for these changes - understanding the survivors story is important, but I’m curious to find any information from the perspective of the friends - why do they feel the urge to pull away from a survivor? How do friends see their role during a survivor’s recovery process? Any leads you can pass my way will be greatly appreciated.
Chat soon.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Scene 23 - We Just Want to Hangout
Hello everyone - its been a while since I was able to write - a lot of life changes and growth, including moving to a new job in a new city in China (Ganzhou, Jiangxi province). Thank you for being patient as I took my time settling into my new home and living situation.
Now lets get back to the writing.
********************Scene 23 - We Just Want to Hangout**********************
but my friends didn’t always want to hang out with me.
It was just hard, you know.
Ryan tells me -
We’re always being told if he does this do that and if he does that…
I mean,
it felt like babysitting -
Sometimes…
and dude, we never knew what you would do…
I mean, you’d go from laughing to…Yelling…to laughing again real quick…
and the laugh - it was almost like this, this Donkey Bray of something.
It was scary.
I mean, we just wanted to
hang out, you know.
***************************Commentary******************************
For this article, we start with the idea of a person having various “circles of friends” or “levels of friendship” - the idea that a relationship can be introspectively categorized according to the level of social intimacy that exists between the persons involved in said friendship/relationship. I do not believe there is any real (objective) rule about the number of friendship categories that exist or the defining characteristics of each friendship type, but I do believe that creating these “circles” can be beneficial for a person’s wellbeing - this could be done unconsciously or as a conscious effort done with guidance.
Note, I do see potential flaws and/or dangers in this method of friendship categorization, but this article is not a critique of this method - instead, I use the idea as a tool to better define what I am discussing.
With that established, for this article (and the next) I have created 5 categories by which one can view social relationships:
1) Immediate Family
2) Close Friendships
3) Casual Friendships
4) Acquaintances
5) Strangers
Below I have defined these categories as they related to me at the time of my recovery:
1) “Immediate Family” are people whose lives are unavoidably intertwined with mine - people for whom my process of recovery had a very real effect on their daily activities - I consider this to be my parents and my sister.
2) “Close Friendships” are the people I interacted with at private social events - parties, trips to the diner, forming a rock band - friends with whom I made social plans and would generally “hangout” with multiple times a week. These are people I could confide in, ask for advice, and would turn to for support. I was fortunate to have had a moderately large, close knit group of high school friends whom I place in this category.
3) “Casual Friendships” are the people with whom I was friendly, but refrained from sharing personal details. Classmates I would see in the hall - family friends my parents would introduce me to - people I would regularly pass in my daily routine - I might have had the “broad brush picture” of their life, but the details were not filled in.
4) “Acquaintances” are the people whom I knew in passing - classmates I see in the hallways - a recognized face with a name just out of reach. People I see and “…Hey!…. You!…You…How are You doing? You still at…? That’s great! Take it easy…catch up soon!”
5) “Strangers” are exactly what the names implies. People not (yet) known.
These divisions are artificial - and there is an inevitable blurring of the lines between all these categories - but by creating this separation, it helps with the discussion of generalized styles of social interaction after my brain injury, and therefore will be used for these writings.
Returning to the scene above - as the narrator/character of Ryan is an amalgamation of my close friends, so for this article we will focus on relationships in the second category - “Close Friendships”.
As stated, at the time of my accident, I had a moderately large group of friends, many of whom I considered close - people knew me and for the most part liked me. It was a relatively healthy, active, social life - I recognize that I was fortunate to have grown up with such a social network, but I feel that the social life I lived was within the spectrum of “normal” for small town America.
After my accident, I wanted to be “normal” again. Now, granted, “normal” is a loaded term. The teenage years - at least in US culture - is a time when a person has the privilege of trying on costumes of personality and choosing the aspects that best fit one’s truth - the parts he or she wants to retain into adulthood. I was finding myself by trying aspects free-love, radical-thinker, retro-hippie, creativity tortured performance-artist costumes - what are sometimes thought of as “alternative” lifestyles…that are still accepted and embraced as a part of US culture. I wanted to be the artist that refuses the constraints of society, but is still accepted by an audience of like-minded misfits - so my task was to find how I wanted to present myself in order to achieve this goal.
Now finding oneself is a personal journey for everyone, but social relationships (friendships) are inevitably a large factor as to what styles of personality a person is exposed to and adapts - a person can only try on a costume if they know it exists. Nothing wrong with this, just pointing out that in this journey, friendships and relationships can never be fully separated from the process of self-exploration and discovery.
We need to interact with other people to find who we truly are.
Returning to my story, I had friends, plans for college, independent artistic pursuits - life was good - and after my brain trauma, I wanted to continue this social self-exploration process with all my friends - but, to be blunt, this was not possible.
What do I mean?
In the commentary to Scene 17, pt 1 - The Job Ahead, I talk about the frustration of having to relearn what what were previously viewed as basic skills. One of the skills that requires relearning is how to be a friend - or put in a more specific manner - relearning how to be the friend you were prior to the trauma.
The re-acquisition of some skills can be clearly evaluated - relearning how to walk, for example, has a clear goal or a way to measure success - to achieve what physicians consider to be the correct way to walk allowing for maximum efficiency of movement in a manner that can be sustained for many years. Being a friend can also have a set of standards, and although these are slightly more subjective and open to interpretation, there is still a set of generally agreed upon skills that can be employed to be a friend - skills such as honesty, supporting the other person, providing feedback, and so on. However, in the case of this story - and as is true for other survivors of a trauma who want to return to a social life - I wanted to return to the specific set of friends that I had prior to the accident - wanted to continue as the friend I had previously been.
This was, however, I repeat - not possible. To start, there were the physical factors of my body recovering, but what caused more social hangups was my brain’s healing process - my decreased inhibitions and lack of self-control. As summarized in Scene 21 - That's Just How She Feels, the frontal lobe region of the brain has an “emotional filtering” function that helps to regulate the expression of emotions - because this area of the brain was damaged in my accident, there were times after my accident when I would unnecessarily express or over express myself - showing love, joy, anger, or even sexuality in a manner that could offend my social peers - or at least make them uncomfortable.
During this time, my goal was to return to being the friend I had been before. Note that previously (before the accident) I had attained my spot in the social scene by acting according to internal/subconscious rules of behavior and adhering to my natural social instincts. After the accident, what I did not realize is that my internal regulating processes had changed, and thus my social actions were not the same. My mind reasoned that I was behaving the same as before - naturally - when in truth I was less able to restrain the raw impulses or emotions presenting myself as a seemingly different person. Behaving “naturally” after the accident was not the same as behaving “naturally” prior to the accident.
To better explain - it was as if I had a sack labeled “Natural Behaviors and Reactions” that I reach into when choosing how I act in a social situation. This sack was never taken away from me, but while in the coma, the contents of the sack were switched with a new set of behaviors and reactions - this new set had some similarities to the previous set, but often seemed more extreme, less aware of social consequences, and at times downright offensive. Due to this, when I was in a social situation after my accident, I was reaching to the same place for “Natural Behaviors and Reactions”, but what I pulled out was from a completely different set.
My peers - people who knew the set of behaviors I used prior to the accident - didn’t understand, know how to anticipate, or feel comfortable with the new set of behaviors - and so there were times when these interactions would just get awkward, uncomfortable, or offensive.
For this reason my close friends - a group that loved me, had physically shown up many times to support me and my family in the initial stages of recovery, hoped and wished and prayed for my healing - began to step lightly when I was around and at times made an effort to not include me in social activities. To these friends, I was no longer the crazy, creative, socially acceptable performer - but a mutated version of that - mashed together with a bundle of emotions and cautions - and it was an effort to hangout with me. For this reason, sometimes (or many times) they didn’t want to make that effort.
Please note, I was still involved in social and extra curricular actives at this stage of my recovery - I had a moderately active social life and was engaged in various school and community organizations - but where previously I had felt in the heart of the action, I now often felt as though I had to either push myself into interactive situations or remain on the outskirts of any social event.
Some might say that this set of emotions is common to high school students, and I acknowledge this, but after interviewing survivors of brain injury and researching the recovery process, I get the sense that this feeling of exclusion is a relatively common experience for survivors. What’s more, I can understand my peers desire to push me out - when I examine my current social impulses (as a 36 year old man) I recognize the urge to avoid social situations that are uncomfortable - and I think this is a completely reasonable and rational urge. Building from this, sometimes that means not inviting a particular person or persons to a party - I don’t think this is always the right course of action, but I do believe that the urge for social ease stays with us throughout life. It was perfectly valid for my friends not to want to hangout.
But a loop was created - as they pull away, I want to hangout and try harder to please - more discomfort - they retreat - I try to please… Its a conundrum.
I also suggest that this social discomfort loop occurs not just in cases of brain injury when “emotional filters” are damaged, but can also occur when a survivor from some other form of trauma seeks to reconnect with his or her social group prior to the accident - the specific reasons for having difficulty reintegrating with social groups may be different, but I suggest that a disconnect between a survivor’s current behavior and previous patterns of behavior likely exists.
How do we remedy this?
There is no easy answer, but I will advocate for a tool to assist in this process being - as I’ve repeated throughout this blog - storytelling. Stories told to the previous friends can educate listeners about the process of recovery and how a surviving friend may have changed. This does not mean it needs to be the surviving friend that tells the story - often the events are so close to the survivor that he or she has not learned how to clearly relate what is happening. The survivor’s immediate story is important, but if it is told, it should be in tandem with stories from other survivors - hearing stories from multiple sources helps to show the common occurrences or recovery and provides examples of how other people how navigated the path of reintegration.
Furthermore, for this article, I want to emphasize the benefit of storytelling from one survivor to another. When a survivor hears stories of recovery, he or she can anticipate changes in oneself that may strain social relations - by being aware that these changes might happen, a survivor can be more aware of his or her own journey. This is not a complete solution - storytelling will not magically fix friendships after a trauma - but it is a tool that can ease a part of the struggle and make the return to life that little bit easier.
Thanks for reading - would love your comments/thoughts - leave them below!
Now lets get back to the writing.
********************Scene 23 - We Just Want to Hangout**********************
but my friends didn’t always want to hang out with me.
It was just hard, you know.
Ryan tells me -
We’re always being told if he does this do that and if he does that…
I mean,
it felt like babysitting -
Sometimes…
and dude, we never knew what you would do…
I mean, you’d go from laughing to…Yelling…to laughing again real quick…
and the laugh - it was almost like this, this Donkey Bray of something.
It was scary.
I mean, we just wanted to
hang out, you know.
***************************Commentary******************************
For this article, we start with the idea of a person having various “circles of friends” or “levels of friendship” - the idea that a relationship can be introspectively categorized according to the level of social intimacy that exists between the persons involved in said friendship/relationship. I do not believe there is any real (objective) rule about the number of friendship categories that exist or the defining characteristics of each friendship type, but I do believe that creating these “circles” can be beneficial for a person’s wellbeing - this could be done unconsciously or as a conscious effort done with guidance.
Note, I do see potential flaws and/or dangers in this method of friendship categorization, but this article is not a critique of this method - instead, I use the idea as a tool to better define what I am discussing.
With that established, for this article (and the next) I have created 5 categories by which one can view social relationships:
1) Immediate Family
2) Close Friendships
3) Casual Friendships
4) Acquaintances
5) Strangers
Below I have defined these categories as they related to me at the time of my recovery:
1) “Immediate Family” are people whose lives are unavoidably intertwined with mine - people for whom my process of recovery had a very real effect on their daily activities - I consider this to be my parents and my sister.
2) “Close Friendships” are the people I interacted with at private social events - parties, trips to the diner, forming a rock band - friends with whom I made social plans and would generally “hangout” with multiple times a week. These are people I could confide in, ask for advice, and would turn to for support. I was fortunate to have had a moderately large, close knit group of high school friends whom I place in this category.
3) “Casual Friendships” are the people with whom I was friendly, but refrained from sharing personal details. Classmates I would see in the hall - family friends my parents would introduce me to - people I would regularly pass in my daily routine - I might have had the “broad brush picture” of their life, but the details were not filled in.
4) “Acquaintances” are the people whom I knew in passing - classmates I see in the hallways - a recognized face with a name just out of reach. People I see and “…Hey!…. You!…You…How are You doing? You still at…? That’s great! Take it easy…catch up soon!”
5) “Strangers” are exactly what the names implies. People not (yet) known.
These divisions are artificial - and there is an inevitable blurring of the lines between all these categories - but by creating this separation, it helps with the discussion of generalized styles of social interaction after my brain injury, and therefore will be used for these writings.
Returning to the scene above - as the narrator/character of Ryan is an amalgamation of my close friends, so for this article we will focus on relationships in the second category - “Close Friendships”.
As stated, at the time of my accident, I had a moderately large group of friends, many of whom I considered close - people knew me and for the most part liked me. It was a relatively healthy, active, social life - I recognize that I was fortunate to have grown up with such a social network, but I feel that the social life I lived was within the spectrum of “normal” for small town America.
After my accident, I wanted to be “normal” again. Now, granted, “normal” is a loaded term. The teenage years - at least in US culture - is a time when a person has the privilege of trying on costumes of personality and choosing the aspects that best fit one’s truth - the parts he or she wants to retain into adulthood. I was finding myself by trying aspects free-love, radical-thinker, retro-hippie, creativity tortured performance-artist costumes - what are sometimes thought of as “alternative” lifestyles…that are still accepted and embraced as a part of US culture. I wanted to be the artist that refuses the constraints of society, but is still accepted by an audience of like-minded misfits - so my task was to find how I wanted to present myself in order to achieve this goal.
Now finding oneself is a personal journey for everyone, but social relationships (friendships) are inevitably a large factor as to what styles of personality a person is exposed to and adapts - a person can only try on a costume if they know it exists. Nothing wrong with this, just pointing out that in this journey, friendships and relationships can never be fully separated from the process of self-exploration and discovery.
We need to interact with other people to find who we truly are.
Returning to my story, I had friends, plans for college, independent artistic pursuits - life was good - and after my brain trauma, I wanted to continue this social self-exploration process with all my friends - but, to be blunt, this was not possible.
What do I mean?
In the commentary to Scene 17, pt 1 - The Job Ahead, I talk about the frustration of having to relearn what what were previously viewed as basic skills. One of the skills that requires relearning is how to be a friend - or put in a more specific manner - relearning how to be the friend you were prior to the trauma.
The re-acquisition of some skills can be clearly evaluated - relearning how to walk, for example, has a clear goal or a way to measure success - to achieve what physicians consider to be the correct way to walk allowing for maximum efficiency of movement in a manner that can be sustained for many years. Being a friend can also have a set of standards, and although these are slightly more subjective and open to interpretation, there is still a set of generally agreed upon skills that can be employed to be a friend - skills such as honesty, supporting the other person, providing feedback, and so on. However, in the case of this story - and as is true for other survivors of a trauma who want to return to a social life - I wanted to return to the specific set of friends that I had prior to the accident - wanted to continue as the friend I had previously been.
This was, however, I repeat - not possible. To start, there were the physical factors of my body recovering, but what caused more social hangups was my brain’s healing process - my decreased inhibitions and lack of self-control. As summarized in Scene 21 - That's Just How She Feels, the frontal lobe region of the brain has an “emotional filtering” function that helps to regulate the expression of emotions - because this area of the brain was damaged in my accident, there were times after my accident when I would unnecessarily express or over express myself - showing love, joy, anger, or even sexuality in a manner that could offend my social peers - or at least make them uncomfortable.
During this time, my goal was to return to being the friend I had been before. Note that previously (before the accident) I had attained my spot in the social scene by acting according to internal/subconscious rules of behavior and adhering to my natural social instincts. After the accident, what I did not realize is that my internal regulating processes had changed, and thus my social actions were not the same. My mind reasoned that I was behaving the same as before - naturally - when in truth I was less able to restrain the raw impulses or emotions presenting myself as a seemingly different person. Behaving “naturally” after the accident was not the same as behaving “naturally” prior to the accident.
To better explain - it was as if I had a sack labeled “Natural Behaviors and Reactions” that I reach into when choosing how I act in a social situation. This sack was never taken away from me, but while in the coma, the contents of the sack were switched with a new set of behaviors and reactions - this new set had some similarities to the previous set, but often seemed more extreme, less aware of social consequences, and at times downright offensive. Due to this, when I was in a social situation after my accident, I was reaching to the same place for “Natural Behaviors and Reactions”, but what I pulled out was from a completely different set.
My peers - people who knew the set of behaviors I used prior to the accident - didn’t understand, know how to anticipate, or feel comfortable with the new set of behaviors - and so there were times when these interactions would just get awkward, uncomfortable, or offensive.
For this reason my close friends - a group that loved me, had physically shown up many times to support me and my family in the initial stages of recovery, hoped and wished and prayed for my healing - began to step lightly when I was around and at times made an effort to not include me in social activities. To these friends, I was no longer the crazy, creative, socially acceptable performer - but a mutated version of that - mashed together with a bundle of emotions and cautions - and it was an effort to hangout with me. For this reason, sometimes (or many times) they didn’t want to make that effort.
Please note, I was still involved in social and extra curricular actives at this stage of my recovery - I had a moderately active social life and was engaged in various school and community organizations - but where previously I had felt in the heart of the action, I now often felt as though I had to either push myself into interactive situations or remain on the outskirts of any social event.
Some might say that this set of emotions is common to high school students, and I acknowledge this, but after interviewing survivors of brain injury and researching the recovery process, I get the sense that this feeling of exclusion is a relatively common experience for survivors. What’s more, I can understand my peers desire to push me out - when I examine my current social impulses (as a 36 year old man) I recognize the urge to avoid social situations that are uncomfortable - and I think this is a completely reasonable and rational urge. Building from this, sometimes that means not inviting a particular person or persons to a party - I don’t think this is always the right course of action, but I do believe that the urge for social ease stays with us throughout life. It was perfectly valid for my friends not to want to hangout.
But a loop was created - as they pull away, I want to hangout and try harder to please - more discomfort - they retreat - I try to please… Its a conundrum.
I also suggest that this social discomfort loop occurs not just in cases of brain injury when “emotional filters” are damaged, but can also occur when a survivor from some other form of trauma seeks to reconnect with his or her social group prior to the accident - the specific reasons for having difficulty reintegrating with social groups may be different, but I suggest that a disconnect between a survivor’s current behavior and previous patterns of behavior likely exists.
How do we remedy this?
There is no easy answer, but I will advocate for a tool to assist in this process being - as I’ve repeated throughout this blog - storytelling. Stories told to the previous friends can educate listeners about the process of recovery and how a surviving friend may have changed. This does not mean it needs to be the surviving friend that tells the story - often the events are so close to the survivor that he or she has not learned how to clearly relate what is happening. The survivor’s immediate story is important, but if it is told, it should be in tandem with stories from other survivors - hearing stories from multiple sources helps to show the common occurrences or recovery and provides examples of how other people how navigated the path of reintegration.
Furthermore, for this article, I want to emphasize the benefit of storytelling from one survivor to another. When a survivor hears stories of recovery, he or she can anticipate changes in oneself that may strain social relations - by being aware that these changes might happen, a survivor can be more aware of his or her own journey. This is not a complete solution - storytelling will not magically fix friendships after a trauma - but it is a tool that can ease a part of the struggle and make the return to life that little bit easier.
Thanks for reading - would love your comments/thoughts - leave them below!
Monday, June 4, 2018
Scene 22 - I Fought with My Parents
**********Scene 22 - I Fought with my Parents**************
I fought with my parents,
a lot.
And it didn’t always make sense -
I remember one time -
she could see that the fight was going Nowhere so she
Ended it by going into her office and closing the door.
And I was Not okay with this! because!…! Because!…!
Well, because I could see she was
Kinda right and that was, kinda, being an idiot…
but I wanted her to know why I was being such an Idiot, it was because She…!
And I Stormed into that office, not sure if I was going to apologize or Scream at her -
- and she’s sitting at her desk,
glasses in one hand, tissue in the other…
red eyes staring at…nothing…
She looks at me,
“What. Lethan, what.”
And I knew that both my parents did Try to work with me,
and they loved me,
and they were trying to help,
and I wanted to work with them, but They just Refused to see things My way!
I didn’t want much! just things a Normal seventeen year old boy wants to do…
****************Commentary***************************
Since receiving brain injury, I have found RAGE to be the most terrifying experience.
There is no denying that I had a temper before my accident - I could sometimes get very angry very quickly - but after the accident the anger changed…somehow became…more…more invasive, more dominate, more insistent - not insisting on solving a problem but insisting that I must WIN the fight - it became an intoxication that takes over the body and soul - divorcing the body from the mind - divorcing it from Reason - releasing dangerous, violent passions…
It begins as a poison - rage seeping into my conscious with venomous stealth - inspired by an annoyance or misunderstanding that may or may not (more likely not) have any lasting consequences upon my life - the conflict could be but a brief hiccup in immediate plans or intentions, but still - bit by bit - the rage dominates my being - forcing self-awareness and self-control into an aether where they cannot influence my actions - forcing my reason - to passively? observe while my physical form acts in an appalling manner. I question the term passively? because emotions are rarely “passive” - and this Reason - that at times of sanity seeks to remain in control of my body - is observing an absurd rant or scream or thrashing - devastating passion is in control and Reason and is forced to watch - it remains aware - and thus - for what might be termed a reasonable cause - my reason becomes Angry.
This anger is the same - or at least similar - to the anger of disgust - what comes froth when we witness a behavior that brings shame to humanity - when we hear of or learn of or see an abusive politician-parent-spouse and we say “Fuck That Person - that Piece of Shit - that Embarrassment to Life.” The Reason that is me sees this - and I Am that person.
That is who I have become - in That moment or passionate anger - I am not who I know myself to be - I am this Other - This…
And I become even more angry - the anger feeds itself - self-anger stirred with self-pity - irrationality dominates reality and this self-anger devolves into self-hatred - further feeding the beast - and so my physical form responds “Well I’m shit anyway” and seeks even more destruction - meanwhile - standing alone - watching - outside the chaos of reality - Reason cringes and cries - my physical form writhing until the fuel for the rage has expired. Then Reason must return - attempt to deal with the results of the actions it observed - perhaps creating a false justification - perhaps attempting to move on, trying to deny that I actually did what was just witnessed - perhaps hoping words can atone for actions.
I write this and cry.
I hate this, yet this is part of me.
Although (as said above) I’ve always had a temper, after the accident it changed - and I recognize that my brain injury is likely a contributing factor to this self-destructive cycle. This is a reason for my temper, this is a cause - but Fuck if I Dare to use it as an excuse. This rage is my responsibility and I must manage it.
Although (as said above) I’ve always had a temper, after the accident it changed - and I recognize that my brain injury is likely a contributing factor to this self-destructive cycle. This is a reason for my temper, this is a cause - but Fuck if I Dare to use it as an excuse. This rage is my responsibility and I must manage it.
Anger after brain injury is relatively common, and there are suggestions of how to manage rages (for one such article, check out https://www.brainline.org/article/anger-following-brain-injury) - the technique I have found most useful is - when I begin to become aware of even the hints of a rage - get out of the situation and take some time alone to cool down - let reason take control - and then return to the situation. The problem is that I don’t always catch the warning signs quickly enough. Still, I think it is important that I am trying, though I don’t think merely “trying to be better” excuses any rage. If a person has rage issues, it is that person’s responsibility to find help.
While preparing to write this, I found a host of articles and websites that discuss dealing with anger after brain injury - and this is all important information - but I found nothing that describes the introspective experience. This blog is about storytelling, and I want to share my experience to try and add something new to the conversation. Please - if you have any anger control issues - share your experience below. You are welcome to share control techniques, but I am also interested in the personal experience of rage - this is the area I feel not enough has been written about.
Also, in that light, if you know of any articles, books, or lectures that discuss the introspective experience of anger after TBI, I would appreciate being made aware of them.
Thank you for taking the time to read. Please leave comments below.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Scene 21 - That's Just How She Feels
***********Scene 21 - That’s Just How She Feels***********
A lot of times, in Traumatic Brain Injury,
one of the parts of the brain that is injured is the frontal lobe region of the brain,
this is the part of the brain involved in emotional self-control,
and for Sarah, ever since her accident, she gets real excited, real quick.
She also Cries a lot.
Doesn't understand it, that’s just
how she feels.
*****************************************************
The frontal lobe region of the brain is located - as implied by the name - in the front of the head. As most evolutionarily advanced region of the brain, this area is sometimes (often) cited as the part of the brain that “makes us who we are”. It is the emotional control center for a person and, as currently understood, it is the home for personality.
In brief, the function of this area of the brain is sorting things out - taking the stimuli delivered by other regions of the brain (senses, memories, instincts…), processing this data, and creating a response. This is the part of the brain that’s involved with executive functions - these are advanced cognitive functions of the brain and include processes such as problem solving, recognizing and adhering to social norms, creating a plan to achieve a goal, and other activities that involve coordinating multiple brain functions. To provide an example of this in work, let’s look at the situation of deciding what clothes to wear to a party. In this instance, the frontal lobe region - by coordinating memories of past encounters, with a prediction of what type of social group will be present at the party, with a reasoning about what outfit highlights your best features, with an understanding of contemporary fashion… - lets you know that you’re outfit tonight will be DYN-O-MITE!
Furthermore, some of the stimuli that this area of the brain receives is emotion. Fear, love, joy, sadness, and other root emotions are fed to this region of the brain so that it can process the immediate sensation and filter it so that one can react in an appropriate manner. Please note, this is not where an emotion originates, but a stop along the way - prior to our experience of this emotion. The raw emotion - fear, love, joy, sadness - is tempered by reason. When you show up at the party dressed like a supermodel and a landslide of compliments is pilled upon you - this was your goal and joy rushes through your body, but - because your brain provides the appropriate filtering about what is socially acceptable - instead of rushing about and hugging all friends and strangers, you simply nod, give a slight smile, say “Thank you”, and move on.
It is this advanced cognition, reasoning, and emotional regulation that decides how one reacts to stimuli - in other words, it forms one’s personality. That said, the frontal lobe is the region of the brain least necessary for physical survival - being a breathing organism that is classified as living - but this region of the brain most necessary for our being recognized as individual persons.
Being in the front of the skull, it is also the part of the brain that is post often damaged in a traumatic brain injury. When an injury happens, branches that sprout off of neurons and transfer information between brain cells — called axons— are broken and release toxins that damage other neurons and axons. These damaged cells create disruptions in communication between the cells, and thus it is harder for functions of the brain to coordinate.
In the scene above, Sarah’s difficulties with emotional regulation is acknowledged — “…ever since since her accident, she gets real excited, real quick. / She also Cries a lot.” — furthermore, she doesn’t understand why this happens. I take this lack of understanding to have two meanings:
First - Sarah does not fully understand why these emotions pour out in such extreme ways. I believe she has a memory of having a higher emotional control and/or her new emotional extremes have been pointed out by other people, and she does not understand why - now - these emotions overwhelm her so completely.
and Second - she doesn’t understand the science behind what is happening, and that’s understandable - its a rather complex process. Above I have laid out a simplified explanation of how this works, and it still took many hours/days for my personal comprehension. There’s nothing wrong with not understanding how it all works. The brain is an incredibly complex organ that the scientific community is just beginning to understand. I just know that - for years I was told “The frontal lobe damage can create problems with emotional self-control”, but I never did the work to understand Why. Until now, I was okay with that. But Now I recognize that by surviving, I’ve been given an opportunity to do more research and learn what this means - and as part of writing this blog, I’ve finally taken advantage of the opportunity.
I hope that what I’ve said makes sense, and I hope it helps you understand your brain a little more.
Please leave comments below - chat soon.
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Scene 20 - Hard Time Relating
*************Scene 20 – Hard Time Relating***************
Ever since my accident,
I’ve had a hard time relating to other people.
See,
I know some things,
because of what I’ve gone through -
you know - I almost died,
I’ve seen God.
And other people,
they have a hard time relating to that.
******************************************************
One way of “relating” to another person is understanding what he or she is talking about - or, vice versa, having said person understand what you are discussing (see footnote 1 at end). What’s more - to truly achieve an understanding - persons must have some set of experiences concerning the discussion topic that can been drawn from for reference, and these experiences must overlap in some manner. If you and I are discussing a “chair”, we both have some concept in our mind of what “chair” is - we’ve both seen countless chairs. Now, the details of the “chair” our minds conjure as a reference point may vary - my chair is pink and has fluffy pillows while your chair is wooden with a straight back - yet in most circumstances, we can agree upon enough fundamental characteristics of “chair” that we can “relate to” one another when discussing a chair - the phrase “I sat in a chair” causes no confusion.
But if the people communicating do not have an agreed set of meanings from which to work, “relating to” one another is at minimum difficult and very possibly impossible.
What do I mean? - An absurd example: Bob has lived a life completely sheltered from snow - he lives in a land where the temperature never nears freezing, every book or movie or song that refers snow has been banned due to culturally sensitive and/or long forgotten reasons, pictures containing images of snow have either been burned or colored in with yellows and greens and said to be an artist’s interpretation of grass. For the majority of situations, Bob speaks perfect English, but he has never conceived of the word “snow” - in truth, the idea of putting the “S” sound before the negative determiner seems absurd - “sssNo”. Coming from these conditions, when Bob meets Karyn the Canadian and she begins to blabber about this thing near her home called “snow”, it baffles Bob - Bob has no experiences he can use to successfully comprehend “snow”. Granted, using descriptive terms Karyn the Canadian may be able to verbally depict “snow” in a manner that grants Bob an idea of what it is, but this assumes that they have overlapping experiences with terms such as “cold” or “flakes” or “melt” and so on. Without experiences that can be compared, the concept of “snow” is meaningless to Bob.
The above situation is ridiculous - and I giggled while writing it - but I use it to demonstrate the point that an agreed upon understanding of terms is necessary for communication to be understood in any real manner - terms and ideas must be experientially defined to have any real meaning - and if alternative adjectives are used to define a more complex topic, there still must be some experience that can be referenced in order to understand what these descriptive words mean.
With that established, I observe that any survivor of a traumatic incident pulls from a set of such experiential definitions that others - those who have not had such an experience - cannot conceive of. I write as a survivor of TBI - as a survivor I have recognized a shared understanding that exists among fellow brain injury survivors that does not fully translate to those who have not had such an experience - but I presume that every survivor - be the persona a survivor of: TBI, famine, battlefield fatigue, rape or any other trauma - has access to an understanding that is unique to his or her survived situation. Please note, I do not mean to equate these traumas - each trauma has an un-equatable set of pains and difficulties associated with it - but I group these situations to recognize that all traumas contain a set of “experiential definitions” that will limit a friend or family member - one without such an experience - from completely understanding or relating to the survivor.
I will continue the article discussing only survival after brain injury, because that is an experiential definition I have access to.
In the scene above, Tony specifies some of his experiences - “I almost died, I’ve seen God…” - and he believes, understandably so, that these are experiences that cannot be comprehended - to understand the fully glory of God without such an experience seems impossible. But perhaps the example of this scene goes too far - the reality of “You can’t understand me because I’ve seen God,” might be an argument that is impossible to refute or defend - so suppose we remove the Divine from this situation. Instead, we cite the example of a brain injury survivor attempting to communicate the ineffable experience of recovery after TBI: the experience of rediscovering functions of the brain and body that were previously ignored because of their seeming simplicity - testing each ability to discover its limits - relearning and adapting basic skill sets needed to complete tasks that were previously effortless - the experience of attempting to explain this rediscovery process to people who have had no comparable experience…a set of ineffable experiences such as these can make it hard when survivors try “relating to” other people.
This is one reason we must share stories of survival - not to explain the tragedy in any definitive manner, but to provide data points that can be used for those who have not experienced such an event - more information about that which makes the experiential definition of survival. I argue that with more data points, the experience of survival - while never fully communicable - can become easier to understand for those who are, concerning a particular circumstance, experientially ignorant.
That survivors can find comfort and support by sharing stories is not an original idea - and many groups have formed around this need - support groups such as this can often be found by searching online for groups focused on one’s particular tragic experience and can hopefully be found in one’s geographical region. One must be careful, however, as it is possible for conversations among survivors to devolve into “bitching session” that take on a spiteful tone that encourage disillusionment and despair - complaints are an important part of the healing process and pain should not be ignored, but dwelling in pain does nothing to remedy a situation. When a conversation pushes focus toward only the pain, it is important to remember that there are always moments of beauty and hope - maybe as simple as seeing a butterfly kiss a windowsill as you gaze out your room’s window, or being able to remember a new flavor fed to you by a caregiver, or taking an unassisted step for the first time since the injury - these may seem insignificant, but must be acknowledged as being as real a part of the recovery process as the pain. Small miracles are still miracles.
Remember, the most miraculous part of any survivor’s story is that he or she has survived, and survival allows life filled with all splendor and pain - minuscule and grandiose - and life encourages a future that contains infinite possibility. When you tell your story about the experience of recovery, tell all of your story. Someone who does not have the proper “experiential definition” can never fully understand a survivor’s experience, but the more stories that are shared - the more subjectively informative accounts that exist - the easier it is to “relate to” someone who has had a different experience - to understand the tragedy and the glory of recovery.
I will give one shoutout to an organization that collects TBI survivor stories and I am proud to be affiliated with - TBIVoices, led and organized by Attorney Gordon Johnson of the Brain Injury Law Offices based in Wisconsin. This group collects and shares stories of TBI survivors so that there is an easily accessible archive providing a collection of examples of what is real in recovery from brain injury - Check it out.
There’s more that I could say, but - to refrain from rambling - let’s call this the article complete. Please leave your thoughts below.
Footnote 1: Please note, I recognize there are many other ways of “relating to” another person - many of which might not involve verbal communication at all, instead relying on non-verbal cues or even an emotional understanding that cannot be expressed using language - but I use verbal communication to illustrate my point because it can be recognized, documented, and discussed in a relatively clear manner. I believe other, more abstract, forms of communication or “relating to” another person follow the same or similar patterns as that which I am about to present - but, for a slightly easier understanding, my remarks will involve achieving an understanding using verbal communication.
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