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!