Acceptance vs. Appreciation

  A lot has been written and spoken about the “acceptance of the reality after brain injury.”  This is acceptance of what has occurred and accepting the person you, as a survivor, have become.  It’s said that one of the goals of rehabilitation should be acceptance of who you are.

        I disagree.  Acceptance should not be a goal but a stop in the road that you visit while traversing the more complete path of recovery.  A person must be comfortable accepting him or herself after TBI, granted, but setting it as a goal doesn’t go far enough.  Saying “all you have to do is accept yourself” is like setting yourself the goal of running a marathon, but then dropping out after five kilometers with the thought, “Well, at least I tried.  I guess I just have to admit I’m just not able to do the whole thing.”  For the marathon of recovery, the goal needs to be that a survivor appreciates the person he or she has become, for by appreciating rather than merely accepting, it gives that survivor the power of choice in the journey that the future will take.

Acceptance is passive.  It is recognizing that the world is happening and believing that there is nothing more that can be done.  Acceptance of a situation is taking one’s hands off the wheel of life, leaning back and saying, “Hey, not my fault — let life drive itself — I’ll just let it do its thing.”  Acceptance might not imply actively a destructive action or encouraging negative thoughts, but it does imply inaction, and if you’re not doing any actions you can’t go anywhere.

 

So be active.  Don’t merely accept what has happened, but appreciate what the injury has allowed you to become.  Note, this does NOT mean appreciating the trauma.  The event that happened is horrific and has caused damage that will resonate in you and your world for all your life.  Tragedy should not be celebrated, but it can teach, and a survivor can learn.  Do the work to find the lessons in a tragedy, and you can discover how to grow.  It is the growth that comes from this learning that a survivor can appreciate.

Appreciating is active, making choices to recognize how to learn and how to grow. Accepting is static.  Appreciating is exciting — it’s being on a quest to discover unexpected gems of understanding buried beneath the mounds of muck created by hardship.  Accepting is boring, and lets the world pass with minimal engagement.  Appreciating is difficult, sifting through the pain and loss in an attempt to find the seeds of growth.  Accepting is also difficult, but can give the appearance of seeming easier, and it almost never offers rewards.

Appreciating is joyful.  Acceptance is blasé.

I contrast these choices here because too often I read and hear discussions about “Accepting who I am after brain injury,” and I find this attitude defeatist, depressing and simply unproductive.  Furthermore, “accepting who I am...” suggests that you are a different person, which is just false.  Brain injury forces adaptations and changes in some ways of living, but the identity of the person is constant — just now he or she is informed by the experience of being a survivor and navigating recovery.  A survivor has not changed, but can grow.

In the next entry I’m going to share some of my experience making the choice to appreciate my self rather than just accept what happened in my own brain injury experience, so check back soon.

My Pet Peeve

 For my pet peeve, I’m talking about how head trauma and brain injury is depicted in pop culture.

Be very clear, brain injury is nothing like it is shown in the movies. Too often when watching the screen, I see the hero experience some horrifying crash, an explosion, utter destruction — head smashing into the ground or a flying car — mayhem followed by darkness — it’s clear that there has been severe head trauma.  Cut to the next scene hours, days, or even weeks later and everyone is gathered around the surviving hero.  Eyes flutter open, the hero sees the loving crew gathered round — everyone shouts, “Oh my God!  You’re alive!  How do you feel?”

The hero takes a long moment, perhaps a few blinks, “Me, uh, I’m...I don’t really remember what happened.  How did I get here?  Wait...hold on...(takes a deep breath)...okay, now I’m ready to Save the World!”

This is absurd!  But time and time again it is shown as how people blink awake after head trauma.

And it’s overlooked in the news as well — news of real events.  A local station might cover an accident, or factory accident, or some catastrophe where a person or many people are seriously injured, and the focus is entirely on do the people live or not.  Granted, this is important information, but the extended rehabilitation and life long debilitating effects that come from the trauma are almost always overlooked or entirely ignored.

Now, I do understand why the media depicts stories in this manner.  Acknowledging the full process of recovery just isn’t that exciting, and most audiences don’t find the long, monotonous, grueling process particularly gripping — believe it or not, brain injury isn’t sexy.  The problem is that the depictions TBI portrayed by the media is how many people come to understand what happens in brain injury — that once a survivor opens his or her eyes its all over and things can return to how they were before. This sort of understanding can result in friends or family members having false expectations about recovery when someone close experiences TBI and can cause the survivor to be pushed into situations that he or she is not ready for.

So, whenever I see a false depiction of head trauma on a screen, it agitates me.  I hope that after reading this, seeing such depictions might frustrate you as well, so I ask that if you see this nonsense of instant recovery in the media, please point it out to any people you are with.  Don’t let it ruin the film, but you can say something like, “Yeah, that — coming out of a coma so quickly and easily like that — that’s bullshit.”  

I don’t expect the media landscape to change, but any person becoming slightly more aware about the reality of brain trauma in what is being watched will benefit to the world.

And whenever you do that, know that I thank you for helping to remedy my pet peeve.

Please leave comments below and share with anyone who might be interested.

Also, please check on the book available here at Amazon.com.

Returning to Awareness

Hello friends, it’s been a while — been hard at work on my book and figuring out how to get back to my home in the midst of this pandemic.  But now the book is out!  So that gives me some more time to write.  So here’s the first article, I hope you enjoy and look forward to your responses!  And if you’re interested in the book that started with this blog, please click the entry below — I’m really proud of the book and I hope to share it with you!

Now on the the article —

**********************************************************************

After my brain injury, there is a moment when I began to remember again — a specific moment when the memory function of my mind decided to start, but when it started this memory recorded only a picture.

— Click — 

And I look at the perspective of this picture and see it’s taken from my wheelchair, in the hospital, sunlight is streaming in, friends and family are also in the room along with laughter in the air.  This is not a movie camera recording, but a frozen frame that, while being silent and still, is filled with jovial energy and action.  And from this moment the timeline of my life was able to continue in my head because, while this memory is just a snapshot, after this were more pictures taken by my brain until the movie camera of my mind was fixed and more complete movie memories began to be recorded.

I highlight this moment because it is when some might say I “woke” after my coma, but there was gasp, my eyes didn’t suddenly pop open, no realization, “Oh my God!  I had brain injury!” Instead, I returned to awareness already knowing I had brain injury, and I had, in fact, been to some extent conscious and interacting with other people for weeks prior to this moment.  I suppose I was retaining a sense of who people are, at least in the case of my doctors and nurses, and I operated in the world with an understanding of my past — but I have no recollection of this time.

So is this moment — the moment I began to remember again — is this the time I “woke”, or did it happen earlier?  Did I “woke” when I opened my eyes for the first time — even though I have no memory of this?  Does the fact that I don’t remember more than pictures for a time after this memory diminish my “wokeness” at this moment?  Does that mean I actually “woke” later, but now I don’t remember what that moment was?

I use these questions to highlight the confusion I feel when I’m asked, “What was it like when you woke from you coma?”  To ask such a question shows a flaw the in the language that is used — the term “woke” implies that a coma is like sleep, and a coma is nothing like that.  Sleep is a time when a person’s body is resting, recharging, and perhaps doing a little bit of healing that is upkeep to make sure all the departments of the body are functioning properly; a coma is when the body is working overtime to repair the brain — the core processing system of the machine.  Using words such as “woke” and other similar language that is commonly used for for talking about sleep when discussing a person being in a coma leads to a misunderstanding of the lifelong physical and mental changes that are happening inside someone who is in a coma after traumatic brain injury.

I write this for two reasons.  First, to point out the flaw in the language used around an injury resulting in a coma — I believe this language can lead to false expectations about the ease of recovery after consciousness returns.  And secondly, I write because I’m curious if other survivors have had a similar experience with the return of memory after brain injury — where there was no moment of suddenly simultaneously regaining memory and consciousness.  I wonder if people had experiences similar to mine of a gradual return to awareness.

From my experience, I believe that most people who experience brain injury do have a slow return to awareness in which consciousness returns first along with some interactions, and then the memory is slowly activated after this, but I recognize that this is a presumption from and I have not yet found research that either confirms or refutes this belief.  So I put the question to survivors — what was your experience of returning to awareness and regaining the ability to store memories?  Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.  Thank you for reading and I look forward to reading what you share.

The Book is Out!

 Excited to announce that the book that started on this blog is finally available!

https://www.amazon.com/Who-Now-Storytelling-Appreciate-Self-Identity-ebook/dp/B08LQSR29J/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Check it out and share your thoughts!

It’s been hard this year being stuck in Malaysia and not having the resources I would like, but I’m thrilled to say that, with the help of many wonderful people, I have been able to finish this book with limited access to resources.  Thank you to everyone who has supported this project!

Now back to writing new posts...

Now please share your thoughts on Amazon reviews!

Accepting Responsibility

Accepting Responsibility

A Story about Struggling with Addiction After Brain Injury

Having a brain injury will affect how a person interacts with the world physically, cognitively, and emotionally.  It is also likely that changes in these qualities will contribute to behavioral and social difficulties — at times a survivor may seem ignorant of social conventions or even lash out in a manner that brings physical or emotional pain to those who are close.  When such issues arise, it can be tempting for a survivor to blame all such behaviors on “the accident”, but this is a dangerous habit.  It should be a survivor’s goal to return to society without carrying the tag of “brain injury”, and part of that means owning up to one’s actions and to not copout of responsibility by using “the injury” as an explanation.  In this article, I will present my personal struggle with rage and substance abuse as an example of first avoiding, but then accepting responsibility.

I am a brain injury survivor of fifteen years, and after my accident it became apparent that I struggled with both rage and substance abuse.  I must clarify — when I say, “...it became apparent...”, I mean that other people could see these faults while I refused to acknowledge any responsibility.  This struggle could be seen in petulant temper tantrums, drug soaked blacked-out nights, intoxicated rages, emotional and physical destruction, and yet I faulted my injury for all such actions.  If there was a problem when I was drugged, I would appear the following morning dressed in what seemed to be appropriate guilt and say, “Hey, look, I’m really sorry.  I know I have these issues ever since my injury, and it’s not okay that this happens, but I’m really working on trying to...stop...I don’t know...calm this down.  It’s because of my brain injury, and I’m really trying to fix it, but...I mean, just know that I know it’s not alright.”

Yet these words allowed me to believe it was “alright” for fifteen years.

Each time this sheepish apology would fall from my lips, I was lying to myself and to those I had harmed.  Perhaps the incident would be forgiven, as my honest eyes and soothing words could at times work rhetorical magic — or sometimes there was simply no more forgiveness and I would be cut off from a lover or friend.  When a loss of this sort happened due to some combination of rage and intoxication, I would weep-away and damn the accident for cursing me with this burden.  In that moment my vow to conquer this “beast of rage” would be renewed — and then I would usually go and get high in order to “sooth the pain”.

Let’s be clear, there are mountains of research that show a connection between drug use and rage, and I was aware of this — but I was also aware of studies that recognize the tendency for outbursts of violent anger after brain injury.  I decided to ignore the first pile of knowledge and focus on the second because the brain injury was what I wanted to be wrong — that way I could persuade myself that I didn’t need to stop drugs and alcohol, I just needed to introspectively heal a little bit more.  And I convinced myself I was getting better by internally reciting egoistic monologues — something to the effect of, “My stupidity doesn’t happen all the time, it could be weeks, sometimes months when, yeah, I’m getting messed up on the weekends, or weekday evenings, or a quiet afternoon, but I wasn’t doing anything really stupid.  Not that I remembered, anyway.  I didn’t yell at anyone the night before and I don’t think anyone’s mad at me, so I must be getting better.  Look at how well I’m doing, I’m really working on this rage leftover from my accident.”

If I could blame my injury I could ignore the problem, despite a trail of consequences.  I lost my place at a university, jobs, friends, lovers, and always I weaseled away when the blame came to me — it wasn’t because of choices, it was my accident’s fault.

Until I lost too much.  A meaningless spat exploded, I drunkenly raged, and the woman I loved and lived with chose her safety and sanity over our relationship.  The morning found me hungover on the couch, and she had ended our romance.  It was necessary, it was clean, it was over, it was what I would have advised any friend to do.  And it was the unexpected crispness of this consequence that flipped a switch and convinced me to accept responsibility.  It didn’t matter whether the initiating factor of my anger issues came from the accident or substance abuse — the issue existed and I needed to help myself by getting some help.  It was time to try something new and get sober.

As a survivor, it is easy to blame personal faults on brain injury, and it is true that TBI can exaggerate or create less than amiable personality traits — but that cannot be a reason to allow a challenge or flaw to go unaddressed.  The injury is an event that happened, but how you live your future is your choice.  If you are a survivor, the physical, mental, and emotional consequences of the injury are now a part of you, but should not be how you allow yourself to be defined.  In fact, it should be embarrassing to define yourself merely as the product of your tragedy — you are so much more.  Blaming rage on my accident allowed me to hide in an addiction, yet this only amplified the anger I claimed to be trying to fix.  It was only after I accepted the flaw of substance abuse as my responsibility that I was truly able to grow.

It’s tempting to praise the above scene — when I made the choice to become sober — as the moment my life turned around, but it was only the first step in a long path that I am still following.  When I made the decision, I had to change friends, locations, and find sources of support for my sober way of life, and this took some time.  The romantic relationship I had been in was over because I had behaved inexcusably — yet circumstance and situation conspired to keep my former parter and I working close together.  She saw me make the decision to deal with my anger issues by staying sober, and as time passed a new, different relationship formed in a manner that allows us both to grow.  That said, it must be recognized that the rejuvenation of a prior relationship is not a good reason to fake responsibility for your behaviors.  Your actions will be able to change only if you want to be a better person, actively make decisions to foster this new life, and are willing to make an infinite commitment to personal growth.  In my situation, I do still occasionally feel fury begin to swell inside, but now I accept that I must be in charge of my anger and seek to calm it with a sober mind.  This struggle with rage and feeling an urge to use drugs will continue all my life, and it may be that these tendencies were amplified by my accident, but now they are a part of me — a PART of me, not the whole of me — and it is my responsibility to ensure they do not take over my life.  Brain injury is no excuse for who I am, because I am alive and that gives me a choice of how I show myself to the world.  My accident happened, but I must allow it to be in my past so that I can flourish as who I am now.