Scene 27 - Questions of Suicide

NOTE: Before we begin, I will warn you that I do use some explicit language in this entry — if “swear words” will offend, please don’t read.

************Scene 27 - Questions of Suicide***************

I remember praying.

God…

They
say I am Here because of You.

They say you must have
Kept me alive for some reason.

They say you Breathed life into my dead, body,
but God Why!

WHY!

why?

You took everything I Am.
Everything.

My,
my skills, my friends,
my self control,
you took it and you threw it out, like, like it was nothing.

Like I…
…am nothing.

On November 4th, 1999
I died.

now I’m just waiting for this body to catch up.

********************Commentary**********************

It’s late afternoon, orange sunlight sneaking through the thin coat of grim on my parent’s kitchen window.  I’m at the chipped white tile counter — just to the right of the sink — the heavy weight of the largest kitchen knife in my hands — the sharp chill of the steal point pressing against my wrists.  Looking at the skin fold under the slight pressure…it is thin skin here — just a little pressure and I bet I could break it…how fast would I need to move to…


In this moment I spoke the words — cried — screamed at the overwhelming nothingness of an infinite universe.  My cries claimed that they were prayer — pleas directed at God — mind, at that moment I knew no God, but I wanted my pain, my rage, my Hate and frustration and anger and fear and loss — I wanted to be heard!  But I did not want any advice — No interventions — Let me me deal with my own fucked life however I goddamned please!  I couldn’t express a desire of suicide to anyone I actually knew because they would worry for me — try to get me help — counseling — medications — things that numbed but could not fix. Numbed the dream of what I thought I had before — numbed the pain inside…

And I wanted to hurt — if I hurt then I could Blame life — Blame God — Blame for my Situation-Confusion-Pain — I wanted whatever had kept me alive to be conscious — and I wanted Know that whatever was my damned salvation would Hear me Suffer.  I wanted to watch the world weep as I die.

At the time, I didn’t really know how to slit wrists, and I don’t know if I could have killed myself.  But I did contemplate it, several times, and this moment — the moment I describe in the commentary above — the moment I remember when I present this scene in my storytelling — This is the closest I came to making a serious attempt.  It was not a moment of impassioned rage that brings consequences of harm to myself or others — it was a meditated, conscious consideration of ending the suffering by slitting my wrists and letting life dribble from me.

My thoughts were filled with elementary and high-school inspirational speakers labeling suicide as “the weak person’s way” — “giving up” — “the lazy way of not facing problems”. 

And my thoughts replied, spitting back at this speaker, “How DARE you echo in my mind when life has decided to toss me to the side, cripple my soul, destroy my dreams, forget about me.  Fuck you if you say I’m weak for considering suicide, that I should ‘grow up’ and ‘face my troubles’ — what if I can’t beat them — is it better to try and know I will fail?  You want me to fail?!  You — speaker — who has not had brain injury — you say ‘Hey, it’s not that bad — ‘You’re alive, right?’ — ‘You can fix your life, it just takes strength and determination, and you seem like the go get ‘um kind of guy who can do it!’ — FUCK YOU if you think it 'just takes strength'.  My strength is gone.  I am gone.  You haven’t had brain injury, don’t you give me advice until you smashed your head open and you're forced to live after life is taken away — see if you can give me the same goddamned advice — see if you still want to live through the recovery.  I’ll don’t want your fucking advice — everyone’s giving me advice and telling me what to do and nothing is helping a Fucking Iota.  This is my decision, and for once I’ll decide what I want to do..”


I spent a long time looking at the knife— feeling the handle against my palm, the blade against skin.  Could I do it?  Would I do it right?

Time became meaningless — seconds — minutes — maybe an hour passed — the decision was infinite — the question devoid of time.

Until the sound of the front door opening shook me to the present — my mother coming back from the store.  The knife dropped to the counter and I fished around in the cabinets for a snack — providing a reason for being in the kitchen.  The decision would wait.

And the question of suicide never pressed into my life as urgently again — it would flicker into my brain, and still does at times, for moments, but these are passions that I quickly quell with reason and/or meditation.  But I often remember my thoughts described above.


How to provide appropriate commentary for this scene?  I took the space above to try and flesh out the moment — to share the memory that remains in my conscious.  I want you, the reader, to understand where I was and where many survivors find themselves — maybe you relate or maybe you learn something new.  When one hears about suicidal thoughts, its easy to say “Don’t do it” and “Get help” — but this doesn’t address the damning confusion and pain that infects many thoughts after brain injury.  Medication numbs the tortured soul and therapy will help to form strategies for understanding, appreciating, and navigating life with the “New You”, but it cannot bring back the infinite ineffable elements of being that have been torn asunder.

 And a simple truth needs to be acknowledged —


Brain injury Fucks your life. 

It does not end life and life can get better — I am a living and joyful testament to continuing after TBI — but after brain injury, your life is FUCKED UP!  All those goals you had, those ideas, those plans…fuck ‘um.  You’re starting over…you don’t know what tools are available…and you’ve got to deal with the world NOW.

Brain Injury takes you to a dark place.  As I have stated repeatedly in this blog, it is important that a person does not dwell in this space and convince oneself that you cannot escape, but it is important to acknowledge where you are.  Don’t hide it.  Dark moments of the mind will come and dangerous thoughts will surface.  Get help as these thoughts begin to become unbearable, but do not try to ignore them — recognize where you are.  As a survivor, the situations of life have brought you here, and now you must deal with it.

The commentary for the next scene will attempt to more rationally discuss suicidal thoughts and express reasons why suicide is not a solution, but for this entry, I feel there is a need to acknowledge the truth of where this experience of brain injury takes you.

And contemplating suicide is a place many survivors find — so if you’re here, look around and see that you don’t see much — it’s a God-damned, dark space.

But you need to know where you are if you want to figure how to get out, and that’s the next step.

Scene 26 - Had Things

************Scene 26 - Had Things**********

Tony, used to have things.

I had, you know, THINGS

Things like
a car, house,
job, career, friends
I had a lover, I had things.

And then, just like that -

it’s all gone.
Now all I’ve gots is myself.

***************Commentary****************

As self-awareness returns after brain injury, it’s easy to feel as though everything has been lost. Physical skills and mental functions are compromised — an obscene portion of personal wealth is dedicated to immediate medical and rehabilitation care — prospects for employment have likely been severely limited — relationships compromised — difficulty completing previously simple independent tasks — memories torn from the conscious…the sense of loss after brain injury is a long and depressing list.  It’s easy to feel like Tony does in the scene shared above — that “all I’ve gots is myself” — but this is not true.

After brain injury, life changes — there is no denying that — and the sudden switch of one’s friendships and social abilities is devastating — easily leading a person down the rabbit hole of isolation and loneliness.  It feels like no one understands — how could they — and because no one understands, the only person you can rely on is yourself.  A survivor is left alone to grieve his or her loses with solipsistic depression.  It is not easy to climb out of this rabbit hole, but remaining in this hole is a choice. 

Now, is tempting — its easier to just remain — when you’re alone in the hole, there is no conflict — minimal investment in activities, and therefore minimal risk of loss — most other people will not want to enter this hole with you, so you will not need to explain your difficulties — but while you’re in a hole there’s no-way/no-where to grow.  A hole is a space that keeps others out by containing or trapping what is inside — isolation — and without room to stretch or flex — without the sun from outside to give energy — more than a majority of people will not be able to grow.  A survivor who becomes trapped in the false security of a hole limits his or her ability to grow — not learning how to utilize the new set of skills — continuing to loose social comfort from a lack of practice — not grasping the full beauty of possibility that exists in the reality of being alive.

As survivors, we are alive — and being alive mean accepting a new reality.

After brain injury, there are many parts of life that you thought were stable, but can no longer continue.  My personal journey included friendships dissolving, changing my plans for college, future professional dreams seeming to become squashed — I felt as if life had decided to abandon me. 

I was forced to change.


I was fortunate to have one situation that did help to facilitate this change — I was leaving my high school setting.  My situation allowed me to attend a local college that is literally across the street from my parents’ house — not where I had hoped to attend, but it allowed me to step lightly into college education while living at home — and as with most college freshmen, I was thrust into a new group of peers and teachers — people who did not know me and therefore did not have a history of what I “used to be like”.  I was starting from square one, and forced to create relationships with people based on who I am now — who I was at that moment — not who I was in my pre-injury life.  My anonymity allowed me to more easily discover the person I had become.

After experiencing an injury, it may be helpful to change your social settings — if you need to find new employment, embrace this opportunity — join new community activities — bring new people into your life by volunteering for charity groups — seek out support groups from brain injury survivors where you can share your story with people who better understand and can relate to your situation.  Finding new groups of friends and peers allows you to build a life where people learn to like and respect you for who you are — not who you were.

However, tied to this search for new social groups there should be a healthy amount of caution — talk with trained professionals as you try new ways social interaction.  The Brain Injury Network webpage states, “Our position is that support groups for people with brain injuries should be operated by people with professional level training in some field related to brain injury.”  This is done to ensure the safety of advice given to survivors as well as to create a clear accountability system for any advice — peers with brain injury may have the best intentions when giving advice, but do not always have the professional training necessary in understanding of benefits and dangers of suggestions.  That applies to advice from this blog as well — I have not yet received professional training, and, while my advice comes from research and experience, I am not a professional rehabilitation coach.  My advice comes from experience, research, and reasoning — but it is still untrained advice.

As a side note, if anyone reading this can suggest ways I can find more professional training while living outside the United States (I currently live in China), please leave notes below.  I am interested in increasing my knowledge and would love to gain a more complete understanding of these processes so I can speak and suggest advice from a better educated position.

But back to the subject at hand…

Some reading this may feel that this method of handling the pain of loss after brain injury (finding new friendships and social groups) is too idealistic — that the process of “forming new friendships” and “accepting your new set of skills” seems too obvious and candy-coated — and while researching this article, I came across comments to other articles dealing with issues of grief and loss that criticized the author for not recognizing the reality of difficulties faced by individual survivors — that attempting to cover the whole of recovery with a blanket statement about recovery is not helpful. 

I do not think this criticism is flawed, but I would like to preempt such comments toward this article by acknowledging that I recognize the paths I suggest are presented in a way that is falsely uncomplicated.  It is not easy to change peer or social groups, especially when you are tied to a setting due to family and/or work obligations.  There will still be the pain of change and loss — and there will be new social difficulties as you learn how to utilize a new set of skills.  I present my thoughts in the hope that they can help provide some direction — some path to start exploration.  The goal of this article is to help a survivor recognize that you do not need to be alone — that believing “all I gots is myself” is a choice.

That said, I do encourage comments below — be they critical or otherwise.  I am eager to read your thoughts on this topic so we can continue and deepen the conversation.  But if you don’t leave a comment, thanks for reading and I hope we can chat sometime soon.


Please leave comments below.

Scene 25 - Gimp

****************Scene 25 - Gimp***********************

I wanted to be like my sister, I wanted to remain true to Who I Am, but…
Who Am I!

I remember being the Gimp.
That was my title, Gimp.
It was a Nickname my friends gave me

And I couldn’t deny it, you know.
I couldn’t walk right,
couldn’t talk right,
couldn’t - Laugh right!
I was…A gimp.

But at least I was somebody.
At least I had a title,
and an excuse.

Whenever I screwed something up I could say, “Hey, don’t blame me, I’m a gimp, remember!”
And they would laugh and I would,
bray, along with them.

It was funny,
I guess.

**********************Commentary*********************

Friends tease one another.

In previous articles I’ve mentioned how — following my injury — I was involved in a rock band.  As we were boyhood friends in this rock band, we would tease each other.  The title of “Gimp” was first granted by one of my bandmates — don’t remember who said it and it doesn’t matter.  As adolescent boys who are playing in the parent’s garage, it’s natural that we would flippantly toss insulting words - casually degrading one another — like peacocks flaunting plumage, young men throw jibes to display juvenile prominence — dissecting a companion’s flukes and flaws in what is a generally a safe environment.  Everyone’s seeking to win this social game — the “score” seems to be kept by any laughter that is a result of these trite insults, and is generally forgotten soon after.

But some words resonate — hanging in the memory like a chime’s solitary tone through an empty night.

“Gimp” — I remember this word roused laughter, and this laughter caused the word to become lodged in my mind as an easy way to get a laugh while simultaneously explaining away any flub, fumble, or folly.  And I embraced the word, proudly seeking comic approval through self-degradation.  Yet at times, I went to far with my “gimp” routine — it was too much, and I have memories of the laughs that left a bandmate’s mouth becoming uncomfortable exhalations instead of jovial vibrations — but I clung to the word because it got a reaction.

And the quality of the word began to change — no longer a playful jest, but a false crutch.

As friendships became strained, when other’s used the term “gimp”, it became a safe way to lash out and express frustrations.  When it was used by me, the term became a self-pitying excuse for my failures.  And the term migrated from a term used solely within among bandmates to something widely known by my social circles — and I accepted this without hesitation.

I would even encourage it, thinking I could to wriggle my way into the social scene by turning myself into a sitcom character.  I wanted to be the fool — the duffus — the Barney Fife character that everyone loves — and there were times when I would accent an error in order to flaunt my “gimpiness” in the hope of comic approval.  But in reality, not everyone loves this character.

There were times I was called out on this excuse — by close friends — scolding my attempt to shirk responsibility for a mistake by using the term “gimp” — yet simultaneously, members of the same social circle would tease me with that title.  I felt trapped — by the word, and what it implied — by the habit of its usage.

Until I made the choice to shed the title.

The date has been lost to memory, but I remember being at band practice when the word was thrown at me — not with excessive malice, just casual teenage cruelty — and I remember taking a stand — “Hey, don’t use that word — I’m trying to get better and that word…it just doesn’t let me do that.”

“Okay.”

And that was it.  There was no discussion, no resistance — everyone in the band, and soon all people in my social groups, stopped branding me with the term.  It simply took me making a decision to not allow the word.


Words are remarkable — intangible vibrations inspired by even less tangible thoughts that are transmitted by pithy bursts of air — words have no direct effect upon the physical world, but we imbue them with such power that they inspire, degrade, encourage, deceive — words can build a civilization, destroy a planet, create a love, manipulate a people — and the same words carry different power for whomever hears or uses them.  One person may hear a term or phrase and it festers in his or her soul and creates rage or sorrow that terrorizes the mood for days — while another person will hear the same words and give them no more attention than a fly’s fart.


The term “gimp” had very little power for my friends other than an easy insult they could give in what was most often meant to be a playful manner — it was my process that wrapped the word in self-criticism, anger, and pity.  This is not to suggest it is my fault that the word carried such power, or that I could have simply released what the word meant to me — I will not explore that sort of argument here — instead what I want to recognize in this moment was how easy it was to ask that the word not be used — and how freeing.  I asked them to stop — they said, “Okay” — and there was a physical sensation, a weight lifted off my brain — and we went back to band practice.


Nearly nothing for my bandmates, it was a moment of personal rebirth.

This is not to say I have removed power from the word — to this day, the word has an affect upon my conscious when I hear it, and it hurts when used toward any person — but my response is different.  Instead of allowing it, I will face the term and ask that it is removed. 

And I suggest you do the same.  In my time as part of the brain injury community, I’ve been shocked at how often I hear or see the term “gimp” used as a phrase of self-deprecation — and on several occasions I have spoken to survivors, suggesting they banish the word from their vocabulary.  I don’t know if these survivors have done this, and I don’t know if they let the term have the same damning power — but too often I have heard the term used as a way to quickly dismiss personal difficulties in recovery, and I suspect that this word does carry a painful power for many people.

So therefore, as a survivor who is still healing, don’t allow the this term — or other similarly simple degrading terms.  Don’t get mad or try to scream these words away, just state to anyone who uses them that you would prefer they not be used around you — if such simple request is refused, these people are probably not good for your recovery and you should try to minimize time together.  No one is a “gimp”, and everyone healing.  Surround yourself with language that supports your healing process.

Thank you for reading, please leave comments below.

Scene 24 - My Sister's Story

****************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.

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.

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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.