TBI Recovery - Not About Restoring the Old Me, But Improving the Current Me

In The Hardest Thing of Mike's TBI Recovery? Acceptance!, I talked of an idea about the process of TBI recovery. For me, at least, TBI recovery can be better thought of not as a process of restoring the old me, but as one of improving the current me!

Seeing recovery as a process of restoration is common. My Mum talks about how, if you do something like break an arm, recovery is more or less what can be done now, compared to what was previously done. For arms and such forth, I agree, such an approach might be appropriate and very useful for motivation, for instance.

Mum then goes on to a very important point. Brain injury is quite different to a broken arm because a brain is so much more fundamental to who we are and what we do. That makes a view of recovery as restoration much less appropriate. Sure, you can help the brain repair itself and try to teach it to do what it used to do; that's like a process of restoration. But, once you've retaught it something, it's most likely the brain has learnt to do it in a slightly different way. Nothing's restored, things are merely improved.

So a restoration idea for TBI recovery seems inappropriate. Yet people still try to beat the square peg through the round whole and continue with it. Most won't even realise they're doing so, but there are some who, through work with brain injury, should know better. It's a pity that they don't stop and think what their view fully implies.

Cheers,
Mike