Unsympathetic Reactions to Brain Injury

In the post, Sympathetic Reactions to Brain Injury, I described how peoples' reactions to the effects of a brain injury commonly fall into two groups. That post discussed the first and this one the second.

Not all comments that fall into the unsympathetic group are negative. Often, people are just going about their business, see something unusual and comment on it. Assuming I was already drunk (instead, I was well fatigued), a nightclub doorman once stopped me from entering his bar and said, "how many drinks have you had tonight?"

I admit, though, that more negative comments are sometimes made. I once was told (in no uncertain terms) that I shouldn't be using disabled carparking spaces because, to the speaker's eye, I looked completely healthy. I've heard about other recoverers who, for instance, have been berated for not filling out forms at the library quickly and correctly.

It is a strange fact of the human pysche that, for many recoverers (me included), even the more negative comments can be significantly less annoying than the sympathetic comments that I 've described. No matter how negative, though, unsympathetic comments get made because everyday people don't come across brain injury very often at all. They're just not aware of why my brain mightn't work quite right. It's easier for them to just think I'm a bit slow or a bit stupid.

If people react unsympathetically, I think it's pointless blaming them. Instead, I need to think about what I can say to make them see there's more to it than meets the eye. To the nightclub doorman, I can say, "Actually, it's not that I'm drunk, just that I had a bad accident a few years ago and my balance isn't so good now." To the library receptionist, I might say, "Forgive me, but filling in forms isn't one of my strengths. Can you help me out?"

Some have labelled unsympathetic comments with the much maligned word, discrimination. That seems silly to me as I can have so much influence over how people react to stuff about me. Why blames others without first thinking about what I can do to help?

Cheers,
Mike

Sympathetic Reactions to Brain Injury

Commonly, when people unused to brain injury see the effects of a TBI, their reactions fall in to one of two groups: sympathetic and unsympathetic. This post discusses the first group while (somewhat obviously) the post, Unsympathetic Reactions to Brain Injury, discusses the second.

Ok, sympathetic responses. Other recoverers out there will know what I'm talking about; things like: "You think your memory's bad, you should see mine and I don't even have your excuse of a brain injury!" or "Don't worry about it. I'm always forgetting peoples' names, too." Because of all my fatigue problems following my TBI, this one's my personal favourite: "You're tired? Yeah, I found that day/night/event really tiring, too!"

Such things have been said to me by some of the nicest, most kind-hearted people I know. Yet, at times, I've struggled not to find them incredibly condescending and very annoying. How could such kind things possibly be taken that way? Your brain injury could well be the hardest thing you've ever dealt with (mine is and, hopefully, always will be). The problems mine caused were unlike anything I'd come across before.

They were so different and so hard to deal with, it felt like no one could possibly claim to know what it was like. Comments implying otherwise seemed utterly ludicrous. How could any normal person understand how difficult this is? How can they try to make me feel better when they've got no idea what it's like?

My instant reaction was to grit my teeth and take the statement badly. What I needed was to relax! The person saying it certainly doesn't mean it to cause such anger. They are trying to make it a bit easier, to make the recoverer feel better about their troubles. Most important of all, they say it because they're being sympathetic and they're trying to their best to understand. Of good friends or anyone else, it's difficult to ask for more than that.

I realised this early on, but it still required effort to make myself relax when such things were said. Upon hearing them, I had to remember to think first, what does the speaker understand about brain injury, and then, second, how do they intend I take what they've just said. Making that a habit made it a lot easier to deal with overly-sympathetic reactions.

Cheers,
Mike

Escaping TBI Escapism

In the post, TBI Escapism, I set out why I think Mike's World Tour wasn't about about escaping my TBI. Yet I talked about how I could understand wanting to run away from it all. How can I understand it, but not have similar desires, myself?

I guess, as you may be picking up, a big chunk of it is the sort of person I am: forever positive and upbeat. That doesn't mean, though, that I entirely avoided having escapist thoughts. When they came on, I guess I was able to focus on what I still had: a reasonable amount of health (that is, at least my accident wasn't worse!), a close and loving family and, yes, something of a life to be had; a life just waiting for me to figure out how best to live it.

I know times can be tough and the mountain looks massive for recoverers to scale. I guess it's almost a given a recoverer will have times when they'll want to run away from it. Thinking about the amount I still had helped get me through times when that feeling came on. It helped me escape TBI escapism!

Cheers,
Mike

TBI Escapism

TBI Escapism: the desire to get away from one's brain injury, to escape its effects, to have a day when things are 'back to normal' - the way they were before the accident. I have written about the concept before in the post, Wanting to Leave Care. As I said in that post, the feeling is very understandable. Departing on a holiday might seem a way to get a break, to relax, to return and feel better placed to carry on the struggle that is recovery.

Unfortunately with brain injury, though, there ain't no where to hide. Your brain is something you take with you everywhere. There isn't any way you can leave it behind, even for just a few short days.

People might well read about Mike's World Tour and wonder, was it TBI escapism that motivated me to take it. I can assure the reader that it was not. Right from the word, go, I was very conscious of the effects of my brain injury on my travel. That is what made me take a month-long trip first just to see how I got on travelling with the effects of my brain injury. While I was away, of course, I was still recovering, still learning about my new brain worked, still trying to think of ways to make it work better. In that way, Mike's World Tour was very much part of my recovery.

I think there is one main trick for others to take away from this when thinking outside the box: never let go of the brain injury. Always be aware that your brain might not work the same anymore; alternative approaches might be required. But always believe that any TBI problem can be solved, or at least substantially reduced; always believe that you can and should be determined to recover.

Cheers,
Mike

P.S. I've written a bit more on this subject in the post, Escaping TBI Escapism.

The Use of this Blog

The first thing I want to say here is, with a bit of help from a few valued friends, this blog is my donation to you! You're absolutely welcome to view it, read it and take from it what you will. I ask for neither reward nor compensation for this. Instead, I regard it as the best way for me to repay all those who have helped me along the way and, yes, there have been an incredible number of them. I think I have a lot to repay!

In spite of my motivation of goodwill, I have no wish to see my donation used in any substantial way without my approval. Feel free to pass on my messages, but, please don't republish or repackage them for consumption by others without receiving my permission, first. If you wish to get this, please email me and I should respond promptly.

If you've come to take a look at what I have to say, please feel more than welcome to read on! And make sure you tell your friends and loved ones too!

Cheers,
Mike

Mike's World Tour

As I explained in the post, Reasons for My Travel, I had become determined to travel. Yet, I was hardly in a state to throw caution to the wind and jump straight in to such a thing. So I invented Mike's World Tour.

The Tour started with a month long trip to the South East Asian countries, Cambodia and Vietnam. I had always wanted to see those places, they were reasonably close to New Zealand and a trip to them was long and difficult enough for me to work out how able I was to cope with my fatigue and other problems related to my brain injury.

Although not quite flawless, that month went extremely well. I managed to work out how to avoid getting truly fatigued and how to avoid many of the traps that can catch out tourists (particularly brain injured tourists :-). I arrived back home and immediately started planning the proper Mike's World Tour.

I had always been tempted by travel to South America and planned out a 7 month spell there before heading to the northern hemisphere to see friends and travel to Spain and Italy. I had a 12 months away, all up. Again, it wasn't quite flawless, but the trip went wonderfully well. I'll write a lot more about it shortly.

I'd been wondering what to call the post label for posts about Mike's World Tour. I decided that there is one thing I most want readers to take away from hearing about my trip. Don't accept that a TBI confines you to anything. Think outside the box!

Cheers,
Mike

Reasons for My Travel

One part of my graph in the post, Breaking the 40 Hour Week Barrier, has a period of me not working. It is marked out as Mike's World Tour and I want to better explain it here.

Picture my situation: I'd taken one hell of a knock to the head and was busy recuperating in hospital and rehabilitation. I wrote here how so many of my friends had either left or were about to leave my home country of New Zealand on international trips to "see the world". In my state, doing such a thing seemed a dream to me.

Eventually, I recovered enough to leave rehabilitation and return to part-time work. I found part-time work exceptionally frustrating: to be so close to the work I loved, but never quite able to properly get involved; to always be leaving work early; to be less of a help and more of a hindrance to the boss I respected so much.

I was fortunate to have options other than work. Savings from a previous job allowed me to think about following my friends on my own trip to "see the world". And so I came up with Mike's World Tour.

Also, I've written more about a thing that was definitely not a motivation for me to travel, TBI Escapicism.

Cheers,
Mike

Breaking the 40 Hour Week Barrier

I'll start this post with something that will be fairly obvious: I love my job! Getting myself into a position where I could properly do it has been a focus for me right from the word, go (or maybe the words, severe brain injury :-) !

And by properly doing it, I do mean full time work. The problems with fatigue caused by my brain injury meant, for a long time, all I could manage was part time work: a few hours a day. After my accident, my first week back at work was only three hours long (for the entire week!). I could never enjoy doing my job part-time the same as I had doing it full-time. So my target was always a normal week's work for economic consulting: 40 hours!

It's taken awhile, but, with care and attention (using things like neuro-resting at work), I finally achieved it, three years and a bit years after my accident. It is difficult for me to communicate here how important a milestone this was for me.

I've prepared this graph to celebrate my rise of the phoenix. It sets out the billable hours worked (that is, those hours I could charge someone else for) since my accident, combined with a few important dates around my accident.

I think it is this graph that does the best job of setting out the progress I have made coming back since my accident. I've written one more post about it, Reasons for My Travel and Mike's World Tour. I'll also write another discussing the trends in this graph.

Cheers,
Mike