Talking through people skills

I was recently asked by a fellow recoverer if I might write a post about re-developing people skills following a brain injury. Two things make me happy to oblige: I myself am very much a "people person" and I remain committed to helping those recovering from brain injury. What I think will help other recoverees out is talking through people skills in depth with a family member or empathetic therapist.

People skills are of course essential to how we get on life. Yet, they can also require a particular sort of brain power, including a strong sense of other people. For example, there are a whole host of conceivable answers to simple questions like, "What shall we do tonight?" Choosing the best one requires an appreciating not only the context, but also the person asking the question. Following a TBI, it is no surprise if recoverers have trouble with this sort of thing.

What I think's needed to help recoverers re-learn people skills is someone to carefully discuss people issues with. A family member might be the first port of call. However, if a good one of those isn't on hand, I'm very confident that many empathetic therapists would love it if someone asked for the therapist's help to improve their people skills. Talk things over with that person: how social were you before your brain injury, how social do you want to be, now? Talk to them carefully about your experiences socialising, post-brain injury: why did that person say that, why did that person get upset?

In my own case, I am lucky to have a very social mother. She of course understood the way I was before my accident and what sort of person I wanted to be. She merely offered suggestions and encouragement to help me be that person. She did things like encourage me to always ask questions of others and warn me that it's rude to simply walk away from a conversation you've been involved in, but are no longer the central focus of.

I encourage all recoverees to find someone to talk through social issues with. This can be seen as another application of the idea that we need to talk to the right people to recover better.

Cheers,
Mike

Dark Days

In some of my posts, such as my last one on mountain running, I fear I might give the impression I'm something of a recovery machine, that I'm an astounding success at recovering from my TBI.  If I have, that impression would certainly not be correct.  I have made mistakes (such as those discussed in Mike's Regrets), but what I think are more important from a day-to-day perspective are dark days,

I think all recoverees, myself included, sometimes face dark days, days where the weight of recovery seems too much to bear.  As an example showing how not to recover, I'm writing this post to talk about what I think helps for dealing with dark days: don't give in to them.

The ability to feel sorry for ourselves is a common human trait.  Whoever we might be, I reckon it's only natural for recoverees, myself included, to sometimes stand back and think, "man, this really sucks!"  A TBI can cause so much stuff to go wrong, there will likely be much to remind us that life is so much more difficult than it was before our brain injury.  It's natural that sometimes all of us will want to pack it all in, to give up and retreat into some deep cave somewhere.

Therein lies the biggest risk posed by dark days.  Do we give in and retreat from them?  That deep cave seems safe from the outside world.  Why not just head in there for a bit of nap?  The thing to remember, though, is that the deep cave provides little shelter from the effects of our TBI, it's actually quite cold and damp.

I think the trick with dark days is know they come, but don't last forever.  As we're experiencing them,  I think it helps to keep in mind that, while not much fun, things could always be worse.  What's important is to stay out of the cold, damp cave, instead standing in the sun as we keep getting into stuff.  Know that dark days come, but don't give into them!

Cheers,
Mike

My recovery: it'll be over when I say it's over!

People often ask me something along the lines of, "How long did it take you to recover from your brain injury?"  I usually respond with, "My recovery isn't over yet: I still think I'm recovering now."  The natural follow up question is, when will your recovery be over?  Back in 2008, I wrote a verbose post on this blog, How Long Does TBI Recovery Take?  In it, I talked about the length of my recovery depending on what goals I set myself.  One activity recently reminded me of the concept, though: my running.

Running in the hills above Wellington city, New Zealand.

Using my running as an example, I want to explain my new answer to the question of when my recovery will be over: it'll be over when I say it's over!

I had my accident shortly before I was to reach my goal of racing Ironman triathlon in 2005.  Being a goal-focused person, I was desperate to build back up to it.  As I started running again, I quickly realised how physiologically complex the activity is to do.  Gradually, I relearnt how to control my muscles well enough, particularly those in my core, to run properly.  Eventually, I was running well enough to support my finally completing Ironman in March 2010.

Even through Ironman, though, I carried a number of running issues.  A key one was that my right quad muscle group would seem to run out of push after about 20-30 mins of running.  The issue wasn't bad enough to stop me doing Ironman: If I walked ten paces, it would come right and I could start running again.  However, I love my running and it was hindering my enjoyment of it.  Once I'd finished Ironman, I was keen to get it sorted out.

In the second half of last year, I restarted my recovery process: I saw physios, tried new things like yoga classes, stretching and muscle exercises and talked to lots of relevant people.  After about six months of trying stuff, I made a breakthough: I realised it wasn't my right quad muscles I needed to worry about, it was my right gluteus maximus (as well as another muscle close by, the gluteus medius).  For some reason, exercising those two made a big difference to my issue with my quad.  Although they haven't solved it completely, just yet, I think they'll allow me to run well enough to train for and complete off-road running events (as per my photo).  (Off-road running seems easier on my quad muscle issue.)

Since I built myself up for Ironman (twice!), you may be thinking I'm someone who likes big goals.  You'd be right!  In New Zealand, one big goal involving off-road running is the 60k (37.5mi) Kepler Challenge, following the Kepler Track in the South Island.  Guess what I'm aiming to be next November?  ;-)

Herein lies my idea.  There are things like running that I really want to enjoy.  It is up to me to do all I can to recover for them.  No matter how long it's been since my brain injury, my recovery will only ever end when I decide to stop working out how to recover more.  It'll only be over when I say it's over!

Cheers,

Mike

From theorising in my brain to theorising in my thesis!

I mentioned in an update in my last post that I had completed my Masters thesis.  I decided readers might well want to know more about how I found it so I've pulled together this post.

Me with the result of 21 months' work: a 300-page bound book.

The main word for how I found it: big!  My thesis started out as a simple question: what made New Zealanders use their debit card payment system, EFTPOS, so much more than Australians or the citizens of other countries used theirs?  Before my brain injury got in the way of things, I'd often pondered doing postgraduate study in economics.  Suddenly, I had an interesting research question to study.  Once this simple idea had germinated, however, it seemed nothing could stop it.  I found an economics professor in my hometown or Wellington willing to supervise my completing a Master of Arts By Thesis.  My thesis eventually became an 80,000+ word study of the economics of the development of retail payment systems in seven Western countries.

Although I started with the plan of finishing the thesis in only one year, it took me 21 months to put it to bed.  I was however very happy with the finished product.  (If you're really interested, the full thing can be downloaded from my university's research archive here, although I summarised it substantially in the context of New Zealand in this guest post for the NZ political blog, Kiwiblog.)  What was the greatest issue for getting my injured brain through thesis writing?  Well, it seems there were two: theorising about my idea in my brain and getting that theorising written down in my thesis.

In terms of theorising in my brain, some major things guided me forward.  When I think back over them now, they're remarkably consistent with ideas I've written about for TBI recovery.  I found it very useful simply to keep talking to the right people about my thesis and where I felt it was heading.  I also thought it important that I enjoyed myself, writing my thesis, and simply keep the faith that I would figure it out.  Did my brain injury slow me down as I thought my way through my work?  I think that's more than likely, but I was enjoying myself so don't feel like that mattered at all.  I just hung in there believing I would find the right way of thinking through my thesis.

As I had figured out parts of my work in my head, the next trick was writing them up in my thesis.  Once again, several things helped me considerably.  The two ideas listed above once more came in handy.  The art of writing well is not a simple one, however.  I think it helped me substantially to have practiced my writing on various blogs around, including on this one.  This is yet another thing that I think has parallels in brain injury recovery, which I outlined in this post, Get Into It!

Even before my brain injury, I think my thesis would have been a major bit of work.  How did I feel about trying to do it with a brain that didn't operate as well as it once did?  I just shrug my shoulders and think, oh well, at least I was still around to do it.  My brain injury could have been so much worse!

If you are a recoveree considering doing something big, I wholeheartedly encourage you to get stuck in and have a crack at it!  See your brain injury not as some insurmoutable obstacle, but as merely something to be managed.  Go for it!

Cheers,
Mike

Embarrassing stuff following a TBI: Google it!

(Please forgive the delay, but it's been a long while since I last posted.  I've been thinking about this post for some time, but haven't focused sufficiently to pull it together until now.  I regret that I've rather been distracted by a frustrating job search following my successful completion of my Masters thesis earlier this year.)

The brain seamlessly controls many, many things.  When we damage it, weird things can start to happen.  And we might not be comfortable talking about some of them.  They may in fact be down right embarrassing!  All is not lost, though.  There is one source of information that won't ask any questions about why you're researching stuff: Google!

Two embarrassing things have arisen during my recovery.  One of them I'm happy to talk about, but the other rates barely a mention.  That's because I remain too embarrassed to discuss it in such a public way.  (I'll leave you to guess from the first how I dealt/am dealing with the second!)  The first is that I (still!) have problems recognising people's faces and the second, that I have occasionally had problems with bladder control.

I am by nature a social person: being around friends and family matters hugely to me.  I find it very natural to be friendly with everyone, it feels energising to me.  I have absolutely no wish to be seen as unfriendly towards people.  Yet, an important part of being friendly is recognising people when you see them again.  If I've only met someone once or twice, though, this is the part I battle with: no matter how involved the conversation was, if I've only met someone the once, it's reasonably likely that I'll completely fail to remember who they are when I see them again.  (This issue is much more than just forgetting people's names, which I wrote a bit about here!)

For some, this might not be a major issue, but for me it definitely is.  Yet, how can I explain it to someone?  Even if I was comfortable with doing so, there would be only a very small number of specialists familiar with it in a small country like New Zealand.  I imagine many neurologists or brain injury specialists would look at it and say, show me a real problem.  To me, though, this is a real problem!

Google's not going to be worried about the seriousness of my problem.  If I input the keywords, brain problem recognising people, if faithfully reveals that I in fact have a condition called prosopagnosia.  Further searching reveals sites such as this one that say there is no formal treatment for the condition.  Sounds to me like an invitation for me to be determined to recover and think hard about how I might work around it.  When I meet someone, can I try remembering their hair colour and the facial features so I can remember them if I meet them again out of context?  With careful thought and a bit of research, surely it's up to me to work out how to recover!

Cheers,

Mike