But I’m really not. I have good days. I have bad days. And I have a whole lot of in-between days… But my brain injury was four years ago, and I’ve adapted well. I’ve learned to allow for my new needs, and I’ve developed a keen sense of when things feel like they’re falling apart – so that I can separate myself from social requirements where possible to give myself time to recover.
Most importantly, I’ve developed solid practices for getting my feet back on the ground and my head back in the game. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I might need thirty minutes or an hour to myself in a dark and quiet space, but I’ve found practices that work for me.
The end result is that most people, especially those in my professional life in this time when “work from home” is the new normal, never see the darker side of my injury. Even my loved and trusted ones see little of this side of who I am, but they do sometimes see some of the aftereffects of a challenging day.
Developing New Work Habits
When I met my new VP, I let him know that I’d had a severe TBI. His comment wasn’t unusual, “Wow, I’d never have known. You seem perfectly fine to me.”
That’s the thing… yes, I seem fine, but I’m not. I have to work so much harder than I did before my injury. For example, I have to set aside time to prep for every meeting, to review the extensive notes I assemble every day and organize them so that I don’t lose track of the primary points of discussion and the key questions that need answers.
With the work from home model my business has implemented, I’m able to take short breaks where I sit out in my back yard to meditate and let some stillness return. Well, except for when I have back-to-back meetings scheduled through most of a given day. This happens way too often lately. When I don’t get breaks to recharge a little, my performance in the meetings can diminish quickly. So, I keep my fingers moving on the keyboard to have notes to review afterwards and ensure I don’t lose any action items or miss important bits of information.
I have a comprehensive folder set arranged by topic or team and keep date stamped meeting notes from every meeting I attend. I keep a folder tracking all my activity requirements by date, which I review regularly so forgetting to do something doesn’t happen very often these days. But these methods were something that I learned the hard way. Luckily, my team was very understanding in the beginning after learning the extent of my injury. But I knew that I had to find ways to compensate for my new disability if I wanted to keep my job. So, I endeavored to develop a system that works for who I am now.
New Ways of Being in this World
I really don’t keep a large circle of friends these days. I’m much less gregarious than I once was because social situations can be overwhelming for me. Multiple conversations in the same room make everything a jumble for me. Restaurant noise, like plates clanking, loud conversations, and general chaos make this a less desirable activity for me than having lunch under a tree in a quiet park with my girlfriend.
As time goes on, I find some things are becoming less distressing. I can wander the local Farmer’s Market with my girlfriend and do fairly well for the first half hour or so. Then, it starts to become a little more activity than I want to be surrounded by. The problem is still that my filters are gone since my injury. She can see and hear everything and amidst all the chaos and noise, focus only on what I’m saying. When the background noise is more intense, I have difficulty separating out what she’s saying from the general chaos and being totally present for her. She’s good at understanding and is becoming ever more perceptive to behaviors that indicate the current environment is pushing my limits. She accepts when I need a break, or when I just need to detach from a current activity and go be alone for a while to recover.
So, just like with work, my personal behaviors are different now as well. This social distancing thing seems to fit well with how I prefer to be in the world now. What stands out to me here, is that for the rest of the world, this is a difficult time – yet, I’ve been avoiding large groups of people for the last four years, so this actually works well for me.
Closing Thoughts
Yes, my injury is invisible for the most part, so people see me and have no idea that I’m the survivor of a severe traumatic brain injury. To them, I seem absolutely fine. But I’m not.
Most people see me as they would anyone else. They don’t see me as someone who needs to be treated different because of a brain injury. And this is how I want things. I really don’t want to be treated differently… This means that I have to adapt to who I am now and do everything in my power to keep my injury invisible. It doesn’t mean I don’t struggle, but it does mean that I’m the one who needs to adapt to the world rather than adapting my world to fit my new situation.
So, I keep to my standard regimen: proper sleep, daily meditation, proper nutrition, and as much physical activity as I can fit into my schedule. And, recovery breaks where I can fit them in help me to keep my mind in a happier place.
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