Recovery from a concussion or other brain injury can be very challenging psychologically. As I read somewhere (I have forgotten where), coping with a brain injury can be more difficult than coping with other types of debilitating injuries. With any life-altering injury, you need to learn to adapt to having a different range of abilities, at least for a while. However, since the organ you use to mentally adapt is the brain, when you have damaged your brain, it can be even more difficult to get your head around the changes you’re having to deal with.
Here are some of the thoughts I came across when contemplating my situation and which I found helpful. If you have any you’d like to share, please contact me: alison at concussionrecovery.uk
(This is a page in progress and will be intermittently updated.)
On patience and endurance
Just the sheer long-haul nature of concussion recovery (if indeed this is what you’re going through) can be difficult in itself. I try to think of it as a game of patience, a game of solitaire but also connection; a game which has to be played and not avoided but equally which cannot be rushed.
Waiting is not mere empty hoping. It has the inner certainty of reaching the goal. Such certainty alone gives that light which leads to success. This leads to the perseverance that brings good fortune and bestows power to cross the great water [achieve a difficult task]. One is faced with a danger that has to be overcome. Weakness and impatience can do nothing. Only a strong man can stand up to his fate, for his inner security enables him to endure to the end. This strength shows itself in uncompromising truthfulness. It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any sort of self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognized. This recognition must be followed by resolute and persevering action. For only the man who goes to meet his fate resolutely is equipped to deal with it adequately.
– from the Chinese divination text, the I Ching, Book of Changes (Richard Wilhelm translation), number 5 – Waiting (Nourishment)
Courage is that attribute of the soul which gives the individual the strength, the power, and the endurance to overcome or surmount obstacles, weakness, hardships, failure, loss, disappointment, crisis – any force, circumstance, condition, person or thing that tends to impede the progress or interferes with the well-being of an individual. There are many types of courage, finding expression on every plane of man’s being – physical, mental, and spiritual. […] Many individuals owe their successes and their triumphs to tremendous difficulties, and some of our greatest contributions to life have been the outcome of the pressure of suffering.
– Dr Thurman Fleet, chiropracter
On taking time (and giving yourself permission to do so)
… convalescence is anything but a passive process. Though its rhythms and its tempo are often slow and gentle, it’s an act, and actions need us to be present, to engage, to give of ourselves. Whether it’s our knees or skulls that need to heal from an injury, or lungs from a viral infection, or brains from a concussion or minds from a crisis of depression and anxiety, I often remind my patients that it’s worth giving adequate time, energy and respect to the process of healing.
We need strength and energy to live with illness.
– Dr Gavin Francis, from his excellent book ‘Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence‘
On suffering
I don’t see suffering as a problem to be solved.
– I read this in a comment on an online article discussing the difficulties of enduring coronavirus lockdowns. The lady who wrote it attributed her view to her Orthodox Christianity but I think it can be held by anyone of any belief system and applied to any form of difficulty. If you don’t get stressed about the suffering itself, then it’s easier to view your difficulties as practical problems to be overcome rather than getting captured by existential angst. I recently came across the phrase “radical acceptance” (in an interview with Paul Kingsnorth) and this has inspired me as well.
On appreciating the journey
The founding constitution of the World Health Organization gives its stated definition of health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.’ If we take that as the aim of recovery, none of us have any chance at all. My own view of health is less demanding and I hope might be more in reach. ‘Health’ means ‘wholeness’ but there are many ways of remaking our selves towards that state, and of rebuilding elements of our lives after illness. Rather than a destination in and of itself, recovery is better thought of as something dynamic, just like life – a direction of travel that we can be guided towards. Anyone whose life is moving in the direction of more dignity, understanding, and in accord with their wishes, is in some sense on a journey of recovery.
– Dr Gavin Francis, ‘Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence‘