Just came across this — good read! And timely, as well.
How Pressure and Stress Are Affecting Your Performance
Author: brokenbrilliant
I am a long-term multiple (mild) Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI or TBI) survivor who experienced assaults, falls, car accidents, sports-related injuries in the 1960s, '70s, '80s, and '90s. My last mild TBI was in 2004, but it was definitely the worst of the lot. I never received medical treatment for my injuries, some of which were sports injuries (and you have to get back in the game!), but I have been living very successfully with cognitive/behavioral (social, emotional, functional) symptoms and complications since I was a young kid. I’ve done it so well, in fact, that virtually nobody knows that I sustained those injuries… and the folks who do know, haven’t fully realized just how it’s impacted my life. It has impacted my life, however. In serious and debilitating ways. I’m coming out from behind the shields I’ve put up, in hopes of successfully addressing my own (invisible) challenges and helping others to see that sustaining a TBI is not the end of the world, and they can, in fact, live happy, fulfilled, productive lives in spite of it all. View all posts by brokenbrilliant
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 
Interesting indeed – and I know that you feel that stress is a valuable tool for you. But I would add that tbi brains don’t function like non-tbi brains, and the stress loop is probably a constant. What is stress? In TBI there is a fairly regular need for vigilance and focus – the conscious effort to maintain that can be experienced as stress – add to that the stressors of circumstance and their is little ‘downtime’ for tbi folks. The endless streams of cortisol just burn them out – not toughen them up.
Explicit learning prior to the injury may be okay but acquiring new explicit learning is difficult in part due to the attentional issues.
The value of cognitive behavior therapy is that is works to retrain your brain about what is stressful – in hopes that this will help provide you with some down time. Meditation and yoga also can provide this kind of ‘break’ – as does sleep for many folks (though not as well) – which may be part of the exhaustion that people with tbi feel.
I have found that added stress – that is situations which are stressful beyond just my day-to-day functioning – are a nightmare; there are cognitive and emotional consequences and the repair work is terrible.
My bones are drenched in cortisol and frankly I would like to have a whole lot less.
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m –
Interesting indeed. I think that while I may use stress for some things, I do tend to not manage it as well as I might. The problems arise when I unconsciously/mindlessly seek it out in ever-increasing doses, until I collapse.
I think it’s more of a problem for me than a solution, actually. But my system is habituated to using it, so I need to find other ways to ‘perk myself up’ instead of constantly frying my system.
Good point about the constant vigilance and focus being stressful. That’s definitely true with me.
Glad to hear from you again.
bb
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Yeah I have been pretty stressed lately 🙂 – work and other things and my weak spots showing through and making it all the more of a challenge – and then my self esteem crumbles and I start thinking I can’t do this, can’t make it – but I can’t think what the alternative is. I feel sometimes like a porsche engine in an old jalopy with no steering – it’s maddening.
I also think that BI impacts the whole stress/response cycle and makes it even more damaging.
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Oh, tell me about it – stress-stress-more-stress. And all the while I’m happily tooling along at top speed, with one of my tires flat, my left-turn signal jammed “on”, and oil from a leaking cylinder in my engine sending billows of greasy smoke out my tailpipe 😉
I’ve found it helpful to laugh. A great book called “Good Omens” by a couple of British dudes, and edgy night-time comedy commentary shows, have done the trick.
Oh, that and rest. And remembering that everyone around me is probably so profoundly self-absorbed, they have no idea how badly (I feel like) I’m screwing up.
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I find that about every other weekend I spend 80% of the day sleeping. It’s imperative.
As is laughter.
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