TBI S-O-S! Restoring a Sense-Of-Self after Brain Injury and Concussion
The things we do to heal
I just learned about the movie Marwencol. Check out the trailer video and visit the site. Fascinating.
This kind of reminds me of my own retreat from the rest of the world, over the course of my life. Although my own withdrawal from the world where I got hurt on a regular basis was not nearly as labor intensive as Marwencol, it was in fact my own private Idaho. It was a place where I could pull back and experience my own life on my own terms without danger of being hurt or mistreated or dismissed. I have that place boxed up in tens of journals I’ve kept over the years, and stashed on bookshelves filled with subjects of “study” that never came to anything.
My own removal from the world started when I was around seven or eight years old. And it stopped 35 years later. I can’t wait to see this movie, Marwencol — I’d like to see how someone else did it. And how it turned out for them.
It makes me wonder how many people are actually walking around with one foot in one world and one foot in the other.
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.
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One thought on “The things we do to heal”
For me this is hard, almost painful to see – you are right about the withdrawal into a private world but it seems so heartbreaking that that is what people feel they must do to survive.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 
For me this is hard, almost painful to see – you are right about the withdrawal into a private world but it seems so heartbreaking that that is what people feel they must do to survive.
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