Real-world TBI recovery

I can *try* to play it safe... but it's not in my nature. (Don't try this at home, by the way.)

TBI recovery is like anything else – if you want to do it well, and if you want to get a good foundation to work from, you have to have discipline, constancy, and you need to keep practicing, keep training.

Overcoming TBI is like doing the impossible. Like being in Cirque de Soleil. Like freerunning or being a parkour traceur. You end up doing things that nobody else ever thought was possible.  Until you did it. And even then there are skeptics — or just plain people who don’t understand or appreciate how “impossible” the thing you just did really is.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it takes to get to a point in my life where I’m “good”. And it occurs to me now, after my morning walk-run-jump, that where I’m at my best, is in the unknown. Far outside the comfort zone. Making myself nervous – for a very good reason.

If there’s one thing that has held me back, over the past years (probably my entire life), it’s been the mis-conception that there can ever be a comfort zone for me. It just doesn’t exist. I’m mentally, spiritually, even physically incapable of staying inside a comfort zone. I don’t belong there. Never have, never will.

And the times I’ve gotten most into trouble, have been when I started aiming for a comfort zone… got it in my head that I needed to get to a safe place, get settled, get integrated. That doesn’t really work for me.

‘Cause when I get comfortable, I stop paying attention to the level I need to. I back off. And backing off is about the last thing I need to be doing. I need to be ON. I need to be alert. I need to be with it. And I need to do it in a way that doesn’t fall back on stressing my system unnecessarily to produce the stress hormones that keep me ON.

That sort of “On-switch” is far from sustainable. It just takes too much out of me.

So, I need to find a new and better way.

I’m looking for that now. Looking for how to do this. Looking for how to be this.

I realize I’ve gotten comfortable in this job, which is a huge mistake. Being in synch with everyone is fine, but I can’t get too comfortable. People around me crave comfort. And safety. And predictability. And their physical condition (or lack thereof) shows it.

That’s not me. Not me at all. I need to stop trying to assimilate with them. Just stay true to my vision, follow my own lead, and do what my decades of experience tell me is the right thing to do. TBI did not take from me my general fund of knowledge, just my facility at accessing and using it appropriately. And that’s coming back now, thanks to working with my neuropsych.

Adieu zone de comfort. I’m off and running…

Diving back into the real world, for a real-world recovery.