The really stupid thing that got me back on this blog…

Last week, I was on a call with a life coach who was pitching their neuro-based approach to peak performance. They’re a trained neuropsychologist, and they had a handful of ways to “hack” the brain so you can basically flip the switch on your success. Super-charge it. Turn it on in ways that we usually instinctively turn it off.

Okay, great. I’m always up for ways to do that. I’ve been doing it, myself, for years, using neuropsychological principles.

But a couple things jumped out at me during that call, that seemed really really stupid. And I don’t mean “stupid” in a way that belittles people with cognitive difficulties. I mean it in the way that professionally trained people who should know better are leading people down a path that goes directly against what they should know, due to their professional training.

Before I go on, let me say that one of the things that discouraged me from keeping up this blog has been all the professional input about concussions, over the past several years, that has not helped. There’s a whole “concussion industry” that’s giving people really mixed messages – from people who have never sustained mTBIs or other sorts of brain injuries (that they’re admitting, anyway). And it’s made it all the harder to have a conversation about what mTBI is, how it affects you, and what you can actually do about it. I mean… I just don’t know where to start.

More on that later. Let’s get back to the professional stupidity.

Okay, so I was on this call, and the neuropsych was telling people that we can turn our lives around by breaking mental barriers. Find something that you’re afraid to do, and do it over and over and over again, using “exposure therapy”. Address your core beliefs about who you are and what you think you can do. Overcome those beliefs by not telling yourself over and over that you can’t do something. Use visualizations to “pre-wire” your system for success. And get comfortable with uncertainty.

All sorts of alarms went off with me on this, especially because the person talking admitted to having been very close with someone who had sustained a TBI years before they met them, and they had ignored the warning signs of suicidal thoughts… they’d even encouraged them to just take some anti-depressant meds — the very same meds which will set off someone with a history of TBI. Long story short, just after they told their friend to take some meds, that friend killed themself. Traumatic, to be sure.

And just as traumatic was the idea that someone who was trained as a neuropsychologist was telling someone to do something (take meds) that even I, from passing conversations with a neuropsych, know can be hugely problematic for a brain injury survivor.

Not only that, but this person was positioning themself as an expert in brain topics, immediately after revealing this massive “tell” about just how clueless they were/are.

Um. Okay.

And then they proceed to talk about how doing things like facing your fears, visualizing, and self-talk will get you on the right track and turn your life around.

Well, okay, so for a lot of people it will do that. But for someone with underlying physiological neurological issues (e.g., someone whose wiring has been rearranged by concussion/traumatic brain injury), those things will only go so far.

It would have been much more helpful, if they’d called out the fact that people with organic/physiological brain issues operate by different rules. And we have to live by those rules, day after day, if we’re going to be able to do things like visualize and self-talk our way to success.

Things like:

• Get enough sleep
• Drink enough water / stay hydrated
• Get regular exercise
• Find ways to calm down the over-active and easily amped-up system
• Keep your blood sugar steady by eating decent meals regularly (and stay away from junk food)
• Have a daily routine that reinforces your understanding of who you are and what you can reasonably expect of yourself, day after day.

If we TBI survivors don’t take care of the basics — food, water, sleep, routine — nothing else is worth much. At all.

And my heart aches for all the people (like me) out there who are being told, each and every day, that their failures are due to bad messages they’re giving themselves, or letting their fear run their lives. I think it was such a waste for the neuropsych’s friend to lose their life (in part) because of the terrible advice that they should have known better than to give. I also get so sick and tired of people lecturing me/us about how we just need to get our attitudes aligned with the right sort of mentality, and then our lives will dramatically change for the better. Never mind the underlying issues with fatigue and irritability and not knowing what the h*ll to expect from ourselves and our systems, from moment to moment, because our brain injury has turned us into someone we don’t recognize anymore. We’re being blamed for results that stem directly from our organic/physiological situation, without anyone even admitting that getting your wires crossed by a car accident, a fall, an assault, or a tackle gone wrong, can and does have an effect on your brain’s function.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do believe that pretty much all of us spend way too much time being afraid and telling ourselves the wrong things about ourselves and our chances. We don’t do enough of the kinds of things that can and will make us successful.  And we generally don’t have the right mentality that sets us up for success.

But none of those performance-enhancement approaches are going to get much traction, if we don’t address the physical facts of our neurological situation. Failure is not all in our minds. It’s also in our brains. And until we learn to support / heal our brains and do the things we need to do — regularly, routinely, predictably — all the self-talk in the world isn’t going to be much help. At all.

Until we get ourselves on a good schedule – and stay there – eat the right foods (for us), drink enough water, exercise on a regular basis, and get decent amounts of sleep on a regular basis… Until we develop a new Sense Of Self that tells us who we are and what we can expect from ourselves… Until we redefine ourselves in ways that are solid and predictable… those mentality tactics are just going to be all in someone’s mind.

And the fact that a neuropsychologist was spouting all this stuff without prefacing their talk with a disclaimer… well, that just pisses me off. If they’d said something like, “What I’m about to share is intended for people without underlying neurological issues, some of which may have been sustained a long time ago, but are still having an impact in you life”, it would have set much better with me.

But they didn’t. So, there we are.

Oh, well. It’s a beautiful Sunday, and I have another 24 hours till I have to be ON for work again. So, I might as well enjoy myself. This isn’t the first time this sort of professional stupidity took the steering wheel. And it certainly won’t be the last.

Life goes on.

So, onward.

I blame the space weather

Coronal Mass Ejection

I just checked online, and apparently we’re having pretty intense “space weather”. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that are pretty intense.  According to spaceweather.com,

Sunspot AR2671 has developed a ‘delta-class’ magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares. Credit: SDO/HMI

Awesome. Just what I need.

Solar flares, CMEs, and geomagnetic storms can affect radio transmissions and have also been tied to migraines and cluster headaches. It’s hard to prove, but if you consider that we’re very “magnetic”, ourselves — our nerves transmit their information as electricity (and lots of chemicals), so if electricity is affected in general, chances are, we’re also going to be affected.

Well, whatever. I’m just getting through the week, trying to be smart about things. Keeping myself on a schedule and focusing on the things I can control, versus… everything else.

Onward.

My solution for TBI/PTSD rage

Anger (or out-and-out rage) is one of the places where my TBIs and PTSD intersect to cause real problems. I’ve been having some rage issues, lately. Getting worked up over little things — getting angry over nothing, really. Just getting angry. Temper, temper…

In the moment, my anger — my rage — seems completely justified. I feel with every cell in my being that I am entitled to be outraged. I am entitled to be angry. I validate my emotional experience, and I end up spiraling down into a deepening pit of anger, resentment, and acting out. Yelling. Making a fuss. Putting up a stink. And getting aggressive with whomever happens to be offending me at the moment.

This is not good. I’ve done it with police officers, and I’m lucky I didn’t get cited. Or arrested. I’ve done it with family members, and it’s cost me plenty, in terms of peace of mind and my relationships. I’ve done it with co-workers, and it strained our connections to the point of breaking.

Not good.

But lately, I’ve been able to pull myself out of my downward spiral before it gets too much of a hold on me. I’ve started doing some basic things that stop the progression of rage before it picks up so much speed it’s like a runaway freight train.

First, I recognize that I’m angry, and I am convinced that I’m right about being angry. This might not seem like a big thing, but I have trouble figuring out how I’m feeling sometimes, and anger is one of those emotions that I don’t always identify well. It just feels like a rush of energy — and while everyone around me knows I’m pissed off, I usually can’t tell what’s going on with me until it’s progressed to a really problematic point. I recognize that I’m angry, and I remember that I need to not let myself get carried away.

Second, I step away. I take a time-out and just walk away. I stop myself from saying what I’m about to say, no matter how badly I want to say it. I tell myself, I’ll give it some thought and figure out how to say it exactly the way I want to say it. I tell myself… anything … just to extract myself from the situation. I step away, telling myself I’ll come back when I’m better able to express myself.

Third, I take some deep breaths.  This helps stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that chills you out. The sympathetic nervous system is what gets you worked up to respond to a crisis situation — and when I get really angry, it’s often because I think and feel like I’m in a crisis situation, and my body is getting all geared up for fight or flight (more often fight). I consciously take some deep breaths to get my parasympathetic nervous system to chill out.

Fourth, I seek out some kind of tactile stimulation. I need to get out of my head, which is spinning out of control, and just give myself a different point of focus. My head is going so madly, at this point, that I cannot even think straight, so I seek out some kind of physical sensation to get my mind off the madness. I press the side of my face against the cold side of a door that leads to the outside. I pick up something rough and rub my fingers along it. I jingle change in my pocket. Or I find something heavy and hold it. The physical sensation, along with the deep breathing, gets my mind off the crazy cycle it was in, just a minute ago, and it lets me focus on a single point — the feel of the cold door against my cheek or the feel of quarters and nickels and dimes juggling among my fingers. Tactile stimulation, like looking at a flame of a candle while meditating, helps me center and get my mind off that crazy downward cycle.

Fifth, I remind myself that my body and brain are playing tricks on me. I am probably not getting angry for the reasons I think I am — it’s my body that’s getting all worked up into a fight/flight/freeze state, and my mind is interpreting that as a real sign of DANGER. And I’m probably starting to panic a little, too. As a matter of fact, when I take an objective look at things, the rage that’s building inside of me might not even be real rage, rather a response to a hyperactive sympathetic nervous system response. It could very well be my body tricking my mind into thinking the wrong things. And I need to remember that I get to choose how I interpret my life. My mind gets to decide how I’m going to think about things, how I’m going to react. And my well-intentioned body, which thinks it needs help, is just misleading my brain into thinking that I have to do something about whatever it is that’s getting to me. When I remind myself that this is a physiological process that’s taking place, I am able to relax… and the anger subsides.

The thing I have to remember, when all this is coming down, is that It Is Not Worth It. No matter how justified my rage seems to be. No matter how entitled I am to be angry. No matter how wronged I may have  been. It is not worth it, to get so tweaked over things. When I go off on an anger “binge” I end up feeling really hungover and dumb and numb afterwards, which just makes my life more difficult, once it’s passed.

I’m no doctor, but I suspect that it may be connected with the mechanics of panic/anxiety… all that post-traumatic stress stewing in a pot, and my TBI brain being unable to sort it all out in a timely fashion… My processing speed is slower than I’d like, and by the time I figure out what’s going on, the damage is often done.

So, I do my best to recognize when I’m getting angry, I step away, I take some deep breaths and try to relax, and I do something that gets my body’s attention — like feeling something cold or rough or tactile in some way. And I remind myself that my brain and body are playing tricks on me again. They’ve done it before… and they’ll do it again.

The Magic of “Analgesic Stress”

Clearly, the human body is built to survive. And the mechanisms that kick in to save our asses are as built-in as breathing heavily after a sprint or sex, as instinctual as brushing shaggy hair out of our faces when we encounter someone or something we need to see more clearly.

What’s more, the survival mechanisms we employ to escape imminent physical doom are also important parts of less extreme, yet equally vital physiological and psychological survival strategies. Physical responses to mortal danger don’t have to originate only from physical situations, like a mother grizzly discovering you standing between her and her cubs. They can just as easily — and probably, in today’s world readily — arise from psychological ones, such as a sneaking suspicion that your boss is going to fire you at the one-on-one meeting they just scheduled, or the surprise discovery of your spouse in bed with the neighbor.

In order to trigger the biochemical cascade of fight-flight-fright, our brains don’t have to be presented with cut-and-dried physical reasons to pump our systems full of glucose, adrenaline, cortisol, etc. The juices can start flooding our systems over perceived threats, as well. And those threats can be just as existentially distressing if they’re job-related or relationship-related, as threats that involve our physical being.

If something truly threatening to any aspect of your survival is registering, your brain doesn’t particularly care whether it’s a charging bear or a discharging boss. It doesn’t matter if the grizzly is coming at you with a roar, or your spouse is coming with a scream. A threat is a threat, and the part of our brains that differentiates between different sorts of threats is offline, at the time we’re reacting to something wretched happening to us. Sure, the refined, discriminatory, gray-area-friendly parts of our brains are still there, but they are waiting till after the excitement has died down, before they start to tell the difference between a purely physical fight-flight-fright scenario and one that’s all about our emotions or our self-worth or our hopes for the future. The problem is, in the interim, while the sensible part of our brains is “down,” the survival-based part of our brains is flooding our bodies with all sorts of biochemical franticness that both hops us up and dulls us down, that pumps us full of energy, while shutting down the very systems that can regulate the rest of our delicately balanced systems.

So, where does that leave us, if we’ve experienced tons of traumatic stress over the course of our lives? Where does that leave us, if we’ve been stressed and over-taxed and put-upon in very intense ways over a long term? Chances are, it dopes us up with a pretty compelling case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that modern version of “shell shock” or “combat fatigue” or “nervous exhaustion” that clouds our judgment and heightens our reactivity.

And the more it happens, well, the more it happens. If you get sucked into a cycle of intense trauma response often enough, your reactions become so sensitized that your experience doesn’t need to be extreme to trigger a heightened stress respose. I’m no neuroscientist, and I’m not a formally trained psychologist, but it’s my understanding that if you’re put through enough trauma over the course of your life, your body can get in the habit of switching on those stress hormones at a moment’s notice, just to get you through the day. You don’t even need to be in severe mortal danger, for the action to take effect. It can just look/feel/seem like severe mortal danger to the body, and the mechanisms that prevent disaster will spring into action.

That’s where PTSD really digs in and becomes more persistent, more pronounced, more likely to take over. Which cycles around to exacerbate not only its own instantaneous reactiveness, but also its after-effects. And they aren’t pretty. PTSD’s symptoms can include (in no particular order, and in a bunch of different combinations):

Re-experiencing the traumatic event

• Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event
• Flashbacks (acting or feeling like the event is happening again)
• Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things)
• Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma
• Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating)

Avoidance and emotional numbing

• Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma
• Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma
• Loss of interest in activities and life in general
• Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb
• Sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career)

Increased arousal

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
• Difficulty concentrating
• Hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”)
• Feeling jumpy and easily startled

Other common symptoms

• Anger and irritability
• Guilt, shame, or self-blame
• Substance abuse
• Depression and hopelessness
• Suicidal thoughts and feelings
• Feeling alienated and alone
• Feelings of mistrust and betrayal
• Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain

Which can all conspire to make you feel like you’re either losing your mind, or you’re not fit to live in the world, or everyone is out to get you, or you just can’t make it through the day, or all of the above. And more. I’ve had a pretty eventful life, myself, thanks at least in part to the after-effects of multiple traumatic brain injuries, so I’ve got my fair share of trauma in my past. And post-traumatic stress. And full-blown PTSD.

My brain’s biochemical reactivity has, in many cases, worked very much against me. And I freely admit that I haven’t done nearly enough tending of my parasympathetic nervous system to decompress and regain my balance on a regular basis. But where my brain has often worked against me in stressful times, it has also worked for me, thanks to stress. And the things that have worked for me are those handy endogenous opioids I talked about in my last section.

Remember, the biochemical/hormonal stress response in humans doesn’t care what the stimuli are that are freaking out the brain. All it knows is that it’s freaking out, and it needs to supply the right magic cocktail of hormonal juices, so that the taxed system can function adequately in the face of mortal danger. Even in the absence of lions and tigers and bears and horrific natural disasters, in our modern world, endogenous opioids kick in to numb us to our pain, suppress responses that would keep us from fleeing to safety, and keep us bright and alert on some level — and they can save our asses just as much as they did our Grendel-fleeing ancestors’. At least that’s my experience.

And this is not something we can necessarily stop, once it gets started. We are literally hard-wired to have these biochemicals kick into gear when we’re in danger, we’re uber-stressed, and when we’re in pain. Whether the stress is from a charging bear or an angry boss chewing us a new one in a performance review… whether we’re in danger of losing a limb or losing our job (and our house and our car and all the stuff we owe money on)… whether we’re in pain from lacerations to our legs or sleep-deprived, repetitive-stress-fried joint agony… our bodies are still sending signals via stress hormones (our messengers to/from the gods) and our instinctively hard-wired brains are going to get a shot of numbing sweetness that takes our mind off our ills and lets us live to see another day.

And so a heightened stress response becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, a self-perpetuating loop of spontaneous over-reaction that not only jacks us up, but chills us out, as well. It’s like having an existential smoke — nicotine has the dual effect of first stimulating the system, then chilling it out (which is what makes it more addictive than heroin, I’ve been told). Getting that rush of adrenaline, feeling the mind clear, sensing the body coil and prepare to pounce or flee… and then getting that soothing rush of endorphins… It’s hard to beat that, when it comes to being fully functional.

And it does make me fully functional. In more ways than one. The net result of our inborn neuro-biochemical survival/support system is the heightened ability to respond to immediate threats, reduced pain experience, and clearer, more focused thinking. And when I am in a state of extreme agitation and sensitivity, the effect on me is like the effect of clicking the button on a morphine pump for someone who has recently come out of surgery.

Indeed, I have to say that the same survival mechanisms that let me haul my ass out of mortal danger, also enable me to function at a “normal”level in my day-to-day life. This is probably going to sound crazy to some people, even mentally ill to others, but there’s a logistical reason I find my ass in a sling, time and time again — an inborn, ingrained need, even dependency, on stress hormones to function adequately in the world, and actually feel like a normal person.

Putting myself in the direct line of danger — whether by cultivating friendships with people who are innately hostile towards me, seeking out work with employers whose environment seems custom-tailored to trashing my work-life balance, or taking on too much work at a time when my body is sorely in need of rest and rejuvenation — triggers that magic biochemical cascade of endogenous opioids, and suddenly everything is better. It’s not only BETTER, it’s just better. Normal. Regular. Boring. Standard-issue. Uneventful. Drab. Blah.

This probably sounds odd, but normal, uneventful, rote life is something I really need to work at. Whether due to my head injuries or just my nature, I seem to be hard-wired for excitement. And that tends to get in the way of living my life — especially around other people and when I’m at work. Plus, I have a raft of physical/sensory issues that really get in the way and keep me from getting on with it in a productive and steady way. I don’t need my experience to be over-the-top better, just normal. Just regular. Just standard-issue, run-of-the mill… the way everyone else’s life seems to be, and the way I wish my life were.

And analgesic stress lets me do just that.

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A Perilous Relief – Table of Contents

A Perilous Relief: Bliss From Within – The Glory of Endogenous Opioids

For better or for worse, I tend to have pretty high stress levels. It comes from an eventful past, as well as a busy present, and the intense drive to realize my deepest desires for my future. Certainly, it’s not much fun having to constantly “quality control” my thoughts and my actions, so I don’t get myself in trouble over post-traumatic stress that has nothing to do with what’s really going on around me. I certainly don’t want my energy and attention to get pulled down by old stuff that still makes me jump when an unidentified figure appears out of the corner of my eye. And it’s no fun “melting down”

But being highly stressed isn’t as bad as it might sound. In fact, there is a side to my typically high levels of stress that feeds me. And I love it. After years of being down on myself for being “over-stressed,” I’ve come to terms with that shadow side of myself. And I’ve learned to love my stress.

Here’s why:

In addition to these classic “fight-or-flight” responses to get you going, the little almond-shaped gland in the brain, the amygdala, triggers the brain to release endogenous opioids (opium-like chemicals that originate in your own system) which help your system function adequately in high-demand situations.

These endogenous opioids are a built-in part of our naturally functioning system and they are ever-available in varying quantities. Endogenous literally means “from inside”. And endogenous opioids are magic opium-like potions our systems create on their own (it’s been discovered that the human body actually produces morphine in small amounts). Yes, Virginia, there is a way to get high on your own steam, as the biochemicals our brains produce are of the same type as the illegal, intensely addictive stuff you can buy in a plastic baggie from some sleaze who will take sex as payment for the goods instead of money. They’re just a little different, so they match our body chemistry better. And they aren’t usually available to our bodies through our brains in the intense concentrations that leave overdosed junkies dead on the street.

In particular, these internal substances can have a hypoalgesic or analgesic (pain reducing) effect on the body, which helps you deal instinctively with whatever threat is in front of you, without having to deal with pain, as well. I’ve read that endogenous opioids serve to suppress the “lick response” in injured animals, so they can escape. (An animal, when injured, will instinctively stop to lick itself and tend to its wounds, but if it’s been injured by a predator this instinctual response makes it easy prey for its hungry attacker. By suppressing the pain – and the lick response – this natural impulse lets the animal ignore its wounds and focus on escaping to live to see another day.)

The same holds true with us humans. Imagine how short-lived we would be in crisis situations, if we were distracted by pain and other heightened sensations. We’d be too busy going “Ow! Ow! Ow!” and checking to see what bone we broke or what piece of flesh we tore, to get out of the way of the oncoming rockslide, tidal wave, or speeding bus, or haul ourselves out a burning car and run to safety before the gas tank explodes. The adrenaline rush and sudden biochemical cascade of pain-numbing opioids makes it possible for us to do important things like rescue each other, even when the rescuer is injured… to pull ourselves from danger, even if we’ve been hurt… and do things that would be utterly impossible, if we had to deal – for real — with intense pain. Endogenous opioids may well have been what let that tech guy save himself from dying on an ill-fated hike through the California wilderness by hacking his arm off below the elbow with a pocket knife.

Now, these endogenous opioids are truly wonderful things. Among them are Endorphin, Enkephalin, and Dynorphin. More research keeps trickling in about these substances — and others like them. It seems implausible that we could know so little about these important biochemicals until recently, but some of these have only been identified and studied since the mid-1990’s. And by the time I write (and you read) this, much more will probably be known about these substances, and how they interact with our sensitive systems.

It’s my understanding that the reason that artificial opiates work is because they are so much like the opioids we produce in our own bodies. Like a copy of a master key fitting into a lock, artificial/man-made opiates “open the same doors” that our own bodies normally have closed… and then open, when properly prompted by our biochemical “keys”. If you consider how strongly heroin and morphine can affect the human system, and if you consider that the only reason they work is ‘cause they mimic the qualities of opioids we already have in our own brains/brains, you can begin to understand just how powerful our own biochemical systems intrinsically are.

Yes, these endogenous opioids have the same sort of effect on us as opiates. They cut pain. They give us a euphoric feeling. They help clear our minds. They do amazing things to make life worth living. Lenny Bruce, the heroin addict, said of his addiction, “… it’s like kissing God.” If you consider that endogenous opioids can work the magic of relieving/inhibiting pain, imparting euphoria, and making us think better, it explains how human beings can sometimes perform at super-human levels irrespective of pain, danger, stress, or other normally stymieing influences (like, for example, the voice in their head urging them (in vain) to keep a low profile).

These magic potentialities we have in our brains have recently been getting more “air time” from scientists like Irving Biederman, who studies perceptual and cognitive pleasure. According to Dr. Biederman, we’re not only wired to survive — we’re wired to enjoy ourselves in the process. A lot. Things like learning new things, encountering novel situations, looking at innovative art, “tickle” the parts of our brains that release endogenous opioids into our systems.

So, under the worst and the best of circumstances, endogenous opioids are about as close to a gift from God as you can get. Not only do they buffer our bodies from the ill effects of extreme duress, but they also reward certain kinds of behavior (learning, in particular) with a pure shot of unbridled joy.

Kind of makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?

A Perilous Relief – Table of Contents

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A Perilous Relief – When Survival Backfires

The only problem with being able to survive terribly traumatic things is that our bodies have a way of hanging onto the stress of the situation, long past the event. Healthy processing of traumatic stress is a two-part process. Yes, traumatic stress is perfectly normal — one would expect that traumatic events carry a good deal of stress… if it doesn’t, something is wrong. The problems arise, when the stress becomes post-traumatic — when we continue to react to situations long after they’ve passed, and history hijacks our present (and future) by forcing us to react to situations and essentially live a life that has no basis in present reality.

While we’re in a state of crisis, our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is aroused, delivering all the hormones and glucose and various biochemicals to our system. But after all is said and done, we need to get back to a resting state, so our bodies can recover. This means getting the parasympathetic part of our nervous system in gear.

The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) is the opposite of “fight-or-flight”. It’s about “rest and digest”. Some literature describes it as acting “in opposition to” the sympathetic nervous system, but it’s not antagonistic — it’s complimentary. The function of the PSNS is to offset the effects of the SNS, so our whole system functions properly. The PSNS calms down the racing heart, the panting lungs, the high blood pressure, and restores the blood supply to our digestive and reproductive organs. Everything that the SNS has demanded our bodies give up in order to save our ass from imminent destruction — attention to non-essential details, blood flow to digestive organs, the ability to sleep and have sex and pick up on subtle social cues — is restored by the PSNS in a far more gradual process than the hair-raising roller coaster ride that the SNS took us on. If we survive the ride, our parasympathetic nervous system lets us lift the proverbial safety bar, climb out of the car, and collect our spinning wits.

Now, if our SNS were allowed to constantly run unmodulated and unfettered, it would eventually wear us down to a nub. Like easy credit that makes it possible to buy sexy big-ticket items, purchase more house than we need, vacation at swanky exclusive resorts, and run up a massive tab buying rounds of Long Island ice teas for coach-loads of beautiful tourists who lavish you with attention, a constantly active sympathetic nervous system can really tax the physical system over time. As exciting as it may be, the drain on our physical resources is the equivalent of spending a whole lot more than you make with total intoxicated abandon. And we’ve all learned where that can take us, given enough time and intemperance.

Physically speaking, long-term one-sided excess takes a toll. Cortisol builds up… Blood sugar spikes throw off the body’s ability to effectively manage its own glucose and insulin… Adrenaline rushes keep muscles tense and stressed and unable to recuperate so they can recover their full strength… And more. Our internal organs, especially our heart, feel the burn. We put on weight. We can lose our hair and our ability to have sex. The list of issues that arise from persistent stress is lengthy, and it’s a little different for each person. But the fundamental rule of sustaining healthy living systems still applies:

You can’t keep taking away without putting back in, and expect to last for long.

Now, in a perfect world, for every shock and crisis and emergency (real or perceived) that comes up, we’ll have ample time to step back and relax, have a good meal, sleep long and deeply, and regain our strength. But that doesn’t always happen (and I would hazard to say, it happens relatively rarely in our modern American world). Our sympathetic nervous systems get all worked up, but our parasympathetic nervous systems don’t always get a chance to kick in to chill us out. After all, we’re very busy people with a lot of (real or perceived) important things to do, and our current culture has a way of socially rewarding people who are “on the go” constantly.

And so our systems can’t operate full-spectrum — what goes up must come down, but we won’t let it. We have only half of our God-given pistons cranking — at double speed — and we get into a state of physical distress that actually feeds back into itself. Our high-alert condition, which saves our asses in tight spots, can persist… and keep firing off warnings about every little thing, regardless of whether it’s truly dangerous or not.

As much as our survival wiring may protect and preserve us, if left to its own devices, it can also rake us over the coals. If we don’t discharge the stress of base survival and return to a restorative resting state after all our agitation has passed, we can end up experiencing even more physiological stress after the fact. We get tired. Our judgment gets clouded. We make poor decisions and do ill-conceived things, and then we spend a whole lot of time playing catch-up, in a state of heightened stress and crisis. The stressors we experience don’t even have to be real. They just have to seem real. Our bodies don’t know the difference, and they respond to what our minds tell them with a response that seems reasonable to them. One problem feeds another… and another… and another… and eventually, we find ourselves in a deep hole we can’t stop digging.

Which brings me back to my own situation. The hole I have found myself in, after many years of “digging,” is a pretty deep one. It’s been dug by a challenging childhood, lots of troubles as a teenager, drinking, drugs, petty crime, and plenty of poor decisions that were spawned, not only by past social and emotional traumas, but by mild traumatic brain injuries, as well. I’ll spare you the gory details of my tale. I’m sure you have enough excitement in your own life. The bottom line is, after over four decades of knocking around on this planet, one of my pieces of “baggage” contains a lot of post-traumatic stress, which I need to actively manage and factor into my decisions and actions, even when I’m feeling 100% sane and competent.

Make no mistake, I am a survivor. But that survival has come at a price. And some days, what I wouldn’t give to not have to pay that price, just for an hour or so.

A Perilous Relief – Table of Contents

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TBI and PTSD – The chicken or the egg?

I’ve been giving a lot of thought, lately, to how TBI and PTSD interconnect and “feed into” each other. In my experience, the two are closely interconnected, and they can make each other pretty confusing and convoluted. Each condition changes the brain in subtle but important ways, and when the two interact in one brain/body/mind/spirit, the compounded difficulties can be exponentially more difficult to identify — and treat.

Traumatic brain injury is by its very nature traumatic, and post-traumatic stress disorder comes out of trauma. So, when you fall and hit your head, or you are in a car accident, or you are attacked and knocked out, trauma happens to the body. The body is threatened – sometimes mortally – and the brain kicks in with all sorts of great hormonal and biochemical survival mechanisms. Adrenaline gets pumping. Endorphines start flowing. Glucose gets delivered to muscles. And the less-survival-based reactions we have get pushed off to the side, so our bodies can focus on one thing: survival.

Even if we are not consciously aware that we are in danger — like when I fell down the stairs in 2004, and I didn’t fully realize the extent to which my physical safety had been threatened — our bodies are aware that they are under attack, and they respond accordingly. It’s not something we can control, it’s not something we should control. We need our brains to be able to care for our bodies without our minds knowing how to do it. The problems start, when our brains don’t realize that we’re out of danger, and/or we get caught in a constant feedback loop of detecting perceived danger, reacting to it, stressing out, and never getting a chance to settle down.

That settling down piece is very important. After our sympathetic nervous systems have risen to the challenge(s) of a perceived threat, our parasympathetic nervous systems need to kick in and help our bodies chill out. Rest. Restore. Relax. Digest… Take a break and get back to balance. But if we never take a break and get our nervous systems to relax and get back to normal, we can get stuck in a constant roller-coaster of fear/anxiety/stress/hyper-reactivity that just won’t quit. And traumatic stress eventually turns into post-traumatic stress disorder. Not fun for anyone.

One of the big ways I think TBI contributes to the development of PTSD is in the “debriefing” phase after a crisis or trauma. TBI can impair a person’s ability to self-assess — sometimes we literally don’t know that something is wrong with how we’re experiencing/reacting to life. It can be harder to detect physical experiences and decode behavioral problems, not to mention cognitive ones. And that diminished ability to self-assess makes it more difficult to self-regulate… to consciously and deliberately change your behavior and actions so that you can “power down” and let your over-taxed body restore itself.

At least in my case, when I went through traumatic experiences — let’s take one of my auto accidents as an example — I wasn’t able to think things through after the fact and assess how I was feeling. I literally didn’t know that I was having trouble understanding what people around me were saying. I thought it was them, who were suddenly refusing to speak intelligibly. I literally did not realize that my sleeping schedule was off — I just stayed up later and got up earlier and pushed myself to go-go-go… and then drank and drank and drank to get myself to relax. I wasn’t even able to determine how I was feeling physically. All I knew was, something was up with me, and it really made me feel awful.

So, I pushed myself even more to “keep up”… and it just added to my already overtaxed body being stretched beyond its means. Not good.

A few posts back, I wrote about being wired to survive and all the biochemical activities that take place as a result of some traumatic crisis. The thing to remember about that wiring system is that it is totally independent of rational thought… but rational thought is necessary to deal with its aftermath. The physical experience of all that adrenaline and endorphins and glucose is not a walk in the park. Our bodies need our brains to take over, after we have rushed to safety, to tend to our frazzled nerves and make choices that allow us to relax, regroup, recuperate, and restore the delicate balance in our central nervous systems.

But with TBI, even mild ones, the brain is impaired and it cannot process clearly. So, we can end up making choices that do not help us relax, that keep us on edge, that keep us going-going-going, so we never really get a break from the crisis and drama.

And post-traumatic stress disorders emerge, which further alter our brain chemistry and how we make choices and take action in our world. PTSD actually alters our cognitive functioning. It makes us think differently than we would, under normal, non-stressful conditions. And that different thinking is not always the smartest thinking.

But wait, there’s more…

Impairments to our thinking — our heightened hyper-reactivity, our hair-trigger response systems that are fried and frazzled — can cause us to make choices that are dangerous and risky. Choices that can cause further head injuries. Being all PTSD’ed-out can make us very quick to anger, in situations where we’re likely to get in a fist-fight, even if our opponent is twice our size. It can make us “slow on the uptake” so we miscalculate choices while we’re driving. It can cloud our judgment about whether or not to take up skydiving. And our increased appetite for stimulation can cause us to pursue activities that are custom-made for yet more traumatic brain injury.

And so, we end up with a vicious cycle of traumatic head injury feeding our post-traumatic stress, which evolves into disorders of mind, body, heart, and spirit… and leave us wondering why the hell everything around us is going to shit. Our brains have been injured, and our judgment is impaired. And each condition feeds the other.

I’m not sure how much research has been done on the interactions of TBI and PTSD. I think it’s a topic that’s ripe for harvesting, and we could probably learn a lot from taking a close look at the two pieces of the puzzle. I think that folks being treated for PTSD should also be evaluated for TBI, and vice versa. Having experts and folks in positions of authority say that “most TBI suvivors heal” sends the message that the brain will just take care of itself, and everything will be fine. But while the brain is healing — to whatever extent that may be — post-traumatic stress can emerge, which can feed a vicious downward spiralling cycle that affects not only the mind, but the spirit and the body as well.

And that needs to be addressed.

And I do more of that here…

A Perilous Relief – Wired to Survive

Something wonderful happens, when our bodies are stressed beyond our means. The human system — ever expert at staying alive despite all odds — responds to threats with a biochemical cascade of various hormones (including adrenaline/epinephrine and noradrenaline/norepinephrine) which not only reduce sensitivity to pain, but also sharpen a select group of coping mechanisms to keep you from being injured (or eaten).

Note: In case you’re wondering about this, the words adrenaline and epinephrine, and noradrenaline and norepinephrine are often used interchangeably. Epinephrine and norepinephrine are the official names for the hormones our adrenals produce, but we tend to call them adrenaline and noradrenaline, as well.

The process essentially works like this:

1. Something happens that isn’t “normal” or expected, like a sudden loud sound or flashing lights.
2. The senses relay the perception of this environmental “stressor” from the sensory cortex of the brain through the hypothalamus to the brain stem. In the process, “noradrenergic” activity (which is connected with norepinephrine/noradrenaline) picks up in the brain, and you become instantly alert and attentive to what’s going on around you.
3. A sudden rush of stress hormones at neuroreceptor sites in your brain tells your whole system to use its spontaneous or instinctive/intuitive behaviors which keep you alive in combat or escape situations. Your brain takes non-essential functions “offline” and pours its energy into only the most vital elements of survival.
4. Your body is infused with energy, your mind is suddenly clear and wiped clean of extraneous distractions that have nothing to do with saving your ass, and you’re immediately ready for action.

The process is purely automatic, and the brain knows quite well how to kick into survival mode. If it didn’t, you – and everyone else – would probably be dead, and the planet would be inhabited by creatures that did know how to survive by brute force and instinct. Possibly ticks.

Now, things get really interesting, if you perceive a stimulus as a threat. The “firing” in your brain becomes more intense and prolonged, and the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system (the part that responds to threats and stressors) gets all worked up. (Remember, the other part, the parasympathetic nervous system, is what calms us down and chills us out.) In the process of sympathetic nervous system arousal, a bunch of epinephrine (adrenaline) and a bit of norepinephrine shoots into your system from the little star-shaped adrenal glands, which sit atop the kidneys (the word adrenal comes from ad (atop) – renal (kidney), or literally on top of the kidneys) and regulate the release of the stress hormones adrenaline (epinephrine), noradrenaline (norepinephrine), as well as cortisol into our sensitive systems.

The release is, again, totally automatic, totally necessary, and pretty much beyond our control. It’s also triggered by other biochemicals that originate within our intricately wired brains, which I cannot pronounce and have a hard time spelling. There are other complex factors that come into play, but basically, this is how your adrenaline-pumped fight/flight response gets started in your brain.

But wait – there’s more. The rest of your body is drawn into the action, in the following ways. The list below is not exhaustive, but it gives you an idea of what goes on:

• Your heart beats faster and you start to breathe faster/pant/hyperventilate
• You pale or flush, or you alternate between both
• Your stomach and upper-intestinal action go off-line, and your digestion slows down or stops altogether
• Lots of blood vessels in many parts of your body constrict
• A “shot” of glucose – sugar, sugar, sugar – gets released into your body to fuel muscular action
• Blood vessels in your muscles open wide to allow more blood to pass through (there’s more blood available to them, since vessels in other parts of the body constrict)
• Your eyes and mouth can get dry
• Your pupils dilate, so you can see better
• Your bladder may relax and your colon may empty (hence the popular expressions “pissing or shitting your pants”)
• Erection is inhibited (the body needs the blood elsewhere, including for your muscles – see above)
• You can lose (some or all of) your hearing for a while
• You can lose your peripheral vision for a while
• Instantaneous reflexes accelerate and become hyper-responsive.

All this basically spring-loads you for action, and it’s wholly automatic. You couldn’t stop the neural/biochemical escalation in a crisis, if you tried. (Well, some people probably could, but they’ve very likely been sitting in intensive zen meditation for years or they’ve received training in how to do this, which most of us have not.) Signals get fired in the brain, screaming Run!!! Run!!! or Fight!!! Fight!!! overriding (by design) your rational brain that wants to sit back and assess the situation and not get all worked up until there appears to be a good reason.

And it totally saves your ass. Like an instinctive response to the shrieking wail of approaching fire truck sirens, bright red lights suddenly flashing through your bedroom window at 3 a.m., and/or the smell of a big smoky fire coming from the apartment next door. Your body takes over automatically, making you instantly alert and highly attentive to what’s going on around you. As your brain takes non-essential functions “offline”, everything around you fades to a blur, except for the sound of roaring flames tearing through the building, the scent of thick smoke, and the sight of the window across the room that leads to the fire escape. Suddenly, the petty distractions of the day before mean absolutely nothing, as do any extraneous activities not related to living to see another day. Forget about making the bed and fluffing the pillows and making sure your hair is combed before you go outside – pull on your bathrobe, grab your keys and the cat, and climb out the bedroom window onto the fire escape. Don’t worry if the firemen can see up your shorts – just get the hell down to the ground level and away from the flame-engulfed building.

When it comes to basic survival, we’re hard-wired to make sure we get through in one way or another, and the tidal wave of biochemicals that floods our system really does take over, whether we like it or not. If those handy hormones do their jobs properly, they give us the chance – after we’re once again hauled out of the fire to safety – to sit back and process what just happened and decide in retrospect if we should have gotten worked up or not. But if they don’t do their job and we end up on a cold slab, we never get the chance to sort things out. So, it’s not a bad thing, that our survival brain hijacks the rest of our cognition in situation-appropriate ways.

It’s not a bad thing at all.

A Perilous Relief – Table of Contents

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Tired of being tired

I don’t like being as tired as I’ve been for the past week. I started losing sleep last weekend in anticipation of my testing results. And then when I had my neuro visit, that threw me off, too. So either way, I can’t seem to catch a break. Even though I got good news, I had been keyed up to possibly getting bad news — I like to be prepared. But when things came back inconclusive, well, my system was still on high alert, I wasn’t sure what to do with all that energy. I think it might have been easier, had I gotten something definitive, even if it were less than positive news. At least then I’d have something to focus on, to aim towards, to measure myself against. Even if it’s problematic, it’s at least something.

But this “we couldn’t get anything definitive” trip has been quite demanding. I’ve got all this energy, all this readiness, all this alertness… and nowhere to go with it. My body has been in a state of high alertness, on and off, for many years, and now it’s starting to really take a toll. I should probably exercise to work it off, and I have been trying to get myself to do just that for months — no, years. But one of the things that my TBI in 2004 did was making me really nervous about being around other people, so going to the gym has not been an option for me. That’s bad. I’m not in as good condition as I should be, and I have a hard time getting motivated to GET in better condition.

It’s a problem. It really is. But at this point, I’m more concerned about my sleeping — ‘cuz if I can’t sleep, then everything goes haywire, and I end up in this downward spiral all over again.

You wouldn’t think that sleep would be such a big deal, especially considering how exhausted I usually am. But I’ve had to really work at figuring out how to sleep, as well as get naps in. It’s wild, how napping feels like my new “hobby”. I do it whenever I can… and I’m actually enjoying it. I’ve been “off” my sleeping patterns since my fall down the stairs in 2004, getting anywhere from 3-6 hours on a regular basis, and rarely getting more than 7 at a stretch. It was such a departure for me — for most of my life I craved 8-9 hours each night, without exception. It was what I used to aim for, even when I was a kid. But I didn’t even fully realize just how bad it was, until the past year or so.

The other crazy thing about my sleeping change, was that for some reason I thought it was an okay thing to do without sleep. I guess I would just get so jazzed up and so charged and so whacked out with agitation and nerves, I would think I needed to work off my nervous energy and “get things done”. Well, news flash — I wasn’t really getting much of anything done. Just spinning my wheels. How crazy is that — I would just start all these writing projects, work like mad on them, write and edit, write and edit, write and edit, but then I would get distracted and go do something else, and completely forget about what I had been so determined to do.

Madness. I was just running like a blind fool, spinning my wheels, just being busy for the sake of being busy. Geez! I wasted so much time imagining myself pursuing success, but I was just churning. And exhausting myself in the process.

I have to say, post-traumatic stress may be a significant factor in all this. I’ve been reading so much about traumatic stress, thinking about it, talking about it with psychotherapist friends, pondering it, looking at it, I’m pretty sick and tired of it always being on my mind. But PTSD must be playing a role in my sleep conundrum. After having gone through so much over the past year, tracking down my tbi and other neurological issues, going through all the testing, changing jobs, dealing with family stuff, having various neurological complications, and trying to put two and two together and make sense of it all… not to mention the hard, hard winter we’ve had… I’ve probably got my fair share of PTSD to deal with. I’ve just been so tapped, week after week, month after month, and it’s taken a big toll on me and my already sensitive system. No, I haven’t been at war, and the past year hasn’t been as hellish as it could have been, but stress is stress, and I have been “on and off” about how well I’ve dealt with it all.

Oh, God, I am so tired. It’s crazy. I can’t even figure out how far behind I am on my daily quota. All I can do, is try to catch up when I can. I had a 2-hour nap Saturday afternoon, and I slept for 3 hours on Sunday. I was still really groggy after both naps, and I didn’t feel like I had caught up as much as I needed, but at least I did manage to lie down for a while, and it feels so good to relax.

This is relatively new for me, in the past years. I have gotten worse and worse at relaxing, especially after each TBI I went through. With each accident, I became a little more wound-up, a little less inclined to sleep. I think it’s become a lot more noticeable in the past years, as the cumulative effects of my injuries is catching up with me, and I’m getting older, too.

When I was a kid, I remember having a lot of trouble relaxing and falling asleep. It was very on-again, off-again. I tended to get tired and go to bed earlier than other kids, but I often had to sleep in a specific position, holding something close to me, like my blankets or a pillow (not so much stuffed animals). I also couldn’t sleep if there wasn’t a blanket over me. I was kind of high maintenance when it came to falling asleep, but at the same time I really craved a good long nap, a good rest, something that would recharge my waning batteries.

I still have trouble falling asleep, if I’m not in a certain position or if I don’t have blankets on me. And I’m still exhausted… by myself and my crazy brain. Some people call me a Type A personality. I am driven. I do push myself. I do tend to get aggressive. And I generally go full-force after whatever I want, not letting anyone come between me and my intended goal. But it’s not all psychological/ego drive that moves me. There’s more to it than that — and sleep plays an important role. In fact, the more closely I examine my life and pay attention to what’s going on with me, the more clues arise about what makes me do the things I do — including not relaxing. And in some ways, it has as much to do with physiology as psychology. In some ways, I’d say it has even more to do with the state of my body than the state of my mind. (I’ll write more on this in a bit — it’s actually a pretty important realization/development for me, and it might help others to understand and accept themselves better, too.)

But I’m operating more and more from a deficit, and it’s just not good. Nowadays, I’m trying to learn how to relax. I used to know how, but I seem to have forgotten in the past years. It helps me to listen to some guided imagery for “training” on how to do this. I’ve lost a lot of my former ability at it, so I have to have someone else walk me through the steps of relaxing… progressive body relaxation, deep breathing, letting myself “go” to an imaginary place where I’m safe (which, for me, is a made-up, imagined place I’ve never physically been to — very few of the places I’ve been in real life are places I can relax in)… At first, I felt kind of inept. I mean, who doesn’t know how to relax? What a strange concept. But when I think about it and am totally honest about it, no, I actually don’t know how to relax. Not anymore. And I need help.

I also need help falling asleep. I have noticed, over the past year or so, that when I have the worst insomnia or am waking up way before my alotted 8 hours, I am often very tense, like I’m spring-loaded. Instantly ready for action. Always on alert, because something might come up that I need to react to. My broken-brain reaction time tends to be slow to begin with, so I compensate by always being on-guard, on-point, on-alert. It’s fine when I’m going through my days, but when I lie down to sleep at night, it makes it mighty difficult to relax, let alone fall asleep. But once I let go of the tension in me… once I relax, I can start moving towards sleep.

One thing that’s really helped me, is starting to go to bed before I “have” to. If I wait until 11:00 to go to bed, and I have to get up by 7:00, I feel like I’m under tremendous pressure to perform — to get to sleep promptly and stay asleep for eight hours. I actually put pressure on myself to relax and sleep. But if I head to bed around 9:30 or so, putter and futz around and take my time getting to bed… and if I can get in bed by 10:30 or so, I have a lot less pressure on me, because I am pretty sure I’ll be able to get my hours in.

I’ve been using some guided imagery to get me “down” too. Fortunately, I get so relaxed by the initial cut on the CD, that I usually get to sleep before the “restful sleep” part starts. So, while I’m sure that it helps me, I’m not entirely sure how. Supposedly, it helps even when I’m asleep and am not actively listening. I’ll just trust that, I guess.

Diving Into My MRI

I spent time yesterday studying my MRI, comparing my brain with pictures of normal MRI’s I found online at Google images. What a treasure trove Google is! Just being able to find pictures of what “normal” looks like has been a great boon to me.

Looking at MRIs can be very trippy, and looking at my own brain is kind of spooky. From looking at it, the untrained eye could easily become very disoriented and alarmed. But knowing what other normal MRIs look like is very helpful. How else would I know that I’m not a freak of nature? The brain is just so fascinating!

It’s so great to find descriptions of the normal brain MRIs, since it can be hard to figure out what you’re looking at. I’ve got a used textbook on neuroscience I picked up, as well as a copy of Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, which is a hefty tome of highly detailed drawings (done by Dr. Netter) of virtually every part of the human body, which also have every little piece clearly marked and labelled. I look at my MRI, then I consult my Netter’s book, then I Google the part of my brain that I think I’m looking at and read about it, and then consult my neuroscience textbook, to read more in-depth information that’s at a student level. Fascinating.

But I’m surprised to be having such a hard time finding information on reading MRIs. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Maybe that type of information is too advanced to be safe to release into the public, lest we all fire our radiologists, start reading our own MRIs, and jump to conclusions about ourselves. I’ve already had people look askance at me, when I told them I was going to be studying my MRI. They clearly seemed to think that I’m not qualified to do it, but I figure, why let that stop me? I’m not getting paid by anyone to ply that trade, and I’m only interested in my own situation, and it’s really just for my own gratification, so I’m not letting their skepticism stop me. It’s my body. I’ll study it to my heart’s content.

I know there’s no substitute for a qualified neurologist or radiologist, but I really need to understand what’s going on with me, and nobody seems to have the time to spend with me to make sure I’m clear on what’s going on. It’s very discouraging to have this level of testing done, only to not be able to find someone to help me understand it. The neuro I saw a week ago wouldn’t give me any more information, other than that my tests read as normal. I asked if they could show me the film, but they brushed me off. Maybe they thought I’d be looking for something that doesn’t exist… malingering and all that. I’m not malingering. I’m curious! And honestly, I don’t want to milk this and make myself out to be sicker than I am. I just want to know why my life experience is so different from what I hear everyone else describing. I want to know why I have the many, many issues I’ve got. I want to know what makes my brain unique — and treat that uniqueness as a strength, not a weakness. And having MRI images to help me gain just a little more insight into my situation seems like a great opportunity to learn more… even/especially if what I learn is that my variations on experience are “within normal range” and not the sort of thing I need to be concerned about.

I did find some pictures of my brain that I have questions about. Places where there are asymmetries and/or dark/light spots that might be old injuries or some abnormality. The part of me that’s been on high alert — or hovering around there — is eager to run off to a neuro to get the spots and dots and bright places explained… to explain how the asymmetries in my brain might translate to some irregularities in how my mind works. I know I need to calm down, get some rest, let it all sink in. There’s no tremendous hurry, now that I know that I’m not in imminent danger from a brain tumor or MS or some other terrible neurological condition. I can relax, now. And I need to make more of an effort at doing that.

In the meantime, while I recover from my over-excitabilities, I’ll think about my next steps. Study normal MRIs online, look around, just do the whole visual image thing, getting my eyes used to the sight of MRIs, so when I do get a chance to talk to a neuro about my results, I can sound at least moderately intelligent. I’m thinking about contacting that last neuro I went to see — the one who treated me like I was looking for drugs, who has since apparently recanted their attitude towards me and offered to help me “in any way” they can. I may give them another chance — but next time, take someone I trust with me, and ask the neuro to just walk me through the high-level points of my MRI. There are some things that are grabbing my attention, and I would like a little bit of an explanation.

I really need someone to read it who knows how to interpret the orientation of the images. I think MRIs may give you a mirror image of a body part, so the left side of the picture is actually the right side. At least, that’s the impression I get from reading descriptions of MRIs that show clear anomalies on the left side… but the text talks about right-side issues. It gets confusing. One side of my brain is shaped a little differently than the other, and I’m not sure if my right side is lop-sided, or if it’s my left. I think it makes a difference, too, which side is varied from the “norm” — left and right sides have different functionality, or so I understand, and if I’ve got developmental issues with one side of my brain, then knowing about them might help me better understand and manage my own issues.

It could be that I’m on some wild goose chase, and that all the differences in my brain are in fact quite normal. But looking at my pictures and comparing them with other MRIs, my head is kind of lop-sided, and one side of my brain has a noticeably different angle than the other side — between the lower frontal/parietal lobes and the temporal lobe that sits beneath it. I’ve got some asymmetrical bulges, and in some places, one part of my brain looks like it’s been crowded by another part that is not shaped the same way as others’ normal pix. It is considerably wider and looks bigger than I’ve seen elsewhere, so that just makes me wonder.

I don’t think it’s a bad thing, having parts of my brain differently arranged than the norm. If anything, it’s probably an advantage. Even if my brain developed differently over the course of my life, it hasn’t completely stopped me from living my life, and no one would probably ever guess that it’s developmentally different. I’ve been far too successful in my life, far too resilient, far too capable, far too adaptable, far too effective, all across the board, for any sort of developmental differences to be a liability. If anything, my differences are a strength. And I’d never part with them. Not at all.

Looking at all these “normal MRI” pix, I have to wonder… What is normal, anyway? If you think about it, the chances of anyone turning out the same way as other people are just so slim. The human body is an amazingly intricate and sensitive system that can be impacted by unseen, invisible forces that we don’t recognize for a long time, if we recognize them at all. We’ve got billions and billions of cells constantly growing and changing and multiplying, we’ve got tons of distinct body parts, we’ve got so many different bodily functions, many of them invisible to us. And we’ve got not only our internal world but our external world to deal with and factor in. Some days, I’m amazed that the human race — or, for that matter, any living creature — makes it through a single day.

Lots can go wrong. Lots can change us. Lots can affect us and our development. But variations are what keep the human race viable. The healthiest living systems have a lot of variety in them, and I would expect that variations in brain development are critical for a healthy system, as well. Even if those variations appear to be “disabilities” or some other sort of rare deviation. The human brain is an amazing organ, and not only can it do things we cannot even begin to imagine possible, but it can also accommodate a whole lot of additional variations and bounce back from injuries, with neuroplasticity and remapping functions and other mechanisms we haven’t even begun to name. (I haven’t done a plug for The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, in a few months, so I’ll mention it here — if you have doubts about the ability of the brain to adapt, then you should definitely check it out.)

So, even if my brain is developmentally anomalous, and even if it got broken along the way with those hits and falls and accidents, and even if it gets tired and overwhelmed and doesn’t know where it is, sometimes, it’s still mine. It’s what I have to work with. And so far, injuries and accidents notwithstanding, it’s still going strong.