Hi Ed,

I too felt that way very strongly. And everyone else Agreeing that a part of you is lost I found to be discouraging even though there's some comfort in knowing other people were experiencing this.

My feelings were so strong, that I wondered if I would be able to cope with this loss. The sense of losing a piece of yourself was reiterated by Dr. Johnson's TBI guide. By the way I strongly recommend this guide. Do download it and use it as a reference; it's great.

Fortunately I had also read Andrew Newberg's work on how God changes your brain. He talks about the thalamus, Which is like a switching station in your brain for emotions and helps you perceive God.

I was injured in February. At the beginning of August I started returning to regular meditation. The type I do is called centering prayer. I found it excruciatingly hard to do, and sometimes fail to do the full 20 minutes. But I soldiered on.

After about three weeks of this meditation, my sense of myself returned. I was absolutely thrilled.

Second, I found keeping in mind that developmental process is a fact of life was very helpful. What I mean by this is that you're constantly changing throughout your life span. When I talk to people I discovered that within my elderly friends, basically my brain was functioning like theirs did: memory slippage, etc. In other words in my injury my brain had aged about 25 years.

Though it was not good news, and was an acute change, I recognized that I needed to accept myself. It helped to remember that the brain I had had been different at six months old, different at two years old, different at five years, different at 14 years, different at 21 years, etc.

The main problem with the injury was that the change that I experienced happened acutely or suddenly. It helped to remember that even though I didn't like it, my brain was constantly changing throughout my life span and this was simply another and different way that it had changed.

I also had a psychotherapist to help me through this portion of my recovery. We talked about how expectation versus reality can cause suffering. When I expected things to be different and my brain function the way it used to, I got upset, got angry, was irritable, frustrated etc.

I found that if I simply noticed what was different, made a conscious decision to accept myself and accept my level of functioning, that I could circumvent the negative emotional responses. This way I could avoid dropping down into depression and anxiety.

I hope this helps; I wish you well.