Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho
I listened to a presentation by a rehabilitation psychologist at Brain Injury Support group last night. She reiterated the need to recalibrate our lives. This includes helping others around us to understand our need to live at a recalibrated level. It is no easy task. But, first, we must accept where we are and do the recalibrating.
When with friends, we can rarely tolerate a lively discussion where people talk over each other. It fries our brains. It helps when we can explain our condition.
The most important concept is filtering. The concussed brain often loses its ability to filter stimuli. Background noises and voices are not filtered out. Visual images are not filtered out. As a result, those thousand words in a picture all hit us at the same time where we usually can look at different parts of a picture and ignore the rest.
I have these visual struggles. I explain them this way. If somebody uses bold text in a document or online forum, my brain struggles to read the non-bold text near it. It is like driving down the road at night and somebody drives toward you with their high beams on. All you see is the bright light. When they switch the high beams off, the other images suddenly are visible.
This same thing happens with sounds, especially voices. Our brain tries to track every voice so it switches between all of the different voices without fully understanding any of them. This means we do not remember what was said because we did not fully process it when we heard it.
At work, you need to try to identify the distracting stimulations so you can take steps to minimize them. In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that your employer use reasonable accommodations to help you. You also need to recognize the fatiguing events, too much screen time without a break, etc.
Once you figure out how to recalibrate your work and home/social life, you will recover better. You've never said what kind of tasks you do in your job. We could help you more if you could tell us.
Things will get better.
My best to you.
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Thanks Mark and I appreciate the response. I know I don't have a choice anyway but I hate not being able to converse with my friends at the level I was previously capable of. Instead of being able to have a fluid conversation I feel like I'm in elementary school and I have to think excessively just to make small-talk, which exacerbates the constant headache I already have. My humor, liveliness, and ability to be outgoing have all been diminished for the time headaches. The only thoughts I have, aside from suicide, is how my memory is shot and the current intensity of my headache.
My assignments vary at work daily so it's not one particular assignment I'm concerned about. It's more so trying to keep afloat of everything I'm expected to do while trying not to obsess about death, my health, my memory, my obligations outside of work, and how to keep going while in a state of depression. I listen to myself stuttering and stammering my way through trying to explain my work and it kills me. I know I sound like a moron but my current manager is too nice to say anything. It's really exhausting, and I can't focus. Writing on this forum is really the highlight of my day.
Aside from all of this, the worst part is the accompanying depression. This weekend, I was consumed with suicidal ideation and my commute to work this morning consisted of me repeating aloud variations of "I want to die" for the duration of the train ride. The passenger next to me asked me if I was ok, which was a nice gesture, and I appreciated her asking. I just don't want to, and quite frankly don't have the resolve to go through this again.
It took me almost 3 years to get to a point where I felt normal from my original concussion and the path to achieve that was brutal.. I lost some of my friendships along the way. I know I don't have a choice and clearly I have yet to come to accept this. Really, I think dying would be easier. Sorry for the whining, and please feel free to call me ungrateful as that may be necessary, but feeling of awfulness, sadness, and depression is all consuming and constant. I can't use antidepressants to help either as I tried that last time and it caused insomnia, making the situation even worse than it already was. Just kill me.