Well I've never been a person with many friends, but I can say that the few friends that I have had, and the co-workers that I had, before (mostly) giving up on trying to work, and every family member are in as much denial as we are, and for those of us who have had this condition for a while realize all too well, the power of denial is very, very strong. The urge to deny that anything is really wrong or that it's just temporary is just so intense. Words cannot even convey how strong the desire was for me. It was hard to make it real that I was brain damaged, and that, my old life as a relatively normal functioning human being was over forever.

If it is that hard for us to accept, we who are the constant victims of our own seemingly persistent and willful scatterbrained stupidity, just imagine how difficult it must be for someone else who cannot get inside of our foggy, blocked, minds. All they see (at least for mild TBI) are behaviors that would seem relatively normal for someone to do every so often, once a month or a few times a year maybe, but we are doing them maybe 10-20 times every single day.

Of course if you have a 'moderate' to 'severe' injury you may not be able to walk or talk or understand speech or you might even still be in a coma. In that case I would imagine it would be much harder for family and friends to deny that anything is really wrong. Although I had significant language problems in the first few months after my initial trauma, and no one in my family acknowledged that anything was wrong at all. Even though I couldn't understand them when they were talking to me and even though I would slur my speech and stumble over words like English had become a foreign language to me, they *still* wouldn't believe me. In the face of that kind of willful blindness, I have no idea what could possibly convince them.

At first I found it maddening that no one ever seemed to understand or appreciate my condition: how incredibly awful it is not to be able to trust your own mind to do *anything*. And of course what we actually can or can't do is always a guess. You can't really know until you actually try it and fail. We can never have any confidence in anything. Ultimately if you can't even trust your own brain, what can you trust?

Now I accept it more and just avoid the topic to whatever extent is possible. I never tried to hide that I had brain damage (except maybe with girls). At the first sign of any sort of cognitive/organizational difficulties I am quick to remind myself and anyone who may be with me that it is not my fault. It is the head injury. It's not like I would intentionally go to my car without my car keys 6 times in a row each time forgetting what I came back to get by the time I arrived inside. I tried to limit my self-blame very early on, and I truly believe that otherwise I could not have survived.

If other people want to be willfully stupid about my condition or anything else, there is very little that I can do about it. For so many people anything that is not visible is just not real at all. They have to be able to see and touch whatever it is. And so much about our condition is just so strange. Initially when my symptoms were more severe I would try to use the analogy of a dog. I would ask them to try to imagine, really imagine, what it must be like to be a dog. Like if a dog could talk what might he tell you? No future. No past. Only the present. No real language abilities. That sort of thing. Of course if they are willing to read a book, that might be one route to some degree of understanding. Another possibility might be to have them watch the film, "Memento".