Originally Posted by Mark in Idaho

JaneLdn,

Welcome to NeuroTalk. Sorry for your reason for being here.

I have hit my head on a low ceiling too. Not a difficult thing to do.

Regarding pre-disposing psychological conditions, I have never read anything about pre-existing psych conditions being a cause of or causing sensitivity to PCS. PCS will magnify any pre-existing conditions. For example, if someone had OCD before their concussion, then after the concussion, the OCD will be worse. Even simple personality traits are magnified by PCS. A weakness for depression will also be magnified.

PTSD can complicate a concussion. PTSD should be considered a psychiatric condition since it causes physiological changes in the brain. Psychological conditions just cause changes in though patterns.

I believe that some psychological conditions may cause PCS symptoms to be more pronounced. Like, OCD and other anxiety disorders, it can cause a person to overly dwell on their PCS symptoms.

The other problem is the 'professionals' who do not believe in concussion that did not include a loss of consciousness. They will try to diagnose the PCS symptoms as psychological because of their bias against concussion.
The psych community is often in this camp.

And, there are those who will try to diagnose concussion severity by their perceived ' intensity of impact to the head.' They again are without medical foundation. They will say, " Such a mild impact could never cause the symptoms you are having."

So, as you have noticed, many professionals are completely ignorant of the issues of concussion. Negative or clear imaging has not bearing on severity of concussion. The only value to CT or MRI is to rule out brain bleeds, etc. The only tests that can approximate severity of concussion are Neuro-Psychological Assessments and qEEG in the hands of a good specialist.

Thus the need for this forum. We are much better at helping ourselves than relying on doctors to help us. Been there. Done that. Spent thousands of dollars with doctors to very little benefit.

Regarding work, If you have bad days after good days at work, you need to lower your intensity and/or duration of work effort. Causing a relapse of symptoms means you have just undone any healing progress you may have made. The brain needs extended times without symptoms to really heal. Your focus should be to minimize anything that causes a return of symptoms.

The effort you put out at work may not even be the problem. It is likely that the sounds and visual stimuli at work combine to cause the overload. You may do better wearing foam ear plugs ate work. You can still hear voices but you will hear much less background or ambient sounds. Sunglasses may help too. Anything that reduces the stimulation to the brain will help.

Avoiding stress is the number one goal when trying to recover from PCS.

I hope this helps.

My best to you.