rick,

Thanks for your answers. It appears you have been making some good choices. The MTV may be a negative influence on your symptoms. Contemporary music has beats and lyrics that do not fit in the more normal flow of brain processing. Your head aches sound like blood pressure head aches. The concussed brain often loses it ability to properly shunt blood flow and control pressure within the brain.

Some things to consider. Your brain like any human brain is designed to organize stimulus so it can process it in a functional way. the concussed brain often loses the organizational function. As a result, when you stimulate your brain with disorganized information, it has to work harder trying to organize the information and gets over-whelmed and frustrated when it fails to do so.

Think of is as trying to read a road map while riding down a bumpy road. The frustration can be exhausting.

The short term solution is to establish an environment where stimulation is controlled and limited to that which your brain can easily understand. This is the only way your brain will get any rest. Simple wall, like you have described are good. Not too many things hanging on the walls. Smells, sounds, visual and even tactile (sense of touch) stimuli can be moderated to be easily recognizable.

Recognizablity is the important concept. When your brain does not have to work to understand your environment, it can rest and relax. I listen to the same music and even watch the same videos when I need my brain to relax. I know others with TBI who do the same successfully. It allows your brain to stop paying attention to all of the chaos and get into a "I know what is going on so I can stop being vigilant" mode.

Now that Texas is starting to cool down, is there any place where you can take long casual walks? maybe drop a line in the water and quietly fish? Maybe find a fishing pond with an older gentleman who can just talk with you about simple things. Nothing that causes tension. Stories of the old days, old guys often love to tell stories of the old days.

The idea is to engage your mind in simple, pleasurable conversation and activities. I used to spend hours in my garage sorting out decades of collections of nuts, bolts, screws and odd things. No pressure. Just something to do without pressure. Now, I will spend hours fixing cars.

Others can get perturbed watching you do nothing or act lazy. You brain needs this lazy like activities, at least for a while.

Slowly read the TBI Survival Guide. Not all at once if it overwhelms you. Identify the symptoms you have so you can better understand them. Then, show those pages to your parents if they are interested. They could benefit from the You Look Great YouTube videos.

You need some people who understand you and your symptoms enough to help you when they can and leave you alone when you need it.

What book are they reading? Not many get the story across well.

When you listen to music or watch TV, try doing it with head phones. It will lessen the load on your auditory processing system. Try turning the volume of on the TV or stereo speakers and put the ear phone volume low. You will be surprised how quiet sounds help you relax. I have a long cord to the audio out of the TV so I can listen with head phone. You can also get wireless head phone systems system.

Give these ideas a try. Print this post so you can reread it without having to go online. Try to set a routine for your day. Doing the same things over and over from one day to the next sounds boring but it is what your brain needs.

My best to you.