Hi Rayna,

I'm so sorry to hear about your struggles. You have found a very helpful forum with caring people and a lot of useful information. This will help you to get started on the road to recovery.

Perhaps it would help for now, just to ease your mind a bit, to read some of the entries under the sticky "Posts on Hope and Healing." There are some inspiring stories there of people eventually recovering from some pretty bad injuries. In addition, the book Brainlash, by Gail Denton, is both a helpful resource and an inspiring recovery story.

I have been suffering from very severe photophobia (light sensitivity) for some time. A few weeks ago, I started a thread called "Tips for working with light sensitivity" in which I shared some of the strategies that I have used to help me to work around the light sensitivity. Perhaps you would find some helpful information there.

There are some recent threads discussing anxiety and OCD. I have a long history of dealing with anxiety and OCD (before my brain injury) and shared some of my thoughts in my comments on a thread called "please read/analyze my situation." Anxiety and OCD are both treatable, and you don't need to wait for your injury to heal to be able to at least start making some progress in treating them.

If this is too much info at once, there is no need to worry. Maybe you can take on one thing at a time and come back and revisit some of these posts as you feel comfortable addressing different issues. I know that it can feel overwhelming to get a flood of advice (even if it is good advice!) all at once and not know where to start.

If you have any trouble finding the threads/comments I mentioned, just say so and I'll either repost or rewrite them.

Take care and hang in there!

Pete