I know I need to rest, but what exactly does that mean?
 

I've seen it posted a lot on the forum, people promoting rest and less stress to help your brain to heal. I get the part about less stress, but what exactly do you mean by rest? Should I sit around and do nothing all day, staring at the walls? Sleep all day? How much sleep do I need when I do sleep? Is laying in bed watching TV considered resting?

The reason I'm asking is..I tried laying around doing nothing all day, and it drove me absolutely crazy. I swear I felt like I was losing my mind. It gave me too much time to think about my symptoms and I started to feel worse. So I started surfing the web, reading articles and playing some brain training games....I just want to know, WHAT is considered rest?

I know its so boring and hard to do....but whatever keeps your symptoms from getting worse. Im 6 and a half months out, and i basically spend most of my resting days watching TV, surfing the web, chatting with friends, laying at my pool ( i live in san diego), or reading (when my vision corrected itself). I stopped working, i stopped exercising, and only left the house for doctor appts or grocery shopping. Try reading books on how to heal from your injury. A great one i just read was "You can Heal your Life" by Louise Hay. Also it might be good to read a book about Coping with Traumatic Brain Injury....that was the first book i read when i could read. It gave all these answers that we keep asking on the website. And describes the depression adn "going crazy" feelings we all get. I would also suggest getting a therapist to talk about this experience with because it is traumatic and life changing. I think seeing my therapist was the smartest thing i did, and saw her weekly for months. And if your headaches get worse with the brain exercises....you may not be ready for them...they may be overstimulating you. Good luck

I heard that watching TV, reading and surfing the web can exhaust the brain.

I got a question for you, since our injuries happened around the same time.

I'll just PM you it, okay? =P

Yeah, pretty much do stuff that doesn't cause symptoms. For a long time, I couldn't read, watch TV, listen to music, or even crochet.

I slept as much as I could. I talked to friends (brief conversations) on the phone. I walked, slowly, outdoors if possible. I went to senior yoga classes at the community center (yes, I was the youngest one in the room by several decades). I colored. I listened to nature sounds like waves or falling rain. I downloaded and listened to guided relaxation and meditation podcasts.

Playing SuperBetter helped me focus on what I was accomplishing during this time rather than what I couldn't accomplish.

After vision therapy, I was able to do more visual tasks like reading & surfing the internet.

What symptoms are you still having, and what seems to trigger them?

The only symptom I'm having now is serious, and I mean SERIOUS brain fog. I'm totally slow and it's really scary. I'm not even answering the phone when people call me because I can barely talk. I'm stuttering words, pausing in sentences, having trouble explaining things...My brain feels like it's in a constant struggle, like it's flexing, trying to work properly but it's not. This has been going on for three days now. I think it started when I played video games all day about 3 days ago, but then again I was kind of feeling sluggish in the morning when I woke up that day too.

I'm not sure what triggered it...but I'm totally depressed, all I can think about is the possibility of me being stuck like this forever. I've had the being slow/brain fog thing happen but it never lasted this long.

nwsmith1984,

I can completely understand about the mental fog, and even being unnerved about it. It's a tough thing for the unconcussed to conceptualize that part of the brain/mind is functioning normally and is completely aware of the fact that a portion is not functioning at normal speed, and there's nothing that you can do at the moment to make it better. Yeah, it sucks and it's scary.

Be patient, and even more patient. Find calmness and with respect to your original question, getting rest for me meant, doing as little thinking and/or mental processing as possible. Computer work, watching TV, loud music, anything that causes mental fatigue is counter productive to "rest". As my neurologist explained to me, "your brain is re-booting", and as well, offered that ever famous saying around here, "it's going to take time".

Mike

Rest basically means don't do anything that makes you feel worse.

Hard to do. Even harder to find something to replace your normal activities.

I colored while listening to movies. I had no idea what the movies were about, but they provided quiet noise in the background to cover the "noise" in my brain, and the coloring gave me something physical to do.