[Hypokondriac]

It began with an accident. Three days before my 19th birthday in December 2012, I had a closed-head traumatic brain injury and I didn't leave the hospital until for close to a month. I have no memory of the month of December 2012 and only a few memories from January 2013. I was in the hospital from December 14th to January 11th. When I had the accident, I was dating a girl who happened to be a cousin of my closest friend. The first half of 2013 is spotty in my memory, but I think that's more due to time than to brain trauma. With the loss of my paternal grandfather to lung cancer, I had just experienced my first meaningful death-in-the-family weeks before my accident, and during the six months after I got out of the hospital, I lost my maternal grandfather to Alzheimer's and my childhood best friend to Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In December of 2012, I completed my first semester of college as a psychology major. I got a 3.3 GPA my first semester, and at the end of it, I decided to become a sociology major. Needless to say, I had to miss out on the Spring 2013 semester of school. During my semester off, I (for some stupid reason or another) decided to become a computer science major because I took computer science courses in high school and remembered loving them, and also because of the usefulness of the degree. Just before the start of the Fall 2013 semester, my girlfriend broke up with me, stating that she didn't think I was boyfriend material. I admittedly let this have too drastic an effect on my self-esteem going back into school. I was obsessive with my post-break-up emotions and I pushed her to blocking contact from me by the winter. I won her forgiveness although we haven't spoken face-to-face since the breakup, and during the Spring 2014 semester I got myself blocked again. I didn't contact her angrily or threatening, but she clearly wanted me to leave her alone and I wouldn't. If anything, I scared her away with unnecessary displays of anger at myself. I was distraught all throughout the school year, and I performed worse than I ever have in school. I made my first GPA below 2.5 in the Fall and below 2.0 in the Spring.

Underlying all of this was a social media obsession and a marijuana habit. During my semester off, and after my accident, I felt a little survivor's guilt and described a little too much of these irrational thoughts on social media. I also posted a lot of self-pitying and depressive content on social media after my break-up. Before my accident, I often went weeks without becoming preoccupied with my social image on the internet, but I became obsessed with it for quite some time afterwards. At first, I think it was loneliness from being home alone a lot (while my mother was out making arrangements for her father with Alzheimer's), but I don't think things really got out of hand until after my break-up. I constantly felt pressured (by no one but myself) to advertise a lot of the thoughts that passed through my head on Twitter. I would even respond to myself critically sometimes before anyone else could respond to anything I said.

As for my marijuana habit, I don't think I was ever a ridiculously heavy user, and the only drastically stupid thing I did involving marijuana was smoking it (hidden in a tobacco cigarette) outside the hospital while I was recovering from my brain injury. I am now part of a psychological study aiming to reduce anxiety and marijuana use simultaneously, and being more moderate with my marijuana use alone has helped tremendously with getting some self-confidence and feeling that I may finally be "back to normal" after my accident. I have only smoked twice in the past two months.

Another thing that might be related to my low image of self since my injury is my tendency to perform some psychiatric self-diagnoses from time to time. I try not to ever take it too seriously, but I know quite a bit about the diagnostic criteria for a few mental illnesses from reading up on a lot of them on Wikipedia. Once, I read about thought broadcasting delusions that are symptomatic of schizophrenia and I became convinced that I was in the process of developing the condition (I can get to telling myself that I have the genetic predisposition, considering that my aunt has it). That's a fear that still resurfaces from time to time.

I can't help but feel that I've done some terrible damage to myself socially from all of this. I doubt that I will ever get the chance to even explain the number of things that affected the way I behaved toward my ex-girlfriend. I hate even bringing her up because I know that she never intended for any of this and I don't want to blame other people for my problems. Sometimes I start to feel a little angry because of the social consequences of my actions, and then I criticize myself for even letting such things bother me, calling myself petty or pathetic. I also really dislike how sometimes it starts to seem like I can't have any self-awareness without pathologizing all of my actions or thoughts.

It is the start of my fourth semester of school, which would have been my fifth were it not for my injury. After a terrible school year spent as an engineering major, I've gone back to psychology and I am considering minoring in sociology. I don't know what exactly I will use my education for yet, but I hope that during my last four semesters I become more involved with the psychology department in research, which is more than possible. I feel like I have a good attitude about my future right now, but it was recently damaged when I ran into my ex-girlfriend and couldn't even bring myself to look at her when she looked relatively happy to see me walking past. I felt really strange and unreasonably guilty about this interaction, so I did something I ended up regretting. I found her school e-mail and e-mailed her apologizing for the interaction and saying that I felt compelled to apologize for a lot of other things, but I thought we would both rather not have to bring any of that up. My last interaction with her before that was an anonymous message in her ask button on tumblr in which I made it clear to her that it was me. She apparently went into a guilt-trip and as a result her father called me and threatened me, which set me straight for a while. I know that one of my main problems in the past has been that I couldn't bring myself to attempt to "get over" her, and I regret even sending the e-mail, although it was short and friendly. I just hate that simply seeing her has caused this sort of reaction in me, when it seems like something that ought to be far in the past, especially considering that we broke up over a year ago. I only wish that neither of us had negative views of one another and it seems like it wouldn't be so bad if I could just control myself a little better, although I don't deny my responsibility in carelessly sending her that e-mail. It was short and friendly, like I said, and it didn't warrant a reply from her because I only said that I hoped we could try and be friends in the future, but it would take some time for me. I at least think I showed a little improvement there because a past version of myself would have e-mailed her back for reassurance when she didn't reply, even though the message didn't exactly call for one. Plus, sending a message to someone who has attempted to block communication from me not long ago is definitely crossing a boundary I wish I didn't cross.

This is probably the most cohesive account of what my post-injury experiences have been like. I think there were definitely some damages to my cognitions in there that I am hopefully on the road to recovering from. During the summer, I started reading a lot. I've read more books over the course of the summer than I've probably ever read during an entire year of my life. As well as reading fiction, I also have been reading work by the sociologist Erving Goffman. All I've read so far is The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, but I also own Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, as well as Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. With a change in majors, and my newfound interest in reading, I feel less compelled to constantly advertise my thoughts now that this semester has started, but it being a long weekend because of Labor Day, and having seen my ex at the start of it has resurfaced some dissonant thoughts. In the past year and a half since my injury, I have repeatedly found myself somewhat desperate to vocalize what has been going on inside of my head, and I'm considering this to be me finally doing that via more acceptable means.

Medications I take since my injury are Lexapro (which I tried coming off of just before my break-up but ended up having to get back on) and occasionally a low dose of Clonazepam.

I can sometimes get to feeling sorry for myself because of the things I have done or said post-injury which I cannot blame myself for, but still have to accept the consequences of. I am incredibly lucky to be doing as well as I am, though, considering the nature of the accident (a head-on collision in a small car with a truck pulling horses) and the uncertainty there was surrounding the severity of my injury, as well as irresponsible drug use shortly after. I try to be grateful for my life as much as I can.

[Mark in Idaho]

Hypokondriac,

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

I'm confused. Is your post just a blog or are you hoping for help/support with struggles you are having ?

btw, Many of us struggle to read long posts unless they have a double paragraph space every 5 lines or so.

[SarahSmile0205]

Welcome.. sorry I can not read your whole post... hope to get to know you.. please feel free to ask questions... we have all been there...

[anon1028]

Not exactly sure what it is you're asking for? You seem cognitively fine, since you wrote all of the above in a very intelligent, cohesive way.

You don't mention any lasting physical damage or symptoms.

Unless I am missing something, it sounds like you got way hung up over a girl (I know, I've been there when I was younger) and you are looking for a psychological reason why you couldn't stop thinking about her and possibly bothering her when you shouldn't have. I've done that one that too. Perhaps you were in a weak place mentally because of the accident. Or it was too big a loss to accept after the accident and along with the deaths you had to face. You need to discus all this with psychiatrist

Your grades suffering from despair over the girl could happen to anyone also. Again, discuss with psych as I am not one.

I think you are trying to look for severe mental illness in yourself where there is none, although you should discuss this with psychiatrist. I am ASSUMING you are seeing one and not being given your meds by pcp.

You need to discover if accident caused you to act certain ways or this was always who you were.

As far as feeling bad about some of the things you did during that year, I cumulatively did worse things to people over a weekend when I was younger, so cut yourself some slack.

But STAY with the psychiatrist.

[Hypokondriac]

Originally Posted by markneil1212

Not exactly sure what it is you're asking for? You seem cognitively fine, since you wrote all of the above in a very intelligent, cohesive way.

You don't mention any lasting physical damage or symptoms.

Unless I am missing something, it sounds like you got way hung up over a girl (I know, I've been there when I was younger) and you are looking for a psychological reason why you couldn't stop thinking about her and possibly bothering her when you shouldn't have. I've done that one that too. Perhaps you were in a weak place mentally because of the accident. Or it was too big a loss to accept after the accident and along with the deaths you had to face. You need to discus all this with psychiatrist

Your grades suffering from despair over the girl could happen to anyone also. Again, discuss with psych as I am not one.

I think you are trying to look for severe mental illness in yourself where there is none, although you should discuss this with psychiatrist. I am ASSUMING you are seeing one and not being given your meds by pcp.

You need to discover if accident caused you to act certain ways or this was always who you were.

As far as feeling bad about some of the things you did during that year, I cumulatively did worse things to people over a weekend when I was younger, so cut yourself some slack.

But STAY with the psychiatrist.

Thanks. Reading through some of this forum has made me realize how fortunate I am to have only really experienced some mild psychological effects (that can probably just be related to simply growing up), considering that I recovered physically pretty fast. Still have a little twitchiness in my left hand sometimes but it's nothing major. Hopefully I'll grow out of the intense feeling of aversion I felt when I saw my ex the other day, mainly because I'm not proud of how I have viewed or treated her in the past. Though, I guess, as a wise man named Joe Dirté once said, "the past has passed; the future's now". I am sorry if my obsessive self-pity here is something that has offended anyone who had worse experiences with brain injury. This might not make sense, but finally being able to write this all down cohesively was therapeutic in a way for me, although if I want to see an improvement this semester I've got to start focusing my mind elsewhere.

[Sitke]

Hi there,

Couldn't read a lot of your post either, sorry, but just wanted to say welcome!

Feel better...