Hi all

I was in a bad way when I first joined this site in summer 2015, I did experience head trauma during a martial arts sparring session which basically saw me quit life for 2-3 months, including being off work sick. As well as all the usual cognitive issues, I had a deep-seated belief my brain was permanently damaged and I was stuck this way forever... needless to say I was severely depressed, lacked motivation and could not even get out of bed most days.

By December, I had returned to work full-time, I was out socialising, exercising at the gym and even started dating...

Fast forward to yesterday 6am and I got up out of bed, went to the bathroom, came back into my bedroom and decided I could move around fine with the light off and I moved forward to pick something up, unfortunately I wasnt stood where I thought I was and clonked my head on the wall.

I am definitely concerned as work has felt noticeablly more cognitively taxing today and yesterday, plus feeling very tired mentally / physically - slightly worried I've set myself back after doing so well. I have been hypervigilant about knocking my head since the original incident, so hitting my head has done little for my anxiety.

On the plus side, I am nowhere near as symptomatic as originally - even then I was able to get back to normality within 3-4 months, so if I have suffered another concussion, then I'm hoping to bounce back fairly quickly.

Those martial arts sparring session will get you. Certainly got me. Do yourself a favour, don't bother sparring anymore. People just use you as a punch bag, many have no respect.

Yeah, I don't plan on any more sparring... too dangerous. I've recently been having private sessions a different club with an ex-professional, I told him the score before I turned up to my first session, so no punches to the head!

One of my ex-friends, who is also an Assistant Psychologist was trying to convince me to go back to sparring, as she and everyone else (doctors etc) where/are 100% convinced my PCS symptoms were purely depression (ie depression only - not anxiety/depression as a result of head trauma) triggered by the pyschological shock of a nasty sparring spession.

From her over-opinionated mindset it was a way, or more like THE way of me accepting I had become depressed, moving on and healing WTF !! Good job I didn't trust that piece of bad advice coming from her as a friend or a supposedly educated mental health professional (I no longer have anything to do with her for 'other' reasons).

I'm just a bit concerned about banging my head into the wall in the dark and possible repercussions, but I'm nowhere near anything like as bad as I was originally, so I have to hang on to that and hope this mishap fades into obscurity over the next few weeks... in the same way I hope my presence on this wonderful site does, I obviously mean that in the best way possible!

What happened during your sparring session? Where about a on the head did you get hit? Mine was one giant whack to the back of the right side of my head. This rattled my brain back and forth. Best listen to your body and nobody else, you know best how you feel. Continuous hits to the head, even lighter ones, are not a good thing.

I wouldnt describe it as a sparring session, it was more like a gym war / competition bout where everyone was trying to leather each other. At one point I had to quickly jump back a few feet when one guy launched a big forward jumping knee that would have removed most of my teeth!

Most of the hits I got where front on towards the temple area, we sparred with a different person each round and the class instructor seemed happy to pair up people regardles off weight or experience.

I hadnt sparred for over 18 months and ended up in front of an 18-19 stone big huge fat lunk who use to fight super heavyweight K1 in the UK, I'm fairly sure he was pulling his punches, even so there's a still a lot of power and skill behind that kind of firepower, even when pulled.

I was on the phone to the instructor about a week after telling him I didnt feel quite right, he ended up trying to tell me I had some kind of bug, as there was one going round the gym. Needless to say, I would never go back there!

Regardless, I've been doing MA for a long time and have had head impacts in other non MA situations over the course of my life and probably reached my threshold in terms of head impact/trauma, so no more sparring ever.

Whats your opinion on my walking into my bedroom wall in the pitch black recently ? It was basically another hit to the front of my head = doh!

I dont feel it was enough to rock my brain around inside my skull - aka traditonal coup-coutrecoup injury... definitely felt my cognition has been a bit off, but nothing like the dysfunction I experienced from the sparring, but I'm much more susceptible now.

It sounds to me like your bump into the wall was less a trauma and more a trigger of an increase in your pre-existing anxiety. When you look for symptoms just because you bumped your head, it is very common to make more of a symptom that it truly is. The increase in anxiety alone can trigger a relapse of symptoms.

Try to relax and get on with your life. Being anxious about another impact will cause you to be more prone to clumsiness and poor reaction time. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I very much doubt that extra knock would have done any more damage. Once injured, the body tends to go into a nursing phase in which the injury is both thought about and guarded in a very over enthusiastic manor. Part of the self preservation instinct, no doubt. Obsessing over a head injury is easy and tempting. The more you give in to that instinct, the more your brain will conjure up feelings which are lies and thoughts that are doubtful and negative.

The negative spiral of pcs can be your biggest hurdle to feeling better. That's not to say your injury is imagined, it is to say that your injury is made worse by obsessing over it.