Hey All,

I've posted on here before, largely due to anxiety about hitting my head. I recognize the title of this thread seems a little contradictory and it is - this post continues with a question about anxiety around hitting my head, but also I'm, I think, more open to suggestions for "normalizing"; life than ever before and would love to hear whatever comments you all are willing to share.

This past Tuesday, I was skateboarding on some basketball courts. I don't jump down stairs, I don't do handrails. I don't do any of the crazy risk-taking associated with skateboarding. However, regardless of whether or not you're jumping down stairs or just cruising around on flat ground, falls do happen in the sport.

That said, I was skateboarding on an outdoor basketball court, landed a trick and fell backwards, landing promptly on my butt. My head didn't make contact with the pavement whatsoever, but it was, of course, a hard hit - I sort of "slipped" backwards landing on my tailbone. I wouldn't say I had a "dazed and confused" feeling, but I did have to sit there and acknowledge that it hurt and that the fall was harder than I expected it to be (while I'm still young, I'm not 15 anymore). I felt myself start to get hyper-vigilant about having fallen, told myself it was ok, and continued with skateboarding for another 10-15 minutes until going to meet a friend for dinner. I felt fine for the rest of the night.

The next day I felt fine(ish) - could feel my mind wondering about the fall and whether or not anything happened. The next morning, I woke up with a mild headache, felt spacey, and feel like my thinking slowed down.

I'm trying to convince myself I'm fine - as I sit here, I feel a little spacey and a little unfocused, BUT this has been how I've felt after even minor things like 1-2 inch heel drops, or bumping my head a little bit on a freezer door.

What do you guys think? Could the fall have caused whiplash, or sent some force up my spinal cord? I know we can train our brains to react instinctively to certain situations with certain responses - I'm generally a pretty risk-averse person to begin with and don't want to start doing anything crazy, just feel comfortable doing the things in my life that have always been a part of it and felt "normal."

Like I said, I've been trying to convince myself I'm fine, that something happening is possible but unlikely - but every time I try and engage in things that feel normal or "let my guard down" and go back to living life, I get knocked down again or go through something that makes being "present" harder to give myself permission to do.

Aside from whether or not you all think anything happened (which is a question I'm interested in), how have you all gone back to normal, or as close to it as you can?

As always, thank you for the thoughtful comments and any opinions/advice you are willing to share.

Sincerely,
Squash291

First off. There is nothing normal about skateboarding. It is a risky sport. One can feel normal without skateboarding.

A hard tailbone landing can cause quite a shock wave up the spinal column. Vertical concussions can be miserable. The C-1 to occiput joint can get injured. Icing can be helpful. Whiplash can be part of the injury.

But, you response sounds like it is mostly anxiety. A minor injury can end up with an 80% anxiety and 20% physiological injury or even more anxiety.

So, if you want to feel normal, stop the risky activities and find the help you need for your anxiety. You need to remember, you have suffered previous concussions so activities that may be a minor risk to others are a serious risk to you.

Stats show that 4 to 10% of skateboard injuries are head injuries. This does not consider the concussions that are never treated.

Were you wearing a helmet ?

Hey Mark,

As always, thank you for the response. You're right - and I agree with you. Skateboarding is risky. I was wearing a helmet, but after this tailbone fall this past Tuesday, I'm just going to let it go entirely. However, it was a massive part of my childhood and I spent a lot of time thinking about myself and growing as a person riding up and down an alley behind my home. It was less a sport, more an act of meditation and something that I appreciate for giving me so much time and space to just... think and be with myself. So, I guess I say that in hopes you might understand where I was coming from in trying to get back on it.

It's a relief to hear you say the symptoms sound more like anxiety. What I find odd is that whether or not it's me falling on my tailbone, bumping my head against a freezer door, or my head getting tapped lightly by someone's elbow, I tend to develop the same set of symptoms. While this event involved more force than the others, the similarity between symptoms despite the differences in forces seems weird to me - do you have any idea why that might be? Does that "correlate" with a more anxiety-driven response?

And Mark, thank you for the suggestion to get anxiety treatment - fortunately, I see a therapist who works with me on all this. A part of why I wanted to get back on my skateboard was, i think, a little bit of my own exposure therapy - to learn to trust that I could fall, and even fall a little harder than I was expecting to, and still be ok.

But, I think what you're getting at also is that there's a difference in the risk associated with certain falls or head bumps and learning to trust that I'll be ok moving through everyday life is very different than learning to trust that I'll be ok on a skateboard. That's a really important distinction to draw and one I'll both internalize and act on.

If you want to do some exposure therapy, there are safer ways. Do things that cause contact with your head that will not cause a concussion. Open the freezer then push the freezer door open the rest of the way with your head. Have people touch your head, lightly at first then with a bit more touch. Not a hit, though. Eventually, a touch can become a tap, and so on. Fall back in bed onto your pillow.

There are a lot of things you can do that do not have the high risk of a skateboard.

Yeah - I don't need to expose myself to risk, just light contact. That makes a ton of sense and is a ton safer than the approach I thought would work best for getting over these fears.

Just so I can walk away from all this and move forward, you feel like the tailbone was more anxiety than anything else and that I should just step away from skateboarding before anything more serious might happen? That's the plan, but I just want to make sure my interpretation of both what happened and your advice moving forward is correct.

Yes, get moving forward. One of the important concepts to work on is to not look for symptoms or look for possible triggers of symptoms.

Thank you, Mark - always helpful and deeply appreciated.

Squash,

Sounds like anxiety to me also.

I have not had a problem with my wife touching my head since my injury but it has always been knowing she was going to touch it...she rubs it in the evenings. The other night she reached out without informing me to move some hair around and I smacked her hand out of a startled self defense response, I had no idea that was in me.

I say that to say head stuff is funny and it is important to recognize anxiety which is a very clever foe at times.

I have not flown since my accident which was one of my ways to be alone and decompress from a busy day....you can find other things in life that challenge you and set you at ease as skateboarding has been for you, the world is big and full of such legal and sane pursuits.

Bud

Bud,

Thanks for your post and for your encouraging response. What's scary about all this is that it just.. feels real. I felt no immediate symptoms when I fell on my tailbone - no being dazed, no stars, no nausea, no confusion, no headache, nothing. From what I understand, even if the majority of symptoms appear later on, your brain will let you know it's a little messed up right away, no matter how transient the response.

But, I've been getting headaches, my brain feels "bruised," I feel a little spacey; i've been mixing up words in my own head, but haven't had any problems talking to people (have been having conversations about medical physiology with my classmates just fine and have been able to learn the material just fine, save this anxiety about the head injury). I know I do feel panicked and hypervigilant too - those come with all sorts of things and I know are more an anxiety response to having my head bumped. But.. all those symptoms are things I find really, really hard to ignore and not take seriously.

It's just.. this is all really scary.. I've had (if I counted right and if this isn't all just anxiety), 9 or so concussions from normal events like bumping my head lightly on someone's elbow, a 2 inch heel-drop, bumping my head on the plastic compartment of a train, and bumping my head on the bottom of a refrigerator door (just to name a few). It all seems.. unlikely, but given the response to these bumps and this recent fall on my tailbone, it's hard not to be scared.

Again, thanks for your response Bud and any wise words or encouragement you or anyone else might have would be much appreciated.

squash,

You have had head impacts but most were not concussions. You have somehow convinced yourself that any bump is a concussion when that is not true. The symptoms from each were the same because they were your anxiety symptoms, not concussion symptoms.

It may help to try to figure out when and where you got this 'any head impact is a concussion' idea. It sounds like you have the concussion equivalent version of anorexia. Many anorexics were triggered into a thought that they were fat and take that thought to an extreme. 'Any lose skin is fat' For you, you are stuck on 'Any bump is a concussion.' You could call this Concussion OCD.

Your therapist may be able to help you unprogram that original thought.

The helmet industry has studied this. Most concussions require 80 G's of impact if not much more (120 G's). The brain can even tolerate 200 G's for very brief moments.

Until you accept that your past contacts were likely not concussions at all, you will likely continue to struggle.

I find it interesting that a few who struggle with these issues appear to have memorized their list of concussions and symptoms. This is often indicative of a created memory versus an experienced memory. A created memory is repeated the same way each time. An experienced memory can related the information in a variety of ways. The created memory is often repeated in the mind as a way of convincing the person that it is real.

Yes, you bumped your head each time. But, you likely created a diagnosis of that bump as a concussion. Anxiety causes people to try to over-define issues. Do you see what I am trying to say ?