I have been a hypochondriac about brain injury all my life, and even the slightest hits to my head sent me worrying greatly. However, I was lucky and none of these hits actually gave me a real clinical concussion.

However, on june 16, my luck ran out. Due to a home accident, I really got a concussion. However, now whereas I had been a hypochondriac before, I suddenly started to become very rough with my head, because I had "given up all hope". The initial concussion was very mild and was barely even noticeable by the doctor. However, what happened in the weeks that followed turned my very mild concussion into a life changing one.

Getting a concussion was a traumatic event for me and I was diagnosed by my psychiatrist as having PTSD. I stupidly began aggressively punching the air and jerking my head violently 12 hours after the first concussion due to frustration. Never did I know these acts would damage my brain badly, and by evening I had my first episode of dementia, where I lay in bed and did not know where i was, and what I was doing in bed. After I slept I had a nightmare and my shoulder slammed into my face.Terrible ringing in my ears and full out concussion symptoms occured. I could not read, I could not use the computer, I forgot my parent's names, I did not know what I was doing, what had happened in the last few days.

In the nights that followed, I began hitting myself in my sleep, in the head, every single night without my knowledge. I would wake up to tremendous pain in my head and loud ringing, but I could never stop the self-harm in my sleep. They seemed to be schizophrenic incidents, because I would remember brief glimpses of them happening, but it would appear to me as a dream, and at those moments my body would act on its own.

It started to get better after 5 days. But thats when the real killer came - My psychological state had declined to the point that I was no longer myself. In the dark room and in my insanity, I pushed and pushed the top of my head strongly with the heel of my palm as I lay down, for 4 hours believing somehow that I was massaging my head . By the next morning I was visibly dazed, and could not think. Previously, the damage was done to my left and right temporal lobes, and now the entirety of my frontal lobe was compromised.

I then went to see my neurosurgeon. Upon coming back, I continued this self destructive behavior for another 4-5 hours as I was still dazed and quite frankly, Had no clue what I was doing and that it could damage my brain. Little did I know that the brain was extremely fragile after a TBI , and little things that should not damage it usually, became devastating.

The next day I could not think, and had massive pains in my head, just like the first day of my concussion. I suspected that I gave myself another concussion and was very depressed. That night, a large object fell from a great height right onto the region of the head I was pushing, the forehead. It was extremely forceful and I was shocked. I noticed that I had lost the ability to feel depressed, and was apathetic. There was a weird feeling of nausea in the middle of my head behind the area I had hit. I went to sleep after that and woke up not even being able to remember my age.

The next day, another object fell onto my head , through sheer bad luck (I was lying down after vomitting and it seems my hands had accidentally destabilized an object on the drawer behind my head)

After this I visited the hospital everyday. I met with psychiatrists, Neurologists, Neurosurgeons, primary care physicians and tried all sorts of therapies (hyperbaric oxygen). I had spent $4000, But nothing worked, and I fell into a deep despair and the family that was supporting me crumbled apart.

The nausea in my head and headache whenever I tried to use my brain was debilitating, and I could not even string up an basic thought in my head. I started stuttering and stumbling over my words and to think, I had to verbalize it or my focus would wane.

Over a week later, I still cannot read large chunks of text or watch TV as I cannot process the information fast enough. I have to reread each sentence again and again or I would get the wrong message.

This is about the most unlucky a person could possibly get and to be honest, I have no idea how to cope with it. No doctor can give me a timeline for healing simply because of the abnormal nature of my circumstances.

Does anyone have any experience with repeated concussions while healing? Right now I am living day to day and its extremely demoralizing when nothing seems to be healing. And yet, I seem to be somehow managing to hit myself in the head every single day.

I can somewhat relate to your present situation. I suffered a significant number of relatively mild hits to the head in a short period of time that ended up cumulating into very significant brain dysfunction. These hits happened over a 6 month period, mainly because of how disorientated I was which made me susceptible to more. It was the worst 6 months of my life, no doubt. I was so messed up to where I couldn't do anything but lay down and try to distract myself from the suicidal thoughts that were unrelenting.

But things eventually got better. If your issues are truly originated in concussions, and not a secondary mental illness, then the most prudent thing you need to do is stop hitting your head. What would always happen to me is I would hit my head, be in absolute hell, then over a 2-3 week period get somewhat better to where living was tolerable, then hit it again and repeat the vicious cycle. I only started truly getting better when I was cautious enough to not accidentally hit my head.

It's quite clear based on your post that you also have some very serious psychological issues that could very well be the cause of this as well. The hitting yourself while sleeping is quite troubling, are you certain this is happening? Could you be dreaming its occurrence?

A few other questions.

Have you tried psychological therapy?

How has your cognition been affected? Are you able to have a conversation/express your thoughts well?

How old are you?

What initiated you into being a hypochondriac about having a brain injury prior to ever having one?

brandnewconcussion,

Welcome to NeuroTalk.

I am not convinced you have suffered a concussion. I believe you suffered a mild impact trauma that has triggered all of your worst fears to become real. Your symptoms are real but that does not mean they have a physiological cause other than a non-injury trigger.

The literature is full of examples of how the mind can manifest physical symptoms without a physical cause. In some cases, the mind has memorized a cluster of symptoms that only need a trigger to manifest to a full blown level. A startle is often the trigger. Those memorized symptoms can be from a past experience or from reading about a particular condition or from watching a movie or TV show. Dr Oz has triggered many of these situations for a wide variety of ailments with his TV show.

All of your symptoms can result from a nervous condition such as extreme anxiety (OCD, hypochondriasis, etc.)or depression.

Whipping your head around can cause vestibular issues that can trigger a myriad of symptoms. Anxiety alone can cause the memory struggles, the loss of sense of self, and the rest you mention.

Hold down on your head cannot cause an injury except to your neck. Face to shoulder cannot either.

As billybobby said, you should find some psychological counseling to help you replace these erroneous thoughts with reality thoughts. CBT could be helpful.

Are you taking any medications ? How about brain health nutrition like in the Vitamins sticky at the top ?

How old are you and what area do you live in ? Maybe we can recommend somebody in your area to get an assessment with.

My best to you.

Hello Mark,

I have actually read these forums many many times in the past when I used to have an anxiety episode.

In response to billbobby, my hypochondria started because I had some sort of a work project and needed to keep my mind extremely sharp. However, I got into several "scares" such as being in a very rough jerk in the car as the taxi I was in jam braked to avoid colliding into something.

Afterwards I actually contacted a harvard researcher on brain damage and he said that all hits to the head actually cause some level of damage including sudden jam brakes in the car, football headers etc, but it is only with a large number that we notice symptoms. Thus my hypochondria.

over the next month my mind became destroyed. I had a devastating combination of OCD,Anxiety, Hypochondria. What would happen is I would accidentally hit my head somehow, have an anxiety attack, and then repeat the action again and again tens of times to "allay" my fears over whether that casued brain damage. Thankfully, nothing caused brain damage in may.

However in June I had a fever and was recovering. The day after I recovered I was still on some panadol and out of it. I accidentally smacked myself hard in the face (my arm suddenly shot up) while adjusting my hand (I sleep on my hand) (somewhat like a palm strike) , as I lay down on my bed. unfortunately due to my OCD and anxiety, I did this many many many more times. My sinus area then started to bleed.

Went to the ER, but I underexplained the situation, telling them it was just "a few" hits. The ER upon hearing that, much like Mark,thought I couldn't get a concussion from that. Said I fine and cleared me. Then I went shadow boxing, jerked my head around violently with every blow etc.

As for the pushing on the head, imagine this. I put the heel of my palm on my head , lay down, and pushed my head in (much like you would massage a sore muscle). At that point of time I was not in a good psychological state due to all the trauma of the initial concussions. I was actually suicidal.

I did this for 8 hours, not being able to sleep through the night. It served as a sort of distraction. By morning I felt strangely dazed unable to speak fluently and had this inability to think sort of like I was drunk, and the next day I felt hot all around my head internally. Then a very heavy pillow fell on my head from an overhanging cabinet.

After the pillow fell I suddenly felt some numbness at that area of the head. Went to sleep and woke up not being able to remember my age for 10-15 minutes. Also could not quickly recollect what had happened to me before I slept.

The problems got worse and worse , and soon I could not type coherently nor think coherently. Stuff would come out with strange grammar and all, weird sentence structures. I started to feel this "blockage" at that area (right frontal lobe) and it bothered me day and night. It wouldn't "turn off" when i wanted to sleep , wouldnt "turn on" when I wanted to think. It was devastating to a person who used to think alot.

I notice my mental declines extremely significantly, and feel that I might have done so much damage to myself because of my psychological illness that there is no recovery. Others have only gotten hit once, but me...100s (not an exaggeration, in 8 hours alot of hits can be done) of times during the recovery week.

I wish it was anxiety Mark, I really do, but I think my OCD and psychological problems screwed me up physically and destroyed my brain.

OCD is just one form of anxiety. Hypochondria is a form of anxiety. I think you have created a storm of PTSD (another form of anxiety) due to your OCD pounding thoughts into your head. It take a skilled therapist and likely some powerful meds to help you break this cycle of damaging thoughts. They may have caused chemical damage, not physiological damage. By that I mean, your brain has been flooded with stress chemicals and has become hyper-reactive to these chemicals. Your brain needs to get clean.

"Afterwards I actually contacted a harvard researcher on brain damage and he said that all hits to the head actually cause some level of damage including sudden jam brakes in the car, football headers etc, but it is only with a large number that we notice symptoms. Thus my hypochondria."

This Harvard researcher is grossly overstating the case. He failed to tell you that it takes hundreds, even a thousand head jerks over a period of a few months from braking to cause a problem, unless they were all done in continuous succession.

There is a greater risk of injury to the upper neck and the problems neck inflammation can cause with symptoms that can be identical to concussion symptoms.

My question for you is simple.

How can we help you ?

What happened on June 16th ?

It appears your OCD and such are causing you to act in ways that are against your best interests in healing. Have you taken any steps to correct that ?

I somehow managed to smack myself hard enough to get a concussion. It was accidental though as my arm jerked somehow, as being a hypochondriac, you know that my worst fear is getting brain damaged.

That day , for the first time in my life, I experienced very strange symptoms the next day. My vision was messed up, and I kept seeing visual artifiacts, my walking was strangely slanted to one side as if my balance was off, and when I tried doing an "IMPACT" test on myself, my verbal memory was significantly worse than usual (i couldnt even remember 4 words) and everything just felt weird. However I could still read and all and it wasn't that bad. It wasn't until after everything I mentioned in my initial post happened, that it got to this stage now. I believe I have aggravated it so so so badly , that my mild concussion at best, became something extremely harmful in the long term.

As for how I can be helped....frankly I don't know. I've been very suicidal as I find myself going from very intelligent to very dumb. But even beyond societal functioning, I can't even watch tv shows or movies without feeling nauseous, nor can I indulge in any of the small things in life that once made me happy (as I'm mostly feeling like im in a fog always, and not present - This only happened after I messed up my frontal lobe) I have almost no short term memory (i'll forget what I typed here after I press submit) and generally I am not really functioning at all.

I guess I came for support and to see if anyone has gone through a similar case like this. I just can't believe I caused this living hell to myself (but it wasn't exactly by choice, I was plagued with psychological illnesses). If I found out it was not brain damage , I would be the happiest person ever. But as it stands, my extremely bad symptoms seem to have a physical cause . I even started having migraines despite not having them my entire life.

Do you mean your June 16 concussion was self inflicted by smacking yourself with your arm ?

It is almost impossible to hit yourself and give yourself a concussion. A sub-concussive impact, yes. But it takes hundreds of subconcussive impacts to cause damage in most cases.

You cannot do an IMPACT test on yourself. It has been over a decade since the IMPACT was even available for self-administration. Even then, the results were reviewed by a professional.

I do not believe you have any brain damage. You need the help of a highly specialized psychiatrist and psychotherapist, who, in combination, can help you learn how to think properly. CBT, Cognitive Behavior Therapy with meds would likely be suggested.

Has you doctor prescribed any meds for your conditions ?

What caused you to be so concerned about brain damage ? Did you watch a TV program or movie that got you thinking ?

I really find it very difficult to believe that I don't have brain damage considering all the debilitating symptoms. I have symptoms of an advance brain injury like many of the people here, my healing phase has been similar as well in terms of timing. A dti would show brain damage correct? I actually have a pre tbi scan for comparison.