Episode 16. Is There A Recipe For Recovery? Discussion with Melanie

This discussion with Melanie gets into a bunch of topics, what she describes triggered a lot in me, both emotionally and rationally, as I am still trying to make sense of that happens to ones' self with a brain injury. Thank you Melanie for opening up so much about your struggles and the craziness of your journey to restore what you lost.Below is a list of topics that come up in this interview, like “parallels” that come up again and again in discussion with brain injury survivors.- Brain injury comes with many problems - Most people with a brain injury have a list of problems, these problems interconnect and influence one another. Having many problems is important to recognize because any work and effort on one problem needs to factor in the other problems. Make sure to add the fatigue with brain injury, that compounds the other problems more-so.- Support from other brain injury survivors in crucial. With out it we are left with no one around to validated or acknowledge our experiences.- Misunderstanding is a major problem with brain injury. There are different forms of this misunderstanding that come up in detail in this episode. There needs to be a large scale re-education and normalization of what problems come with brain injury in order to deal with this problem.The National Academies Of Sciences have a report that addresses this misunderstanding.https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25394/traumatic-brain-injury-a-roadmap-for-accelerating-progressI also did a presentation on this report:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSJOpPrnO1o&t=1s- Melanie describes level after level of misunderstanding and inadequacy that she faced, she also did get some good help which still had gradations of misunderstanding, important to note.- Time - Rebuilding and restoring of inner capacities takes time on the scale of months and years.- Brain Injury problems evolve and change - These changes are a complex topic that seems to come up in every discussion and Melanie's journey is no exception. From not even being able to make sense of the problems, to the "realization point," and years of work to restore her mind and body connection. Learning about this evolution can help others recognize that people with brain injury will require flexible support and have changing needs over time.- Hopelessness - The combination of  brain injury problems plus despair, judgement, and anti-support from doctor's and those who are supposed to help can lead to a "downward spiral," this interview spells out in detail how this storm of problems can lead to such hopelessness, a problem that effects many with brain injury- Breaking Reality - The brain is constantly creating our reality. If people accept that these systems exist (see talks below), can get injured, and that we are able to in-fact be aware of such changes, it can help at least acknowledge some of the bizarreness with brain injury. - Here is a podcast on the systems in the brain that do ‘reality monitoring’ and how they may actually create our subjective experiences. https://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/2022/196-lau-  This talk focuses on brain research of how the cortex predicts our reality:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2IV0wcmgsk- Last topic discussed in detail in this interview is how learning to not push yourself to the limit can help brain injury recovery in a graduale, subtle, but consistent manner. It's like learning to avoid the limits makes '"room for recovery."