If you or someone you work with is recovering from an illness or injury…
As a high-functioning person who has mostly recovered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) myself, I’ve come to believe one of the toughest challenges facing anyone in recovery is the ongoing disconnect and difficulty we have with people who knew us before the injury.
People might feel frustrated or even personally let down that we aren’t as reliable, smart, calm, or efficient as we once were. This can be especially hard for others to understand when we look, speak, and walk perfectly well. The result can be a strong sense of disappointment for friends, family, and coworkers, and a deepening sense of isolation for the one who is injured.
Whether the situation is at work or at home, status changes such as going on long- or short-term disability, or the Family and Medical Leave Act can legitimize what someone is experiencing, but these formal decisions offer little in the way of helping coworkers and loved ones understand what is happening in a meaningful way.
Sometimes, going on disability simply isn’t an option. It’s also likely that the injured person wants more than anything to continue working, to contribute, and to socially engage. Such activities give us purpose, and purpose is central to a healthy sense of ourselves.
Critical tasks for someone recovering from a TBI are to identify and strengthen what you can do so that what you can’t do becomes less and less of a preoccupation. I’ve come to believe that this is especially difficult and important for high-functioning individuals, who are suddenly navigating life and work with reduced abilities, and a resulting bewilderment and grief over what has been lost.
I started leading workshops on Resilience in early 2020, and right away, clients with TBIs showed up in numbers that surprised me. The ideas offered below are experiences and concerns common to every single client.
1. If someone says they are struggling, believe them. Avoid statements like, “Oh, everyone makes mistakes,” “We all forget things,” or “You’re fine! You’re doing great!” While these statements are undoubtedly motivated by kindness, they undermine and invalidate the very real struggles. Instead of creating a connection of empathy, they can silence the person.
2. Recovery is non-linear. We learn as we go, and we may not know the answers right away as to what accommodations we need.
3. In order to agree on a reasonable level of productivity, all parties need to let go of the person’s prior work style. Someone who used to be able to work overtime with no notice, or work until midnight on a special project, simply might be unable to do that.
4. Depending on the nature of the brain injury, cognitive decline can be specific to certain tasks, and may negatively affect language and communication skills, visual and verbal memory, working memory, emotional regulation. Again, letting go of your experience of the person before the injury, and meeting them where they are now is critical.
5. Most disabilities are invisible. A person might look perfectly normal on the outside, but be experiencing pain, confusion, mobility issues, or emotional challenges.
6. Only someone who has experienced a TBI can understand the physical, mental, and emotional toll a brain injury take. Cultivating a listening stance, and taking the person at their word is imperative.
It can be so very hard for someone with a brain injury to explain things to even the most empathetic listener. My hope is that by framing the challenges in an emotionally neutral way, all sides can align to create a process and space in which ongoing recovery is supported.
Below is a testimonial from the aptly named Hope, who took several of our Resilience workshops as part of her journey to wholeness after several strokes.
“Six months after a having three strokes at age 47, I read a newspaper article about Callie’s personal journey with Resilience. The words she spoke to the reporter made me feel, for the first time, that I was not alone in my experience of my brain injury.
Despite my lifelong optimism and diligent work to recover from the strokes, there was some elusive aspect of recovery that I couldn’t grasp. Speech therapy, cognitive therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and psychotherapy all had their place, but even with all that progress, I still felt like I’d been possessed by a lazy, dimwitted, clumsy alien.
What no one tells you when you have a giant life change—be it a stroke, head injury or other big thing—you’re not entirely sure who you are. This critical loss of self trumped all my other deficits. Finding a way to march forth to wholeness was daunting.
Callie’s Resilience Workshops tapped into this void for me. She created a warm, authentic, welcoming space to share and learn. We worked in several modalities (talk, meditation, movement, art) in each workshop. Her warmth and connectedness shone as we worked through telling (and accepting) our stories. We processed our struggles, laughed a lot, and cried some, too.
Callie guided us with practical lessons on how to press on in a life unexpected. Finding joy on these tough journeys is really hard. She offered me so much of what I needed to turn the corner towards wholeness.
”
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”