A few months ago I struck up a conversation with Jaime Crane-Mauzy at the Utah Brain Injury Alliance Conference is Provo, Utah. Jaime is a fellow survivor, and she gave an awesome presentation. One of the ideas she shared caught me off guard. She talked passionately against the idea of the new normal after Traumatic Brain Injury that we often talk about in the brain injury community.
My own opinion is that accepting the new normal is one of the most important part of a person’s recovery. It helps to smooth the recovery journey in front of you and helps you move forward.
One of the most powerful breakthroughs I had after my injury was accepting the new normal. It was a very important experience in my recovery journey. So when Jaime talked so powerfully against it, I had to talk to her.
It was an awesome conversation. Jaime was very open to discussing both ideas. At the end of it, I think we even agree with each other.
What was the difference? It was in the definition of Acceptance.
After a TBI, or any brain injury for that matter, we all go through a grieving process. Grieving has 5 steps. We bounce through them for a while, and eventually work our way through to the final step of Acceptance.
It’s at this step of the grieving process that I think we come to peace with The New Normal.
Two Ways to Accept
But how you define Acceptance has a lot to do with the lenses through which you see The New Normal. I think there are two main points of view.
Acceptance can mean arriving at a dejected finality of “this is the way things are always going to be.” If this is your perception of The New Normal, then I definitely think The New Normal concept is something that you want to stay away from. It can lead to powerlessness and confinement.
On the other hand, Acceptance can also mean that you know what you have lost and what changes you have experienced. You have mostly come to terms with it. You have assessed everything, and you are ready to move on. This is how I always thought of the New Normal. For me, it was a truly empowering realization.
The grieving process is important, and it helps to lighten the weight of our emotional baggage and sadness. It’s normal. It’s healthy.
Acting on What You Can Control
But our perception of the final step of Acceptance, and thereby The New Normal determines if we work to rise from the ashes of our old selves, or if we stay put and become stagnant in our circumstances.
Please don’t misunderstand me. We each have aspects of our (or our loved one’s) injury that we cannot control. For me that means my memory will likely be bad. I cannot read as fast as I could pre-injury. There are some personality changes that seem to be permanent. I will likely always have to be careful of overstimulation.
Others may have physical challenges or cognitive challenges.
Most people with a brain injury can find some way to try to improve themselves after an injury. Some things that come to mind are:
- Necessary doctors and medical therapies
- Looking for alternative therapies that work for you (meditation, writing, art, chiropractic care, acupuncture, etc)
- Coming up with other goals to keep moving forward
The extent of your improvement does not matter. Getting back to where you were pre-injury does not matter.
All that matters is doing the best you can with what you have. And continually trying to increase what you have.
There is value in trying something and finding that it’s not working. Sometimes we call this failing forward. That’s how we got the light bulb. Edison failed at it 1,000+ times. I talk about my own experience with failing forward in this article about getting back to work after my injury. Trying and failing helped me come up with my own approaches to manage the effects of my injury.
Being able to try things and fail forwards started as I began to spend more time in the Acceptance part of the grieving process. I found that Acceptance is the intersection of sadness, worry, anger, and fear with peace, understanding, and empowerment. It’s here that you can start to capitalize and build on the concept of The New Normal.
I could deal and recommend the acceptance of the new normal; however I’ve had more incidents and acts against my life by every level in community that is beyond any that I had prior to my injury. Although I had educational, work, and life experience in all levels and worked in treasury of city government as just 1 example of my credentials. However the continuous and contact errors and acts are beyond any normal person in the community and this shouldn’t be allowed or accepted to any person; especially the disabled and harmful to their cognitive decline with aging and prevents positive or successful recovery and any hopes of quality existence.
Hi Jennifer,
As you mentioned, egregious, intentional acts against us, should never be a part of anybody’s New Normal. It’s unfortunate that this has been the case for you. I’m unsure of the extent of these errors, but I sent you some resources to help with self-advocacy. Best of luck to you.
Thanks so much! It helps give me inner strength to know that somewhere others support people like me. It offers hope to others like me as well.
No problem, Jennifer. I’m glad you found this useful. Regrouping and moving forward after a TBI is challenging.
Yes and when I decided to learn new technology and smartphones and in 2014 April and my beginning on Google plus because I accepted an offer and challenge from God and it was too make me at least as Independence and person I was at age 8; besides the extreme high IQ I had then lol but I gave it my all and had hope and life to build my hopeful future as independent peaceful and happy with my cats that had been my team 5 years prior and my email address. I have 3 boys left that I had to send back to my ex partner/severe shzritzofrinic and violence behavior and harmful disabled person that gets excused and hasn’t lost anything or comfort even and still argues how he perceives his incidents and that’s wrongful acceptance also of the new norm. I have conquered beyond human abilities of TBI patients and I’m still most stable emotionally than ever and it’s physical factors but I went to my Primary physician yesterday and I’m still so disgusted and upset and it wasn’t my primary and nurse wasn’t sane and it was totally useless and I’m still waiting on CVS to receive my prescriptions that I explained I switched since I haven’t been able to get to stop &go pharmacy to get since September same day Dr visit. But I have medical background and I have wrongful death from drs mistakes prior also and I have housing issues, theft on contract on purchase property that I’m going to just let go and I want to leave but with my pets and few items that hasn’t been destroyed or buryed under the junk and garbage that others has left and got away with and seems I have all documentation but it’s mostly local county and state matters but have all intertwined and even my mom passing away suddenly in Nov ; but my social security payee and representative and my us department and federal government and most my support agencies as my medicare and health insurance along with providers are same and procedure are very correct and I will gladly mention that ; however I’ll probably curse it or whatever lol it seems to be the NEW NORMAL aka annoyed by them that my life matters and is deeply in negative prior and I’m noticing that but just in case you are interested and hopefully I continue to survive thru my hardest battle that isn’t here in my region or state that I reside;. But I’m sorry if not posted rite or here but ur email is all I can possibly take few minutes and standing at my daughter’s house about to walk next door at CVS and tell them to transfer locations CVS and I’ll pick up BP meds and dilatin and decide if I want to pay $4.95 to reload my APU/AMU Bankmobile that I’m $-2.53 but caused delay and failure of my classes at APU/AMU. however they supported me and did have to correct their messsages informing me I was no longer enrolled student at APU and fees apply. Lol lol so just let me know if my posts or replys I shouldn’t waste my time
Hi Jennifer!
Thanks for taking the time to reach out. It sure sounds like you’ve been through a lot. I feel honored that you feel comfortable enough to share it with me here.
Would you mind if I suggest that you share these experiences in the private Facebook group? It’s limited to other group members seeing it, whereas these blog comments are visible to anyone who visits the page.
It’s just a thought, and it’s up to you.
I wish you the best with your recovery, and I hope you find the resources you need.
Thank you for this article. I love the idea of ‘falling forward’ & I appreciate the stage of grief discussion. My one year anniversary is next week. I needed to read this.
Happy anniversary! Congratulations on hanging in there.
I’m very glad that you found this useful. Fail, learn, try again is a useful cycle to keep in mind during the recovery journey. It is easier said than done sometimes, though.
If you enjoyed the grief discussion in this article, you might want to read the one in this article. It’s toward the end after #10 on my list (in the bonus section).
https://shorturl.fm/pQkT9