FINDING A PERSONAL STRATEGY - BY J.D.
The first big change
following my head injury was that everything became a big deal. Those automatic responses
that used to just come didnt happen anymore; I had to think about it. My days were
very tiring. I had to pay attention to everything. The best strategy that worked was to
avoid overload and to talk to myself and just logically work my way through.
Things became do-able; it
just took so long. Even the simple task of walking down the street holding my briefcase
required me to say, "Keep your hand closed," because as soon as I didnt
say this to myself my hand opened and I dropped the case and it was the stupidest darn
thing and it was because of the paresis on my side.
Eventually I simply dumped
my pocket book into the briefcase and carried both on my right side. I came to realize
that I wasnt stupider than anyone else even though I seemed to be doing stupid
things more often. I took comfort in the fact that everyone loses their keys even if they
dont do it every day. Now I wear my keys on a cord around my neck - it works.
Ive found systems that worked and Ive stuck with them.
The best thing I learned
after this was how much control I had acquired. I suddenly realized that some things are
not good or bad, they just are and its how you think about it. What I did when I
found something that was difficult to deal with, I learned to look at it from a different
angle because sometimes you cant do something about a particular thing but you can
always do something about how you think about it. So I started implementing strategies to
get around my deficits. I began to think of myself as clever for having found ways of
doing rather than thinking of myself as stupid for needing to use strategies.
Revised: Saturday, February 23, 2002 08:42 AM