How to prevent the decaying of your soul

It's been surprising how few people, and especially those whose job it is to know and tell the truth, have avoided in entirety attempting to learn the truth. You would think they would want to talk to me, that they'd ask the questions that will provide the truth. You would think they would want me to know the truth that they can provide. 

But unfortunately, I am learning, most people would rather stay blissfully ignorant than know the truth. 

Yet blissful ignorance is a treacherous illusion that gnaws at a person's core and rots them from the inside out. 

With half my brain tied behind my back.

 All the research in the world is worthless if it is not put into action. 

The research, what are you doing with it? 

Dear PhD researchers and healthcare providers,

You need the patients. You need the voices and experience from the other side of your work. 

Helen Keller is credited with saying, "Alone we can do so little, but together we can do so much."

Really, alone we can do a whole lot but it accomplishes so little if we do not work together. 

We are the other side that validates the work you do and your work validates us. We can, and many of us want to, help you improve the application of it. But if you ignore and invalidate us you invalidate all that you have worked so long and hard on.

Please stop excluding us. Please stop excluding us from involvement and input in and on the work you do and how it is implemented. Please do not confuse the countertransference you might experience with those of us whose life experiences validate your lives work and please do not vilify us for your countertransference confusion.  Please, instead, recognize it to be the intuitive prompting that it is and that is trying to tell you of our value to you and your work.  

And please do not allow the irrational fear that our value to your lives work may somehow outshine your own value to prevent us all from obtaining the "so much" we could achieve together.

We are not your enemy. We are your other half. 

And we are better together.

Sincerely, 

Your patients and test groups

I thought it funny when I heard the late radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh* say that he worked with half his brain tied behind his back in order to keep things fair. I find this catch phrase of his popping into my brain as I write this because, after all, we TBI survivors are doing it all now with half our brains tied behind our backs. So if we validate research in ways that could improve diagnosis and care for others and we have figured out on our own, without any of the academic and professional backing, funds and support researchers and our healthcare providers have, we probable deserve some credit for it. 

*Disclaimer: This blog does not endorse any commercial product, service, process, person, or enterprise. While I prefer to give credit where credit is due, I and this blog do not endorse and have no affiliation with Rush Limbaugh or any political movement party, association or views, left or right, liberal or conservative.