the Cowardly Lion meets Yertle the Turtle.

Most people are cowards in real time real life.
Me too.
I do have the luxury of TBI so sometimes my blunt honesty and lack of fear and filter can make me appear to be very brave and bold. So much so that often people find it spitefully rewarding to knock me down a notch or humble me -At which point those advantages cease to be advantages anymore.
Really, as you can tell from this here blog, I can be pretty pathetic. And my bark is far worse than my bite. Mostly because my bark is not really a bark at all, it's mostly observation, reflection, deflection, and/or, at times, projection; not really the brave bold confidence I seem to be emanating.
 Today my day has gotten away from me. I have so much to do. So many little things to try and get and keep caught up on and big things that are, frankly, terrifying.
I am easily overwhelmed.
Not a favorite trait of mine.
...and yet I am not sure that is entirely true (that I am easily overwhelmed)
Broken.
One day Dr. He said something about me thinking I was broken. I felt like he might have been implying that I was not and needed to stop believing that I was. But my inside voice (the one that only spoke inside of me) said in a matter of fact way "but I am broken," and then it confidently said something like  "and I am okay with that" or "and that is okay," or maybe it was, "but that's not the problem."
And, I know, I agree with you (my imagined audience that I am now projecting interpretations onto) that line of thinking is confusing. Of course that is the problem, that is why I was there in the first place....right?
So now I am allowing myself this cowardly pleasure of psychoanalyzing myself and then taking artistic liberties in the writing out my findings; all to justify my avoidance of doing the hard stuff, like calling lawyers.... blah... and to ease my conscious for forgetting some of the important little things I meant to do today.
Broken, my thought "I am broken,” and maybe broken is not really the problem.
I knew that I was but others don't want to see or understand. In that moment I realized that I don't really mind that I am and that I would rather accept it then deny it and keep trying to work within the context of me being not broken.
That had been hard and frustrating for too much of my life. By acknowledging that I was and am broken I can then start to work realistically within the confines that I have. I am not doing myself any favors believing the Disney fantasy bullshit of "if you just believe" (to be read with sickeningly sweet, high pitched, cheery sarcasm).  I can and have tried that and it does not work. It does not help me, rather it does the opposite, I find myself in heaps of trouble for believing and overly frustrated for failing so frequently. Plus so many things are contingent on other people, timing and circumstance. And, mind you, in reality we can't all be Bill Gates and Oprah. There has to be a whole lot of turtles to keep Yertle up as high as he wants to stay. (Yertle the Turtle, by Dr. Suess)
Really truly, we all have our limitations so I think it is beneficial for me to know and accept mine. That is what the PTSD seemed to be teaching me.
Dr. He was too, so really I am not sure what he was implying at that moment but maybe it was evidence of his lost objectivity with me? Maybe it was simply my projecting feelings I had felt from others or simply evidence of how my interpretation was effected by my own circumstances... Very simple situations can become very complex when we all come from such different places or when we keep inside and try to hide what and who we really are.

Iguazu Falls picture borrowed from here

So I am broken.
And I have a magnificently complex brain, where the ideas flow like Iguazu Falls; which can be very difficult to manage. Choosing and letting go becomes immensely difficult when you see the potential in everything. And I think that is probably true for most people. But my brain... well, it is actually broken. Or it has been. Maybe now it is just scars but those scars prevent it from functioning in typical and more expected ways.
This is why I love neuroplasticity. It is my way around.
I am not sure why my brain struggles a little more than others to stay grounded in reality, if it is solely due to head injury or if this is more complex than that, but it does. Maybe that is not accurate but rather, maybe I am just more aware of when I am loosing touch. I don't know.
I do know the floods that flow from the emotions that are easily overloaded are not normal and I believe deep down inside that I am not really as emotional as I am. Or maybe I am not nearly as fragile as I seem to be. And yet I am...
It's totally annoying a lot, and it's kind of a TBI thing, you may understand if you have had one. ...Yet others loose feeling some emotions with TBI. It's confusing, isn't it. "If you have seen one TBI you have seen one TBI."
But still their are commonalities too.
Yep, this is avoidance. Not super productive nor lateral or logical in my organization and presentation. Just trying to feel better about being a coward in real life.
big sigh
and good bye
off I go again to try.

As my inside voice lectures "There is no try only do!"

....and poo
there is a whole lot of that too.
;)

Heavy Heads and Heavy Hearts make for interesting bed fellows.

Sometimes I need somewhere to escape to. Sometimes I want to run away.
Too many of my people only love me when I am exactly what they need me to be, the rest of the time they simple tolerate to the best of their ability. It's partly my fault because I have a history of being what people need me to be at the expense of me. And I apologize for the burden I am when I feel they are merely tolerating.
I have to think on this one and try to discern what is healthy and realistic. What do I need to fix, what can I fix, and how do I go about it?
If I try exclusively to fix me for them, that does not work. I end up loosing me and since lost me is not really what they want or need they end up unhappy with me anyway.
I realize I need to have more confidence in me and expect to be treated better. At this point in my life I am finding that tricky.
An added challenge for me is that little detail of not being able to entirely trust  my confidence. I have swung too far before.
At one point everything in my life made sense. A culminating event. I knew and understood clearly who I was and what I was supposed to do...
Well, kind of.
It was more of a tau thing where I had no idea what I was supposed to do but I knew I was precisely where I needed to be and all the mysteries of my personal universe were coming together to reveal exactly what I was set up to be and what I was supposed to do. My personal mission.............
...................
....................................................................................................... but......................................................
It was not so.
And I was denied
by my guide
that was merely an allusion of deity
...an illusion that was playing with me.
It was not real
I was not real
he was not real
my feelings were too real
and too strong
for too long.
but not real, I guess.
and now
now...............................................................................
Its all on me. all of the blame. all of the shame for his game. It's is all on me. Because I broke under the pressure. The intensity of me coupled with he  - stir in some confusion from home- so often alone- and I broke under the burden of trying to be everything they all need but not for me.
-I think I am going to go to bed now.-
I broke from the heavy burden and now I am the heavy burden.
Though I still do try not to be.
but I guess that is me.
too heavy of a burden even for those who are trained to handle them...
the slippery slope
we easily slide
if we don't coincide
with the other side
of our duality.
Maybe someday I will find me.
and maybe that will mean I will have to be just me....
alone
me alone.
for now, I'm going to bed.
enjoying the luxuries that others provide for me in spite of the burden I am
and that is nice
for me
so I will take my drugs that keep my head straight and go to bed.
live to see another day
and try to get my head to stay
out of my own way
good day.

**side note. For the record, aside from the thank you card, I never once tried to contact those I am being accused of harassing for ANYTHING other then trying to understand what was going on with my head. I asked for medical and record clarification, and only things related to why I was there in first place. All attempts were within the realm of my patients rights and were attempts to clear up misunderstandings and also attempts to stand up for myself without causing harm to them. I don't think they had the same intention, to not cause harm that is.

Utah's Medical Malpractice Act

It is pretty amazing to me how deeply my failure with the Neuroscience Science Institute continues to effect me.
On days that I don't have to, getting out of bed is the hardest thing in the world to do. Right now I have the added challenge of a cold (that may be a sinus infection) on top of it, but even without it I am sure struggling to feel motivated.
It's one of those struggles that I keep thinking I am out of only to find myself entirely beat down, my negative core perceptions grounded in their confirmations of my worthlessness and denials of the actual medical and physical conditions that were manifesting.
I can logically look at this and see and say that it is wrong; that they are wrong. I can see and acknowledge my accomplishment of maintaining some sanity while manic and even enduring as long as and as well as I did when I trusted them in their insanity. I can see how wrong it was and is. I know logically that I must be something special for these highly trained and degreed ego's to be power tripping on me. I try to build myself up with these recognitions and acknowledgings but at the end of (and often the beginning of) the day I feel voiceless and powerless and I still struggle to feel I am of value and to feel like anything I do will be of value. And to believe that I can actually accomplish anything at all that I set out to do...
This is not just because of the NSI, Dr. Concussion, Dr. P, Patient Advocate, and the others who are not even worth mentioning (yes, I mean that to be a slight and mean, and I am letting my jading come out) but it is also due to what they denied, misdiagnosed and negligently treated.
My head gets disorganized rather quickly. It is harder now to keep things straight. A cold lowers my cognitive stamina even more than it would have before and when my brain gets tired my emotions go. And flow, often through my eyes again. Yesterday, I hate to admit, I had less patients with my young snowboarding students, and while this does not happen very often (far less than many other instructors I know of) I feel bad about things like this. It is not who I want to be.
Then there is the manic, bipolar side of things.
And the relationship side of things.
I think that the bluntness and honesty that TBI has a tendency to bring out is similar to children and we are a bit childish in our ways. I often feel like a child and yet I can also see that some of these childish traits in an adult body and adult world can also help me to see things more clearly. Most people are childish in one way or another, and even in many ways, I'm just not sure if they recognize their own childishness. That or their ego's and pride will not allow them to admit any of their childish mistakes.
-Digression in childish psychology
back to my point-
The other day, when I had the privilege of meeting the governor, I felt happy and proud and it was a very stimulating experience, but I did not feel too high and that is so good and nice for me. I was pleased to feel that simple happy feeling that is normal. And I continue to hope that I will get stronger there.
But there is still that feeling of.... not sure how to name this emotion... probably fear is an adequate word for it.
I fear my emotions, my feelings, my intensities and I fear happy and confident, I fear those feelings of I can do this because my brain does not always know how to stay balanced through them. It can go too high and this has hurt me. ...and my family.
Add into that the tragedy and complexity of Dr. P and the NSI missing, dismissing and denying and the blend is both toxic and deep.
Now add to that the difficulty in finding help and the reality of corrupt laws, rules, and the people in power  -who advertise their initiatives to help improve the quality of life for every person (real IHC adds that dagger twist in my heart every time I hear them) but that, in reality, really don't care. At least they don't really care for me, thus perpetuating the "you don't count, and you are worthless" messages- and it is not surprising that anyone in my situation would have a hard time getting up in the morning.
My sweet friend -whose abuser walks free, having suffered no legal or criminal consequences, despite his serious sociopathic manipulations, abuses and even obvious intent to take her life- pointed out, the laws in their effort to be "innocent until proven guilty" are now written and easily used to protect the guilty.
In the Utah Malpractice Act it points out that "provider's practicing defensive medicine because he views a patient as a potential adversary in a lawsuit" increases health care costs, but the Act only addresses and places more requirements and demands on the patient, or family of a patient, who wishes to address malpractice. It limits a patients ability to seek restitution and the amount of damages they can expect to recover and it makes it immensely more difficult for patients to file malpractice complaints and/or lawsuits.
Yet it does not address the issue of practitioners practicing defensive medicine at all.
Our belief in humanity may lead us to believe that the practitioners and medical providers would then stop practicing defensive medicine knowing that they are highly unlikely to face a lawsuit.
But sadly that has not happened.
Still, as I write, the standard of practice with medical providers is to practice defensive medicine if they make a mistake. This was made painfully clear in my situation and I have heard this is accurate from so many people on all sides of the industry; i.e. lawyers, doctors, nurses, patients, other medical workers, family members of patients, therapists that deal with the adverse effects this has on patients, therapists that have worked for companies like IHC.
Thus the result of laws and rules like this malpractice act equate to an increased burden, shaming, physical and psychological stress and re-victimizing of victims of malpractice while protecting the perpetrators. Wherein they may not have initially been intentional "perpetrators" they become perpetrators in their practicing defensive, negligent, and fraudulent medicine in an effort to "avoid a lawsuit" that is highly unlikely in the first place, even less likely they would acknowledge their mistake and treat appropriately and furthermore highly unlikely due to the laws being staked in their favor. It then causes superfluous harm and increased suffering for the patient and their family.
Their defensive medicine becomes nothing more than egotistical abuses of power that they are protected in.


“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

...and what is most silly to me is I am still having this occasional conversation with myself "I'm not going to die, and I don't really want to die.... do I?"
Today I actually audibly said those words to myself in response to my debate on whether to see the doctor or not about this cold that is kicking my butt head and is moving down into my lungs.
A couple of times this last week I have wondered why I am doing things to try and get better from it. I could just let it get worse...
Even though I have been through suicidal phases I have never, ever had thoughts like that... that's new...
And I also know I am not likely to die from this, even if I do let it get worse so I think I'd rather get better and enjoy a better quality of life for my efforts.
...more confessions of the deep and warped psychology of me that I am still facing and trying to undo.