Apophenia

 I learned a new word today: apophenia. 

Apophenia is not a recognized word in the spell checker of whatever platform I am using to type this, but a quick google search will tell you that apophenia "In psychology, [is] the perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. Apophenia can be a normal phenomenon or an abnormal one, as in paranoid schizophrenia when the patient sees ominous patterns where there are none" as explained by https://www.medicinenet.com/apophenia/definition.htm. 

This is an interesting thing to me. 

...

How do I explain this?

Clearly I make connections. It is my favorite thing about neuroplasticity. "My TBI brain can make connections that your brain does not even know exists," I like to joke.

So are they meaningful or meaningless and are they between things that really are connected or not? 

The answer is, Yes. 

When your brain starts down the manic slope (or is it up?) you are seeing all kinds of meaningful connections between unrelated things... It is part of how I knew. How I knew I was not quite right. How I knew he was not quite right in his missing or misdiagnosing. But I wanted to believe him. He was, after all the professional. But if these seemingly meaningful connections, that I am suspecting mean I am loosing stability more than they mean any of the other connections my mind is making, are then said to be something else, something other than apophenia, what then? That means the connections are real AND those connections were diagnosed to be real by the expert.

Another thing about connections and meaningful connections; who gets to decide if they are meaningful or not? Who decides who is crazy, anyway? Remember Semmelweis? Einstein? Galileo? and many many others; scientists, who made seemingly meaningless connections between unrelated things. 

It's tricky and very open to interpretation. 

One thing I have noticed is that when you are making connections that threaten what people know, or believe they know to be true, they want to make you wrong. It is so common and happens so quick that it almost seems to be an instinctive reaction. If this happens with people, or institutions, in power and they feel it threatens their practices and policies they will take it even farther. They will silence you. They will blacklist you. They also react this way if you are connecting things they are trying to hide, or are using to deceive people. 

Right now I am making connections. Are they real or are they not??

Connections. Meaningless connections. That is what they will say. But, what if they opted to listen? What if they listened when I told them I think part of the connection was that I validated his chosen career path, his research, his very life's work? What if they considered the connections I was making when I suggested the "concussion" was worse than I was manifesting? What if they considered the connections between how I have been treated and the attorneys that are advising them? What if they considered these connections and the reasons for them instead of writing them off as some form of apophenia?

...Too many of my connections are not apophenia. That is why they want me silenced. But do they actually realize this about themselves? Or are they doing the opposite; not making connections when connections do exist? According to this little article featured on Psych Central https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-play/201207/being-amused-apophenia, that mistake is can be much more dangerous. 

...This is also true of transference and countertransference, which are ultimately forms of meaningful connections between things that are supposedly unrelated. 

I believe the solution likely lies in the problem: recognizing that these connections are not unrelated and not meaningless. These connections should not be discarded and ignored nor treated as a threat that we instinctively try to destroy. 

I believe that humanity is the ability to overcome primal instincts and the only way we can overcome those primal instincts is by first recognizing them and making connections. 

Now you decide, is this apophenia or intelligence? Or is it just plan common sense? 

Keeping on

 The other day I was sad. Also scared and insecure about how to apply to grad school. It is not that I lack confidence in being able to do it, it is that I lack confidence in my ability to sell myself. I lack confidence in convincing others to give me a chance. I lack confidence in other people giving me a chance. 

And that is a very difficult challenge to overcome.

I am not sure how to overcome that one. I have had significant difficulty in the past and I am fairly certain I have been blacklisted at some institutions. ...I don't want to get into it. I already have, which may be why I have been blacklisted... 

So I will try to stay focused on the positive. 

Asking for letters of recommendations is intimidating. I was quite nervous about that. But so far the responses have been overwhelmingly positive. 

And that is nice.

So I am letting that be what I think about and focus on and I am very grateful for those votes of confidence from people I highly admire. 

 Today I am genuinely sad.

I don't want to process anymore. I don't want to keep working through. 

I don't want to keep fighting 

for chances

I don't want to keep getting rejected.

I am sad.

Tenacity and Trees

We have had this sad little plant for about 20 years. It was not a sad little thing at all when I bought it. However, it has since moved seven times, been left in a car during the summer in the High Desert of California, deprived of water when forgotten about, thrown off a deck, had its leaves picked off by curious little hands, and has rarely been repotted or given new dirt. 

If I didn't have so many other things to feel guilty about I would feel guilty about how I have neglected this poor little tree. And just so you know, I was not the person who threw this sweet little survivor off the deck. 

But what about this little tree? 

My husband says he thought we threw it away... actually we had, when it was in particularly bad shape. So it's been through that too. It may have been around the time it got thrown off the deck. Whenever it was, I did not have the heart to discard it so easily. You see, that is the trouble with me, I see potential. I see a pretty little plant that has so much potential in spite of the abuse and neglect it has endured. And it is a fighter. The sweet little thing has held on in spite of all of it. 

Yesterday a new beautiful plant was given this guys location and my husband thought to throw this little displaced tree out again, but he knew we could not. 

So instead, I gave it a very honored spot on the sunny window seat of the front room. I think that is where this silent struggling survivor really belongs. In a highly visible spot where it is honored and more likely to be remembered. By supporting it and nurturing it, by celebrating it for its strength and tenacity, I hope this little plant will thrive. It may never reach the full potential it once contained but already it is more beautiful and happy looking. 

And it is inspiring. 

A new potential that it did not have before which, ultimately, might make it more valuable than it ever would have been if it had not endured the hardships it has. 

This next picture, from a different angle, shows just how beautiful and healthy it's new growth continues to be. 

Keep reaching and keep striving little tree, and together we can become greater then either of us ever could alone. 

 

Update added 4/23/24

It has been sometime since I published this post, but today I was noticing just how healthy our funky little symbolic tree is looking. Sure it is still scared and stunted compared to what these trees are meant to look like and what this little guy likely would have looked like had it not been through the trauma it has been through, but none-the-less it is a happy healthy plant that I believe brings far more satisfaction to us, it's caretakers, than it would if its journey had not been what it has been. So I decided to post this picture to show how our plucky little family tree is progressing with its supported potential. 

TBI's just don't fade away...

 I'm lying in bed wondering why I am not sleeping... Why I am not more tried than I am feeling, because I I am tired and yet, somehow, I am not. Thoughts are cycling and I feel a tad concerned that maybe I am getting high again. 

Why?

Well, in light of recent events, I am a bit emotional about having to drop the class and feeling rather inferior about applying to grad school. "Maybe that is it," I think as I reflect on my emotions and the day. 

In reflecting I step myself through the events that might be affecting me. That is when I realize, I can't remember taking my medication... I didn't take my meds.  

What a freaky weird mess I am. If I don't take them, even once, I don't sleep?  And I have to be so much  more aware of my emotions than I assume others have to be. It can be quite exhausting really, so you'd think the sleeping would not allude me so. But alas, it does as my mind so easily wonders to the taboo paths that neuropsychologists create and then forbid. 

Sigh. 

...High, 

I am not. But rather I am thinking about it. It is so weird and funny really. Loads of people take all kinds of drugs to get high, but I get high if I don't take drugs. 

I remember when I was first diagnosed with depression at age 18/19. Drugs and alcohol were assumed, which was really annoying to me because -with the exception of a margarita and a daiquiri I drank at the age of 18 at a restaurant while with friends that I ordered kind of on a dare and just to see if I could get away with it- I had never touched drugs nor alcohol. I knew better. I was already screwed up enough, I didn't need help with that. So it annoys me still that drugs and alcohol are so automatically assumed to go hand in hand with mental illness. Because, for me, they do not. 

...And, like the good girl that I am... I responsibly take my drugs every day so I can not be like all the people who irresponsibly take their drugs to get high and behave stupidly.   

TBI's do weird things to people, their brains and their autonomic nervous systems, and I sure do wish I had experts to discuss and collaborate with about things like this.  

Meds kicking in, eyes getting heavy, I'm off to bed again. 

Keeping in context. Still fighting.

 Nothing I have experienced is quite as exquisitely painful as knowing that someone you loved and trusted would rather you die than admit they made a mistake... 

and then further deepened knowing that they may have even been pushing for it.

I am not sure if it was the PTSD trigger that brought back, or maybe rather re-intensified the still fading,  feelings and memories or if it is the distance I am feeling between me and my husband that has caused feelings to resurface, but for some reason these last couple of days, I keep finding myself tucked away in memories and feelings that I have been struggling like hell to forget and move past; to get and/or keep within appropriate and accurate context and framing. 

Today, while on a drive with my husband, I started reading aloud the next chapter in my PSY 1010 book. It is on stress. It is probably worth noting that the previous  chapter covered our human need for belonging. Now I am reading about how stress, stress from trauma, and prolonged stress effect your health and your autonomic nervous system (ANS). 

It put things back into appropriate context. 

Dr. He's research on how concussion effects the ANS is a systematic review. That's kind of a big undertaking and if one chooses to take on all the research and scholarly articles well enough to produce a publishable systematic review, then one knows the topic and material very well....

...And there is nothing quite as exquisitely painful as knowing and remembering that someone you loved and trusted so completely knew what he was doing and knew how it would affect a person. When I was trying to protect he was pushing for increased stress, a compromised immune system, depression, and further instability that would increase likelihood of a shortened life.

It is very painful. 

and I have to admit, I feel especially hurt again, not just by that man but also by the slew of other people that chose to follow suit and by the silence of my husband after I explain why-the-tears that refused to stay contained.

And by the silence of friends and family who no longer speak to me, because they did not want to be bothered and/or they did not want to believe our medical providers could do such things when I needed help and support to pull through the trauma ... and when I was distressed. 

I am sad.

But at least I can feel some peace knowing this has likely shortened those aging fading years that I am not all that excited for. 

taking sides (of my brain)

 PSY 1010. I am reading about thinking, language and intelligence. The book, Psychology in Everyday Life by David Myers and Nathan Dewall (2020) says, "we have many distinct neural networks that enable our many varied abilities. Our brain coordinates all that activity and the result is g [general intelligence]" 

I also just read about Broca's area and Wernicke's area. They are area's in the left frontal lobe that effect language comprehension and expression. An area where I have some damage. And I have read about cognition and creative thinking. I especially like Robert Sternberg's and colleague's 5 ingredients to creativity. And I like the list of cognitive processes this textbook contains on page 221. 

Back to the quote I started with. I read that and had a moment of insight, defined by the the book to be "a sudden realization of the solution to a problem; contrasts with strategy-based solutions." I think I might extend the definition to also include sudden realizations of problems and the potential contributing variables. 

My insight? I suppose it stems from the problem of "why is it so much harder for me to focus when I am emotional and with this recent trigger?" I have really struggled to study, and function with the recent PTSD trigger. I am forgetting things across the board and staying focused is really difficult.

But the Aha moment points out that my right prefrontal cortex has damage too, even more than the left temporal lobe. My insight reminds me that neurologist was impressed at how well I am doing in comparison to others with damage like this to that area. But when emotions hit and conditions that would require energy from that now missing area arise, it takes energy and effort from all the other parts of my brain to manage what that missing area could manage so much more easily and efficiently. Thus, so many other areas of cognition suffer ...so I probably really am more sensitive... 

and the fatigue happens faster because I am coming from a deficit. And I know this, but I think I finally just understood it. Neuroplasticity; is a wonderful and amazing thing, but it does require energy.