Getting your mojo back after brain injury
2022 and A New Heart and Dreams - Part 3: Getting your Mojo Back.
If things happen to you rather than because of you – this is a sign that you need outside help. 
Krysalis blogger Anne Ricketts on how to get your mojo back after a brain injury. If you missed the first two articles in this series, then fear not; the fascinating insights can be found here:
Part 1: Turning wounds into wisdom after brain injury
Part 2: Focusing on the essentials after brain injury
When we no longer have the space in our mind to listen, hear, consider, feel, and ‘know’ what is going on inside our brain, we struggle.
It is rather like sitting on a hiccup or the arm of a record player with the needle stuck in a scratch; your life bounces from one catastrophe to the next.
It is like being the ball in a pinball machine.
The struggle feels like you are trying to drive at 30 miles an hour in first gear, and you keep jolting along instead of flowing.
Your memory can’t recall the past, and your mind can’t visualise the future. You get stuck in a moment where you are perpetually reacting and trying to stifle what you just did or said.
It is as though the rest of the world is running at a different pace, and you cannot synchronise the internal void with the life around you.
Sometimes, the only way to escape is to shut yourself away or disappear down the garden to find a diversion.
When we can no longer filter, agitation is a permanent companion. The question must be, ‘how do you get the noise to stop?’
Nearly 22 years after my traumatic brain injury (TBI), there are many things I understand now that I wish I had been able to focus my attention on earlier.
I think getting my mojo or ‘flow’ back would have come sooner if I had spent more time doing certain things.
These include:
- Having a nutritional diet plan
- Building guided meditations into my daily habits
- Creating a daily routine!
- Using the compensatory tools, I didn’t think I needed
- Learning to ask why
- Learning to ask other questions
Oh, and learning to pause and stop.
Here are other things that help:
- Letting other people help me make decisions
- Allowing others to guide me through daily tasks
- Starting yoga, tai chi or pilates as early on as possible, and…
Making sure I understood and practised everything my neuro occupational therapist taught me.
If you can think of anything else that needs to go on the list, please feed this back.
I could add it in future blogs to address in more detail why these things are essential.
The list above may seem familiar, or it may seem odd. Either way, I know that it is helpful because these are the things I do now by habit.
There are far fewer bumps, and my days flow.
One thing is for sure: I wasn’t capable of running my own life or of independence. I didn’t have the cognitive capacity or connections to my previous experiences to make comprehensive decisions.
These deficits are common among people with frontal lobe injuries. Knowing this can help us recognise where we need to make allowances and changes in our understanding.
When we learn to notice when and where the brain is making errors of judgement, we add another essential part of regaining our flow.
Taking on suggestions such as these isn’t easy after a brain injury. We can unconsciously deny many possibilities that would otherwise be open to us.
We must consider anything that we can do to help ourselves, and to me, it helps if we understand why.
For example, it can help if people take the time to discuss possible scenarios and outcomes with us, but to benefit, we must remain open to what they say.
It helps us know that we are safe making the most of other people’s sensible advice if we understand that they are as objective as we used to be.
Allowing ourselves to be guided means we have much better control of the final decision.
No one wants anyone else telling us what to do or saying we are wrong, but I now realise that people generally reach the same conclusions.
I always had a problem with thinking my life would end up matching their design rather than mine, and I would be the one living with the consequences.
I used to get very frustrated and feel people were telling me what to do.
Now, I realise their tone became more assertive when they recognised I wasn’t listening and rejected their help.
These fear-based concerns caused by brain impairments and thinking deficits are often perceived negatively by the people trying to help.
We need people to listen to us, but equally, we need to try to slow things down enough to recognise what is happening so that we can hear clearly.
We know if we have been listened to when people repeat what we think and feel.
Being in a supportive atmosphere among people we know we can trust makes a huge difference to how well we progress because the broken brain understands this external support.
A supportive atmosphere helps us be more relaxed and less fearful. The added comfort layer allows us to spend much more time in our inner world.
While thinking and contemplation may be jagged and lack robustness, having time alone gives the brain quiet time without distraction.
Just as we need plenty of good quality sleep to allow the brain to ‘file’ everything from the day, we also need the space to daydream, enabling the imagination to have activity time.
If we take on too much, the brain feels bombarded because it can’t process fast enough to keep up.
I think utilising imagination helps to encourage the thinking voice in our heads to return.
We may start with a feeling of blankness when we gaze out of the window, but the unconscious mind has room to be part of the stillness under the surface.
Stillness is just as healing as full-on concerted effort – we need a balance.
Even if we don’t have conscious awareness of contemplative thought, reflective time allows our whole physiology to calm down.
It is serenity that allows the beginning trickles of flow to come back. Within the peace, we can imagine all is well with the world and, however it feels to us, the injured brain needs these quiet periods to progress.
Peace and serenity aren’t something we ‘try’ to find; they are something that we drift into when we let go and allow flow.
If the brain doesn’t quieten, focused breathing can help.
You don’t need to be a meditation expert. All you need to do is put your attention on listening to the breath go in and out.
You can develop breathing techniques over time; there is no rush.
Being aware that you need space where your brain can get some time off is critical for letting your brain know you are making decisions.
Choosing to be quiet is a decision.
Becoming consciously aware of making choices is a step towards taking back control.
It is easy to miss the choice event with an injured brain, but you must do your utmost to notice it.
Talking out loud to yourself helps you retrain the brain to have conscious order. Instead of wandering into the kitchen and forgetting why you went that way, you start speaking about what you notice.
For example, “Ah! I am thirsty. It is time for a cup of tea. I am going to the kitchen to put the kettle on.”
We would have done all this automatically before the brain injury, but now those individual thoughts aren’t connecting to the previous habit – we have to rebuild it.
To allow realisation to creep in, we have to release expectations consciously. Getting our flow back works in similar ways.
We need to be conscious of letting go of expectations, of getting into the habit of being mindfully aware of what we are doing.
We do this by talking aloud to ourselves and then releasing the tension, fear and panic that we will forget so that we can feel the flow starting to return.
As with anything post brain injury, everything takes repetition and practice.
However, instead of seeing this as a chore, we can choose to see how it reflects our continuing ability to be proactive.
Further reading
Read more about Anne's lived experience of TBI and her inspirational tips on managing daily life with a brain injury here:
2022 and A New Heart and Dreams:
Part 1: Turning wounds into wisdom after brain injury
Part 2: Focusing on the essentials after brain injury
How neuro occupational therapy transformed me four years after a brain injury
Re-claiming life after brain injury
Nutrition and diet after brain injury
Covid-19, brain injury and me: Diaries of an ABI survivor – Part One
Recently on talking heads ...
Further reading
Read more about Anne's lived experience of TBI and her inspirational tips on managing daily life with a brain injury here:
2022 and A New Heart and Dreams:
Part 1: Turning wounds into wisdom after brain injury
Part 2: Focusing on the essentials after brain injury
How neuro occupational therapy transformed me four years after a brain injury
Re-claiming life after brain injury
Nutrition and diet after brain injury
Covid-19, brain injury and me: Diaries of an ABI survivor – Part One