Life Changes After Brain Injury - My Hat

What do you do when the fear of someone else touching or bumping into makes you not want to leave your house?

What do you do when the slightest hit makes you drop to your knees crying?

You Wear a Hat!

Now you'll see me without a hat sometimes, but 9/10 times when I leave the house, I am wearing a hat, either a baseball cap or a toque in the winter. I have quite the collection of both!

I definitely do love hats, but I never realized why I wore them so much until someone flipped off my hat as a joke, and I snapped back. However, they didn't mean to cause that extreme of a reaction; I regretted my words and thought about it more. I realized that I didn't just wear my hat because I liked it but because I felt that I needed it! I needed that false sense of security when walking out the door that my head would be "protected." As to this day, I still freeze when someone touches my head.

One of the best explanations I've heard is to think of your head like a sunburn; all of those nerves are "on fire." When you run a sunburn under warm water, it feels so much hotter than it is. Very similar to your head, your head is "on fire," and when someone touches it while so sensitive, it can feel so much worse than it really is.

Now, does my hat protect my head? No, but a baseball cap does prevent me from hitting the front of my head since I am indeed a clutz. The real point here is how many little things we change in our lives after a brain injury and while living with an invisible disability. As humans, we adapt and don't always realize the changes we make over time to our daily lives; it becomes our new normal. You can listen to my discussion with snowboarder Kelsey Boyer this week's podcast guest, on Thursday, as we discuss some of the changes we made to our lives (Click here)!

Brain injuries can change practically everything about you, which is why many consider it a "new me." It can change the way you walk and talk, which is more visible to others, but it can also change the way you think, the way you react to emotional situations, the way you exercise, the way you work, and the way you walk out the door in the morning.

Now I'm not saying you have to wear a hat. I'm definitely saying it won't save you physically, BUT if you are nervous when walking out of the house or when around others, consider it. If it helps you be calmer and more relaxed, then ROCK THAT HAT every day of the week if you need to!

One day at a time,
Bella