Living in a Gray Space with Chaandani Khan
Show Notes:
Finding the language to describe your feelings after a traumatic event will leave many people at a loss for words. It can be even more difficult when you’ve experienced a traumatic brain injury that impacts how you process information. Our guest today, Chaandani Khan, has coined several new terms in her efforts to describe her experiences living with post-concussion syndrome. In our conversation, Chaandani describes the feelings of intense anxiety, depression, and overwhelming fatigue that have accompanied her concussion, and why she chose to become honest and vulnerable about her struggles. She shares how terms like ‘loss trauma’ and ‘gray space’ have helped her process her experiences and why being honest about the mental health struggles that come along with post-concussion syndrome has been so important to her.
We discuss the importance of having a support system, as well as some of the strategies one can implement to cope with feelings of overwhelm and how to decrease your cognitive load. Chaandani also shares some of her plans for the future including writing a book and becoming more involved in the concussion space. For a refreshing and honest conversation that reflects on what it’s like to live with post-concussion syndrome, how to find your voice, and more, be sure to listen in!
Key Points From This Episode:
● Chaandani shares details about her busy life prior to experiencing a concussion.
● How Chaandani had to adjust to a loss of control and why she describes herself as a recovering type A personality.
● The low point Chaandani experienced when she felt overwhelmed by the number of steps it took to make a sandwich.
● Why the feelings of fatigue after a concussion are so challenging.
● Why saying ‘it could be worse’ is such an invalidating response to someone’s experience.
● The mental health challenges that Chaandani experienced after her concussion.
● How feelings of intense anxiety and depression affected Chaandani’s life.
● How Chaandani uses the term ‘loss trauma’ to describe her experiences.
● The term ‘gray space’ and how it helps Chaandani express what it’s like to live without an endpoint to one’s recovery.
● How Chaandani uses strategies she’s learned from her therapists to make it seem like she is coping with the symptoms of her injury.
● Some of the things that have helped Chaandani through her recovery.
● Why a really good support system has been crucial to Chaandani’s recovery.
● Why it was so important for Chaandani to be honest, vulnerable, and open about her struggles with mental health and post-concussion symptoms.
● Chaandani’s plans to become more involved in the concussion space by creating awareness and supporting those who are living with post-concussion symptoms.
Get in contact with Chaandani on her website here
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Transcript - Click to Read
[INTRO]
[00:00:05] BP: Hi. I’m your host, Bella Paige. Welcome to the Post Concussion Podcast; all about life after experiencing a concussion. Help us make the invisible injury become visible.
[DISCLAIMER]
The Post Concussion Podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post-concussion syndrome. It does not provide, nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussions and post-concussion syndrome.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:04] BP: Welcome to today’s episode of the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige, and today’s guest, Chaandani Khan. Nearly three years ago, a concussion injury derailed Chaandani’s entire existence. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she was about to embark on a very painful and humbling journey of loss, followed by the opportunity for massive personal growth. Chaandani is a survivor who leads vulnerable and open conversations about the real deal behind concussion and post-concussion syndrome, thus increasing public awareness, speaking for those who have lost their voice, making the concussion journey easier for others to navigate. She has a deep gratitude for the support all her loved ones provided her and wouldn’t be where she is today without her mom’s home cooked meals throughout year one.
Welcome to the show, Chaandani.
[00:01:55] CK: Thank you.
[00:01:56] BP: To start, do you want to tell everyone about your concussion experience?
[00:02:01] CK: Yes. So it was in May 2019, and it was a Saturday and I had headed out for lunch. But the problem was that I never actually got to lunch because I was in a car accident. What happened is a woman flew through a stop sign and ended up T-boning my car right in my driver’s side door. That was kind of the beginning of the concussion journey for me.
[00:02:23] BP: Yes. Something we talked about before was that you had a very different life before your injury, kind of like myself where you’re really busy and it was a big adjustment. Do you want to talk a little bit about your life before the concussion happened?
[00:02:43] CK: Sure. Yes, it was really, really different than how I’m living right now. Before the accident, I was really outgoing, very social, very busy. Just to give some context to that, I worked about 50 to 70 hours per week. I had a really fulfilling social life with lots of events, and happy hours, and reasons to get together with friends and connect with people. I worked out four to five times a week at these really intense fitness classes, are actually heated to 40 degrees and it’s just a very intense experience, the best whatever. I also balanced all this with my volunteering passions. I love horses, grew up riding, and so I recently landed a highly coveted role with rescue horses right before my accident. I also had my own hobbies. I was really happily busy, I’d say. In fact, I’d actually worked really hard to change industries right before the accident as well. I landed an incredible new opportunity with an amazing company and I also had gone back to school so I could obtain the diploma, because I wanted to learn the new industry from two different, my guess, ways. That’s where was pre-accident.
[00:03:50] BP: It’s quite the change when you go from being this crazy, busy, high functioning person, and especially the workout so I could not. Temperature regulation is a problem. Working out in the extreme heat would have been really rough after. I think it would have been tough for me before. I used to ride horses as well as everyone knows, and show jump, and that meant pants, and long sleeves, and jackets, and tall boots, and helmet and gloves in like scorching summer weather. I never would have done that on purpose, but I’m glad you liked it.
[00:04:29] CK: You might have been able to do those hot workouts. I don’t know, just saying, you had some pretty good training growing up.
[00:04:34] BP: True. What do you believe some of the biggest challenges you had to face in all this?
[00:04:39] CK: That is a great question, and I have honestly probably about 10 hours long challenges. But for our purposes, I’ll just kind of summarize that one thing was a loss of control. This was huge in my life because I refer to myself as a recovering A type. I’ve always been very composed. I’ve always been very controlled. I’ve chosen what I want to do when I want to do it. Generally, I haven’t felt too held back in a lot of ways in my life. However, having this injury just rained down a ton of limitations, absolutely constant pain on me and that prevented me from doing things the way I want it to. My life went from how I described it and it just became this awful cycle of relentless medical appointments. I didn’t feel that I had control or choice, I wanted to get better, so I “wanted to go.” Yeah, that’s huge.
As well, loss of basic abilities, which I know you speak a lot about on your podcast, and all of your guests really, really relate with. But things like understanding conversation, that just stopped working. It’s like my brain would shut off when people talk to me. How to make a sandwich, that was one of my hardest and still, at this point, emotionally painful things to think about. Just realizing that I was hungry one day, and I wanted to make a sandwich. I ended up just laying on my floor and crying for three hours to be totally honest, because I couldn’t cope with the amount of steps that were involved in making a sandwich because I couldn’t even remember them or understand how that was supposed to work. We could call that an extreme low loss of my life before as I kind of described it going into this sort of just pause, massive pause.
I was 31 when this happened and I’ve lost my entire early 30s to this whole process. It’s been really challenging watching people around me, whether it’s my friends who I’m so proud of, and so happy for, achieve certain goals, or even other people online that I see. Really, if they’re achieving certain goals that I had for myself, it’s been a really hard to sit with that. I guess mostly sit with myself, I should say. They’re achieving goals and I’m focusing on being grateful that I have slept for three hours in a row that night. The hardest thing of all was really loss of self. It’s just this really profound experience that I guess I was very privileged before not to really know that that was an experience that could be around the corner for me. Yeah, the pain associated with that and confusion is really hard to put into words.
[00:07:03] BP: Yeah. You talked about a lot of great things like being composed and having your life kind of seemed like it was on a track. When that gets taken away can be really tough, especially with concussion recovery, because all of a sudden, it can seem like it is back and you’re like – everything’s going well, and then all it takes is like one thing and everything goes backwards again. It can be really tough, and I get the struggle with like the eating and things like that. I actually talked about it the other day with someone about how I used to get really dizzy cooking. For me, things in the oven worked really well. Sitting on the floor and crying, I don’t know why that’s a thing, but it is a thing. There’s like a comfort with the floor. I don’t know.
[00:07:50] CK: There’s something about that.
[00:07:51] BP: I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s been a lot of days where it used to be like the landings on my staircases at my parents’ house because I could only go down like four stairs at a time and then I get to dizzy and I have to lay down. I would just like lay there on each stair level and talk to my mom as she like did laundry and I would like cry and stare at the ceiling. I was like, I don’t know why that’s a thing, but it is a thing. There’s some comfort in it, but it’s also like really emotionally draining when you go to get up.
[00:08:22] CK: Yeah. No, just to add to that. I think it’s also just a great level of fatigue in my case. It’s been just mind blowing. I’m somebody who just could work constantly and travel. I also choose to travel frequently for work and personal, and just the level of fatigue just being like, “I am awake, but I am lying flat.” That’s all that you can manage at that time.
[00:08:43] BP: Extreme fatigue is really tough and it’s really tough when you weren’t a person that came home from work and then sat on the couch. You came home from work, and maybe you work more or maybe you went to the gym, and maybe you do a sport or hung out with friends. It’s just is a really big adjustment to make. I know for myself, watching people as well was really tough. I’ve talked about it before, where I actually removed myself off of all social media for about six months to a year when I got really sick for a while because it’s not that you’re not proud. I definitely understand that. I was super proud of my friends who are still competing, and still making it like moving up the levels, becoming more professional, getting more sponsors, those types of things. But when you’re not doing it, it’s more just anger at yourself and tough to be sitting there going, “Okay. They’re making plans for the next horse show this weekend, and I’m trying to get out of bed and I’m organizing pill containers.”
[00:09:46] CK: It’s a very humbling experience, I’d say, because there’s a lot that, again, I realize now what a privileged position that I was in and it sounds like you were in as well prior to your injury. You didn’t even have to think about these little micro things like organizing pill container. You wouldn’t have had to think through that so hard prior, but now it’s a task in itself. Watching friends go off to the next show while you’re doing that, yeah, it’s really hard.
[00:10:09] BP: Yeah, it is. It is really hard. I know people always say, oh, it could be worse and I always go, “Oh! That is your first response. That’s not a good response to say to anyone.”
[00:10:20] CK: Invalidation. Yeah, and comparisons don’t make it easier, like comparing yourself to someone else doesn’t make what you’re going through any easier, because they’re going through something worse, or they’re going through something better. Comparisons are tough, and I think it’s really bad to do honestly to start comparing yourself. But I think it’s like natural human instinct to be like, “Oh, they’re doing this, we’re the same age, we should be doing the same thing.” But what I’ve learned, even just not being ill, the amount of people that are at different stages based on how old you are, is so all over the place. There’s no consistency. I think it’s important to kind of just take a step back and let yourself breathe a little bit.
[00:11:06] CK: Agreed. It’s like that important piece of emotional wellness, I’d say or you realize that yeah, the comparisons, that’s not going to work, that’s not sustainable. You’re going to have to put a pin in that, focus on yourself, be really present and then come back to that later if necessary.
[00:11:20] BP: Yeah. What type of things did you experience like the mental health and things like that?
[00:11:27] CK: Mm-hmm. Mental Health? This is one of your favorite categories, I know.
[00:11:30] BP: It is.
[00:11:32] CK: It’s something that’s really important for me to shed light on and speak openly and honestly to as well. I experienced honestly the whole spectrum. Anything from the most overwhelming, and crippling anxiety and depression that I ever thought possible. That was something interesting, because I have such a large team of professionals, and medical professionals and others that I work with. You can attest to how many frequent check-ins there are with them and how many scales and how many this week versus that week. It’s overwhelming. The amount of times that I checked in and said, things along the lines of having really bad anxiety or really bad depression. It’s interesting, because often, I feel like, I was kind of asked to figure out where it was coming from as the patient, almost like, “Oh, is this just happening inside you because of the injury or is this coming from you, because you’ve lost your entire life as you knew it and now you don’t have anything to look forward to or anything to plan?”
I never knew. All that I knew is it was probably a deadly combination of both. Honestly, there were times when I would just sit on the couch, I would wake up, I would not have energy to get dressed into something else. I would sit on the couch, and I would just physically shake with anxiety. Next thing I knew, the day was over. I’m saying this because I really want to lead other people and be super vulnerable with the struggles. That’s not something that I’ve ever experienced in my life before and it was a huge low for me. Depression as well, you go from having this big fulsome satisfying life into what I really struggled with was, oh my God, there is no end date. Nobody can give me an end date. For the first year and a half, every single appointment, which was a lot of appointments. I would ask, “What is the end date? When am I done? When am I better?”
Even just grappling with that and being such a young age in an age where – I guess, we can say, everything is changing. But traditionally, there are certain milestones that people will hit around this age bracket. Knowing that I just need to focus on getting through this day somehow and not perhaps buying the house that I want. That piece was the mental health on the anxiety and depression that was huge, and just deeply humbling and really eye opening for me, really helped me develop empathy, like a very deep sense of empathy for other people who have struggled with that before. I just didn’t know the extent of their pain and people who are struggling heavily now.
[00:13:54] BP: Yeah. It really shows how much you can be struggling when you don’t look like it. I think it’s always important to mention the depression and the reasons behind it. I know for myself, it was always like a really straight answer. It was the head pain and then no riding, like that career change was really tough for me, considering I didn’t let it go until three years ago in May. It actually took me a really long time. Took me seven years to accept that. It was a long time and a long process. I remember talking with therapists and things like that, or even just myself trying to figure out why I was so sad or why I was so upset. I’d say, “Well, I can’t do anything, that’s why” or “I’m in so much pain, that’s why.”
That’s where I learned that once my pain went away, I still felt that way and it took an adjustment to realize that I also needed to address that I was now mentally ill. Even though the head pain was gone, it wasn’t like a head pain gone equals in no. It’s like not an equal balance between the two, I always thought if I got rid of my headaches, that I would no longer struggle mentally at all. That wasn’t the case. There was a lot more to it than I thought. I took time to realize that and kind of come down to, “Okay, it doesn’t matter how many life changes you make, you have to learn how to handle the mental health side. You have to learn how to handle the thoughts, and the depression, and the anxiety and things like that other than just making as many life changes as you can, because that gets really exhausting.
[00:15:34] CK: Truly exhausting. Just on the note of life changes, I like to think, I’ve coined a term, which is, “loss trauma.” That’s something that, at this point, next month is three years for me since my injury. That’s something that I really realized that I struggled with at the time. I just didn’t have language capacity. I didn’t have the wherewithal to actually think through and understand what it was. But looking back on that, it was a lot of loss trauma. Again, it happens so quickly, as people always say, with every injury, it happens so fast and you go from one thing to another. Complete loss of life, of self, of being a good family member, and friend of contributing to society with working of having goals, ambitions, dreams, moving forward in life the way you thought you would, all of a sudden it just stops.
I think it is important for everyone to just really look at that and be like, “Well, that can happen for a variety of reasons.” Your story and my story is relatable to people with concussion, but also even far outside of that, and mental health struggles that can come with that type of again, as I call it, loss trauma.
[00:16:41] BP: I really like that term. It’s a good one, because it really is what it is.
[00:16:46] CK: It’s really good. Yeah.
[00:16:48] BP: I like that you mentioned the goal dates, because I think that’s a really tough thing. We always talk that breaking bones would have been easier because we know a lot more about a bone. We can put a date, rehab this day, within this many months, you’ll be good. It’s just not the case with brain injuries because it’s way too complicated. And it is getting better, but it’s still quite a complicated mess, to be honest. We are going to talk more about what’s helped you and living in a gray space. But with that, let’s take a break.
[BREAK]
[00:17:27] BP: I just wanted to say thank you to all of those who have donated to the podcast. It truly helps more than you could ever know. If you happen to be struggling with your recovery, with things such as relationships with others, school, work, finding the right help when you need it, please make sure to take the time to book a post-concussion life coaching session with myself. Because these coaching sessions are what I needed when I was struggling immensely to share with others what I was really going through. You can find the link to these coaching sessions by going to postconcussioninc.com and clicking coaching or of course, in our episode description. I can’t wait to work with you.
[EPISODE CONTINUES]
[00:18:20] BP: Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today’s guest. Chaandani Khan. I want to talk about the gray space because no one’s ever mentioned that before or at least use those terms. Do you want to talk about what it feels like to live in a gray space?
[00:18:38] CK: Yes. Thank you for acknowledging the terms. That’s something that I realized I’ve done this whole journey of kind of coined different terms, and I’ve labeled different things. I’m a really visual person, so it helps me to kind of label them with something that I can almost see. Yes, I feel like I’m living in a gray space right now. I mean, not very much now. I don’t just feel that way. I mean a couple things by that. It’s essentially what I’m saying to say that I am a living dichotomy in a sense. If I look at where I’m at right now, again, it’s as of next month, it’s almost three years and I’m doing a lot better. My whole team, including my therapist, my medical team, everybody consistently has me look back and compare. This is the one type of comparison and concussion that I think should be happening. Not comparing yourself to others, but comparing yourself to your own journey.
Really, though. Where I am right now, I can confidently say yes, I’m doing a lot better than three years ago. I can list off symptoms that I had that have reduced I can tell you that I can manage X amount more during work simulation, right? But the truth of the matter is, but I’m still not living what my normal life looks like and I want it to look like again. My life if I’m very honest, and this is very much exposing myself. My life is filled with strategies so that I look “normal.” I can seem “normal.” Anything from, if a friend wants to have a phone call, I will specifically schedule it into my calendar in a time when I can afford to have a rest period prior to it, so that I can have that 20-minute, 30-minute hour phone call and be okay after.
When I’m really tired, this might sound a little bit weird or relatable, depending on everyone’s state. But when I’m really exhausted, which is honestly every single day, but when I get to a point where I’m just overloaded, and I need to take a shower, I will actually sit in the shower and take my shower from the floor, because I am so exhausted that I’m just trying to cut any kind of cognitive load that I can. That’s a couple examples of how I’m not living my normal life and I’ve been trying to impress this upon my team and say, “My life is just strategies.” I’ve been doing it for almost three years now, and I’ve learned the strategies that therapy has taught me that, this physical therapist has taught me, my chiro has taught me, that my active rehab kinesiologist has taught me and I’m just good at making it look normal. That is one way of looking at the sort of as I call a gray space. More to come if you like.
[00:21:10] BP: No, you can keep going if you want.
[00:21:12] CK: No, go ahead.
[00:21:13] BP: Okay, I like that you said the scheduling. We actually have like our support groups on Concussion Connect. I actually take a nap before them every single time. I wake up like 15 minutes before, so that I can be present, because it’s like, certain things drain more energy. That is something because it’s a lot of coordinating, talking, processing thoughts for many people at a time and things like that. I love the support groups, but I also find that I have to balance them. Then the showering you mentioned, having showering being exhausting, and it’s actually really true. It’s something like I’ve talked about before. A lot of the past I forget about until someone like mentioned something and I’m like, “Oh, trigger!”
Showering for me used to be so exhausting that I used to shower and then lay on the landing outside of the shower, like outside of the bathroom on the carpet. I would lay there for like an hour after just to be able to move. It wasn’t like the, everyone goes and loves to lay in their bed after the shower because they feel tired. It was more like I physically can’t believe I made it out of the shower. Now, I need to make it like to go get dressed. I used to get panic attacks, and somewhere I used to get them a lot was after being in the shower. I think it’s because it actually drained so much energy from me that when I get out, I’d be like vibrating and shaking. My mom would be like, “Okay, sit down.” I’d be like laying on the ground vibrating.
[00:22:49] CK: Of course. It’s so overstimulating. Its temperature, its sound, its smell, it’s physically having to like use your arms above your head.
[00:22:57] BP: And touching your head when I had headaches. Yeah.
[00:22:59] CK: Yeah. Then heart rate variability for me having my arms above my head, and then I’m nauseous and it’s like – well, this whole thing. Just to kind of fill the blanks, and if there are some listeners who are just like, “What the heck are they talking about?”
[00:23:09] BP: Why are they having trouble showering?
[00:23:11] CK: Yeah. Don’t you go to shower and sing? Don’t you just get there and like plan your day? I’m like, no. Sometimes I’m on the floor with my eyes closed because I need to cut cognitive load so desperately.
[00:23:22] BP: Something else that used to help was, I used to leave the shower curtain open a little bit so that I could breathe better. Because if it got too hot, and the air got like a little thicker, just from the steam of things, I’d have trouble because I had already had respiratory problems from my concussion, so that was added on top. By just having it open or even like if you have a glass door, the floor gets wet. Who cares? It’s tile. You know what, it’ll be okay if the floor gets a little wet. Just leave the door open a bit just so you can breathe, right? It’s fine. It’s just water.
[00:23:53] CK: Yes. I have like this like really thick mat that I put down for those days when I know I’m going to have to crack my shower door open and [inaudible 00:23:59]. Protect the floor, but yeah, it is truly. Isn’t it just so wild to think that these are things that we have to think about now, because I have another term which is micro struggles. I have micro struggles every single day and you don’t share that with everybody constantly. Obviously, that’s not how normal conversation goes. But it just needs to be said that like there’s just so many things that we used to take for granted and just doing, but now, we just realize how hard our brain has to work to be able to do it.
[00:24:27] BP: I agree. It’s actually overwhelming if you started listing them all. But it is important to realize them and to create awareness around them because people don’t always realize that getting dressed or getting dressed seems like an everyday task, but sometimes it’s a lot more than people think. Or little things, like doing little things around your house, or for me opening a book. Okay, I’m going to open the book. Great. Open the book. Now, read a page. Okay. Now I’m done. Great. It does get a lot better. I’m doing a lot better than I ever was in the past, considering – as most know, I lived in a hospital for a while, so things can improve. What do you believe has helped you the most?
[00:25:11] CK: Yeah, I’d say honestly a combination of things. It isn’t just one thing. Even in combination, it’s not like the golden key that fixes everything. However, I’d say, first off, having a really good support system. I’ve been really, really lucky to have during this time, like just to be able to lean on a close circle of girlfriends that I have. It’s been really interesting just to see that they might not be able to understand everything you’re going through. Fair enough, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn until now. They may not be able to understand it, but they can still hold space for you with love. That’s been truly changing, like huge in my experience. I’ve had girlfriends cry with me as I’m sitting in pain, an emotional pain and loss. I’ve had them make food for me. I’ve had them check in on me. Just that amount of support and love is huge, as well as family.
The next part would be treatments. I won’t go through the whole laundry list, but I am seeing a lot of different treatment providers. I do believe that over time, these treatments have helped to get from where it was to where I am now. Another part, this is huge, is finding some level of acceptance. This part to me, I fought. I fought this for the first over a year. I pushed myself way past where I should have. I fought it. I was so angry. I was so angry. Again, some of that stemming from brain injury, creating anger, and the other part just not being able to do my life. But I found an incredible therapist who have been working with this whole time, and she has experienced with concussion, and she’s just been instrumental in allowing me to find my own level of acceptance, which just as she said it would, automatically lessen the sort of painful load on me. Also, I went on a personal growth journey. I made this conscious decision, which I’m really proud to say as of last month, it’s been one year, which involved a lot of seminars, courses, networking, and kind of doing these things in my work simulation period that I have with my occupational therapist. But really. just working on my mindset and developing a mindset of growth. Understanding that this truly happened for me, and not to me as my loss trauma initially led me to believe. That’s been huge.
The final part is huge as well. This is that, I made a decision about almost a year and a half into things. I just one day, my brain started to clear enough for me to start thinking a little bit better and I made this decision to start speaking openly and honestly about my true experience and my true struggles. I had so much shame and I was so embarrassed. I just was probably the hardest person on myself thinking that, if I just work harder, if I just pushed harder. But with a brain injury, you can’t just push harder. It’s not the same as just being tired on an injured brain. When I started being honest with others, and just not being afraid of worrying them or making them awkward with my truths and my micro struggles, I see you laughing with that. I think it’s relatable to you. But really, that helped me find my own acceptance for self, and like, I can’t speak highly enough about that.
[00:28:20] BP: Yeah. No, it’s great. I liked that you mentioned like sharing it with others. Because, for me, a lot of my friends that actually knew me, when this started, I’m not really close with any of them anymore. But a lot of that’s just because I was in high school. High school to now is quite the life changes for most people, with friends as well. Even some my friends to this day that didn’t know me then, whenever I talk about it, they look at me like, “I don’t know how you did it. Like how?” I was like, “Well, technically, I didn’t do very well. Like I made it. That’s why the podcast exists is because I did a lot of things wrong.” I was like mentioning that because they were looking at me, they’re like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Well,” we take a run at the whole list of everything I tried, and then the times where I’d like quit therapy and every single medical professional in one day and I’d be done. I’d tell my mom to call them all and cancel every appointment because I was over it. I would like throw all my pills out, and throw them in a drawer.
It happened all the time because I get tired of being ill and I’ve just told myself, “You’re not ill, it’s fine. Just carry on with life.” But that’s not the way it works, but I tried. I liked that you mentioned support. Support is really important. I have very close family and friends. If you don’t have that support, that’s why we are here and why Concussion Connect is here because we all need it. I know I needed even to this day, I hit a really low spot months ago and I guess over half a year ago now and my two best friends saved my life, because I managed to call them and tell than that I was having a really bad day. Rather than just like sitting there bawling with myself, like sat and bawled on FaceTime. Sometimes that is okay to do because I felt guilty for involving them, but then I realized that they would rather have me around than me feel guilty of involving them in my mental health struggles.
It’s important to talk about it, it’s important to create awareness, if you can, if you’re ready. If you’re not, that’s okay. You just focus on you. Where are you now? It’s been a few years, you’ve kind of learned a few things that help you. What are you up to now?
[00:30:35] CK: Yeah, I am existing in this gray space right now. What that means is that some days are easier, and I’m getting little bits of my old self, my motivation, my ambition coming back to me. Other days are really damn hard, and I’m really upset that I’m still struggling and I’m frustrated. One is, I’m existing in my gray space and just doing the best that I can through that. A lot of the days, I will wake up and I’ll choose to be in a good space mentally and emotionally, like make that actively decide, “This is where I am today. This is how my day is starting out.” That’s been huge for me as well.
Yeah. On the exciting side of things, I have become very passionate, as you can probably tell about everything concussion and making this an easier experience for others to navigate. I’m not going to make an official announcement at the point, but I definitely have some very exciting things planned. One thing is like a longer-term goal is that I’m writing a book. Shorter term, I’m going to be involving myself in the concussion space, because I really would like to address the shocking lack of education around it that seems to still exist. I also want to be a voice for other people, people who have lost their voice through this process the way I once lost mine. Please stay tuned and be sure to follow me. Links will be included. I will be sharing more about how I’m going to get involved and make changes in the space.
[00:32:04] BP: Yeah, absolutely. I’m really looking forward to it. I get really excited when more people are interested in like helping and creating awareness and all those things, because there’s a huge gap. I can honestly say, it’s getting smaller by micro notches. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we end today’s episode?
[00:32:28] CK: Yes, just a little tidbit on humor. I think that, obviously our journey, we can’t sit here and pretend it’s super light hearted and fun. But we can say that, I think it’s important to have a sense of humor, and to view some things through the lens of how they could be kind of funny. A little while ago, when we were talking about the idea of showering and sitting on the ground or opening the door just to breathe, and like you know, both of us kind of giggled, because it is kind of funny. I think that that’s something that’s really helped me. My family has been really supportive during this time and that’s something that’s really big to them as well. Being sure to have a sense of humor, accepting the idea of dark humor that exists and yes, it can be uplifting. I would just say try to find the little things that can bring you some light and giggles.
[00:33:16] BP: I really like that. It is important to laugh about it, because you’re not laughing when it happens. It definitely helps with the mental health stuff after. I just wanted to thank you so much for joining and sharing all of your terms and your life post-concussion.
[00:33:33] CK: Thank you so much.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:33:38] BP: Has your life been affected by concussions? Join our podcast by getting in touch. Thank you so much for listening to the Post Concussion Podcast and be sure to help us educate the world about the reality of concussions by giving us a share. To learn more, don’t forget to subscribe.
[END]
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