Post Concussion Mindset with Julie Kuch
Show Notes:
Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast. During today’s discussion, we are joined by Julie Kuch, concussion and stroke survivor, and life coach who has helped hundreds of people to reconnect with their joy and purpose in life after suffering traumatic brain injuries. Join us today to hear how she draws on wisdom from her own story to guide and inspire others who are dealing with the fallout of similar experiences. You’ll learn what Julie refers to as operating from the ‘lower brain’ before realizing that everything in life begins with a thought. Listeners will also hear about the power of questioning everything your brain tells you and understanding that sometimes our feelings of anxiety are trying to protect you from a threat that isn’t there. We chat about mindset, self-compassion, understanding that your worth extends far beyond the success of your recovery, and much more. Thanks for tuning in!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Meet today’s guest, Julie Kuch, concussion and stroke survivor, and life coach for brain injury survivors.
• Julie’s first injury, having a stroke while driving at the age of 30.
• Why the first injury was the hardest: she didn’t have any experience on how to manage it.
• Her second injury which occurred during a snowboarding accident.
• The third time she experienced a brain injury during a client meeting which she is recovering from today.
• What Julie refers to as operating from the ‘lower brain’: the fight or flight response.
• Recognizing that everything starts with a thought that changes our lives.
• Questioning everything your brain offers you to see if it is trying to protect you from a threat that isn’t there.
• Distinguishing between facts and thoughts and visualizing them as a cloud passing by.
• Two emotions that keep us from advocating for ourselves: shame and embarrassment.
• What Julie refers to as Recovery Days, and Good Days.
• Having compassion for yourself and your brain.
• Considering the possibility that you are right where you need to be in your recovery.
• Why it is so important for your emotions to come out even if it happens in a bad way.
• Understanding that your value is not tied up in your health and recovery.
Knowing that you are valuable because you exist on this earth!
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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 the Post Concussion Podcast, with myself, Bella Paige, and today's guest, Julie Kuch. Julie is a concussion and stroke survivor. She is a life coach for people who have had a traumatic brain injury. She has helped hundreds of people find joy and purpose in life again. Welcome to the show, Julie.
[00:01:22] JK: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Bella.
[00:01:25] BP: So to start, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about the brain injuries you've experienced?
[00:01:31] JK: Yes. I have had three brain injuries. Back when I was 30 years old, I had my first stroke. As it was my first brain injury and I wasn't educated at all on brain injuries, it was really miserable and a long recovery. What had happened is, I was just driving my car, I was going to a doctor's appointment and I was trying to find out where the doctor was. It was a new doctor and I looked at the address, I brought out a piece of paper, and I took my eyes off the road for a minute, and I looked at the address and I had tunnel vision. I couldn't see the address. It took my eyes several seconds to focus on it. I was like, "Hmm, that's weird. Maybe I should have eaten breakfast. That's probably why that happened. Of course, that's logical."
I got to a stoplight, and I stopped the car, and then the light turned green and I was so confused. I was like, "What do I do now?" I looked down at my feet, I saw the pedals. I didn't know if I should go. I had no idea what the pedals did. It took probably a minute for me to figure it out, and then my brain came to and I pushed the gas. Somehow, I managed to get to the doctor's appointment. I got there, and I noticed it was really hard to speak. I had slurred speech. I didn't have a lot of control. Then, she gave me some paperwork to fill out. Again, I was shocked. I couldn't write. I had no muscle control on my right hand. When I got into the doctor's office, I told her like, "I think I'm fine. I think I just need to have some food in my stomach, but this is kind of what happened." She's like, "You have two choices. You can have someone come pick you up and take you to the emergency room or I'm calling an ambulance right now." I was like, "Whoa, lady. You're a little bit over." I'm like, "I'm fine. I just need a bagel. I'm totally fine."
That was by far the hardest of the brain injuries because, again, I didn't have any information or skills. The doctors were really good about trying to find out why I had a stroke and prevent me from having another one, but I didn't get a lot of help managing my symptoms. It's crazy, because I've had two strokes, and one concussion and it's about the same. I feel like a lot of my symptoms are very similar with all of them.
Six years later, in 2020, before COVID, I was snowboarding and I had taken my son and a bunch of his friends with me. We were going in a train park. A train park is where there's tricks. There are all kinds of fun things to do in there. We were just kind of playing around in there, not doing huge tricks. I was following these boys; we went up a big hill and in the middle of that hill was a big jump. You could either just go up the hill on the sides of the hill, and get a little bit of air, or go in the middle, and take the jump and get a lot of air, do twists and turns in the air and land. We were on the side of the hill. We went up, got baby air, went down. Well, someone behind me didn't see us go. A skier went up, got air, did flips, whatever and he landed on my head. His skis landed on the left side of my head. I was luckily wearing a helmet. His skis went down onto my shoulder and then he skied across my thighs.
The way he hit me, my neck just torqued to the right really hard, and I was in a lot of pain and I had a concussion from that. That was also very challenging. I was very sore, my body hurt, my head hurt. Luckily, I'm alive. It is a blessing that it wasn't worse. He hit me in a spot where I was able to get up and function and I feel very blessed. But then I got my second opportunity to recover from a brain injury.
Then my third one I'm recovering from right now. I had a stroke in January. I'm a life coach for people with brain injuries. I was at a client's house, she's 90% blind because of brain injuries. I got to her house and I was very confused. I was trying to pull off being normal, like, "I'm good. I'm fine. Nothing's wrong with me." I could tell I was having a hard time understanding her. I was very confused. I was trying my best. Then I got this massive headache between my eyebrows. I knew at that moment in my heart that I was having a stroke. I said, "Hey! I'm not feeling so good. I think I need to go to the emergency room." She said, "Yeah, you're not acting normal at all." I went, "Okay, thank you." I got a ride to the emergency room., and they showed me some pictures of feathers and cacti. I was like, I have no idea what those are. They gave me some simple sentences to spell out and I was like, I can't read that. I have no idea. I am recovering now from that third brain injury.
[00:06:26] BP: It is quite the story. I know I've had family members with strokes, but I've only had one really close friend, because she was 18 and had a stroke. Hers was very severe and actually – she was puking and head pain. She went to sleep that night, actually. It's crazy, your ski accident is the exact same accident that I had. But I was about. I think seven, eight years old and I was sitting in front of the jump. This was sort of on me. I was a kid and we were just goofing around on the hill. A snowboarder who is of course, at least 10 years older than me, flew over top of the hill and landed on top of me when I was sitting there. I got a concussion at the time, but didn't realize it. I hurt my knee. That's all I was concerned about was that my knee hurt, and my knee was in a lot of pain and I remember limping back into the ski lodge and telling my mom what happened. And this guy apologizing to my mom for landing on top of me because I was this little kid.
It wasn't until the next day or that night that I went to dance practice. It was somebody else who noticed. It was my coach called my mom and said, "Bella's not okay. She's acting funny. She's talking kind of funny. We don't think she's herself. I know, she got an accident, and she said she hurt her knee, but we think there's more going on." That's how I realized that one. You're I'm fine reminds me of myself. That was my problem for a lot of this, even to this day. I'm bad for it. Sometimes I'm just like, "Oh, it's fine. I'm fine. Oh, it's all fine" and it's like, "It's not fine." I remember telling myself, it is not normal to have a headache every single day of your life. I had to remind myself of that, because I sometimes will get into such a groove that's like, "This is normal, everyone's in excruciating pain while they get out of bed, and do everything in their life." reminded myself that, "No, no. Lots of people don't live with chronic pain."
[00:08:29] JK: It's the things you get used to.
[00:08:30] BP: It is and you get better at getting used to it. But actually, for me, one of the biggest problems was when they started to go away, I was terrified, because I was doing so well with them away. I was scared of it coming back. Once in a while when headaches come back, I have to really focus on my mental health and keep it positive. Except that we can't always control things, which is something I was going to let you talk a little bit about. Because sometimes, we think back on accidents. We think back on what we could have done in our therapy, and everything and it can kind of become quite the spiral that gets out of control if you don't learn to accept what's happened and what's going on.
[00:09:07] JK: Yeah, exactly. The problem is, is that, we accept all of the thoughts that come to us as facts, right? Like you were just saying, it's just normal to have headaches every day and to be in chronic pain. This is just okay. Our brains job is to keep us alive. Okay. Think about our ancestors that lived in caves. Their job was to stay warm enough to be fed and to procreate. They needed just to stay alive to survive. Oftentimes, our brains go back to that mode. I like to call that our lower brain, where we need to just survive the day. Worry comes when we are operating from that lower brain, from that lesser part of our brain that just tries to keep us alive. When we allow all of that worry, and stress, and fear and anxiety to come, it can overrule our lives.
For me and my clients, I noticed that very much, we're operating from our lower brain. That fight or flight mode, that panic mode that's like, "I just need to stay alive." I noticed myself trying to talk myself out of going to my therapies, my occupational therapies. It's like, "Well, gosh. I have to get a ride there, and then I have to make the time, I have to find someone to watch my little kids. Then I have to go there and endure an hour of therapy. That is so hard. It's so painful." My lower brain is like, "Yeah, let's not do that. It's probably not a good idea. We're too tired today." Then I'm like, "Wait a second, that's not even true. I actually do need to go to therapy. All the things I need to do, that's what I need to do."
Brain management is a skill. We have over 20,000 thoughts entering our minds every single day. If we think that every single one of those thoughts should be a fact, or we should give airtime to, we are going to have really challenging days.
[00:11:09] BP: Yeah. That's overwhelming.
[00:11:11] JK: It's a lot. It's overwhelming just to think about that. There's a lot of decisions, and we do it subconsciously. What I want to offer everybody listening today is that, what we can do is we can go, "Okay, brain. Thank you for offering that fact." My first brain injury, I had a thought, and I always thought this. Because I don't have my health, I have nothing. It really resonated with me. I really felt like, because I wasn't functioning in life, because I couldn't take care of my kids or my family, or I couldn't snowboard, or run or do all the things that I love doing, I felt like I had nothing. I thought, yeah, that's true. That's totally true. Well, that's fine. I can think that's true. I can think because I don't have my health, I have nothing. But how does that make me feel inside of myself? Kind of devastated, down, depressed. How do I show up in my life when I think that stuff? Well, I think I have nothing.
I have a big pity party for myself. I definitely don't look at gratitude or the blessings that I have in my life. As a result, I continue to find evidence that I don't have anything. Well, that's a horrible way of life. What I do is I help clients see, okay, that's actually not a fact. Because that's not a fact, the thought, if I don't have my health, I don't have anything. I can change it. Just like neuroplasticity in our brain. As we recover, our brains are creating new neuroplasticity. We're creating new pathways so that we can recover. That is what our thoughts are. We're shaping them into thoughts that serve us better. Overall, everything begins with a thought that changes our lives. I can think., if I don't have my health, I don't have anything, but it's optional. I don't have to think that. Do I like how I feel when I think that? Do I like the results I'm getting from that? No, I don't. That's where you want to catch your brain and question everything your brain offers you because oftentimes, it's trying to protect you from harm and danger that's actually not real danger. You know what I mean?
[00:13:10] BP: I love the questioning your brain. Because for myself, mental health is one of the biggest challenges I've ever dealt with in my life. Sometimes my brain gets on this spiral of everything that's gone wrong in my life. For me, there's lots that hasn't even been shared on this show, and a lot of very dramatic things. I remember one day, I was sitting, I've done it in therapy, and then once with my brother. I was sitting there, and just like going, "I think I've gone through too much for someone my age," and I just like shut down. My brain would shut down, and I go, "I don't think someone's supposed to go through all of this before. They're like – I'm not even 25 yet. I think it's a lot." My brothers like, "Yeah, you've been through a lot. But if you keep thinking that way, it's always going to feel like a lot."
Even in therapy, I think I like shocked my therapist once when I listed everything. I was like, "Woo, okay." They were the ones who really taught me to stop thinking that way and start understanding that it is a lot. But thinking about it makes that way harder than it is. I've gone through a lot of it. I've worked through a lot of it. I've accepted a lot of what's happened to me. I am a lot better now because of it. But sometimes, you get stuck in that mindset, again, where everything is terrible. Your brain is telling you all these things and trying to ignore it is not always the easiest. But if you can get over that and learn to accept things, it makes life a lot easier. I remember always telling myself I'd never accept what happened. I finally got to that point this year and that took 10 years actually to get there. It's not something that happens overnight.
Something else I wanted to talk about, which most survivors and listeners here know that emotional control is so much work. It's so much work, it is exhausting in itself, just talking about it. I've had conversations with people where I'm just bawling, and they have no idea why, and I don't know why or my anger was really, really significant, especially when this all started, specifically towards my mother. Actually, I didn't even realize how harsh I was until not long ago, when my brother-in-law said, I actually thought you just hated her so much then. I didn't realize that it was your head that was causing you. I thought it was just a lot. It's like, well, most teenagers don't like their parents. But he's like, "This was insane." I was like, "Hmm, never realize how intense it was from other people's perspectives." I started to realize it, but emotional control is tough, working on it and getting better at it. Just kind of ease the stress of the day, honestly.
[00:16:00] JK: Yeah, it really can. When I got back from the hospital in January this year, my husband, he was listening to a book as he was getting ready to head to the office. I've worked up in my brain, because that noise was so hard for me to hear. It was so irritating, and it drove me crazy. In my brain, I was like, "He doesn't care about me. He knows I'm recovering from a brain injury. If he cared about me, he would put his earbuds in. He's not conscious of what's going on with me. He doesn't care. He doesn't want me to get better." Then I was like, "Okay, brain. Wait a second. Is that true? Is that a fact?" Because I can think that about my husband, who loves me dearly, and pretty much does everything in his life to help me. Or I can just think like, "Oh, he just isn't thinking like I need to tell him like, "Hey, that sound is really hard for me. It's taking a lot of my brain power. I can go or would you mind just putting some earbuds in, either way, but it's really challenging for me to hear that." Then of course, he's like, "Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't even think about it."
But the brain wants to catastrophize all the things. I'm going from like, "I have a kind, loving husband" to like, "He doesn't care about me and doesn't want me to get better." What in the world, brain? Question all those things. The reason that emotions are so important, you guys is because emotions are the reason that we do everything. They drive our lives. They are the driver of our motivations, and everything that we do. We don't realize it, but if you think about it, why do we work hard? Well, so that we can feel free, right? We can have financial freedom. Why do I go mountain biking? So I can feel a certain way, right? Why do I clean the house? Why do I call my mom? All the things you do is so that you can feel a certain way. They're always our motivation. It seems daunting, but it's not as hard as we think.
When I first got a life coach, I had so much anxiety, and I did not know how to deal with it. I said, "Listen, I just know for sure that I have five kids. I know that one of my kids is going to die, because I always think it." She's like, "Okay. Is that actually a fact?" I'm like, "No, but I always think it." "Well, that's only because we've created a neural pathway in our brain by thinking something for so long that it seems true." It doesn't mean anything, though. Once you kind of see the difference between facts and thoughts, you can go, "Okay, that's not true, but how do I get rid of the anxiety? How do I get rid of the fear? How do I get rid of the nightmares that I have about this? The first thing she taught me, it was so beautiful, and I still use it. When the anxiety comes to me, which I still have bad anxiety. I imagine it like a cloud. Okay. If you're looking at the sky, and you see a cloud, the clouds are going to be moving. Just watch your thoughts, watch your anxiety, watch your sadness, your fear, like a cloud. Imagine it in the sky, and then just watch it, just kind of float away and pass by you. It usually takes about 90 seconds for all emotions to pass through you. Instead of avoiding them, resisting them or reacting to them, we can just take a couple deep breaths. Imagine them like a cloud and they float by.
Every time you do that, you get mentally strong. You're able to get stronger. Will the anxiety come back? Yes. Every time you practice this, you're going to tell your brain, "Hey, brain! I don't need this anxiety anymore, because I know how to handle it." It's giving me anxiety because it thinks I need it for a reason. As long as I keep on feeding that fear, the anxiety will get worse. But if I learned to control that, and just take some deep breaths, watch it float by like a cloud every single time, that pathway will get smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Until now, what is it like, 15 years later, 10 years later/ I don't think about that ever. I don't have these nightmares that one of my kids is going to die. That's not even a thing for me anymore, because I practice it, I've worked hard. I've created a muscle there for myself.
[00:20:10] BP: Yeah. You do get a lot stronger and better at handling things like that. For myself, mental thoughts that we are going to get a little bit more into soon. They were out of control. The thoughts that my brain could have were – they would start, and then all of a sudden, I would want to drive off the road. They could get very powerful, but you can get better and to the point where I still get them sometimes, but I can get them to go away with a few thoughts instead of out of control to shaking and ruining my whole entire day type things. It can get better. But with that, we're going to take a quick break before we start talking about mindset and more.
[BREAK]
[00:20:59] BP: It has now been over two months since Concussion Connect has launched and it is continuing to grow every day. Just like last month, we have a new topic. This month's topic is depression. Though a very sensitive topic, I believe it is so important for us to talk, be open about our mental health. If you have questions about your mental health, or need someone to talk to, join concussionconnect.com today or find the link in our episode description.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]
[00:21:32] BP: Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige and today's guest, Julie Kuch. Something we also already talked about on the break that I want to talk about more was the invisible aspect of all of this. We talked about a lot. It's literally the slogan for Post-Concussion, Inc., which holds everything underneath it, including the podcast, books and more. But I wanted to really talk about how to handle the invisible aspect from both the public and your family. Because I find they're both two different scenarios. I find with the public, we tend to be like, "Oh! It's okay that they can't see it, but this family can be tough too, because they don't always realize how much you really are struggling."
[00:22:15] JK: You know, I think there's two emotions that keep us from advocating for ourselves or standing up for ourselves when it comes to the invisible injury. The first one is shame, right? Shame is like, "I did something wrong. There's something wrong with me. I should be doing it better. I should do as well as I look." That's a huge problem, because a lot of us don't look like we've had a brain injury. There's nothing physically going on. Some of us do have some things going on. But either way, the shame comes up like, "I should be doing better."
My first brain injury, I had so much shame over it. I hid. I just tried to hide. When someone would say, "How are you doing?" I'd say, "I'm good." "Yeah, you look good." "Yeah. Thanks." It's a huge contrast to now when someone says, "You look so good. You just had a stroke." I say, "Yeah, but the storm was on the inside." I really tried to advocate not just for myself, but for the whole brain injury community. I'm not okay. I'm a mess. I am a hot mess inside. I really tried to advocate and educate people on, when they say, "You look really good." "Well, thank you." "How are you feeling?" "I'm not feeling so good" or "I'm doing better. I've had some headaches. I have lots of confusion. I slept for four hours yesterday afternoon." I really try to educate people on brain injuries because not enough people know what's going on.
I love that your dance teacher called your mom and said, "Hey, she's not doing okay." That is beautiful to me. For someone else to advocate for somebody with a brain injury, I absolutely love that. The other part of it is the embarrassment, where I'm embarrassed that our recovery is so long. People tell me all the time I need a coach, I need your help, but I've been recovering for eight years. I should have been done by now. Well, guess what? shame and embarrassment make your recovery longer? Because when you don't, like you said before, accept what's going on. You kind of want to push it down. Think about when you get into a pool, and there's a big beach ball, and you push the beach ball under the water. You're like, "No, I'm fine." People are like, "Are you sure you're okay?" You're trying to balance this beach ball under your bum, and try to keep it under the water and they're like, "You look uncomfortable. Are you sure you're okay?" "Yeah, I'm fine. No, I'm good. I'm totally fine. I'm good."
That's what we do, is we're like, we have so much shame or embarrassment about a brain injury that we try to recover, but not wholeheartedly. We're not all in on recovery. That's why I have no shame or embarrassment. Probably, I should have a little more embarrassment about the things I share, but I don't. Because I have got to help as many people in this world understand about brain injury, and understand that when you have a brain injury, you're your best advocate and it's hard when you're going through it. But if you don't advocate for yourself, that also shows up in your recovery. You don't recover as well if you're not accepting what's going on in your life.
[00:25:05] BP: Advocating for yourself is really tough. I know for myself; my scenario was a little different. The embarrassment I've noticed with a lot of survivors in our support groups, and the shame of not getting better, and working or not comparing to each other and things like that. For myself, I was just angry at the entire world for everything. I was mad at myself for not telling people what was going on when it started. I was angry I couldn't ride horses. I was angry at my parents. I was angry at health care. I was just angry, like a very angry individual. For years, it took a long time to let go of that. That's the thing about this is, for concussions, at least, when you look it up or when you go into the ER, it's like this little sheet of paper that you get. It's like two weeks. If you don't feel good in two weeks, come back. But you should feel good in two weeks.
But then, that makes it really hard when you're the person who doesn't feel better after years. I think they should talk a little bit about it being bigger. I like the storm on the inside mentioning, because that's really what it is. It is all on the inside. I can't count how many times that I've just looked okay, and I've been struggling on the inside. For example, just the other day. I don't deal with headaches too often anymore, but once in a while when I do, they can be quite severe. I had a friend over, and they were like, "Oh, you're getting really quiet. Are you okay?" I was like, "Oh, I just have a headache." Then they went home and I remember texting one of my best friends going, "I am in so much pain. I think I should go to the hospital. I am like screaming in pain." She's like, "Oh, well. Take some of your meds." I was like, "I was on this already today, and you don't want to over mix and things like that." It was funny, because she's like – they had no idea how much pain you're in. When they laughed, I was like, "No, no." It's like, "I'm not good."
I want to educate, but like, "Oh, by the way. I'm in excruciating pain, and I want to go to the hospital and my head feels like it's going to explode." It doesn't really seem like the best moment to tell. They're sitting at your house, and they haven't known you for very long. It was just so funny because she was just like laughing. She's just like, "How are we doing today?" I'm like, "Trying to go to sleep and things like that." Some days we do have those moments, even in our recovery where I've went months without head pain like that. The last time I had had pain like that was February and it was in the hospital. It is a wave and it is a roller coaster that just keeps throwing things at you. You just have to get good at dealing with that, and dealing with the intrusive thoughts. I find that come with a lot of that, something that can be really tough to deal with.
How do you think about mindset? What mindset do you think really helps to be in when you are recovering? Because I think it's a hard thing to get in. I always tell people like, "Oh! You need a good mindset." Then they're like, "What? How am I ever going to get there?"
[00:27:58] JK: Yeah. For me, I think there are recovery days and there's good days. Recovery days are maybe what people like to call a bad day. For me, personally, this works really well and you guys can take it or leave it. But when I'm having a recovery day, that's when I can't find my words. I'm confused. I know that those days, I don't drive because my brain needs all my energy. That's a recovery day. My brain needs all the energy, and it can't give my body, or my speech or anything else the energy because it's taking all of it. I go, "Okay. It turns out today is a recovery day. I thought I was going to get some things done, but apparently not today. My brain is going to take all the energy. That is a good mindset trick, right? A hack for me is like, "No, there's no bad days. There are recovery days. Brain, take all the energy you need. We're going to peace out on all the things I'm going to get help, I'm going to ask for help if I need it, and take care of those things. I'm peacing out. I'm in bed. I'm doing the things whatever recovery looks like for me that day." I really liked that, and that helps me and that helps me to respect my brain.
Another good mindset hack that I like to use is having some compassion for myself and my brain. Showing myself some grace. If I am hard on myself, if I'm hard on my brain, if I'm telling it that it's doing it wrong, that I should be better that I should be further along, then I'm going to be impatient with my recovery. I'm not going to be that nice to myself, and then I'm probably not going to be nice to people around me either. Where I am in my recovery is exactly where I'm supposed to be. What if that was true, you guys? What if that's true? What if right where you are in your recovery is exactly where you're supposed to be? Is that possibly true? Could you believe that? That glimmer of belief there. So often, and I'm guilty of this where I want to just push my recovery just like. "Done. Done. I'm ready to move on."
[00:29:59] BP: Yeah, at those moments, I just would quit. I've talked about it on the show before. People can ask my parents. I just say, "I'm done." They're like, "What?" I'll say, "I'm done being ill." They're like, "Okay, sensitive topic. What do you mean you're done?" "Well, I'm done. I'm not taking any of these pills. They're going in the garbage. I'm done going to therapy. Cancel my appointments. I'm done." It would sometimes last a few months, where I just kind of just be a kid. I was like a teenager or like young 20s and trying to go through school. We just want to be a kid and go out with my girlfriends, and not think about the meds that I took, or be able to have a drink, and not think of how it's going to affect me the next day and just live my life. Then I'd end up back in therapy and treatments. But once in a while, I just tell myself, "I'm done," but it is important to realize like, "Where I'm at now in my recovery, I never thought I'd get here ever, like ever." If somebody asked me 10 years ago, nine years ago, eight, seven all the way until three years ago, when things started getting better, I would have told them they were lying and I would have closed the door on their face. Then like, "Yeah, no. Things aren't getting better."
[00:31:06] JK: Good job. Congratulations. That is so awesome. I also want to like leave space for everybody to have those days, where you scream and yell, and freak out and are angry.
[00:31:17] BP: It's okay, because it's normal to feel like that.
[00:31:20] JK: And you've got to. The emotion is in there, and it needs to be released. Sometimes we don't have the mental capacity to release it in a healthy way. Sometimes we do, but sometimes we don't. But it needs to come out. It's not healthy to hold it inside. I remember a couple months ago; I was trying to put all my vitamins in my –
[00:31:41] BP: The day things.
[00:31:43] JK: Yeah, the day things. It was so hard. I had bought it on Amazon. What's that called? The pill –
[00:31:49] BP: The weekly pill packs. I know what you're talking about.
[00:31:51] JK: Yes, thank you.
[00:31:52] BP: It always made me feel like I was an old person. Because I knew grandparents that use them, and then there was like me. Like, "Here's my pill packs, going camping with my girlfriends for the weekend."
[00:32:04] JK: That's me. You notice now, it's so hard for me to find my words. The pill packs, I'm trying to put all my vitamins and meds in there. There was like on the morning meds, there was a sun, and the evening meds, there was a moon. The morning was blue, and the nighttime was green. It was so confusing, and you had to flip it around. I was like crying, crying and telling my husband, "Why did they make like this on Amazon? I'm going to make a complaint. Do you know how hard this is? People that take all these meds or vitamins or people that are struggling?" I just went off and was in tears, just crying about this. It was healthy, and it was good, and it felt good and I needed it.
[00:32:44] BP: I agree. I like the thought of thinking of things as recovery days. You say you don't drive on those days sometimes. I can attest to that because I get something called cluster headaches, which is like all around your eye and then it's like – they call them suicide headaches. That's how painful they're considered to be. I drove on them once, and I crashed and I got in an accident. I realized I was very grateful that I had not hurt anybody else, but myself and my vehicle. Essentially just my vehicle. I remember it was like a reminder to myself that it's okay to not do everything you had planned for the day, because I was doing really well at the time. I just, "This is what you have listed on your things to do, so this is what you have to do."
Even to this day, today is a headache day for me. I just have to kind of like, you said, "Give yourself grace and give yourself room to heal, and just be like, "It's okay to heal today, and not get everything done on your list. Because sometimes, we've put so much pressure on ourselves that it almost makes it harder to live. You have given so much great advice. I love podcasting, this is why. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we end today's episode?
[00:33:55] JK: Yeah. I just like to add one last thought is that, our value, we sometimes think is all wrapped up in getting those things done, or being that certain type of person or we identify ourselves with who we were before marketing questions. What I want to offer all of your listeners is that, that's not true. Because when we hold our value on the line, and then we have a recovery day, or we have things going on and we can't get anything done at all, then we create feelings in ourselves that are full of like self-pity and embarrassment. We feel like we don't have any value or worth on this earth. That is not true at all. Your value is not associated with your to-do list, with who you are or anything else. Your value is only associated with you being a human being on the planet Earth. It does not matter if you get nothing done in your day or your life. It truly doesn't. Your value exists because you belong on this earth. That is where it is and period. That's it. When you can disassociate your value you from your to do list or who you identify yourself from, it makes your life so much easier. It makes crossing off everything on your day that you cannot get done so much easier. It's like, "Okay. I can't get any of that stuff done. No big deal." There's nothing bringing me down. It's fine. My value exists because I'm a human being, period. That's it.
[00:35:21] BP: I love it. It's very true. I always like the quote where it's like, "It's okay if the only thing you did today was breathe," and it's very true. That's all you need to do. It's okay if you did nothing. But I just wanted to thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all of your advice for survivors.
[00:35:39] JK: Thank you, Bella. I've loved it.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:35:44] 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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