Can I ‘pot’ My Brain Please?

Kate Allatt
A Rocky Stroke Recovery

Aug 7 / 2012

I think I need to walk around with a bandage on my head so people realise that I actually have a broken brain. Perhaps serve as a reminder???!!

Well I may have had a recent and spectacular breakdown both on Facebook and with friends locally, but it’s here where my recovery will start, so I just have to write.

Why are everyone else’s expectations seemingly so high? “ooh you are just like you were,”or “get a grip!”

I’ve got a bloody brain injury for god’s sake, I’m emotionally un-able. Yes, I am less-able.”

That means:

• I get more angry than I did. I cry more. I laugh like a donkey (I believe it’s called emotional lability or the Pseudobulbar Effect).

• “What helps most is the fact that I had more than my fair share of emotional lability [a symptom of brain-stem damage that can cause uncontrollable laughter] and found humour in so many things – some people cry or get angry but, although I did cry and get very angry, predominantly I laughed quite uncontrollably and still do. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8378262.stm“

I laughed at a funeral, during my daughters’ serious, school leavers assembly, (when I shouldn’t) and during my copious A & E visits over the last two years. Until now, I have beaten myself up about being a dreadfully, uncaring, inappropriate mother. It turns out I suffer from emotional lability, but I didn’t know it!

I have huge highs and crushing lows, I have low self-esteem and confidence. I get irritated easily. I’m impatient. I get depressed. I’m fragile. I’m frustrated. I worry about missing trains or planes. I wish I could be like all my enthusiastically fit, (cycling) middle-aged friends, and not emotionally and physically unable to do very much, I can go on..

Ultimately, I realised that I have always felt VERY unworthy, unimportant and unloved throughout my life. This explains my workaholic nature with my charity, books and recovery. If I did more and more, then I would get the approval I’ve always sought, from those people who should brim with unconditional pride. However, by choosing to work passionately, obsessively and relentlessly with Fighting Strokes, it allowed me:

• ‘to give me a purpose’ having lost my job,
• ‘to give back’,
• ‘to speak for all those forgotten ones who can’t’ speak themselves’,
• ‘to make a difference to society’,
• ‘to raise awareness of locked in syndrome and stuff that can help’
• ‘to re-build and become financially independent again’ with my books and speaking career, and
• ‘to make people proud of me.’

... But I never gave me the affirmation that I needed, from the people who I needed that from he most.

Of course, those survivor, family and friends that I’ve helped, (and will continue to help), have been SO generous with their comments and truthfully have helped me as much in return.

Truly, I thank them all from the bottom of my heart, but I feel stuck at 42 years old I feel stuck in ‘a rocky stroke recovery’ moment, trying to lift myself out of my thick fog.

My sense of purpose and worthiness comes from anything to do with my stroke. When I do that, I’m able to confidently articulate issues, from deep within my limited, comfort zone. (That’s why I get irritated when people try to suggest that my stroke shouldn’t come to define me, (like it has), in the medium term.)

Yet I don’t like myself or indeed being forced out of my comfort zone, either in social gatherings, (where I was once the loud probably annoying, centre of attention), or as a mother or wife.

I have to convince myself to go out. I’m so un-confident with my kids and feel brow-beaten most of the time. (My normal motherly coping skills have been severely compromised by events.)

I rehearse the conversations and scenarios that I will respond to during our infrequent nights-out , making sure I bounce-back any questions which may be asked either relating to me, or my stroke, or books or my passions. An example might be,

‘If someone asks me about the Olympic Opening Ceremony, I’ll say yeah it was great, but what did you do all summer?’ That way I cant become a social bore or garner too much attention. I mean I have a practical, very loyal husband, three gorgeous (but more often, extremely challenging) children, a fantastic best friend, with handful of ‘real’ friends, two books, a charity and I broke free from locked in syndrome, and against the odds in 2 years!

So you ask, “What are you complaining about?”

Where I fit in society, in my family relationships and in life.

But then I felt guilty, selfish, self-pitying, utterly crap because sadly there is always someone far worse off, and coping better than me. It couldn’t have been put better and more eloquantly by my good (and new) friend, Mia Austin (24), who wrote this yesterday with her eyes, (during my melt down):

“In my jeans is a pocket full of dreams includin a time machine i rewind back 3 years no more frustration no more tears id do all the things i want to achive id say all the things i belive id skydive from the higest height and ask mike tyson for a fight id travel round the world and back with just my sunglassses and rucksack … 

id have a dance of with diversity and have ago at being a M.C id roll around in a chocolate bath and get my freinds round for a laugh id drink champage and go on a yaught id get a pet monkey and call it dot id go and save kidz all over the world and feed and play with the little boys and girls id fly to space and step on the moon this is all my dream but il be back soon! life is for living so do every thing now you never know when your time is up and you will get knocked down.” Mia Austin, in her words on 2/9/12.

So, so poignant.

I shut up, stopped crying, gave up feeling sorry for myself, pledged to cope better, be emotionally stronger and have some time to mend my fragile state.

Yes, I need to see a ‘shrink’ or the Samaritans, to learn better to deal with my emotional baggage, because I can only describe like it was ‘living through my own death’. A real Patrick Swayze ‘Ghost’ moment. Really, I didn’t like alot of what I experienced or heard about. In amongst all the amazing stuff people did for us.

I was really surpised by both the out pouring of love and goodwill, but also the remoteness of some others. Maybe I need to find some new interests, though I will always be passionate about Fighting Strokes and the people I help.

I’ll try and come back positive, refreshed and happy. I’m sadly naturally a huge worryier, (not a manic depressive), so this feeling is all relatively new to me and difficult to deal with.

See the original article:

Can I ‘pot’ My Brain Please?

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A Rocky Stroke Recovery