Everyone has trouble with tradespeople’s propensity for setting big time windows, even businesses. The Toronto office at the ADD Centre is undergoing some minor physical restructuring, and a guy was supposed to arrive at the same time I was being trained to do some work near the computer I’m usually hooked up to. So my trainer connected me to the one in the other office, the one I hadn’t been on since September 2012.
No problemo.
Just change the screens and reporting frequencies . . . except my trainer forgot the high frequency data stat was set to gamma and not SMR. She was about to exit the program and restart it so as to change that frequency when I said no, no, no leave it. Then I shamelessly begged. She couldn’t resist. Hehe.
Because of the screens I chose (you get to choose which games to play), we ended up training the high frequency data in the first two screens — that is, gamma — and SMR in the third one, but the reports only showed gamma stats not the SMR. That meant we could see what happened to gamma when training SMR.
It goes up.
I’ve never trained gamma at C4, for apparently it’s normal in this area. During the first training screen, I quickly developed a sensation of deep pressure over my right temple, which is in front of C4 but not that close . . . I don’t think. In the second screen, the pressure expanded from right temple to across the forehead to left temple. Now this could be coincidental because the barometric pressure changed suddenly and quickly at the same time. I think my trainer said it went up. The feeling of pressure went away after my session was over but returned while typing this on the subway.
In any case, I got a feeling of calm that sifted into me like a mist slowly, gently covering roiling waters.
The gamma/muscle tension ratio started at the 0.8s and though it didn’t go above 1, it rapidly increased into the high 0.9s during training and SMIRB. I think it’s what I needed. Happenstance helped me with my stress and emotions when I needed it.
Victoria Day has once again become a difficult day for me. I was close to my grandmother, and she died unexpectedly just after midnight of Victoria Day when I was a teen. The autopsy found no cause, but we knew she died because she missed my grandfather (who’d died a couple of years earlier), and her physical health was temporarily fragile enough for her mind to make its will felt.
So during tDCS this week and before beginning brain biofeedback screens, we discussed that but then we discussed yet another relationship problem I’m having. Whether family, friend, professional, or acquaintance, I always seem to be having relationship problems I need help sussing out.
I don’t recall it being this difficult before my brain injury. It’s funny, you know you have a changing personality, have trouble with social cues or communicating or navigating relationships or connecting with people, but it doesn’t feel like you’ve changed into some sort of creature who can’t do the social thing. And I have no problem on Twitter, though it took me months and years to understand and become good at. Yet friendship trouble (and professionals wanting to keep you in a box and family issues) is a common refrain I hear in the brain injury community.
Luckily the client after me was very late. Happenstance to my rescue again.
All the talking and problem solving we did brought my out-of-control busy brain down, even before training began. It was the problem solving part of the talking that was key because mirroring or venting wouldn’t have done that. And the training really got my brain out of that rat wheel.
