Well . . . I needed more than a week, technically 10 days, of disconnection. My muscle tension is down, way on down, but I’m still feeling on edge, still being totally overwhelmed by the stupidest thing to the point that my brain goes: nope, not dealing with that now, I’m turning the body around and leaving. Sigh.
That may be why during this week’s brain biofeedback I suddenly got the idea to turn the pins in the bowling game I play on the computer with my brain into the criticisms and people who’ve haunted me and harmed me since the crash. It was rather satisfying aiming that bowling ball down the lane with sharp focus and hitting the “get over yourself” pins or the effing insurance company pins or the CEOs who determine their policies that lead to hardship and needless suffering pins or the people who’ve trashed my reputation so that they didn’t have to deal with my very real, disastrous brain injury pins.
As I was striking down these pins energetically — well, as energetically as you can hit virtual pins that leap into the air then float on down — I noticed my SMR brainwaves were not doing so hot. At the end of those three minutes of satisfying virtual bowling, my trainer laughed with me over what I did, liked the cathartic aspect of it, but pointed out that SMR is calming. And what I had done was definitely not calming.
Whoops.
On the bright side, my delta-theta brainwaves plummeted like a satisfyingly well-thrown stone, for I wasn’t tuning out. I was focussed.
Anyway, next week we’ll be returning to gamma brainwave training, this time every other week, to see if it’ll help with my downward slide into PTSD hell. I don’t know what else it is because the overwhelmed feeling is the same as in the early years after my brain injury, in that my brain refuses to deal yet different in that it’s not accompanied by that old physical, severe angsty feeling and my brain being unable to compute what’s in front of it. These days, my brain can usually compute or maybe slowly, but it’s more about absolutely refusing to deal with what’s in front of it and then turning the body around away from the egregious source of overwhelment. Since anything and everything can overwhelm, even a chat with a friend you really like, it makes life difficult.
I know the area of brain injury treatment has barely begun and brain injury with co-occurring PTSD is hardly acknowledged in the civilian population, but I really hope my health care providers wake up and smell the bubbling and burning coffee soon.
