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We with brain injury are too often told to be positive and "to forgive." By "forgive," many people mean "to reconcile" as well as forgive (though forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation). To fail to do so is seen as a deficiency in us, not a lack of understanding in the demanding person. But we don’t have to accept blame for how our brain injury and resulting grief expresses itself. Instead, we can turn the other cheek in the way this phrase meant originally 2,000 years ago. I explain more in this excerpt from my award-winning self-help book, Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone.

Resistance Is Not Futile

Turning the other cheek means, in fact, compelling the other to treat you with respect—as an equal. It also forces them to see the lie that they are better than you.

We don’t have a non-violent cultural equivalent to this first-century gesture. But we can learn from it. We don’t have to cooperate with humiliation, infantilizing, and blame for the way our broken neurons express themselves. We can resist non-violently. Silence is a tactic I used in my tweens to resist bullies. I discovered it makes people uncomfortable.

Silence Speaks Loudly

Silence says to the humiliator they’re not worth responding to; their words and actions are too ridiculous and disrespectful to expend energy on. When they talk without listening or helping, their words aren’t worth responding to.

Silence as Resistance

When someone speaks humiliating words, I reply, “OK.” And say nothing else. I simply stare at them. If you’re stronger than me, you may prefer to get up and leave without saying a word. I use it like this:

A psychiatrist may speak some nonsense like, “Not everything is due to brain injury.” (That statement is demonstrably false in that the brain controls everything. When the patient has a brain injury, a good doctor first rules out broken neurons with objective tests, not subjective questionnaires and opinions; then, and only then, if tests turn up negative, do they search for other causes.)

When I hear those dismissive words, I reply with silence. My brain injury helps me with that response because my brain chugs in their words, stalls in comprehension, processes, and connects to my speech centres to voice a response like an old dial-up modem. After staring for long seconds, I retort that the symptom had not been present before brain injury.

I assert my decades-long self-knowledge over their knowledge gleaned from five minutes of seeing me.

Buttress silence with asserting your self-knowledge when they haven’t done the work to know you and your brain. The work you’ve done so far will grow your self-knowledge and empower you to resist false statements.

When replying solely with silence, I look at the person, trying not to move. When they fall silent, I continue to say nothing and wait for them to speak first. Use your brain-injury-created non-responsiveness to help you stay silent until they speak.

Notes Can Help With Resisting Disrespectful Thoughts, Words, and Deeds

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My brain injury grief was slow to reveal itself because I focused on treating my neurons and managing daily life consumed me. When I finally asked my neurodoc outright for help with my brain injury grief, he refused. He insisted I must be positive, a stance I’ve encountered before in standard medical care of brain injury. This kind of instruction negates my suffering, like Job’s friends were blind to his.

The need to protect myself from being forced into either agreeing or defending my brain injury grief is real. I wrote a note and stuck it near my phone. When we try to defend our state of being, we don’t sound like we’re advocating for ourself. We sound defensive. People don’t respect defensiveness, and they don’t listen to it. When my neurodoc spoke the words "be positive," I read from my note. I said, “OK, well, thank you very much for your feedback. I will speak to you on___. If [date] is OK?” Then I hung up.

I also used the note to keep anger in check. Although I’d long since healed my brain injury anger through neurostimulation therapies, being unheard still sparks its vestiges. Reading a note out loud and following its instructions to hang up or leave immediately keeps my words polite and delays my anger sparking to life until after I’ve left the situation.

After I responded a few times with that polite note, my neurodoc agreed to help me with my brain injury grief. He faced the problem of figuring out how, because there’s a paucity of research and clinical case studies on treating brain injury grief. I knew, though, that partnering with me in this endeavour, we’d succeed. How many psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists partner with their patients, though? While the numbers may be expanding, patient empowerment is not the norm yet.

Another way to resist is to continually bring up the merits of neurostimulation therapies. Whenever you’re offered strategies and rest or told to be positive, counter with information on neurostimulation therapies. Since loved ones and health care professionals think it’s OK to talk down to you, reciprocating with facts feels good. Your confidence will grow and your sense of competence will spark to life. You’ll need to learn about these therapies, as well as appropriate, objective diagnostic tests, and how brain injury manifests in order to do this with confidence.

Copyright ©2022, 2024, and 2026 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy

Linn, Dennis, Fabricant Linn, Sheila, & Linn, Matthew. (1997.) Don't Forgive Too Soon: Extending the Two Hands That Heal. Paulist Press.

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