Trauma seems to co-occur with brain injury. How can it not when brain injury devastates almost every part of one’s life? I researched and devoted a portion of my book, Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone, to discussing trauma, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, in relation to brain injury. The following is an adapted excerpt on this topic from my book.

Pre-Brain Injury Wounds and Traumas Reanimate

Like what happened with me, your brain injury may have disconnected your pre-injury memories from your emotions, and thus undone any trauma work you may have done before your injury. When emotions return, the now-unhealed memories upthrust a tsunami of traumas that you hadn’t thought about in years. They lash against your mind, making you feel out of time. Confusion piles on top of flashbacks, and chaos results.

Acknowledge Traumas Being Unhealed

To re-heal these pre-injury wounds, you and your therapist will need to acknowledge this strange unhealing and work together to reconnect the memories with the emotions. Strategies, medications, and rest will not restore your affect so you can do this work. Only neurostimulation therapies can. When those broken memory-emotion neural networks reconnect, you embark on a chaotic road towards unifying memory and emotion, one that requires cognitive empathy from the therapist and perseverance and courage from you.

Cognitive empathy allows the healthcare professional to put themselves in your shoes and respond to your distress with kindness.

Memories that appear and disappear, like whack-a-mole or black holes opening and closing........

© Psychology Today