WELCOME 2 Our World of Recovery and Restoration!
From nothing to something
I actually recall waking in hospital in the midst of a cold New Zealand winter (icy, no snow) in 2005.....and again the next day when I thought it was the first, and the day after that until, maybe a month afterwards, I began to expect to awaken in hospital. I recall this having happened now but, at the time, it felt like waking after a hard night drinking and trying to recall the events of the previous evening as everyone informs you of how silly you were. Everyone still said things of the events prior, but they were of grave concern and uncertainty when the hangover-esque disease would wear off, curious even if it would, as I was also...obviously.
It felt like being in the middle of the movie, 'Groundhog Day' - y'know the one? Bill Murray waking in the same day over and over, gradually getting into the swing of expecting events to occur like eventually predicting the icy puddle on the road as he crosses each time after having stepped squarely in it on so many occasions prior to that moment while another person, seeing it for the apparently first time, points and laughs at the stupidity of the moment - that was me, stupified into repeating simple mistakes over and over again while others looked on and shook their heads while wondering how much longer things like that would happen.
I feared the future and knew that trying to convince an employer that I was the right man for the job with the dizziness/vertigo, memory deficit, eye astigmatizm, slurry voice, and so forth, would be akin to turning up to a job cataclysmically drunk each day and repeatedly failing at everything attempted.
I hate feeling inferior as much as anyone, I loathe appearing fragile and deficient so, when I began my journey of social rejection in 2005 as everyone I knew outside family avoided me like the plague, I questioned my place in the world as I looked through the situations vacant section of the daily paper to find some kind of vocational direction and was duely told twice, through eyes tainted by an eye astigmatizm, that every...single...thing I looked at was as impossible as once again becoming popular seemed : destined for failure and it felt prooven and published in each daily Press newspaper.
In desperation, I threw myself at physical and mental rehabilitation and it made me *tired* - not regular worn out, but seemingly exhausted on a perpetual level and this brought about regular episodes of the blood circulatory, dizziness-based symptom known as presyncopal lightheadedness.
This symptom cemented my feet to a world of withdrawn depression and self doubt as it occurred whenever I became nervous, and I became nervous mostly around other people. So, I stopped talking to people outside the family and withdrew further : old friends thought I no longer wanted their contact and stayed away despite my daily prayers for their contact, leaving the front door seemed to invite the dizziness and headache which used to be *red hot* pain and discomfort in my head - like going from sober to completely drunk/hungover and back again in an instant, is how it felt.
No one understood this and, when it occurred, most saw it as a good reason to leave the room.
It took two years of, what felt to me like, very hard physical rehabilitation in order for the symptom to lessen from 3x/day down to 1x/day. At this point, I turned up to a job interview at a local factory and they gave me the, 'Oh, my gosh, is this guy for real in thinking he can work here?' look, before politely showing me the door.
More rejection, more reason to avoid human contact. I'm ashamed to say that I became more than a little self obsessive at that point - frequenting the gym 7 days/week, doing home study 2 hours/day with evening exercise and every darn pill which I could find was bought and trialled as I became catatonic with fatigue and the dizziness worsened, though I felt less drunk, yet still appeared as such, and was still largely ignored by the world.
The gym routine lessened from 7 days, to 5, 4, then ultimately 3 throughout 2008, and I began to feel less tired and began to improve again in my physical and cognitive abilities, but socially I remained a mess.
The physical improvment continued as I entered voluntary work this year (2009) at an inner city library and I felt the weight of the then 3.5 years of social segregation as everyone there seemed, to me, to be talking behind my back or thinking something bad, and I duely withdrew from being sociable with them, preferring to instead just try and do the job right. I often made mistakes, and this compounded my social paranoia.
After 9 months there, I no longer cared about what they all thought at work and was even on speaking terms with a few. I also became known at the gym as some there saw me frequently and said hello, even despite my initial cold temperament. It all seems so silly now, but back then the way they seemed to mock or conspire and laugh when my back was turned seemed so utterly real and it ate away at my mind as I searched for others to vent frustration upon.
These others, I now see, were my former friends. I was so paranoid about them and how I thought they saw me that I distanced myself from them until *everyone* seemed to think like I felt they did - 'What a freak' I thought they were saying, 'No freaks allowed here' was another common phrase in my mind, but not once did anyone actually say this and often people were accomodating and pleasant instead.
Now, 4.5 years on, I feel a certain amount of my own definition of normality return in my health, but I wonder how much sooner this would have been achieved had I been more trusting of others and not isolated myself in a paranoid frenzy, such as I did?
I think alot would have been different, and I think social confidence rehabilitation has been prolonged as it has been because I hated what I saw in the mirror each day - seeing either pity or discomfort in the expressions of people I met created a perpensity for me to not want to see that and avoid others. I justified doing that by manufacturing paranoid thoughts about what they all thought when no one was thinking any such thing at all.
My reason for writing this blog is to relate my social experiences of the past 4.5 years : people keyed on the vibe I gave off, seeing that I was withdrawn and paranoid, and they avoided me like the plague. In turn, this created deep paranoia and lacking social confidence. I hated meeting others as, to me, it felt like a point in time where my brain injury would be evident and the reasons for the self hatred I formerly harboured would become evident, presenting itself in the presentation of presyncopal lightheadedness, which was so frequent when such self doubts presented themselves, and fear was felt.
I still struggle with self image today, but I'm much more capable of withstanding it spiralling into a bad moment : I feel more confident around other people, and this is because I've forced myself to try and do something in order to change, which is the ultimate thing I feel has been learned : anyone worth knowing, and I think that's the vast majority of people, won't say anything bad about your appearance to your face, if they do, then they're the wrong person, and in need of help themselves. People, I find, are inherantly open to being respectful, but how you project yourself is often the reason for social isolation.
I've regained a few friends - it's still tentative and slow as they seem to understandably think I hate them as I once did when I thought they were all laughing at how pathetic I felt I was back then - but the real critic was not them all along, it was my own paranoid, over active imagination manufacturing delusions of what they all thought when they didn't. I wish I could go back and give myself this blog to read, maybe life would be better right now, and maybe I wouldn't feel so 'on the outside', as I often do.
This should have been a discussion as I wanna know how your take on the way others view you is, and how you think you've contributed to any negativity you feel from other people?
It felt like being in the middle of the movie, 'Groundhog Day' - y'know the one? Bill Murray waking in the same day over and over, gradually getting into the swing of expecting events to occur like eventually predicting the icy puddle on the road as he crosses each time after having stepped squarely in it on so many occasions prior to that moment while another person, seeing it for the apparently first time, points and laughs at the stupidity of the moment - that was me, stupified into repeating simple mistakes over and over again while others looked on and shook their heads while wondering how much longer things like that would happen.
I feared the future and knew that trying to convince an employer that I was the right man for the job with the dizziness/vertigo, memory deficit, eye astigmatizm, slurry voice, and so forth, would be akin to turning up to a job cataclysmically drunk each day and repeatedly failing at everything attempted.
I hate feeling inferior as much as anyone, I loathe appearing fragile and deficient so, when I began my journey of social rejection in 2005 as everyone I knew outside family avoided me like the plague, I questioned my place in the world as I looked through the situations vacant section of the daily paper to find some kind of vocational direction and was duely told twice, through eyes tainted by an eye astigmatizm, that every...single...thing I looked at was as impossible as once again becoming popular seemed : destined for failure and it felt prooven and published in each daily Press newspaper.
In desperation, I threw myself at physical and mental rehabilitation and it made me *tired* - not regular worn out, but seemingly exhausted on a perpetual level and this brought about regular episodes of the blood circulatory, dizziness-based symptom known as presyncopal lightheadedness.
This symptom cemented my feet to a world of withdrawn depression and self doubt as it occurred whenever I became nervous, and I became nervous mostly around other people. So, I stopped talking to people outside the family and withdrew further : old friends thought I no longer wanted their contact and stayed away despite my daily prayers for their contact, leaving the front door seemed to invite the dizziness and headache which used to be *red hot* pain and discomfort in my head - like going from sober to completely drunk/hungover and back again in an instant, is how it felt.
No one understood this and, when it occurred, most saw it as a good reason to leave the room.
It took two years of, what felt to me like, very hard physical rehabilitation in order for the symptom to lessen from 3x/day down to 1x/day. At this point, I turned up to a job interview at a local factory and they gave me the, 'Oh, my gosh, is this guy for real in thinking he can work here?' look, before politely showing me the door.
More rejection, more reason to avoid human contact. I'm ashamed to say that I became more than a little self obsessive at that point - frequenting the gym 7 days/week, doing home study 2 hours/day with evening exercise and every darn pill which I could find was bought and trialled as I became catatonic with fatigue and the dizziness worsened, though I felt less drunk, yet still appeared as such, and was still largely ignored by the world.
The gym routine lessened from 7 days, to 5, 4, then ultimately 3 throughout 2008, and I began to feel less tired and began to improve again in my physical and cognitive abilities, but socially I remained a mess.
The physical improvment continued as I entered voluntary work this year (2009) at an inner city library and I felt the weight of the then 3.5 years of social segregation as everyone there seemed, to me, to be talking behind my back or thinking something bad, and I duely withdrew from being sociable with them, preferring to instead just try and do the job right. I often made mistakes, and this compounded my social paranoia.
After 9 months there, I no longer cared about what they all thought at work and was even on speaking terms with a few. I also became known at the gym as some there saw me frequently and said hello, even despite my initial cold temperament. It all seems so silly now, but back then the way they seemed to mock or conspire and laugh when my back was turned seemed so utterly real and it ate away at my mind as I searched for others to vent frustration upon.
These others, I now see, were my former friends. I was so paranoid about them and how I thought they saw me that I distanced myself from them until *everyone* seemed to think like I felt they did - 'What a freak' I thought they were saying, 'No freaks allowed here' was another common phrase in my mind, but not once did anyone actually say this and often people were accomodating and pleasant instead.
Now, 4.5 years on, I feel a certain amount of my own definition of normality return in my health, but I wonder how much sooner this would have been achieved had I been more trusting of others and not isolated myself in a paranoid frenzy, such as I did?
I think alot would have been different, and I think social confidence rehabilitation has been prolonged as it has been because I hated what I saw in the mirror each day - seeing either pity or discomfort in the expressions of people I met created a perpensity for me to not want to see that and avoid others. I justified doing that by manufacturing paranoid thoughts about what they all thought when no one was thinking any such thing at all.
My reason for writing this blog is to relate my social experiences of the past 4.5 years : people keyed on the vibe I gave off, seeing that I was withdrawn and paranoid, and they avoided me like the plague. In turn, this created deep paranoia and lacking social confidence. I hated meeting others as, to me, it felt like a point in time where my brain injury would be evident and the reasons for the self hatred I formerly harboured would become evident, presenting itself in the presentation of presyncopal lightheadedness, which was so frequent when such self doubts presented themselves, and fear was felt.
I still struggle with self image today, but I'm much more capable of withstanding it spiralling into a bad moment : I feel more confident around other people, and this is because I've forced myself to try and do something in order to change, which is the ultimate thing I feel has been learned : anyone worth knowing, and I think that's the vast majority of people, won't say anything bad about your appearance to your face, if they do, then they're the wrong person, and in need of help themselves. People, I find, are inherantly open to being respectful, but how you project yourself is often the reason for social isolation.
I've regained a few friends - it's still tentative and slow as they seem to understandably think I hate them as I once did when I thought they were all laughing at how pathetic I felt I was back then - but the real critic was not them all along, it was my own paranoid, over active imagination manufacturing delusions of what they all thought when they didn't. I wish I could go back and give myself this blog to read, maybe life would be better right now, and maybe I wouldn't feel so 'on the outside', as I often do.
This should have been a discussion as I wanna know how your take on the way others view you is, and how you think you've contributed to any negativity you feel from other people?
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