I am feeling a bit "something" today - not sick, not overly tired, not sad - just something. As you can see, I can't quite put my finger on the feeling and I have even less of a guess at the cause, but I am "affected". I have always been pretty reflective and have paid attention to my body, but since the stroke I think I have become even more so in the mental sense, where I have spent more time paying attention to the condition of my thoughts too.
When a bit of the brain dies, it isn't really conducive for improvements in thinking I assume, unless the bit that is taken out is a piece that is causing some kind of trouble. A stroke is like having an uncontrolled lobotomy, where some random piece of the brain is removed from the thought circulation.
And, since the brain is highly complex with a lot of parts performing clusters of actions, no two stroke patients are likely to be affected in an identical way. Of course, depending on where in the brain and the severity of the stroke it is possible to predict where the two might have overlaps, but it is not a perfect map of outcomes.
For me, it is in my cerebellum, which is an old part of the brain and therefore impacts on a lot of our fundamental abilities. For instance, it is largely responsible for keeping our balance, our motor skills, and judging distances. And, it is a key part in our timing, for instance being able to keep a beat. So perhaps that can be my excuse for my dancing. I definitely drop things more and have a lot more typos.
However, it plays other key functions pass the physical too, as it plays a significant role in our emotional condition and our decision making processes, which might be interrelated with our emotional position at the time of the decision too. I have noticed this affect a lot over the last couple years since the stroke, and I am not a better person for it. There is more variation in my emotions, less ability to control my emotions, and my ability to rationalize decisions is more difficult.
This last one is further hindered by an inability to automatically create images in my head based on environmental input, which means all of my visual thoughts need to be built from scratch and manually using the images I can recall at the time.
The phrase "nothing comes to mind" is salient for me.
And whilst this sounds like it means that manual creation makes everything more intentional, that is also not the case, as my brain is doing things in the background and generating a response, but it isn't always making it into my awareness before my body is reacting. This means that for instance, things come out of my mouth that I do not intend to say, but that are also meaningless thoughts that would be filtered out rapidly. They are not my opinions, they are not my hidden preferences, they are just random noise in the system - Voiced. Which sucks.
It sucks because if someone hears it, they naturally assume I meant it, as they probably don't understand the process that goes on in their own brain that stops them from voicing the noise of their own mind. Perhaps one example analogy might be where parent with multiple children and is suddenly upset by one of them, will run through all the names of the other children until they find the right one. Or, when tired and not being able to find the right word for something, but in reverse, where the wrong word is substituted, even though when voiced it is obviously the wrong word.
At least for me, this has been difficult.
I used to be relatively clear with my thoughts, visualize situations, concepts and implications rapidly into the current frame and potential implications on the future, and also have the right words at the right time. I even have some old articles that speak about some of these aspects and how I utilize them in my daily life to my advantage. And these things were part of my core skillset, my competitive advantage. Losing them has been decimating on my personal sense of self-worth, as I think we tend to identify ourselves with our strengths and weaknesses.
Talking/writing about these things helps though, as it allows me a chance to focus my attention on paying attention to the changed conditions and better understanding how the "new me" (new doesn't mean better) behaves in different circumstances and environments. Regardless of whether we have had a stroke or not, or any other kind of trauma, I do believe we would all benefit from reflecting on the conditions of our minds, bodies and emotions, in order to better understand ourselves and therefore, make more useful decisions on how we want to move forward.
This last bit is important for me, because if I don't take a step back, the (comparative) lack of emotional control and the effects it has on my decisions means that if I leave it up to my brain to decide unfiltered, a lot of the unwanted noise will be pushed through the system and out into the world, which is not what I want. Because, regardless of whether I can control it or not, it impacts on others and it will be me who pays the consequences, which are generally poor.
So, while spending some time writing this, I have come to terms with being out of sorts, even though I still don't know the cause of the disruption. It could just be noise in the system, or there might be some other underlying issue, but the writing has cleared away some of the emotional layers on top and freed up mental energy to better observe.
Just a random thought to finish.
I wonder what the result would be for couples if before an emotional argument, each went away and wrote about it all first. Would the relationship be better, or worse?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
