Building Confidence After Brain Injury

Building confidence following a brain injury is essential to long-term recovery. By now you may be thinking, "Larry believes everything is essential when it comes to providing help to a brain injury victim." The one thing that helped Beth the most over the past 19 years was knowing about and understanding the Cycle of Response (chapter six in Brain Injury Survivor's Guide).

Steps of the Cycle of Response

• Mental Fatigue
• Confusion
• Frustration
• Guilt
• Depression

You'll notice that long-term success is not part of the Cycle. That's because the Cycle takes the brain injury victim the opposite direction. You'll also notice that none of those steps will build confidence. However, learning to recognize and defeat the Cycle will.

What I Mean by Essential

Okay, to understand what I mean when I say "essential" let's just take a look at changing the oil in your car.

• Buy oil for the vehicle
• Buy oil filter for the vehicle
• Remove plug and drain out old oil
• Remove old oil filter
• Install new oil filter
• Replace drain plug
• Add correct amount of new oil

Which of those seven steps is not essential when changing your oil? Buying oil for the vehicle would be quite useless if you did not replace the drain plug because all that pretty new oil would pour right through to the ground. Helping someone who has suffered a physical injury to their brain involves many types of therapy.

Not only is the best therapy provided in the home by family members, it is the family caregiver who helps the brain injury victim build confidence.

Or not! I've had the privilege of meeting and communicating with a large number of brain injury victims the past few years. One thing I hear a lot is, "They think I'm faking." That's not much of a confidence builder, is it? And that's why it's essential for family members to learn about brain injury and its effects. That's one of the primary reasons Beth and I wrote Brain Injury Survivor's Guide.

The Value of Compensatory Strategies

A compensatory strategy is "something" that compensates for a brain injury effect. The three major areas that are affected are memory, cognition and behavior. But think for a moment just how large and encompassing each of those can be. How much stuff is in a person's memory?

Of primary concern right now is what the brain injury victim cannot remember for a given task. Those who have read our book know that Beth did not remember how to put on her makeup. Compensatory strategy: We made a step-by-step list for her to follow and taped it next to her bathroom mirror. In addition to the dozens of compensatory strategies in our book, we also have downloadable strategy sheets that you can download to your computer, make changes to them, and print them for use. You can find them at Brain Injury Planner Pages.

Compensatory strategies allow a person to perform a task without wearing out the brain thinking about it. (See step one on the Cycle of Response.) We learned that Beth reached a point in time when she could take that list down from the bathroom wall and put it in a drawer. She had gained confidence in her ability to apply makeup.

Confidence Building for Family Members

You are not a trained and qualified therapist, are you? You don't need to be. What you need to be is a listener. Listen to your injured family member. Find out what is bothering them. Gather information that will help you help them. Use our book and use our websites to help you find that information.

Beth's Brain Injury Blog has additional information about living successfully after having a brain injury.

Go to our Sitemap to find additional articles that can help you. No, we don't have all the information. That's why you will see Google links to other websites on all our pages. You can always contact us for more information.

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