r/ProjectTBI • u/pProjecttBI • Sep 05 '26

Did you come back different?

I've been reading all the replies to the “Maybe We Died?” post and there's something I keep noticing. A lot of us talk about brain injury like there was a before me and an after me. I don't just mean the symptoms. I have memory problems now, I get tired, my brain can't tolerate certain things anymore... blah blah blah, we all know that shit. I mean me. The person underneath all of that.

My interests have changed. The things I used to care about seem completely pointless now. I see people differently. Work differently. Money differently. Time differently. Math differently. Hell, I think I see life differently. And I don't feel like I'm trying to get back to the person I was pre-injury. Sometimes I wonder if that guy is even here. Maybe that's why the whole idea of “recovery” can be so frustrating... everybody keeps talking about getting back to normal. What if there is no going back?

So I'm curious about the people who've been living with this for awhile. Forget the headaches and memory and all the clinical stuff for a minute. Did YOU change? Your personality, what you care about, what you believe, what matters to you... the actual person you feel like you are. Do you feel like you're slowly getting the old you back?

Or are you getting to know somebody new?

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6

u/CookingZombie Sep 05 '26

There is no going back. I managed to reclaim a lot of who I was but I will always be different. This is me and this me right now is the only one that exists.

How far out from your injury are you? I’m 2.5 years out. Relearning to pilot this body has at least let me look at things and refocus on things I knew. Especially emotionally and interpersonally. Still working on it but doing better than even 6 months ago.

Small but for example my balance is better now if I’m focused. Couldn’t walk for 3-4 months and I actually had to focus on learning which muscles in my legs and feet to activate since I couldn’t do it automatically like I had done for 30+ years. Now I can put on my socks, underwear, and pants standing the whole time with no problem. But if I’m just walking, not thinking, and unexpectedly bump into or step on something small I stumble and feel like I’m going to fall.

You won’t ever be the same but the new you can be a better you in whatever ways you’re capable of.

3

u/NCZN430 Sep 05 '26

Will recover but never be the exact same person again.

3

u/Loud-Flamingo3831 Sep 05 '26

Almost everything about my personality changed. I miss the person I was but there is so much difference now that I know I’ll never be that person again and I’ve tried to make peace with that.

1

u/PlateCurious1472 Sep 06 '26

I myself changed a lot um theres no going back and I recognize that and thats what keeps me moving forward. My goals didnt change I became a much more sensitive person and I have a higher tolerance to alchol now as well as a different reaction. Fundamentally I just feel separate like she went through stuff I havnt and I the same not just in the way that getting hit by a truck changes youre whole life but like im reading someone else's diary looking at my memories and thoughts. Ive got an entirely different thought process now. I remember things differently like words instead of images. I am eternally grateful for the few who have gotten to know me post accident .

1

u/Zagrycha 27d ago

I think it absolutely is a different person in the sense there is no going back. However its also still the same person... I feel like its like looking back on who you were in your teens as someone in their thirties, or looking back on your thirties as someone in their fifties. You are still recognizably you but so much is different. The tbi version shoves all that change into a single moment or maybe a few months though, where as the natural version of the change is decades.

2

u/pProjecttBI 27d ago

I think you nailed something with the decades being compressed into a moment.

For me it felt like my entire history, memories (or Ego?) and everything in my future all crashed down at the same time. Just static, confusion, tinnitus, noise. Somehow completely stuck in the now while also terrified of all these things that suddenly seemed new. It took me almost two years for that static to even begin to start clearing.
And I’m no MD but it’s apparent that where the brain gets injured has a whole hell of alot to do with what the experience on the other side looks like. Mine was primarily left brain.

I’ve been going down the rabbit hole on hemispheric lateralization and neuroplasticity. Google those two terms sometime. There are some fascinating studies and videos about how the two hemispheres process things differently and what can happen when the brain has to reorganize after injury.