Patience. I Needed to Be More Patient with Myself.

Recovering from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) requires patience and is one of the strangest experiences of my life. Not because it is always dramatic or obvious, but because so much of it happens quietly, invisibly and way too slowly. It requires patience and for me, that may be the hardest part!

When you break a bone, there is usually a cast, an X-ray, and some sort of timeline. You understand it. There is evidence. There is permission to rest. There is sympathy and support.

With a TBI, especially when you are walking around looking mostly normal, the world often assumes you are fine long before your brain agrees. Sometimes… you assume it too.

One of the most difficult lessons in brain injury recovery is learning patience. Not the cute little “take a deep breath and relax” kind of patience. I mean the deep, soul-level patience that asks you to stop fighting your own healing timeline. That for me, has been hard, and I assume I’m not the only one.  This is especially true if you are someone who is productive, driven, responsible, helpful, independent or used to pushing through difficult things.

Many of us built our lives around persistence. We get things done. We adapt. We overcome until suddenly, we can’t.

A brain injury has a way of humbling you in ways you never expected. One day you are multitasking, solving problems, remembering everything, handling stress, and moving through life at full speed feeling like the EverReady Bunny. The next day, simple things feel overwhelming. Noise feels louder. Crowds feel exhausting. Conversations take effort. Your memory feels undependable. Your nervous system feels fragile. Perhaps most frustrating of all, you find your healing doesn’t move in a smooth, predictable straight line.

You can have one or more pretty good days and suddenly wake up feeling like your brain has hit a wall. You can think you are “finally getting better” and then overdo it and spend two days recovering. That can really make you feel discouraged.

Personally, I am learning something important through this process: My brain heals on its own timetable, not on mine.

That realization has changed everything for me. For a long time, I treated my recovery like a project I could manage through sheer determination. If I researched enough, ate well enough, rested correctly enough, supplemented enough, exercised enough once I had been cleared to do a moderate version of that again, surely I could speed this up.

While all of those things absolutely matter, healing still required something I did not naturally want to give it:  Time and patience.

Real recovery is often less about “forcing progress” and more about creating conditions that allow healing to happen. That is a very different mindset.

I also think many people recovering from brain injuries become unintentionally hard on themselves. We compare ourselves constantly to who we used to be. We measure our current abilities against our former capacity, and that is a dangerous game with frankly no upside. The truth is, healing brains need encouragement, not constant criticism.

I have noticed on days when I get angry and frustrated with myself for forgetting something, for becoming overstimulated, for needing rest or for not being able to do what I once could do easily, my entire system tightens up. Stress increases. Fatigue increases. Headaches increase.

The brain does not heal well under constant internal attack, and yet so many of us do exactly that.

We become impatient, frustrated, afraid, ashamed. We tell ourselves we “should be farther along by now.”

But according to whom?

Healing is not linear.
Healing is not tidy.
Healing is not efficient.

Especially brain healing.

 

I found keeping a journal of my recovery helped me quite a bit. I could look back a week or a month and read how I was doing then. That really allowed me to say to myself I was doing much better and moving ahead nicely with patience and grace.

Your brain is incredibly complex. It is constantly attempting to reroute pathways, reduce inflammation, regulate neurotransmitters, restore balance, calm your nervous system, and rebuild function. That is enormous work happening behind the scenes every second of every day. No wonder it gets tired.

I think one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself during TBI recovery is permission to heal imperfectly.

Permission to rest without guilt.
Permission to say no.
Permission to move slower.
Permission to have setbacks without deciding we are failing.

It’s important to realize setbacks are not failure. They are information. Sometimes they simply mean:
“That was too much stimulation.”
“That was too much stress.”
“That was not enough sleep.”
“That nervous system needs a little more support today.”

All this does not mean you are broken forever.

It means your brain is still healing.

I also believe patience becomes easier when we begin noticing the smaller victories instead of only looking for dramatic ones.

After a brain injury, tiny improvements matter enormously.

The first time you realize you handled a grocery store better.
The first time you read several pages without exhaustion.
The first time you remember something without writing it down.
The first time you laugh genuinely again.
The first time you feel hopeful.

Those moments matter.

And honestly, sometimes progress looks incredibly subtle from the outside while feeling monumental on the inside.

People may not understand that getting through a social gathering without sensory overload can be a monumental victory; or that answering emails for thirty minutes without a headache was progress; or that driving somewhere alone again felt huge. But you know.

Those small wins deserve to be acknowledged and honored.

I also think there is something deeply emotional about recovering from a TBI that people do not talk about enough.

You grieve.

You grieve your old energy.
Your old confidence.
Your old brain.
Your old sense of certainty.

That grief is real.

Somewhere along the way, if we are careful, we also begin discovering new things.

We learn gentleness.
We learn boundaries.
We learn how deeply stress affects your body.
We learn that rest is productive.
We learn to pay attention.
We learn what truly matters.

In a strange way, many of us become more compassionate people after suffering.

Not because we wanted to suffer.
Not because brain injury is “good.”

But because pain has a way of stripping away illusions and forcing us into deeper awareness.

I know I have become far more understanding of invisible struggles than I ever was before.

You truly never know what someone else is carrying.

If you are currently recovering from a TBI, I want you to hear this clearly:

You are not weak because this is taking time.

You are not lazy because you need rest.

You are not failing because healing is slower than you hoped.

Your brain has been injured.
And injured brains require enormous amounts of energy to recover.

Please stop speaking to yourself like you are a machine that should already be repaired.

You are a human being healing from something profound.

Be patient with yourself.
Be kind to yourself.
Support your body.
Reduce unnecessary stress.
Feed your brain well.
Protect your peace.
Celebrate small improvements.
And trust that healing is still happening, even on days when it feels invisible.

A dear friend told me she views my TBI as a reset. A chance to change things up. This perspective really resonated with me and gave me hope I might get through this better than I was before. In fact, sometimes recovery is not about becoming exactly who you were before.

Sometimes it is about becoming someone wiser, gentler, stronger, and more aware than you were before.

And sometimes… healing looks less like racing forward and more like learning how to walk slowly without losing hope.

 

Your questions and comments are always welcome. I love hearing from you!

Helping You Achieve Major Wellness!

Cheryl

I’m author, health coach, backyard shepherdess and entrepreneur Cheryl A Major, and I would love to connect with you!

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