Latest / Understanding Your Concussion / Episode 14: What does it mean when they say "Let it be a process" in a healing journey
Transcript
- Jana: Hi, I am Jana Kapp. I know the concussion recovery journey deeply, ⁓ both personally and professionally. Join me in understanding your concussion, ⁓ where I empower you in navigating the complexities of a concussion recovery journey by sharing the science of what is going on behind the scenes, the stories of why we feel the way we feel, and how we can work with our brain to find our way back to feeling and functioning like ourselves again. There's something I want you to understand about your concussion recovery journey and healing in general. Healing is a process. It used to drive me absolutely crazy early on in my journey when people would say to me, Let it be a process. And I was like, what does that mean? What does it mean to let it be a process? Because this drove me so crazy when people would just flippantly say, just let it be a process, I went on a mission to figure out what that actually means. When I was going through my journey, I would often look to other people going through a healing journey for inspiration to know that it was possible to navigate through a healing journey. And I was hearing a lot of people saying, I had to let it be a process. It was a process. I just had to go through, You know, so-and-so said, let it be a process. And so I did. And now here I am on the other side. Like, what what is this magical process that we all go through? In a more recent podcast episode, I was talking about you know, using the principles of neuroplasticity to help us Navigate a healing journey specifically related to concussions. And those principles of neuroplasticity require energy, effort, repetition, and awareness through an intentional action. And the reality of applying those principles of neuroplasticity is really about building new neuropathways or repairing neuropathways in our brains. Well, that building is a process. any kind of building, building a house, building a car, building a healing journey. It's a process. And so I really try to dive in and understand what does that mean. And about halfway through my journey, I started having children. So I was feeling better. I wasn't as symptomatic, but I was still not quite at that place that I wanted to be at in terms of how I was going to feel and function. And having children made me feel nervous. I didn't know how that was going to impact my concussion. But in many ways, there's a lot of things that I learned from having children having newborns is it was like at this awakening moment of really understanding that currently, right now, in my own child, they are building their own neuropathways. of how they're gonna end up feeling and functioning down the road. They were creating their wiring and making those connections throughout the brain. And it really started to make me realize that I was watching neuroplasticity in real time right in front of me. And it started to help me understand more about what it meant of let it be a process. You know, when we think about the neuroplasticity aspect. An intentional action for a baby or a newborn is that they eventually are going to walk. That is an intentional action, that they are building these neural pathways in their brain to move them towards that goal. But a baby, especially a human baby, doesn't just pop out and start walking. A deer does. There are certain animals that do pop out and off they go, but not a human baby. We don't know right away how to walk. It is something that we have to learn and is something that we have to build. when a baby is moving towards that intentional action of walking. There are certain milestones that they're going to hit working towards walking. That's the process, right? All the different milestones that they are achieving and moving on to in that first year of life is what's actually leading towards them being able to achieve that intentional action of walking. In a post-concussion healing journey, I feel that you know a main intentional action that kind of overlaps between all of us is that we are trying to live our lives symptom-free. that is the intentional action that we are working towards. But if we have not allowed ourselves to go through the process and we have missed certain milestones along the way, or we've avoided allowing ourselves to go through the process, we often lack the success of living symptom-free. This was me. I was trying to live my life symptom-free for four years almost, without actually applying the principles of neuroplasticity or working with my brain. I was just kind of hoping at some point my brain would snap out of it and I would be fine. And I was just trying to go about my business of living my life, thinking that eventually I would be symptom-free. But I wasn't putting in energy or effort, definitely not repetition or paying any attention. into what I was doing and how it was making me feel or function. I wasn't a part of the process. I wasn't aware of what milestones I actually could start to work towards to build those pathways that would eventually support me in living my life symptom-free. The milestones are all the things that come before to support you being able to live your life symptom-free. All the milestones a newborn starts to go through in that first year of life is what is supporting its ability to be able to walk down the road. And even for a baby, it requires a lot of effort, energy. Repetition. And you have to have that attention to put in towards creating those neural pathways to create the wiring that's going to support you in that bigger picture of your long-term goal. For a baby, that's walking. For us with our concussion symptoms, that's living symptom-free. And so the process. Is from trying to get from A to B, either not being able to do the thing to them being able to do the thing. Or in a concussion journey, going from our old self and moving towards that future self of who we want to be and how we want to feel and function. So the process. Is the in-between of those milestones, of those markers. The process is that messy middle where you are taking action, you're putting in the effort, the energy, the repetition, putting in the attention. But the process is moving through that space between the old. And the new or the not knowing and the knowing or the not being able to do and then being able to do. If you have children like me, you may have come across Dr. Becky. She is a parenting expert. And she calls the messy middle the learning space. It's the space between the not knowing and the knowing. And in any journey like this, whether we're learning to read, we're learning to walk, we're learning a new skill or task at work. We are trying to learn how to live symptom-free. There is that space of the in-between of the messy middle of the learning space. And we have this notion or this idea that success only comes from being at the end, at the knowing, at that final destination, of crossing that finish line of. I did it. But Success crossing that finish line of healing, of finally no longer living with symptoms. We put a lot of our emphasis on being there now and not necessarily allowing ourselves to move through that space. Process. So Dr. Becky talks about how it's success actually comes from the length of time you can tolerate being in the messy middle, being in that space, that learning space. Because when you're in that space of the in-between, there's a lot of frustration. It's really uncomfortable. And there's a lot of uncertainty and unknown. How long does it take to get to the end, to get to the knowing, to get to being symptom free? Will I get there? And is what I'm doing actually moving me in that direction? It is uncomfortable when you are in the messy middle, when you are in the process. It can lead to a lot of different feelings and emotions, mostly frustration. And you know, some pain, whether that's physical pain or emotional pain. It it's all in there in the middle, in the messy middle. And so the reality is that when when I am in this space, and currently I feel like I'm in this space right now in my life, where I'm in the messy middle, I am not at the beginning, and I'm not at the end, and I know that because I'm frustrated, I'm uncomfortable. Everything feels completely uncertain, unknown, and I'm very overwhelmed. And so now I know from this journey that when I feel this uncomfortable tension within me and I'm frustrated, I'm learning. And during my concussion recovery journey, I was healing. I was going through that process. I was just in the messy middle. It's happening. When you start to feel all of those uncomfortable feelings, it's happening. But it doesn't feel positive. It feels uncomfortable. And being able to kind of recognize we're in that space means that we're we're doing the work. We're in the process. Because when we're feeling those feelings of frustration, of feeling uncomfortable, of the unknown, of the uncertainty. And it feels like absolutely nothing is happening. There's actually more going on than we realize. Even though in that messy middle we're not functioning the way we want to be functioning, and we're definitely not feeling the way we want to be feeling. All that action, all the effort, all the energy, all the repetition that we're putting in is what is helping us move through that space. It is helping us to live in the process, be in the process, create the process. That's what I think they were all trying to mean that let it be a process. But in reality, we have to recognize the process. when it's here based off of how we are feeling and functioning and being able to know that we can continue to move through this space to get us out the other side. Because in that messy middle or in the long-term journey, we are achieving these different milestones along the way. That's setting up our wiring, building the neuropathways, creating those roots or a foundation for us to heal from, for us or for that baby to be able to now walk from. This is the process. So for a baby, there's all these milestones that as a parent or as a healthcare professional that you're looking for as indicators that they are developing healthy and moving in that direction of that goal or that intentional action of walking. And it starts very early on. Typically, it takes a year for a baby to be able to. Have built that foundation to walk. But around, you know, two, three months old, they're already starting that process by being able to lift their head up against gravity, because that's actually engaging and building abdominal strength. Then they're starting to roll over. Well, that's starting to build strength again through the abdominals, but through that ability to rotate, which is a part of what happens when you walk. And then maybe they're starting to get up on all fours. Or they're being able to sit on their own against gravity. They're getting used to playing with gravity, finding and learning their balance from all of these different milestones. Once they've been at that point where they can finally handle the balance of gravity on all fours or through sitting, well, now they can start to move. And now we're starting to see them attempt to crawl. Then they're pulling themselves to stand. Then maybe they're just standing up and squatting and standing back up and squatting. All before they're actually taking steps. They're going through this process in a year as they're building those neuropathways in their brains. They're creating the foundation, the strength, the endurance, the understanding, and the awareness. They're creating those wires, those connections, those neuropathways that they're going to rely on. Down the road to towards their intentional action. And they have to put in, they have to put in the energy, the effort, and the repetition. Like if you have ever been around a newborn, whether you've babysat, it they're related to you, they're your own child, you know that there is so much repetition, right? All they want to do, once they can crawl up the stairs. Up the stairs, down the stairs, up the stairs, down the stairs, over, over, over again. It's kind of exhausting on your back, but they have to put in that effort and energy and repetition to really build a reliable solid neural pathway for them to build from so that they can walk. When they're going through that process. They start from that not walking to walking, that not knowing to knowing. And it's all of that in between of all these little tiny baby steps, pun intended, that are moving them in that direction. And we are doing the exact same thing in our healing journey. Or at least we can. We can create those milestones that are going to help us move through that space. We can create those milestones that are going to support the neuropathways of how we want to feel and function. Down the road of the knowing, even though maybe right now we're in the not knowing, we can start to create those little mini milestones that are going to help us move through that space of where we are now that we don't really like how we feel and function towards how we do want to feel and function overall in our life. But while we go through this process or in this process, we all have to go at our own pace. We are all individuals when it comes to healing. And babies are all individual when it comes to learn how to walk. We can create those similar milestones. Going at our own pace, trusting that the speed of which we are going at is what's right for us. Much like a baby never doubts itself am I walking fast enough? Am I learning fast enough? Am I gonna get there fast enough? Am I gonna work by 12 months? Is that the right thing? Should I be walking sooner? Should I, what am I, could I be doing more? Could I should I be doing less? Nope. They're not doing that. They just go their own pace. They also go in their own order of achieving the milestones. Some of them do lead to the other ones. But for some babies, they don't get up on all fours. They don't pull to stand. Some babies skip certain steps or have to go back and relearn it. that's okay. my oldest son started taking steps at seven months. And I remember thinking, whoa, that's that's really early. But after a few days of taking a few steps here and there at seven months, he stopped. He just went back to crawling. And I thought, that's kind of strange. I thought it would just keep going forward. No, the stop start is also part of the process. Sometimes we start things and we realize, no, I need a little bit more time focusing in this milestone over here before I really have the strength and the endurance to do this. Intuitively, innately, he knew. And he trusted himself 'cause that's what we do. Especially as a baby. But It's okay to allow this process to be something that you create for yourself. You have to make it work for you, right? Not all babies crawl the same way. Some babies they drag one of the outside feet or they bumshuffle forwards instead of actually your traditional sense of crawling and alternating right, left, right, left with hands and legs. Some may need support or intervention in order to ensure that they're actually meeting these milestones. Sometimes we need extra support in our healing journey. And babies all walk in their own time frame. So typically, babies are going to walk somewhere between 12 to 15 months. My youngest was walking by 10. And my oldest was walking probably around the same time, 10 months, even though he took that three-month hiatus. my niece it took her 15 months guess what they're all not babies anymore they're walking and you wouldn't be able to look at either of them and go you took 15 months to walk where you took 10. No clue they're walking Going through a concussion recovery journey can also be very similar. We can learn from this. We, like I said, we often are so focused on the end result without going through the process, without going through that space. We're trying to live our lives here, but we haven't allowed ourselves to hit those milestones in between. When I recognized in my journey where I was just waiting for my concussion to go away and not trying to apply the neuroplasticity principles, once I realized that, I recognized that I was putting a lot of weight on the end result, on the outcome. And so instead of focusing on that, I understood in that moment, that's what they mean by let it be a process. And so that's what I started to set out to do was to go through the process to create certain little milestones for me to achieve so I could start to build my strength, my endurance, create and build those neuropathways that were going to support me in how I. really wanted to feel and function. And that's what I started to focus on was more about how I was feeling and functioning rather than if I was at the end yet. we have to allow ourselves to move through that space. We have to let it be a process. and that's what embracing neuroplasticity or embodying neuroplasticity is all about. Because we're rebuilding, repairing, and creating those neuropathways. just like a baby does. And we are living that act of neuroplasticity in real time. Just like a baby. but it's not just our concussion recovery journey. We have been here before. We just didn't recognize it. Right? When we're going through school and we are learning a new skill. Trying to ride a bike. Learning calculus. Whatever it is that is some that was something at some point new to you that you had to learn, you were living neuroplasticity in real time. You just weren't as aware of it because it wasn't impacting you in the same way it does with a concussion because of the associated symptoms that are often involved. However, when we're learning. We can still get frustrated, get brain fatigued, feel tired, get overstimulated. All of those same similar symptoms, albeit expressed and experienced at a very different place when we're going through our concussion recovery journey, is something that is similar. It is something we have gone through before. We just weren't aware of it. Much like any of those journeys, you might be able to tell for yourself of thinking when you were in that space of didn't know, wanted to know, couldn't walk, wanted to walk. Living with symptoms, want to be symptom free, that space in between is not quick and easy. That we know. It is awkward. It is uncomfortable. There are a lot of ups and downs. We can go through an emotional roller coaster. There's that feeling of success along the way, even though maybe we haven't reached the end. It takes courage, it takes vulnerability. We do feel frustrated. Moments we might feel sad, demotivated. But all of that is part of that moving from the not knowing to the knowing, from the healing to feeling healthy, because in that space, it is the learning space, like Dr. Becky talks about. Healing, we have to learn how to do this. Walking, we have to learn how to do it. Reading, we have to learn how to do it. Calculus? We gotta learn how to do it. I don't want to learn calculus, but you get what I'm getting at, hopefully. It's all about learning. It's that process. The process is living, is healing, is learning, is the messy middle. We just have to keep taking that action, even when we feel awkward, uncomfortable, when we are all over the place emotionally and feeling frustrated. We have to just keep moving towards that intentional action or that goal, that long-term goal. Much like a baby does. Even though that baby has no clue, probably, that what it's doing is moving it towards walking. And even though there are moments where we feel we don't know if the action we're taking is moving us in the right direction, we just have to keep going. If we don't We're definitely not gonna get to the other side. And Part of the process will also be failure. How many times does a baby fall over in that year of trying to learn how to walk? A lot. But a baby doesn't fall and go, well, I suck at this. I can't do this. I'm not getting better. I'm not improving on my walking skills. A baby falls over and it gets back up and it keeps going. Right? There's no guarantee. We don't know. What will what it'll feel like, how we'll be functioning at the end as we move in that direction. There's no guarantee a baby might walk. But for sure, if you don't try, that's the guarantee you won't get there. You won't reach that long-term goal. You will not cross the finish line. So falling or failing or getting overstimulated, it's a part of the process. Of moving you through that space. There were so many moments in my journey where I had no clue if I was doing the right thing. I pushed too hard, I'm overstimulated again, I'm feeling extremely symptomatic, I'm having a day where I'm so depleted in energy, I don't even know if I'm doing the right thing. I didn't know. I didn't know if the actions that I was taking was moving me in the direction. Of wanting to get to that side of feeling and functioning like me, I had no clue. But I did know that if it didn't try, I was definitely not gonna get there. And so I started to remind myself that in those moments, like a baby, when they fall over, they're learning. And so when I overstimulate myself, when I'm feeling symptomatic, when I have pushed too much. It's a learning moment. It is a moment to reflect on, okay, well, what what was working, what isn't working. What do I need to find my balance? Right? If we push it too far, if a baby pushes too far out of their base of support, they're going to fall over. Well, that's a learning moment for them to go, too big of a step. Oop, I went too fast. Oop, my head was too far ahead. Whatever it is. That's the same thing we can do. Instead of being hard and down on ourselves in those moments of I'm not doing it right. I'm not getting better. I would remind myself that pushing beyond my limits, feeling overstimulated, was a way of me trying to find the limit and find my balance of what was going to help me And it doesn't just stop at walking for a baby. The walking becomes a foundation for more. walking becomes the foundation for running, for jumping, for skipping, for playing. The journey just it doesn't end there. Ooh, okay, great. I walked. Success. I did a good job of being human. I am done now. No. They keep going. They keep exploring more. We have to hit those milestones throughout our journey to create the foundation for how we want to feel and function down the road. we have to figure out those milestones often for ourselves. But typically they involve understanding our systems that we're working with the brain and where rehab comes in. I talk a lot about this in lesson one and understanding your injured brain. So if you want more information, it's free on my website. We have to make sure those systems can integrate well together and function well together. We need to work with our brain and the capacity and our energy levels. We need to ensure that our nervous system is regulated. These are all setting the foundation. for us to begin to live symptom free and often going through the rehab process and finding those tools and strategies that do work for us do lead us to a point where we can live symptom free. But there's more we want to do in our lives. And often people on a long-term concussion journey can get stuck here. They're like, well, I'm better. I'm not asymptomatic, but I'm not running. I'm not jumping. I'm not skipping. I'm not playing. I'm not where I want to be in my return to work or return to school schedule. I'm not where I want to be in my return to sport or activity. I'm not where I want to be socializing. I'm not playing in my life. We just assume that once we kind of get to a point where we're not experiencing symptoms and have created that foundation, that naturally we should just be able to get back into work and social life and sport and activity and play. But and I mean, sometimes that can happen. But in reality, if you're feeling stuck in your journey, this might be why. Because it's not just A to B. A to B, to C to D, to E to F. There are processes within the process, especially if you have a very long-term goal of an idea of what that is like, of how you want to feel and function. And only you will know that, because only you know how you feel and how you function as yourself. How do you take that ability to live symptom-free, that ability to walk, and then keep yourself moving forward? while you go through that process of learning and that next level of healing. we keep creating those neuropathways to rely on, to find our new balance, to learn and create our new normal, new sense of self, of how we want to feel and function. We just keep going through that process. It doesn't just stop at walking. We have to keep going because we're always learning and we have a history of learning. We've been through that uncomfortable, awkward, messy, frustrated, unknowing, uncertainty, messy middle Before. We have been through the messy middle before. We have to remind ourselves that we've done this and we can keep doing this. We just have to let it be a process. And ideally, now there's a different meaning to you about like it was for me, of what let it be a process really does mean. Healing is ongoing. It is not a final destination. It is something, especially when we've lived with concussion symptoms for a long time, or have had multiple concussions, or have struggled on this journey. It is an ongoing process. If you can focus more on knowing that you're going through this process and recognizing when you're in the messy middle if you allow yourself to let it be a process, let it be an ongoing process. You will take away the pressure of being at the end, at the result. And you can focus more on being in the now, in the present, and try to enjoy it along the way. We don't put that pressure on a baby. ideally come on you gotta walk come on you gotta walk come on you gotta walk they do it at their own pace in their own time because they're their own individual and that's the same thing you're gonna do in your journey is you're gonna go through the messy middle and when you're having those feelings you're gonna go I'm healing it's happening right now I just have to keep putting One step in front of the other, go at my own pace and prioritize how I want to feel and function, and remind myself that I've done this before, I'm doing it now, and I'm moving in the right direction. I'm not staying stuck here because I'm trying. So I'm moving in the right direction. Go at your own pace. My mantra was always: slow and steady wins this race. Let it be a process because that's where the healing is happening. Thank you for joining me in understanding your concussion. I hope that you are leaving this episode feeling empowered in understanding what is going on behind the scenes of your injury, why you feel the way you feel, and how to begin to take action to move forward in your unique healing journey. Interested in checking out understanding your concussion course? Head to concussion healingspace.com or the link is in the show notes. You can purchase lesson one through four, reminder lesson one is free. If you're interested in connecting with me for mentorship and support, one on one consultations are available online or join the Concussion Support Club where you get access to all four courses and weekly drop in support club options