Support Groups

Practical Skills for Recovery Program Beneficial to Brain Injury Patients

Recent "graduates" of the "Practical Skills to Recovery" support group: Back row (L-R): Dr. Howard Kunin, Psy.D, NERHP Neurobehavioral Services, Stephen Andrews, William LaCroix, Ted Brackett and Daniel Lavigne. Front row (L-R): Yonca Berk-Giray, NERHP Speech Language Pathologist, Rhonda Durant and Giselle Rec (Author).

Here are a few things I don't recommend:

• Landing on your head after a fall down 12 concrete stairs
• Shopping on Ebay after being diagnosed with a head injury (things will come in the mail you don't remember buying), or
• Trying to talk a toddler through a temper tantrum when, thanks to your brain injury, you feel like having one yourself.

That said, if you should be one of the unlucky, like me, who find themselves out of control with a "mild traumatic brain injury," then I do highly recommend the "Practical Skills for Recovery" class through New England Rehabilitation Hospital of Portland (NERHP).

Led by Yonca Berk-Giray, Speech-Language Pathologist, and Dr. Howard Kunin, Psy.D, the class is known to therapists as "a cognitive-behavioral skills training program for patients who have mild traumatic brain injury or other neurological problems."

To the patients, though, the ones who enter the class scared, confused, sad and lost, the class is simply a program for healing.

Six men and women from Maine wrapped up the latest 12 week session on May 31, with new knowledge of themselves, their injuries and how to cope with their new lives. It was knowledge they probably would not have gained from their occupation, speech and language or physical therapies.

"Through my practice I found that just working on somebody's skill levels, memory drills, and attention drills, didn't always make that person better, " said Berk-Giray, "because there was a part of them that wasn't even aware of their deficits."

In other words, those with brain injuries also need to find ways to control their emotions and cope with their fears.

Berk-Giray and Kunin teach their students to do this by training them to have a wise mind. "With 'mindfulness skills' people learn that they can actually slow themselves down," explained Kunin. "When you slow down you become more aware of things and when you are more aware you realize you have different options available to you."

Those options can take a brain injured person from crippling fear to the relief of acceptance.

Here is how it worked for me. Before the class, and shortly after my plummet down a flight of stairs, my emotions were out of control and horrifying. I thought I would never stop crying, never stop being angry, never be able to make it through the day without being "spaced out" half the time. I lost sight of myself, lost confidence in what I could do, was uncomfortable caring for my children alone for fear of what I might forget to do.

Some of it was funny - like the time I opened the fridge to find the Downey where the milk usually sits. You can guess where I found the milk!

I came away from the "Practical Skills for Recovery" class knowing how to redirect myself when my emotions seemed to drown me. I came away knowing I had power over my own mind, despite the confusion, fatigue and forgetfulness. Mostly, I learned how to live with my brain injury instead of my brain injury telling me how to live.

There is also no way to measure the strength participants who take the class gather from each other. After my session I actually wondered if I had been blessed with my brain injury, instead of cursed. Without it, I would not have met Theo, who understood better than anyone how much I wanted to be the person I was before and how much anguish and grief that caused. I would not have met Rhonda, Dan and Dave who helped me heal with laughter and reminded me that sometimes the best way to get through a brain injured moment (telling your boss about cat poop) is to laugh at yourself. I would not have met William, who gave me great tips (take three-hour soaks in a hot tub) and made complicated things seem easy. "If your own needs aren't being taken care of, you're not in a position to help anyone else," he said one day. How true.

With Berk-Giray and Kunin's leadership, we began the process of actually accepting the accidents, strokes and surgeries that left us with brains forever changed. But the gift they truly gave was the knowledge that our brains are still changeable; that we have the power to make ourselves better. Our brains, injured or not, are ours to control.

Note: Giselle Goodman Rec, 34, grew up in St. Louis, Mo., graduated from the Journalism School at the University of Missouri in 1995. She moved to Maine in 1997 and in 2001 she began working as a news reporter for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. On December 13, 2005 she was coming down the stairs while at work and tripped. Twelve concrete steps and four days in the hospital later, she began her long journey to recovery. She broke both her wrists, her nose and to some extent, her brain.

When not in rehab remembering how to multi-task, she is mother to two young children and wife to the "world's most wonderful husband." Without their love and patience, she would never have progressed as far as she has.