I used to be so annoyed by the kind of people who seemed to always be living on some sort of schedule. People who seemed to always be checking their “calendar” and seemed to have an hour by hour plan written out for nearly every day of the week. People who seemed to know what they were going to be doing days and sometimes even weeks in advance and who seemed to be unwilling to change their plans in order to make time for you, even if the change seemed rather insignificant.
Well. guess what?
After my traumatic brain injury (TBI), I feel like I’ve became one of them - and I really hope I’m not that annoying!
My life is now planned out and I pretty much live on a schedule because I seem to function much better when I do so. If things aren't planned out well ahead of time, I get extremely stressed and agitated. If things aren’t written down, I tend to worry more about not doing what I need to do and many times will even forget to do it. If I don’t have things entered in the calendar or down as a reminder on my phone, I feel like all I can do is run them over and over in my head because of the fear of forgetting them. This results in me being very disengaged from the people I’m with and from what’s going on around me. I also become very agitated when someone tries to add or subtract things to my plans or calendar, thus giving me the appearance of being a very rigid and non-spontaneous person. Given these new traits of mine, you might conclude that I wouldn't do well with any type of change whatsoever - but I don't believe this is completely true. I seem to be okay with it as long as I’m in charge of what, when, and how something changes. The problem arises when someone else is in charge of it, That’s when change seems to become a completely different story for me. (I guess that also makes me a bit of a control freak!?!)
Please trust me and know that I don't tell you all my weaknesses simply to make excuses for myself. One of my pet peeves is when people don’t accept responsibility for their actions and I certainly don’t want to be that kind of person. I know that I have to own my faults and they’re all things I plan to continue working on. I am only sharing my experience with my TBI so that you might understand those who are living with one just a little bit better.
