A family friend was interested in learning about neurological rehabilitation.  What do you do with someone who suffers a head injury?  Even minor head injuries can result in increased irritability, memory problems, difficulty with judgment, impulse control… Of course, the list would be long because the brain is so complex. In a way, head injury is like dropping a computer onto the floor.  Anyway, my friend wanted to see what a head injured person looked like so I dug out a dusty, old videotape that I had from a continuing education course I had taken long ago.  What I found was exciting!

The videotape featured an in-house program for individuals with severe brain injury.  Not only that, these clients were “bad dudes.” In other words, even before they suffered a brain injury, they had engaged in all kinds of high-risk behaviors and were generally impulsive, hot-tempered,  erratic,and frequently in trouble with the law. In addition, most head injuries involve some damage to the pre-frontal cortex which modulates these behaviors in the first place.   In traditional therapy, it was thought that since the pre-frontal cortex was damaged, rigid, external structure was needed to bring about cooperative behavior.   However, all of the rules and restrictions actually made these guys worse.  Why?  The missing element was collaboration.

For example,  one man refused to eat.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry, but he had trouble initiating behavior (In fact, it can often take a brain injured client an entire day to get into the shower despite the fact that he knows he needs one badly).  Forcing this man to go to the dining hall only resulted in combative behavior. However, through active collaboration with the patient,  a solution was found.  The therapist, the patient, and 3 of his peers decided on the plan of action.  Would you like someone to come and get you to eat?  Who? What time should he come?  What should he do if you refuse to come?  All of this seems so simple but in example after example, the power of collaborative solutions was demonstrated even with very impaired, very bad dudes!

Collaboration works because it makes the client do some of the work. The brain builds neural connections in response to whatever stimuli it encounters.  If someone has to actively process a problem and come up with solutions, not only is that person more inclined to act on that solution because he came up with it, he will also gain competency for further problems he might encounter.  Whether the situation is coaching, parenting, counseling, or solving a conflict, the more active someone is in finding a solution, the more likely it is that they will follow through and also learn.   The role of the supporting party is to provide options, propose strategies, and offer guidance in evaluating the solution set.  Foisting rigid structures and forcing someone to see the matter your way do little to ensure compliance or good judgment the next time around.

The rediscovery of this videotape was a great find for me! What was particularly rewarding  was the notion that in all of the roles I have played in life, this has been one of my “bread and butter” strategies.  As a parent,  speech pathologist/cognitive specialist and now a life coach,  the power of collaboration has been a common thread.  Sometimes you want to cringe when it doesn’t go smoothly at first but my position is that you end up with a more resilient improvement in the end.  My role as a coach is to provide support and let the brain do it’s work!

March is Brain Awareness Month so the bookstore was overflowing with intriguing selections for me to take on vacation.   I have a lifelong passion for brains.  How do they work? What happens when they are broken? How do you get the most out of your brain?  For instance, I am intrigued by the notion that many of the behavioral observations that have been made about the brain, behavior, cognition, and personality over the course of thousands of years can now be confirmed through imaging techniques such as the fMRI or the PET scan.  Indeed, there is no better time than now to learn about the brain, appreciate individual differences, and to be wowed by it’s wonders.

The first book I read was The Edison Gene/ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child by Thon Hartmann (By clicking the link, you can also read the American Psychiatric Institute’s review  of the book).  There is ongoing controversy as to whether ADHD is a real disorder or if it is the gift of creativity and adaptability in it’s highest form.  Thomas Edison, left school after only 3 months of formal education and was labeled, “a problem child, stupid and difficult” by his teachers.  He set his father’s barn on fire to see what would happen.  He laid on goose eggs to see if he could hatch them.  His mother had to move his laboratory into the basement for fear that he would blow up the house.  Of course, without Thomas Edison, there would be no light bulbs, no phonographs, and no motion pictures among other critical inventions.   The author makes the case that medicating or trying to “break”  the highly creative types like Edison, our society would not move forward.    As I read the book, I imagined the Thomas Edison types to be intuitive- thinking-perceiving types  ( ENTP  and the INTP) using the Myers-Briggs terminology.  Another parallel terms would be right brain thinking (holistic, random, intuitive and a “could be” focus) versus left brain thinking (linear, sequential, concrete,and a “what is” focus).

I agree with the author’s assertion that people are wired differently and are therefore more adept at various tasks.   Some individuals tend to remain open to changes in incoming data and adapt accordingly while others prefer structure, organization and consistency. Neither style of thinking is superior to the other.  (more…)

Recently, I resigned from my job as a speech pathologist in a hospital, a position I had held for 24 years.  What’s more, I now have no hospital affiliation whatsoever for the first time since 1980.  My position at this hospital was on-call, but I hadn’t  worked there in over a year.  In all honesty, I should have dropped out long before that because I had plenty of other endeavors to work on such as continuing to do cognitive rehabilitation for the Courage Center,  training to be a life coach,  completing my Myers-Briggs certification,  developing a blog and a website and taking on my first coaching clients.   I assemble this list not to say, “Oh look how busy I am.”   It’s to make clear that I was clinging to something that I had no room for in my life anymore.   Clearly, hospital work was  my security blanket.  In fact, even when I was in college and graduate school,  I worked in a hospital as a patient transporter/lab specimen runner.   So it is easy to see why dropping my affiliation with a hospital was no easy process! However, it was an important moment when I realized that I was ready to leave the cocoon that was  my identity for so many years.

There are many reasons why an individual embarks on reinventing himself.  In today’s economy, some people are forced to make that change due to a job loss. Others may be dissatisfied because they are performing  jobs that are not tapping into their greatest strengths. Sometimes money and compensation is the issue.  Other times, there is a restlessness that must be addressed.   No matter what the reason, in most cases, there are 3 major stages that you visit and re-visit once you decide to reinvent yourself.

Stage 1:  This is the discovery stage.  Usually you have a vague notion that you want to or must do something different.  Perhaps you research ideas on the internet or you read books to try to zero in on a set of possibilities.  This is a dreamer’s stage and it is full of energy and possibilities.  You don’t need much motivation at this stage because it seems to drive itself.  Often this stage is accompanied by taking a few steps in the direction of  that dream.  The first thing I did was research coaching schools and when I found one that I liked, I enrolled.  It was really exciting to go through the first few rounds of classes but then when I started to notice it wasn’t an exact fit for me, I passed into stage 2.

Stage 2:  This is the stage of self-doubt or your a reality check.  You discover that your dream isn’t a perfectly carved path and that you might need to make some adjustments.  In my case, I chose to add to my skill set with other tools such as learning the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instruments.   I leaned heavily on my best friend and coach who gave me useful feedback and encouragement when the vision got murky.  There were several exciting moments when I felt like the dreamer again and everything was new and exciting.  I had a new scheme to try!   However, that was usually followed by another reality check. I had to learn to refine my vision or simply  be patient.  I even had  to be willing to take feedback (Ugh!).  An individual can get discouraged when going  back and forth between the dreamer and the reality check stages without realizing that it is actually a proving ground for resilience and stability in your new role.   You have to spend some time going among several dreams and reality checks in order to thrive in the final stage of self-invention.

Stage 3: The final stage is the stage of confidence or momentum. Here some of the groundwork you have laid is finally beginning to pay-off.    Perhaps you receive a referral from someone who was present during one of your free seminars that you gave months ago.  Maybe you made an impression on someone that you didn’t even know was listening.  You know you have arrived when there is no longer an inertia that you have to overcome every time you set out to achieve your goals. You sense momentum and your confidence builds as a result.   Certainly there will be more reality checks and occasionally you might even start to dream of something altogether new again. However, when you get to this stage, there is usually enough energy to draw you back to your vision.

The process of reinventing yourself is exciting, at times scary, but ultimately rewarding.  The exciting part is when you are energized by the possibilities for the future. The scary part is when you have to push through moments of self-doubt or disappointment. The rewarding part is when you finally overcome the inertia and feel the flow. Once you achieve this, you can begin to shake yourself out of your cocoon and fly off to explore your new world.