Breaking Free from Loneliness after a Brain Injury

By Michael Cerreto, M.S., CPCRT, CSC, LDR, A Talented Mind Clinic

You wake up every morning certain that your life will remain relatively stable over the years. Then one day, you have a bad accident. When you awake after the accident, you are surrounded by nurses, tubes, beeping monitors. You are shocked – something serious has happened, but you aren’t able to remember exactly what occurred. You find it hard to speak or move. You are staring down a future of doctors, rehabilitation, and uncertainty.

But time and resilience march on. After you are diagnosed with a brain injury, you receive wonderful support and treatment and get a little better each day. You are encouraged by your progress as time passes, but you still think about the job you have lost and the friends who have stopped calling. You feel guilty about the injury’s effect on your family, and you feel powerless to care for them as you did before the accident.

You want more out of life.

The desire to make your life better is rooted in two basic human needs that guide your behavior: the need to feel connected to others around you and the need to contribute to your community. In other words, the need to receive and show love as well as the need to be constructive rather than feeling inadequate. These are powerful needs that can propel you to create a better life.

As you recover from brain injury, you begin to want more out of life. You may feel constrained, however, by your inability to follow conversations, to remember things, and to do physical activities that were once effortless. You feel lonely but reluctant to leave the house, so you withdraw into your own world of TV, reading, eating, and doctor’s appointments. Greater isolation and loneliness set in. Your basic need to feel connected to others goes unmet.

As humans, we try hard to avoid isolation and loneliness by creating expansive lives through school, friendships, sports, art, religion, and family. After a brain injury, your world shrinks. You can quickly withdraw into isolation and loneliness, which feel like shackles that constrain recovery.

You can break free from loneliness.

The good news is that you can break free from loneliness and expand your world again. Having a life of meaning and achievement can help you feel worthwhile and productive after a brain injury. You can have a renewed sense of control over your life, which is important to your recovery.

First, you need to learn how to create relationships from scratch. When you were a kid, you probably had a large variety of friends because you were around people your age each day. You had classmates, teammates, and neighborhood kids next door. These are called relationships of proximity; relationships that are quick to develop because you see the same friends each day. You don’t have to seek out people in unfamiliar places; your friends are at your doorstep. If you lose connection to work, school, and other groups after brain injury, you need to learn how to find places to meet people. In general, many adults complain that they have fewer friends as they get older and often question why. As we age, we tend to lose the daily proximity to people that helps us form friendships when we’re young, and we need to learn how to find friends on our own by getting involved in different groups. The Breaking Free from Loneliness Discussion Questions can help you get started.

Be More Accepting Of Yourself

As a person with a brain injury, you may hesitate to explore new activities and meet new people because you have trouble getting around, following conversations, or finding the right words. You may worry about what others think of you. The likelihood is that many people are more understanding than you think, and that you are more critical of yourself than others are of you. Keep in mind that people will connect to your character, kindness, and interests, regardless of how well you speak or remember names and faces. Like you, they too have a need to connect and feel appreciated.

Preview Social Situations

If you find yourself hesitant to seek new opportunities to meet people, you can use a method called previewing. Let’s say that you are invited to a party at a neighbor’s house and you’re worried about feeling overwhelmed by the noise and conversations. Before the party, you should sit quietly and imagine the faces of the people attending. Select a few people you want to speak with and what you want to discuss with them. Imagine having each conversation. When you go to the party, you should have those conversations, then decide if you want to stay or leave. Previewing helps you imagine how to make a socially overwhelming situation more enjoyable because you prepare for it ahead of time.

Plan Ways to Expand Your Life

Work with a friend or family member to answer the Breaking Free from Loneliness Discussion Questions to determine how you want to expand your world.

Whatever you choose to do outside the home to rebuild your life, make sure you incorporate the activities into a scheduled routine each week. For instance, you may go to the gym from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Monday, you take a painting class every Tuesday from 4 to 5 p.m., and so on. By incorporating your activities into your routine each week, you are more likely to follow through and be consistent.

You should share yourself with the world.

While many things may change after your brain injury, your two basic needs – connecting with others and contributing – will remain. Fulfilling these needs can help you break free from loneliness, expand your life, and share yourself with the world.

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This article originally appeared in Volume 12, Issue 4 of THE Challenge! published in 2018.