Desperation Skills - Meeting the Five-Year-Old (3rd Post)
During my early childhood in the 1950s, at age 5, I had the great misfortune to experience a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Tragically the resulting brain damage from the head wound was not accurately diagnosed until 2019. Here is the tale of how my 5-year-old self began the lifelong mission to “solve the puzzle of me.”
In the 1950s, head injuries and the lingering impact were often not treated by the medical community. At age 5 I was running in my back yard, tripped over a tree root, fell, and upon landing my forehead collided with a pointed piece of concrete. My injured forehead was treated at home by my parents. During my recovery, once a small horizontal scar materialized on my forehead, my brain and I were considered healed.
Like many adults, my early childhood memories are very few and fragmented. The only clear and concise memories I have are around the TBI. I remember running around my backyard. I remember stumbling over the tree root. I remember seeing the concrete point. After those memories, I only remember once wearing the big gauze bandage over my forehead while at school. And then I deeply remember a little while after the accident how people reacted to my behaviors and personality. I found their negative reactions to me alarming.
My childhood friends began to tell me I was too angry too often. They began to refuse to play with me. It became difficult for me to both make and keep playmates. I felt so lost. I thought I was acting and talking like other kids. However, I was not receiving the same reactions as they received. Adults began to tell me I was too angry, too intense, and too anxious. I remember playing mostly by myself or with my sister, who was 2 years younger than me. I remember watching both her and my older sister make friends, yet making new friends was never as easy for me.
At age 5 I did not know underneath that horizontal scar there was brain damage. I did not know I had a TBI-induced personality. I did not know at age 5 the executive functions of my brain had been damaged. I did not know the damage also meant my thoughts were frequently run over by my emotions and survival instincts. I only knew I wanted other kids to like me and to be my playmates. I also wanted people to stop telling me how angry I was. And I wanted to stop feeling so very confused and frustrated as to how I was different from others. I did not realize my “broken” brain could not help out with any of these desires. And it could not help me other aspects of myself outside of the TBI symptoms. There was so much going on inside me I could not articulate to myself or others.
Desperation became my next closet companion, always on the heels of panic. They seemed to haunt me every day. So desperation, panic, and I was a 5-year-old, did what all lost children in a broken childhood frequently do. No one was helping me, so my very desperate self decided to figure out a way to help me. At that moment as a 5-year-old, I did not understand I was actually developing coping skills - ways to survive. Adults sometimes refer to good or bad coping skills. Now as an adult and also remembering my desperate 5-year-old self, I believe when a coping skill is born - whether it appears good or bad - the skill is always deeply embraced by its creator. Why? Because the skill helps one survive and because the only thing my 5-year-old knew was it worked and she felt better.
So the first desperation skill was when interacting with both kids or adults to watch them very closely and carefully for any signs of disapproval of my words or actions. If I noticed looks or heard words of disapproval, I immediately stopped talking or and/or acting. I did not grasp what I was doing wrong I just knew I was being judged as wrong. I found it was not safe to be me. The next desperation skill was controlling the anger. I worked really hard at that. I would magically transform the feeling into numbness. Or if the anger came roaring out before I realized what was happening I then worked really hard to clean up the mess. Sometimes I simply gave up on this latter idea as I was just too hurt, angry and confused and thus did not care what people thought or said to me. I was just too exhausted to try and fix it and so I would hang out with a rather new companion - despair.
Sadly this is all I remember of my early childhood - the accident and the aftermath. However, I had my desperation plan so at least I functioned.
After my TBI was finally diagnosed in 2019 I began rehabilitation for my brain damage. My rehab consists of many services, including trauma and cranial sacral therapy. For one session we focused on the head wound at age 5. I had a very startling and very profound experience. In a meditative state, I saw an image of my 5-year-old self. She was propped up in her bed. On her forehead was the large gauze bandage. Looking at her I sensed her aloneness, saddens, and an empty heart. It appeared her desperation had morphed into deep despair. The bedroom door opened. I watched as a mirror image of the 5-year-old walked into the bedroom. She sat on the bed. She took the wounded 5 years old’s hand in hers and held it gently. She then spoke to the wounded child. She said I do not know what is wrong with us. I am here now and I will never leave you alone by yourself. I will do whatever it takes to find out what is wrong with us. And when I do find out I will get it fixed. And then the scene dissolved. I cried for both my 5-year-old and for myself in the session. I had discovered how this heroic part of me was born. And that part of me finally accomplished her mission in May of 2018. And we will eventually get to that story.
For now, there is another hero in this saga to meet. Tragically at age 10, another TBI to the exact spot on my forehead occurred. However, the 10-year-old me kept the promise made to the 5year old to go on to expand Operation Desperation Skills.