Have you ever had a thought stuck in your brain?
In the non-brain-injured world, a thought can be stuck in your head for hours, possibly days, even months.
Imagine, not just one but numerous thoughts going around and around in your brain that don't stop. Even years after the fact. These thoughts can take over your whole life. In the brain injured world, this is called perseveration.
A person who is perseverating may feel trapped because they can't let the thoughts go or may not even see it. For family and friends, it becomes very annoying and despite complaining, the person continues to talk about the same things over and over. Sound familiar?
One of the first articles I wrote focused on brain injury symptoms going away, then coming back and new symptoms showing up. When I first heard about perseveration, I was glad I wasn't struggling with that because I had so many other brain injury related issues to deal with.
About seven months ago, guess who showed up very unexpectedly.
Surprise!
Because I have friends who wrestle with perseveration, I recognized it right away.
My first obsessive thoughts were about buying only local food. I inspect every label and if it's not from Prince George or somewhere in B.C. or Canada, I generally don't buy it. I stopped buying Asian vegetables because they are mostly imported from the U.S. I order meat and eggs from local farmers. As we got into winter, the selection was extremely limited for produce, however it's been quite manageable for my family.
Where it's been and still is a problem is how buying local has taken up so much space in my brain.
Why can't we grow our own food and rely less on the U.S. and Mexico for our produce?
Why are we allowing agricultural land reserves to be bought up by businesses that are not going to produce food?
And I've become judgmental towards consumers who only buy their food from big box stores. Why aren't more shoppers supporting local merchants? I tell myself many times to let this go. These thoughts and others have prevented me from having a decent sleep.
My perseveration has decreased in frequency and intensity since I pulled out my information binders I received through my classes at BIG (Brain Injured Group). The following tips can help slow down or temporarily turn off the cranial merry-go-round:
- Recognize that you are perseverating. You're trying to figure out a problem that you can't fix. It rolls around and around in your head along with other thoughts. You're still hanging onto something from five years ago and you talk about to anyone who will listen to you. People around you tell you to "drop it" or "you've told me this a million times already."
- Reduce situations where you may get stuck. This means having to avoid certain people, situations and topics of conversation that may trigger you.
- Retreat from the situation whether it's leaving the room, picturing a stop sign in your head or explaining to people what is going on.
- Relax, do some deep breathing and tell yourself to stop and move onto a pleasant subject.
- Rethink about if you can change the situation you're obsessing about. If the answer is "no," then tell yourself "change it or accept it.”
- Rebuild by finding ways around perseveration. Limit the amount of time you perseverate, talk to someone you trust, journal your thoughts, ask others to help you move on. Talk to your doctor about possible medications that may help.
Ongoing practice and repetition will repair and change damaged neuron connections so that new and positive behaviours can become the norm.
