I Was Doing PCS Recovery Completely Wrong

This might be the hardest truth in your recovery, but it also might be the thing that finally sets you free. Hi, my name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I learned that I needed to take radical responsibility in my recovery to see the progress I wanted to see. Let's begin. Now, I know a lot of you are at a point of your recovery Where you are stuck. You've tried all the different specialists, you've tried every supplement on the market, you've tried the therapies, you've tried the protocols, the systems, and you're still stuck. You're still stuck in a person, stuck in a phase, stuck in a place where you don't feel like yourself. You don't feel like you can function the way you want to. Now understand that this is naturally a part of post-concussion recovery. It's the unfortunate situation where your systems have been dysregulated, your body is out of sorts, and now it's at this very point where you're going to make the turn from someone who is passively watching their recovery to someone who is active, someone who is the change agent who's going to change the trajectory of their life from here on out. And that's what this video is going to be all about. It's going to be giving you that motivation, that competencies, so that you can become the person that you could only imagine would be possible. Okay? And it is truly within your grasp. Now, I don't know about you, but at this point in my recovery, I was constantly searching for things. I was constantly watching videos, constantly listening to podcasts like this. This one, thinking that this was the way out, thinking that, you know, by simply listening, by simply engrossing myself and educating myself about all the different systems, the protocols, the beliefs I needed to have, that I would just naturally heal. Like my body would just encompass these things and it would naturally become who— part of who I am. And therefore change where I was going. Now, little did I know that that passivity that I was showing by simply just watching, by simply just being a viewer instead of a participator, was going to keep me stuck. And it was going to keep me stuck for a very, very long time. Now, again, this was something that I did not know. The things that I'm going to talk about today are the things that I wish I knew 5 years ago, 10 years ago, when I was stuck in that, in that valley of recovery. I couldn't see the sun come up. I was basically in a cave with no light and no way out, no idea what to do. Okay, I was scared, I was lost, I was frustrated, I was anxious about my future. But I hit a stumbling point. Okay, I hit a turning point where all these things changed, all those beliefs of negativity, all those thoughts that I was just going to be stuck in this body for the rest of my life altered. Okay, that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about how those turning points came, okay, and why I went from someone who believed that I was destined to live a life of cocoon therapy, of lying in my bed, of being a zombie, to someone who knew Not thought, but knew recovery was not only possible, but plausible, but within my power. Okay, and that I was the one that was going to change my course. I wasn't going to rely on luck, on fortune, on someone else doing the work for me. I was going to do it. When I found that out, when I learned this. What we're going to talk about today. I learned how to take radical responsibility of my recovery. Everything changed from that moment on. Now, let's, let's start by saying this. This is not to say that if you need to take radical responsibility of your recovery, that you were to blame, you were the reason for this. Now, I'm going to say in most, if not all, cases, you are just a victim of a circumstance. For me, 7 concussions, 4 of which were sport-related, 2 of which were teaching physical education, where it was an errant ball who hit me in the side of the head, a weight that was dropped on my head. These are all just circumstantial dumb luck things. Now, the dumb luck stops when the actual concussion occurs. At that point, it is now on you. You are now solely responsible for turning from a place of destitute to a place of recovery. Now, it isn't easy. Everything I talk about on this channel, I follow the moniker, okay, simple but not easy. The theory sounds simple, okay? What I'm going to talk about, all these lifestyle modifications, changing your sleep, your mindset, regulating your nervous system, those seem simple in theory. But I know when you're at a place Where everything is difficult— opening your eyes, going outside, the sensitivities, okay, the brain fog, the anxieties— that makes almost anything seem impossible. So we're going to break that barrier. We're going to go from those simple concepts, make them practical, make them small to start, so we can go from something that seems impossible that seems almost too easy and seems impossible not to overcome and not to achieve. And that is the goal of this channel. Okay, now the great— one of the greatest things I learned, the concept of neuroplasticity, the power of your brain to heal itself. Now, up until about 5 to 10 years ago, it was thought that most of the brain's power to change, to heal, to form new neurons and new neural pathways was set when you were a child, when you were younger. So the thought that if you're your 20s or 30s or 40s or beyond, that to have that neuroplasticity, that power to change your neural pathways, was not possible. So when you have that concussion and, you know, everything seems to be misfiring, dysregulated, there's no way that I can change this neural pathway. Okay, I found out otherwise. I found and I heard, okay, from a number of different places. Specifically, I heard from Andrew Huberman. Dr. Daniel Amen about the concept of neuroplasticity, the power of your brain to heal itself. Now, we know that those neural pathways were laid at one point of your life, okay? The beliefs that you have, the associations. So the association of going outside and feeling joy, okay? Going to work and having those stresses. All those things are associative connections that you've made in your brain. Now, those connections can be relearned, can be changed, can be altered at any point of your life. And again, I'm going to say this, it is simple but not easy. I'm not saying that this is going to be easy to rework those neural pathways from someone who is struggling to get out of bed, struggling to focus on doing their daily tasks and being a person that can be responsible and be productive, to someone who's going to be the best version of themselves. Not easy, okay, but possible. And that is one of the greatest things you'll know, is this recovery that you're going to embark on, this journey that you're going to go on, okay, it's not going to be easy. But all you need to know is it's possible. That is the only thing you need to know. For me, I could care less if it was going to take 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years. All I wanted to know is, would it work? Could I do it? Could I be in control of my destiny? Now, for the longest time, going to doctor's appointments, trying any and every supplement, I was just hoping that something else, some external source, was going to heal me. Now, that was good, and again, anything that was going to heal my problems, I was down for. But when I learned that I could make some of these changes in my life Okay, I could influence the symptoms that I'm feeling and therefore reduce those and feel like I could be part of society again. It blew my mind when I learned that neuroplasticity was real and I started to apply it and see it in action. It was, it was probably the greatest revelation in my life. Again, you go from thinking that this is the place that you're going to be stuck in This vegetative comatose state to someone. And again, I'll say this now, and I'll say this multiple times if you're going to listen to this podcast channel. I am a better person today than I was before my first concussion, because all those systems, all that belief that I instilled in my system, that ability to understand my body, to be intuitive with my body. has now carried forward past my recovery. I'm now 8 years after my last bout of PCS, and I feel like the best version of myself. I feel like I'm improving every day. I feel like doing something like starting a channel to help advocate for the needs of those who are struggling with post-concussion syndrome is improving those deficits that I had. Again, I'm not to say that this is going to be easy. But understand, the brain can heal, and those symptoms that you're feeling is not a sign that your brain is inherently broken. It's a sign that your symptoms, your body, your hormones are out of sorts. But we can fix that. The body is a miraculous healer. If you believe, you understand, you start small and scale, anything is possible. Again, I am living proof of that. Walking down that path of recovery twice. Okay, the first time, horrible, but I learned a few things. I was able to recover. Then I received another concussion 9 years ago and again had to go through that same process. But along the way, during those 2 bouts of post-concussion syndrome, I learned a lot of things that helped me, that created belief in the system. Belief allowed me to do more actions. Actions created The desire for momentum and motivation to be the best version of myself. And again, this might seem strange to worry about being the best version of yourself when you're just trying to get out of bed, but it is possible. Okay, I want to empower you with this channel. That is my goal. Okay, I want you to sit up in that bed, in that chair, and think, you know what, maybe David is Right. Maybe I can be the change agent. It's, it's not easy. I'm going to tell you right now, I'll remind you this, it is not easy, but it is possible. And if you come with the right mindset, okay, if you come with that same focus and you instill in yourself those small little actions that will compound over time, it will happen. I believe that wholeheartedly. Okay. Now I want to just talk quickly about this concept of radical responsibility, okay? What it means for me in my recovery, what it meant when I was starting off, when I, I started learning about this concept, okay? I always think I want you to start at the smallest scale of any kind of protocol or system. So if I want to add gratitude, I'm going to do one sentence of gratitude Put it on a sticky somewhere visual that I'm going to walk by multiple times in a day. Okay, I'm making it visual. I'm starting small. Maybe next week it's 2, or maybe I'm going to start a journal in a few weeks, but I'm laying the foundation. Understand that any new habit that you're going to form is going against the previous identity, that identity of recovery, that identity of living in those symptoms, living with That fear and anxiety of what life is going to be like. So if you then go ahead and make all these changes, your brain is going to stop you. It's going to say, whoa, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this. That is going against who we are. Your brain is simply trying to keep you safe, keep you alive. So anytime you do something that seems like a stray from your typical behavior, that's when you start to feel that anxiety. That apprehension, like maybe I shouldn't be doing that. But that is not your brain trying to optimize your life. It's your brain trying to keep you safe based on past behavior. So I want to start small. I talked about that gratitude, that one sticky. I'm going to plaster it on my mirror. I'm going to walk by that multiple times. Again, that's phase 1. Maybe I want to add some movement, but right now I have a sensitivity. I have a low tolerance. I walk for 10 minutes. I become symptomatic. So I'm going to walk below that threshold. Maybe it's a 5-minute to the mailbox and back, and that's all I'm going to do for a couple weeks. Okay, maybe then I'm going to do a small loop. But again, everything that you're going to do at this beginning part of your recovery is you are going to instill in your system that you are changing your identity. You're becoming a new person. That new person should not scare your brain, scare your nervous system into A shock where all the alarm systems come off, because you are going to reinforce over time that these are things that are healing, not hurting you. Okay, so again, gratitude, movement. Maybe I want to add some mindset. And down below I linked— it is a 10-minute audio. I call it the Belief Reset. And what it is, it's for you to just put your headphones on, lie down, sit down, whatever you're going to do. And it's going to walk you through, okay, that belief mindset. It's going to reinforce those thoughts that you need to be thinking about throughout the day. It's going to do a bit of yoga nidra where you're going to feel your body become present in the system. So again, down below, the belief reset is a great tool at this stage of your recovery. So I'm going to empower myself with the mindset, the gratitude, the movement. Maybe I know that when I eat lots of, lots of sugar or caffeine later in the day, I don't feel great. Maybe I'm just going to take out one food item this week. Again, this is all about I am now taking responsibility. Okay? And again, this is hard. I get it. Start with one thing one week, add another the second. Maybe it's just the gratitude journaling. Maybe it's just listening to that belief reset. Whatever it is, you are reinstilling in your body that there is hope, there is belief. I can be part of my recovery. It's it's going to take some time, but everything that's great in life takes time, takes patience, takes the ability to understand how to scale properly. Okay, I appreciate your time and your support of this channel. This is something I'm going to do weekly, posting. Both podcast form as well as on YouTube. The more you interact, the more you can review and rate this show, the more people this reaches. Because again, this is becoming my life's mission, okay, to reach out to those people, the person that I was 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and guide them along. I have walked this path. I've cut back all the weeds and all the overgrowth. so that you can walk forward in a more streamlined way. There's no sense going through a circuitous path, cutting through the forest, being attacked by trees and high grass when you don't have to. Okay, let's walk that path together. Okay, please, if you haven't already, subscribe, like. Um, I love your support and I love hearing comments from you. So until we meet again, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you watching to the very end. I hope you have yourself a fantastic day.