The PCS Recovery Paradox: Patience With Time, Urgency With Action

What if I were to tell you that the keys to your post-concussion recovery requires 2 seemingly paradoxical concepts? What are they? The first one is that you need to have patience with your timeline, but at the same time, immediacy with your actions. Hi, my name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions, Over a 20-year time span, it came to me that slow recovery does not equal no recovery, but almost without certainty, no action equals no momentum. Let's begin. In this video, I want to go through the 2 different extremes that I have seen in people and in myself. In terms of their state of their post-concussion syndrome recovery. Also, I want to give you one thing that you can do today to catalyze that recovery so that you are going to become the person you know you can be. Let's start with extreme number 1. Now, I found myself in this situation more than the other. When you think of this extreme, you think of someone who is panicked in the moment, Who wants to recover tomorrow and therefore feels pressure, feels stress, feels a great desire to do any and everything. This was, this was me multiple times. Anytime I found a new supplement, a new routine, a new therapy, I would try it. But I wouldn't try it in small doses. I would try any and everything. My desire and my urgency caused a greater need in my system To want to do everything, not understanding that the body has capacity. The body has only so much ability to take in new stimulus. I just thought the more the better. The more I could do, the greater my potential of recovery. Now, herein lies the biggest problem with this situation. I believed that what I did today, if I were to go ahead and Go to a therapy. I was going to go get some work done maybe on my neck, some soft tissue repair. I would feel better the day after, maybe even, you know, hours after that treatment. I did not know something that basically stalled my recovery for months. That concept of the echoes of your recovery. I didn't understand that what you do today doesn't necessarily mean that you will feel the results, feel that benefit shortly thereafter. I did not understand that what I was doing in that moment was as much trying to fix some of the symptoms as it was trying to change who I was in my recovery. My goal in that moment was to make myself feel better, was to, on my way home driving from that appointment, feel Wow, that neck pain is gone, that dizziness no longer. But that was never the case. And months after months with, you know, technique and supplement and treatment after treatment where I tried the same thing but had the same limited results made me thinking like, is this the person I'm destined to become and destined to live with? For the rest of my life. See, that created an intense amount of pressure and stress in the system, a stress that carried forward where I would go ahead and I'd try a bunch of things. I'd crash and fall back down and think, ah, I can't do this anymore. I would therefore get a surge of energy, try it again, and crash right back down because I didn't have any sustained results. It was a roller coaster, up and down and up and down. But at the end of the day, I was no further ahead than I was when I started my recovery. I had completely plateaued. Now, the second extreme I felt from time to time as well. This is the extreme of people who will only act when they feel perfectly well. Now, I don't know about you, but the number of days that I felt well In my PCS recovery, I could count on one hand. It was very, very few. So if I was constantly waiting to get up and not have that brain fog and not have that cognition issues and that dizziness and that overall malaise in the system, I was going to be waiting for a long time. So my issue in this case wasn't so much that I didn't know what to do. I had read everything. I'd watched countless recovery videos. I knew exactly what to do. My issue lied in the fact that I was not taking that information and applying it. Now understand that understanding what to do is step one, is phase one. It's a very important part of your recovery, educating yourself. Knowing what are the different options that will help me recover, that is great. But a vast majority of people get stuck in this phase. They know everything but apply nothing. Now, understanding is not going to heal your body. Understanding is not going to make your symptoms go away. What it is going to do is it is over time going to eventually increase the stress in the system. Because you're just going to learn and to learn and to learn, and that will compile and create that congestion in your mind about all these things that you're really wanting to do but not ever able to apply. You're constantly waiting every day, every morning, for that day to wake up and feel perfect so that I can start. Let me tell you this, movement precedes mood. You cannot wait to feel better to start and to act. You need to act to feel better. A lot of people have that wrong. They feel like, I am waiting to be the person who is ready to recover, instead of, I'm ready to be the person who is acting to help initiate my recovery. They have it backwards. Okay, too many times, myself talking to numerous people who who are in that deep rut of recovery, they are passive in their recovery. They are watching, they are thinking, they have intentions, great intentions to start tomorrow, next week, when life is a little less chaotic. Well, guess what? There's always going to be something coming up. There's always going to be something new, whether it's in yourself or in your environment or something around you. You cannot wait to act. The world will not wait for you. You need to initiate this process and become an active part of your recovery. This is a point that is so tough to really understand. Your patience in your recovery timeline is different than your patience in your actions. Again, let me repeat that. Being patient to see results Of those actions you take today, reducing the symptoms that you're feeling is what you need. What you don't need is patience to act. If you wait to act, you're never going to feel better. You're never going to have the momentum, the motivation to scale, to add those things that you need in your life. You need to act today. It doesn't matter how you feel. It matters what you do and how consistent you are. See, the brain is a prediction machine. It takes up 20% of your energy but only 2 to 3% of your actual body mass. It is an energy-consuming machine. One of the ways it reduces the amount of energy it consumes is predicting what you're going to do next. If every day you get up, you think, ah, I should act, but you know, I just don't feel like it today, it's going to tell you when you get up That's normal. That's the way it should be. When you get up, you don't feel great, we don't do anything. We sit, we lay, we relax. Now again, for a day or two, that is fine. If that becomes the norm, your body becomes deconditioned, your mind becomes deconditioned. That becomes who you are. You are someone who rests, who relaxes, who is not active in their recovery. Now this might be hard to hear, It was hard to hear for me, but the truth sometimes hurts. And why it hurts is because it is a life that you've been living. And when you get up and you start to change how you act and you add simple little actions, it won't feel good. Your brain is going to tell you to stop because your brain, like I mentioned, is a prediction machine. It is saying, this is not how you behave for the last month. Year, you've been getting up and just getting through life. You have not been acting in a way that is trying to be proactive or trying to show signs of recovery. So it is going to tell you, this is not right, this is not safe, because this is not who you are. But to change who you are is to act differently than you have in the past. So taking small steps today will allow you to take bigger steps Tomorrow, which will influence and increase that safety in your system. And then at some point when you get up and you want to do some breathwork, gratitude journaling, you want to add some movement, your body won't be so resistant because you have changed who you are. You've changed how you act. You changed how you exist in your recovery. You are no longer passive. You are active. You are the one responsible for your recovery. You are not the one who is responsible for getting in this position. Let me, let me be clear about that. But at the end of the day, no one should care more about being a better version of you than you. And the biggest change you can make is from waiting for something magical to happen, waiting for that perfect day, is to starting today. And that's what I'm going to implore you to do. After watching this video, I want you to take one step. I don't care if that step takes 2 seconds or 2 minutes. It is a sign to your system that this is how I look to behave. I'm changing who I am so that I can change who I can be in the future. Now, I want to leave you with one simple thing. Again, I mentioned how you need to start doing something today. So one simple thing you can do today, and you're going to scale this up over time. Remember, urgency in your outputs, patience in your outcomes. Okay, again, I am okay if my recovery takes longer than I'd like, but I need to start today because that recovery is never going to happen if I don't do it today. Okay, so in order to be urgent with our outputs but patient with our outcomes, I'm going to give you Something so dramatic but yet so simple that you can start today. Now, before I begin, I want you to go ahead and look in the description. It has a link to what I call, call the belief reset. Now, the belief reset is something simple. It is an easy way to kickstart your recovery. It's a 10-minute audio. All I want you to do with this 10-minute audio, find somewhere comfortable to lay down, put your headphones on. Limit your distractions and just let be. Be open-minded and be receptive. The point of this is to start changing that narrative in your mind. Start changing how you think about your symptoms and yourself, and start thinking about that future self. So that's the belief reset in the description. Thank you. Now, what is that simple thing that we can do today that can start our Shift. Shift from worrying about, ah, I'm never going to recover, to I'm going to recover when my body is ready, but I need to start today. Okay, what you're going to do, I want you to think of one thing. If you could choose one thing that you wish back in your life, or you wish that you could have— for me, it was always movement. I would always wish that I could get back to being an active person, being an athlete growing up, a fit Physical education teacher. Activity was part, a main part of my life. So when I lost the ability to move without symptoms, it was a huge part of my state. It took a huge toll on my mental well-being. So I would sit in bed when I get up and I would visualize for 5 minutes. Okay, it could be 10 minutes. The ideal state is actually from numerous studies I've read is actually 12 minutes. But let's start small. So maybe if it's only 2 minutes, it's 3 minutes, it doesn't matter, but you're starting the process. So you're going to visualize. I want you to visualize what that state looks like in its perfect form. So for me, it was getting up, feeling great, looking out the window, seeing the sunrise, hearing the birds chirping, feeling my body in a state that I could move and do anything I want. Going downstairs, doing my workout. And again, during that workout, I want you to feel that emotion. You have to connect positivity in those thoughts, in those expressions, to that visualization. The mind cannot tell something that has been vividly rehearsed in your mind and something that has actually happened. So I'm going to go ahead and elicit those positive responses. I'm— when done, when I'm done visualizing, I'm just going to give a big fist bump, I'm going to high-five myself in the mirror, I'm going to make sure I understand the positivity of that thought. Okay, so that's the first thing. I'm going to visualize my end state, whatever you want it to be. Maybe for some people it's socializing with friends or going back to work or eating the foods that you want to eat. Okay, whatever it is, I want you to visualize that in as much detail as possible. Okay, as many senses as you can include, the better. The second thing I want you to do, and again, this is just as important as that first part, okay, is I want you to do one thing today that's gonna get you to that point. You cannot simply just visualize and just let be. Over time, your brain will start to say, but how come your actions aren't connecting to these thoughts? You need to make sure that you're linking your thoughts with your actions. So, I'm going to do one thing today that's going to start the process to get me to that person. So, for me, it was walking to the mailbox, doing 5 air squats, anything that I could tolerate where I wouldn't become highly symptomatic. And again, next week, it's 10 air squats, it's walking around the block. You see how I'm slowly scaling the system At the same time, I'm convincing my mind that this is safe, I am supported, this is not going to cause me harm. This is not something that's going to change, like I said, in a day, a week. It might take months, it might take longer. But understand that you are powerful. You can change your state. Your brain is simply looking for what has been rehearsed. What can I predict is going to happen? Provide the prediction of the thing that you want to happen. Don't try to constantly avoid what you don't. We're thinking positivity. We're trying to think where we're reaching for. What's that North Star? And then I want you to take those steps today to start getting there. Now, I hope you got something out of this video. The understanding that you are a change agent in your recovery. You have amazing power to change your state. It starts with one action, but it has to start today, not next week. So stop the video, stop listening to the podcast, okay? I want you to do what I just asked. Visualize your ideal state and start today. One thing you can add that's going to get you closer to that person. I believe in you because I was at the same place that you are, stuck deep in that rut of recovery without a hope, without a belief. Until I started to act in line with the person I wanted to become, and that changed everything. I hope you have yourself a great day. We'll see you later.