In this instructional video, concussion survivor and PCS coach David Brimacombe explains that recovery from post‑concussion syndrome is driven less by the physical symptoms themselves and more by the internal questions a person repeatedly asks. He describes how the brain’s meaning‑making function and the reticular activating system (RAS) filter attention, turning self‑focused questions about danger into amplified symptoms. Brimacombe then offers a practical method: consciously notice unhelpful thoughts, rephrase them into specific, short‑term, solution‑oriented questions, and replace chronic, threat‑laden queries with three vetted questions—“What feels a little safer today?”, “What’s one small win I can build on?”, and “What does calm look like now?”. He illustrates how these reframed questions shift perception from a global threat to manageable, actionable concerns, reducing hyper‑arousal and supporting the nervous system. The video concludes with advice to celebrate small wins, use breathwork or quiet moments to down‑regulate, and recognize that calm is personal and can coexist with lingering symptoms. The overall message is that by reshaping internal dialogue, individuals can create a safer internal environment, lower symptom intensity, and build momentum toward long‑term PCS recovery.
Chapters
Your recovery isn't shaped by your symptoms. It's determined by the questions that you keep asking yourself. Hi and welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective. My name is David Brimacombe, and after 7 concussions over 20 years, I learned a lot about the questions that I was asking myself and the answers that I was providing. In this video, I want to go through how the questions you ask determines your recovery trajectory. Let's begin. Let's start with this: your brain is a meaning-making machine. Okay, the questions that you ask will elicit answers, and those answers will create actions and thoughts and values that create your identity. So as someone with PCS, who is constantly asking themselves, why me? Why do I still have these symptoms? Why do I feel terrible as soon as I get up? Why can't I go into a store without having the light and sound sensitivity? Those questions are going to be answered, and the answers are not only going to come in the form of your subconscious loop playing in your mind, but also in forms of physical symptoms that are going to appear. Now, This might seem crazy that if I ask a question, my body will respond with a physical symptom. Like, I'm going into a store. Why do I always feel symptomatic when I go grocery shopping? So you might think, how would my body respond with symptoms after a question? Truth be told that what you're doing by telling yourself these things or asking these questions is that you're changing your brain's filter, your reticular activating system, or your RAS. You're having it look for things that it might not be looking for otherwise. If you're asking the question, you're going to be conscious of those things. So again, if I'm going into a store asking myself, why do I always become light sensitive as soon as I go into a store with fluorescent lights? I go in, I'm going to look at the lights, I'm going to think about the lights, My eyes are now going to be hypersensitive to the light. And again, I'm not to say that this is all in your mind, this is all in your brain. What I am saying is that when you focus on a problem, the problem becomes magnified. So what can I do to reshape how my recovery trajectory is going to go? Now, first of all, okay, I have to understand that these questions are highly powerful. Because the questions are determining my course of action. It's going to determine how my body interprets the world around me. Is it safe? Is it dangerous? If all my questions are all about danger, about preventing things from happening, guess what? Okay, I'm going to be looking for signs of danger. My body's going to be hyper-aroused. My alarm bells are going to be ringing at the slightest sense of danger. Okay, again, this has nothing to do with your symptoms. It has everything to do with your body's interpretation and your body's ability to source out and to look out for things. Okay, so how can I change this? What are some ways that I can change the way my body interprets the environment around me and therefore creates a safer sense of self and therefore lower Symptoms. Okay, let's start with what we can do. The first thing you can do is every time a thought comes to your mind that you know is not going to benefit you, you know is actually going to elicit greater symptoms, I want you to refine it. Okay, and again, it's not about stopping those thoughts and saying, I'm not going to think about anything negative for the rest of my life. Let's be realistic, that's not possible. Okay, what is possible? is to be conscious of the thoughts that are coming in our mind. So a thought comes in, what's wrong with me? No. Okay, acknowledge it. That's fine. That's, that's not guiding or not helping my recovery. I'm going to rephrase that. Why does my nervous system feel off today? Again, it's not saying that I'm broken. It's not saying that it can't be fixed. It's a short-term temporary issue that I'm going to have to deal with. Okay? And, and being specific with that, what's wrong with my nervous system today? I know for one, it's my nervous system, and two, it's just today. So maybe I'm going to do some breathwork. Maybe I'm going to go in a quiet spot and relax, do some reading, something that's going to downregulate my body. Okay? But I've now provided a question that has an answer. If I just say, what's wrong with me? Everything around me is going to elicit symptoms. I feel terrible. I always feel this way. You see the difference between those 2 simple questions? They might not seem very dissimilar on the surface, but how your body interprets it is vastly different. It sees one as a threat to your long-term health and vitality. The other one is just a threat today, and it's a threat That you know a path to fix. Another type of question is, why is my— why are my symptoms never going away? Okay, and again, not specific, long-term. I can reshape that to something like, what has improved since last month, since last week? Okay, I am making this a short-term. I'm shrinking the scale. My body can't take vast questions, questions that talk about the greater extent of my, of my being, of my ability to recover. I'm never gonna— why can't I ever recover? Why do I always feel so bad? Now you're— the entirety of your body is susceptible to the symptoms that are going to come on. Again, this might seem like I'm attacking you. saying that your symptoms are simply derived from your thought processes, the questions that you ask. And that's not necessarily the case, but the thoughts that you ask yourself are going to exacerbate the existing symptoms. They're going to bring out, okay, those negative feelings because of the negative thoughts, okay? The energy that you're going to put into your system, in this case, negative questions, negative energy, is going to be reflected in those negative outputs, your physical symptoms. Okay, so simply change how you question. Okay, from something of long-term, of whole body, be more specific. Okay, why is my nervous system struggling today? I can fix it. I know what to solve. So just a simple takeaway here. What you can do in your everyday life, okay? As soon as you start to feel those negative thoughts creep in, and they will creep in on a cycle, it's going to happen a lot, but the more you do this, the less frequent that will become. And I want you to insert 2 or 3 questions that you're going to use all the time. And these are questions that have been vetted, have been created, that instill safety instead of a threat, instead of danger that is going to increase your symptoms. Okay, so these are three questions. First one: What feels a little safer today? So you're keeping it small. What feels a little safer? Maybe today I don't feel like the bright lights are a threat. Maybe today the loud noises aren't bugging me. But you're keeping it small, and you're working on what has improved, what has actually scaled up. From last week, last month, from yesterday? What are some small improvements? Number 2, what's one small win I can build on? Again, part of this program that I talk about religiously is start small and scale up. Okay? So, what's one small win that I can build up on? So, maybe you have really struggled with your diet and you feel like the inflammatory foods that you're eating, You're eating lots of sugar, you're eating late at night, your dietary routine is not very good. Maybe last night, last week, okay, you skipped dessert, you didn't eat after supper, and you felt great. Guess what? That's a small win that you're going to use to build momentum, that you can actually create more changes thereafter. Okay, so what's one small win that I can build off of for future Gains. And your third one, what does calm look like now? Okay, so again, understand this: when you're in the throes of PCS recovery, okay, calm does not necessarily mean super quiet, there's no mental chatter. You can still have symptoms and feel improvements. You can still have symptoms and be happy and be okay with that. But what does calm feel like to you? Okay, calm maybe feels like I have less of those automatic negative thoughts running through my mind. Calm might feel like I was able to do some breathwork and feel my heart rate lower and increase my parasympathetic drive. Calm to you is not calm to someone else. Calm to you is not calm to you prior to your concussion. But we're working on the— on your current context. And we're working on how have you improved in the last week, last month. Okay, understand that PCS recovery is the long game, and it is difficult to, to think about that. But as soon as you put one foot in front of the other, you feel that confidence from the gains that you're making. It'll make it a lot easier. So working on what is one small win, how do I feel calm in this moment? Okay, those types of questions are going to help you create momentum, which will help you with your recovery. Just remember, small wins today equals big victories later on. It doesn't have to be major accomplishments that you should celebrate. Celebrate everything. Okay, you made it through the day without having a panic attack. You made it through the day without feeling overwhelmed. Okay, these are all big wins for you in this moment. Okay, remember that. I appreciate you. I appreciate you staying till the end. Okay, your brain is not broken. You're just learning to heal. Thank you and have yourself a great day.
