My Crazy, Caring Brain

The complexity and care of my brain continues to amaze and astound me.

I have been learning a lot about our body, mind and brain from the NICABM as well as books by Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and Dr. Nadine Burke Harris (in order of what I read).

So when I experienced my first “dirt nap” (aka. unconscious for 30 seconds in the Whistler bike park), 30 minutes of lost memory as well as frozen emotions, I was able to put this experience into some perspective.

You are probably familiar with the terms “fight, flight or freeze” when it comes to stress responses. My brain clearly chose the freeze option. Not only was my body frozen, my memories and my emotions were also frozen. The crash also clearly impacted my episodic and emotional memories.

I have no memory of falling off my bike and hitting the ground. My memory picks up again when I was standing off the trail near the tree house looking at my dented helmet, then my husband and then Mel from Bike Patrol. The following conversation was on repeat: 

“Is this my helmet?” I asked.

“Yes,” my husband replied.

“Did I go down?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t even remember going down!”

Then I laughed out loud. A little bit maniacally.

One of the signs of a concussion was confirmed early.

I was mostly unemotional for the next 36 hours. In fact, my first ER doc kept calling me “stoic” – no one has ever called me “stoic” before!

There were only two instances where I showed any emotion besides being in pain: 1) A young rider who was brought into the Whistler ER was hyperventilating for a very long time. I am typically quite sensitive to the emotions of others around me and hearing this brought tears to my eyes. My empathy was clearly not impacted. 2) I was transported to Lions Gate Hospital by ambulance and the thought of an overnight stay in the hospital didn’t sound appealing at all. Our friend Dr. Wai-Ben Wong (from the Glotman Simpson Cycling Club) was working that night though and I had tears in my eyes when he arrived at my bedside. He took over for my husband who desperately needed sleep by this point. 

But how is it that my brain knew to hit the rewind button to prevent me from remembering the fall before I even hit my head? I recently listened to Dr. Daniel Siegel discuss how our internal checker uses a Scan - Alert - Motivate process to help protect us and keep us alive. I guess my internal checker scanned the environment, alerted my brain to the pending problem and then motivated the freezing. Maybe it anticipated something awful was going to happen and initiated the freeze early? 

Also, how did my brain know to freeze my emotions? I am typically the kind of person who cries during a really good ad on TV. I am pretty sure if my emotions were unleashed, I would have been a wreck!

Does my crazy, caring brain know me so well that it knew exactly what I didn't need to remember? Makes me wonder. 

I do know part of my recovery was because my husband made every effort to be with me from the moment he realised I crashed to his continued support and care over the next month (and beyond). That is an important part of recovery following a traumatic event.

I don't know if my memories are gone for good or just hidden somewhere in my brain. I don't know if I will ever get those memories back. If I do, I have no idea what impact that will have on me. Update: a physician friend told me these memories will be gone for good. I hope he’s right!

For now, I will just be grateful for my recovery and the fact I can't remember the worst of it. 

Unfortunately, my husband can remember though. 

When I tell the story of my crash, I pass it over to him to fill in the blanks. It has actually become our story.

PS. I wish I had a copy of my CT scan to show you.

Resources:

NICABM. “How to Work with Clients Who Struggle with an Inner Critic: What’s Going On in the Brain When the Inner Critic is Active.” 2022: Module 2.  

Photo: NICABM