Brain Injury: Does Gender or Age make a difference?
I recently received an E-mail asking about a possible relationship and marriage from someone with a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and its affect upon the relationship.
What I wrote back was the following: How TBI affects someone is determined, in most cases, by gender, age of injury, family background and coping ability. Women, who tend to be self-reliant, handle TBI better than men, who look to someone to nurture them. I can state this from all the various support groups I have interviewed and discussed this issue. Women seem have a better support system. We are mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and tend to be in social networks. Women tend to share their feelings with other women, while most men talk about the subject or activity, such as golf, baseball, work and rarely share their feelings with each other. The exception to this is ethnic or blue collar workers who may hang out at social clubs or pubs. If the injury is early in life, he may not feel the loss of his self as much as in later life. The worst time to have a TBI is during the teen period, when your identity has not been developed. Does he have a supportive family and how does he cope with stress and daily living also is a major factor.
The good news is he can recover, even after all these years. The work and the integrative program we have put together that involves, nutrition, exercise, cognitive, audio, visual, emotional, trauma and brain training has brought people back from the extreme of having no memory and locked-in syndrome to going back to college. What is great about the program is that the man you’re dating can speak with the patients who have improved and hear it from them. The key to recovery is that he wants to recover and is willing to follow the program, which at times is very restrictive, especially the diet.
This means doing daily neurofeedback, watching your diet, exercise, daily planners, etc., yet, he can return to a normal life. I have and recently had another concussion and back working. This is # 4 TBI plus a stroke, plus Lyme disease.
