The Intense Struggle to Find a Sense of Well Being

Inspirational Reflections for the Victims of Brain Injury and Their Caregiving Families

The Agony of Your Reactions to Anti-Seizure Medications and the Terror of Feeling Like You're Disintegrating

Appreciating What We Have

Escaping the Onus of Unworthiness

Where to Put the Anger and the Pain?

Reconciling the Paradox of Personal Struggle and Other's Struggle: When Choice is Lost

New Musings

Keep on Keeping On

The Dilemma of Keeping A Spiritual Connection When Bodily Issues Clamor for Attention

In Sharp Contrast

Musings to sort...

Strategies for Dealing with the Disorientation of Feeling Disconnected from Yourself

And Once Again We Must "Deal with It"

A Dramatic/Traumatic Turning Point

Courage, Perseverance and Change

What Does Integrity Look Like Five Years Later?

The Paradox of Brain Damage

The Paradox of Gift and Curse

The Struggle to Reconcile a Loud Body with a Sense of Well Being

The Gift and Burden of Post-encephalitis

The Intense Struggle to Find a Sense of Well Being

The Changing Face of Reality

Intimacy with Hard

The Paradox of Feeling Energized and Capable

The Joy of Reaping from Hard Work

The Paradox of Intimacy with/in Self-Reflection

Reconciling Sadness and Loss with Gratitude and Gain

Memory Loss

The Isolation of Brain Damage

Sustaining a Strong Self-Image in the Face of Memory Loss

In Stark Contrast: Learning to Value Being and Knowing Not Just of Doing and Proving

Re-Defining and Re-Claiming "Feeling Like A Jerk"

The Relentlessness of Brain Injury and Memory Loss

Memory Loss and Credibility

The Fatigue of Continuing to Need to Rediscover

The Awesome Magnitude of Knowing

May Day and Memory Loss

Practical Strategies

You're Not A Project

The Guidelines for Living Out of the Musings

Home Containment

Confronting the Runaway Energy That's Triggered When You Anticipate or Do Tasks

The Paradoxical Dilemma of Sleep

Reflections on Being Awakened at Night and not Being Able to Get Back to Sleep

Vehicles for Creating A Team with the Anxious One's Energy

Relief and Discouragement

The Tiring Need for Re-Learning and Repetition

The Marathon of "Keep on Keeping On"

The Relief of Feeling Alert and Renewed

The Inner Joy of Journeying Well

Dealing with Discouragement

Pacing, Rhythm, and Timing

Pacing and Rhythm

The Process of Lining Things Up

The Dilemma of Timing

Containing Runaway Energy

The Dilemma of Trying Too Hard

Reconciling Sadness and Loss with Gratitude and Gain

Yielding to Brain Damage

Yielding's Gift

The Complexity of Yielding to the Brain Damage

Dealing with the Powerlessness of Having a Damaged Brain

Reaping From What We Sow

The Toll of Never Being "Cured"

The Price of Brain Damage Revisited

Daring to go to Yale-New Haven Hospital for Observation and Monitoring

The Freedom of Dealing With It

Dealing with Harsh Reality

The Capacity to Savor and Embrace

Daring to Maximize Our Potential

Integrity, Intimacy, and Inspiration

A Closer Look at Integrity

The Depth of Being That Intimacy with Integrity Brings

The Gift of Integrity

Integrity of Discouragement and Despair

The Role of Inspiration in the Healing/Recovery Process

The Christmas of the Millennium

Reflecting on the Millennium New Year

Mother and Daughter: The Added Complication of Brain Damage

Proclaim It to the World

Capturing the Essence of Meditation and Inspiration

Circling Back on the Gift of the Paradox

Liberation Psychology

The Intense Struggle to Find a Sense of Well Being

© 2000 Michele Toomey, PhD

June 15, 2000

Marlene Hoerle using her AlphaSmart keyboard.

Amidst bodily discomfort, brain dysfunction, and intense agitation, you struggle to find security, safety, well-being and peace. Is there a more difficult task? I think not.

How to yield without giving up, how to try without pushing beyond endurance, how to search for understanding without chasing yourself around in circles? That is the dilemma. Always a dilemma. Never real respite. Always one more problem, one more set back, one more river to cross.

Where then is the relief? Where then is the hope? Only in the integrity of the struggle and in the integrity of the process. Please shine on us and through this morass. Be our beacon of hope. Hang on to INTEGRITY as if your life depended on it. It does.

Copyright © 1999-2012 Liberation Psychology. All rights reserved worldwide. The resources at this web site are copyrighted by the authors and/or publisher and may be used for non-commercial purposes only. They may not be redistributed for commercial purposes without the express written consent of Michele Toomey. Appropriate credit should be given to these resources if they are reproduced in any form.