In the prior post I described my Doctor’s recommendation that I recommence blogging and the positive therapeutic value of this activity. This experience suggests the digital realm may hold other positive benefit for persons with cognitive deficits, or those persons having problems with executive function.
The basic concept of the Daffodil Network is to explore these potential benefits, the ways in which technology may assist with rehabilitation.
The Top Five Therapeutic Benefits
- Shared experience
- Advancing neuroscience Research
- Developing assistive technology and resources
- Creating occupational opportunity
- Solution sharing
The Benefit of Peer to Peer Experience Sharing
There is a lot to discuss here. This post will focus on shared experience. Subsequent posts will address the other four topics.
I found tremendous benefit when I met, and became friends with, another brain injury victim. When I encountered a perceptual problem that I found to be strange, I spoke with him. He immediately recognized the situation and was able to provide a description of his own, very similar experience. The prior post, Positive Feedback documents a case in which an anonymous, brain injured reader of this blog identified with the description of my own experience. I recognize my rehabilitation has benefited from an increased ability to understand, catalogue, and describe my own deficits. Once I have an understanding of the deficits, I can begin to mitigate them. But the first step comes with recognition and understanding. Peer to peer dialog can assist this process.
Why is this important?
The New York Times, in a story titled Learning How Little We Know About the Brain which ran November 10th, 2014, describes the paradox of progress in neuroscience:
Yet the growing body of data — maps, atlases and so-called connectomes that show linkages between cells and regions of the brain — represents a paradox of progress, with the advances also highlighting great gaps in understanding.
In other words we are only just learning how little we actually understand about brain function. The new knowledge suggests gaps in past knowledge and understanding. This implies that persons who experience brain injury have experiences very different from those with an uninjured brain and that the totality of that experience may be foreign to the uninjured.
Sharing experience may therefore provide considerable benefit.
In my own experience of the injury, I went through a period in which I was unaware of the injury. When I met with medical professionals who understood brain trauma, I was resistant and did not want to accept their diagnosis. I disbelieved what I was being told.
In speaking with my friend, I learned that he too was very resistant to his own diagnosis.
The moment I began to accept the fact of the injury was an extremely troubling time. I was learning that I could no longer trust in the cognitive processes utilized and developed since my birth. This awareness was enormously unsettling.
Providing an on-line resource that permits persons with brain injury to dialog with each other, and share their experience, will likely assist them in overcoming the initial phase of denial, provide reassurance during the phase of acknowledgement, and help with gathering and implementing the variety of coping skills needed to mitigate the impacts of the injury.
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This post is part of a series which seeks to describe the functions of the Daffodil Network. Other posts in this series are the following:
Daffodil Network – Introduction
Daffodil Network – Research Need
Daffodil Network – The Internet of Things
Daffodil Network – Shared Experience
Daffodil Network – Support Group Meeting