Hello all, this is Arturo Gonzalez and I know I am on here every once and a while but the amount of help and support I have gotten from this group is tremendous. I am in a much better place now than I was last time I wrote on this groups page, I know it is still an uphill journey but thanks to everyone who is willing to give a few words of wisdom I know that I have the support needed. It still baffles me how complete strangers could be so supportive and how we could all have a family-like bond, especially in times of need. Well I am writing to you all with a recommendation, and note that I am in no way profiting from this monetarily, but it is something which has helped me see and remember who I am and why I, like a lot of you, survived and were able to thrive in this crazy life with such a debilitating thing such as an aneurysm. I have gotten the opportunity to share my story with many people, some 20 year olds, and they have a tough time understanding how it was that through all the devastating effects of the aneurysm I was able to get back up and go to school as soon as possible. My answer was always the same, it was the option I had, to continue living my life the way that I knew how. I was 22 when this traumatic event occurred and it has changed my life forever, but I am choosing to not let it affect what it is I want to be in life. I knew it back when I first started on the road to recovery but somewhere along the line it became mechanical and I forgot why I was where I am and how I got to that point. In school you're always told to look for a career in which you won't be "working" but look for a passion in life so that you could find it rewarding to do what you do and not really call it "work" and when something becomes mechanical I feel as if it gets exhausting and we see it as "work". I could say that I was sick and tired of it and constantly thought about how it would have been easier to have just passed away during the aneurysm, not the smartest thought. All throughout I just forgot why or how I got to where I was, and while I was and am thankful to be alive, in some respects I had forgotten. This is where the book 'Mindset; The New Psychology of Success' by Carol Dweck became handy. Initially this was suggested to me by a career counselor at my university, she told me about a group of very successful investor who used their book and live and die by the principles and so as a 26 year old who hopes to be successful in whatever field I do I picked it up and started reading it. I am not through with it yet, as I am currently in midterms and am busy with prep work, but what I have learned so far is something that I feel I knew, but life has a way of beating you up to the point where you sometimes forget how you got and start doing this mechanically. It is a book that preaches about a "set" mindset and a "growth" mindset and the big difference. The set mindset does not believe one will improve or get better where as the growth mindset knows that just because you fail once doesn't mean it's over. This type of "growth" mindset got me through my recovery and has helped me in school in the past. I have major anxiety when it comes to exams and all I could remember was how I used to relish the experience of being tested and how studying was a privilege I enjoyed. I wondered how it was that I went from loving the challenge to being downright scared of failing and I could tell you that this book has helped me realize what I once knew. As survivors or family of survivors we have overcome so much and all have that "growth" mindset embedded within us. The odds of surviving were greatly stacked against us and yet, here we are. Life is not 'as normal' and might never be but we are incredible and look at your recovery as a challenge set forth that you simply will not and cannot back down from. I am far from where I'd want to be both physically and mentally but instead of seeing it as a failure I am trying to succeed in this challenge and come out better than I went in. Many people wonder why it is that I went back to school nearly 7 months after my aneurysm and in the beginning I told myself that I would not let this aneurysm define me and I wouldn't let take more time from my life, especially my early and mid 20's. I wanted to come out of it better than I went in and I could proudly say that I am graduating from a highly ranked university as an economics major, the major I decided on before the aneurysm, despite my mathematical skills being at a 6th grade level after the aneurysm. I may not have the best and brightest of GPA's but know that it does not define me and that I survived and you can too. This "growth" mindset will remind you of who you are and how you got to where you are, and we all need reminders every now and then. The book is great because it outlines this with stories but there are certainly other options for you and some people might have this type of mindset already. Well this was just something that I felt I had to share with you all, keep your head up and the mere fact that we survived proves that we have this mindset, we just have to remember we do.
Congratulations Arturo! And thank you for sharing your words of inspiration and encouragement.
I will look into the book, thank you for the recommendation. I also highly recommend learning about Amy Cuddy - she's also an inspiration on improvement and keepin' on keepin' on. She's not an aneurysm survivor, but she did have a TBI from a car accident.
https://www.ted.com/speakers/amy_cuddy
I'm trying to find the balance between acceptance of what is, and striving for improvement. It's a balancing act, for sure.
Arturo...please forgive my slowness... thank you for providing more info and generating Sarge's sharing..
You are blessed with your recovery and ability to realign your choices, decisions and achievements.
There is a website: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~rswenson/NeuroSci/chapter_9.html that also may help many who are working so hard in their recovery.
This portion of chapter 9 covers the "limbic system" portion of our temporal lobe...the medial temporal lobe (or some such name of that portion)...It is noted the "limbic system has been conceptualized as the "feeling and reacting brain"...interposed between the "thinking brain" and the output mechanisms of the nervous system... "
Arturo...I cherish your successes...and I hope the above site will help those who are so struggling, their spouses/family/friends/associates, to better understand.
And, I hope this this data is not viewed as negative, but that it needs to come forth for procedural selections by patients/spouses/families and the various therapies that can/may be available and referred by some new-rologists who will author.