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There's a strange name for an affect that the person feels after traumatic brain injury.
It's called partial death syndrome. And it happens in some cases where people
feel as though the old person or the person they were prior to their injury has died
and the new person has sort of resumed their identity. To feel that much change in who
they are. And so this feeling I think occurs on a spectrum. Some people may feel just a
little bit different. Some people actually feel as though they're better people following
the injury. And some people feel just so, you know, bereaved by what they've lost,
that they have a tremendous difficulty accepting life with a brain injury.
I call brain injury the most spiritual injury. Because it's the one kind of injury that
forces a person to ask who they really are. And that question of who am I is so central
to so many different spiritual traditions that it really opens up the door for
transformation in many cases. I wrote about a woman in my book named Melissa Felta who
was a very Type A corporate executive. And following her injury, she had this sort
of radical transformation where she, after a very long struggle, was able
to deal with herself in a way that embraced who she was after the injury. And she did
this with the help of meditation and spiritual practice of some kind. But it
was that element of questioning who she was and embracing that,
that really led her to a type of recovery that I think is very special. And I've heard
a lot of other survivors echo a similar thing.