Jana K. Transcript

Hi, my name is Jana, and I want to share with you my journey of recovering from three concussions and post traumatic stress.

I have been on a very long journey, my first concussion was sustained in 2008. And here we are now, 15 years later, in 2023. And I am starting to realize that this is the first time that I truly feel that I am healthy again. The first half of those 15 years, I didn’t realize I was living with concussions, I didn’t have typical concussion symptoms. I didn’t have access to information or education because concussions were not popular in the mainstream media or in the medical world. I was completely on my own. Intellectually, I understood I had a concussion, but I had no way of knowing how to recover. And I feel that there’s a lot of people, even with how popular concussions are, and how there’s so much more research and healthcare professionals who are knowledgeable in this area. But there are still a lot of us who don’t understand the symptoms that we are living and relate it to a concussion.

We have to remember that concussions aren’t just about hitting your head, but it’s about whiplash too. And that often, we can consider when we sustained a concussion, and seriously brush it off as something that is very mild. We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes. And how our systems are trying to manage that. Because we’re trying to now function and live as humans. And there’s more to us as humans, than just our brains and our bodies. There’s all these different aspects of who we are. And the stress of living with symptoms and not having an understanding as to why you feel the way you are, or why you are functioning the way you are leads to an immense feeling of uncomfortableness.

And that’s how I felt. I felt uncomfortable in myself. I felt stressed to try and show up and be me. Because I couldn’t trust myself. I couldn’t rely on how I was going to function. I didn’t know how he’s going to show up. I didn’t know how I was going to feel. And I was caught in this stress cycle. Not realizing that a lot of it stemmed from the symptoms I was having because they were atypical to concussion. The uncommon ones, not the headache, nausea, dizziness; it was loss of appetite, excess sweating, digestive issues, sleep issues, emotional, trouble concentrating, the inability to control my emotions. Through increase of my reactions to certain situations, I didn’t understand why I was acting that way. I did not relate those feelings, those symptoms, the experience that I was having to sustaining the concussion.

I was in a unique position though because I am a healthcare professional. I’ve done a degree in kinesiology and in my history of sustaining concussions, I also threw in physio-school. And even with physio-school, there wasn’t at that time, and I don’t know about it now, access to information about concussion recovery. We don’t take this injury seriously enough. Regardless of how intense our symptoms are, or what symptoms we are experiencing, we brush it off because we are focusing so much more on the external world and making sure we can just keep showing up and going– instead of making sure that our internal world and our quality of life is more of a priority.
After I sustained my third concussion, I could no longer work, no longer drive, no longer socialize, be active, participate in sport, engage in life. In one fell swoop, even though I had still sustained other concussions, but in that moment it felt like my life just completely was taken away from me. And I did not know what to do, which led to more stress and more emotions. And so once I kind of got through the fog of it, I decided that I wanted to work towards feeling healthy again. I was determined that I could heal from whatever it was that I was experiencing, regardless of how long it was going to take, and I knew that there were physical things that I could do, but I also knew I had to address the emotional sides of it. And the stress. Because the stress that I was living with was dysregulating me, which was blocking the ability to heal on the physical side and the emotional side. And so I really had to learn how to navigate my emotions. And the stress.

This is when I turned to my intuition, because there isn’t a lot of science always behind navigating emotions. But I turned to my intuition, because at this point, I didn’t really have anything left to turn to. Slowly, more and more healthcare professionals were starting to address treating concussions, myself included, by taking courses and I understood the physical sides, but again, without addressing the emotional side, it was blocking my healing. So turning to my intuition, led me in a very– down a very different path than I thought I would need. It felt uncomfortable. It was unfamiliar to me, it was not logical, which was very hard coming from the science background. And it often didn’t make sense. But when I allowed myself to tune into that aspect, that feeling of what felt good and right to me, it did lead me towards feeling better, functioning better, feeling healthy.

And so the more I did it, the easier it got. And I started to understand and reconnect back to myself again. I started to realize that recovering in this journey wasn’t just about what I would do for the physical sides of my brain, and my body, but it also had to do with my mind, and my soul. I wasn’t a very spiritual person before my injuries, and I have not turned into a complete spiritual person after this journey either. But I do recognize that there are these different aspects of who we are and each aspects needs to be addressed at some point in order to support you in this journey.

Spirituality for me isn’t something about the hooeyness, it’s more about helping me navigate the uncomfortable sides of being human. The uncertainty of not knowing whether or not I was going to get better, the loss, and the grief that’s associated with this journey. It gave me tools and strategies to manage the stress and the emotions that came from those aspects that the physical side wasn’t giving me.

And so as a physiotherapist now, I combine science and spirituality in my practice which is now devoted specifically to concussion management. How we treat acute concussions is very different to post concussion or chronic concussion symptoms. You can heal from this injury. Our brains have the capacity to heal, and it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been living with the symptoms. There’s no timeframe on healing from a concussion. Everybody is different. There is no one way to heal from a concussion. It is about finding what works for you, because we are all individuals. And so I use my physiotherapy hat to help on the physical size with the brain and the body. And I am now a Human Design reader, or trained in the system of Human Design, and I use that in helping my clients navigate the mind and the soul and the energy of who they are.

When– one of the biggest issues I found with my concussion recovery journey was the fatigue associated with it. And I didn’t realize that that fatigue had a lot to do with not living in alignment with my energy. There are different energy types; we are all meant to engage with the world differently. And when you know how you are designed energetically, it can help put you through on the path of least resistance when you’re engaging with life. I wasn’t aware of Human Design at the time that I navigated my recovery process, but because I allowed myself to tap into my intuition, it aligned me with that design. And in hindsight of learning Human Design, and looking back, I can see where those moments are. And I now use that with my clients to help them in their recovery process.

We are all designed differently of how we use our intuition. And when you know how you are designed, it will help give you another tool in your toolbox to navigate this recovery process. It really is about mind, soul, brain, and body. The science and the spirituality. They need to come together because these are the aspects of who we are. So for holistic healing, it’s making sure we’re addressing all these aspects of what makes us a whole person.
If you’re on a journey, and you’re finding that you’re doing all the things, going for treatment, doing the exercises, and you’re not seeing that improvement, then there may be this other side of your emotions, your mind, your mindset, and the emotional aspect that’s impacting your nervous system, which is blocking your ability to heal the physical. When you can understand your energy, your essence, your soul, your personality, however you want to call it. Then, and you apply that to the physical size of things, you start to treat yourself as a whole person, instead of only one aspect of who you are.

For me, recovering from a concussion wasn’t about not living with symptoms. It was about feeling healthy again, feeling like myself again, and being able to live the life that I wanted to live. Once I embarked on this journey, it did take seven years, but I did live in those seven years as I continued on my concussion recovery journey.

If you feel like you’ve gotten to a point where you have improved, but you’re not back to who you are, this is where I come in to help you understand how to navigate in these other stages of your concussion recovery process to get you back into yourself fully functioning as a whole person, making sure that there’s nothing missed on the physical side and starting to bring in these other aspects of who you are for that holistic healing. If you’re interested in following me on Instagram, I’m @concussion.healing.space. I run a private Facebook group: Concussion Healing Space. And you can check out my website: www.concussionhealingspace.com.

I offer in person management and virtual management in ways to guide you through this recovery process. It is possible to heal from this injury. The brain has the ability to heal. And sometimes we just have to be open minded to trying all these different aspects and addressing all these different aspects of who we are for us to fully feel like ourselves again.

Often after sustaining a concussion, we feel very disconnected from our true self, because these aspects of brain, body, mind, and soul separate, and we want to merge them and integrate them back together. And that’s what I feel that I have done by embracing the spirituality side of who we are and the science side. If you’re looking for support or guidance in your journey from either lens: science, or spiritual spirituality, or both, please feel free to reach out to me. I know how challenging it is to recover from this journey firsthand. And it really has changed how I treat and show up for this injury, compared to someone who has never experienced this injury before. Now being on the other side and feeling whole again, I know that there’s all these different stages to get through. But it is possible.

I look forward to connecting.