Trigger warning: This story contains mentions of suicide.

Kaitlin N. Transcript

My name is Kaitlin. I am in my third year of recovery. I am a mental health therapist. I own my own practice, which developed through my concussion recovery, and I see a lot of TBI clients and trauma clients. I’m finally back to work mostly full-time, so that’s a good win.

I sustained my concussion three years ago when I was driving in the Smoky Mountains and a tree fell off the mountain and hit the top of our car and shattered the windshield. I can still feel it all rocking back and forth. I hit my head three times in three different areas. As you can tell, it’s still hard for me to talk about. Thankfully, my family, my husband and my daughter, were with me and they left without a scratch on them, and I was very thankful. But that was not the case for me.

I had a headache and I kind of knew right away it was a concussion because I had one when I was four. But I declined going in an ambulance to the hospital, which I kind of regret doing. Not that they would have done anything, but at least I would have had that on paper and I would have known for sure. So I went to urgent care the next morning after I went for a walk with my daughter, and my mother-in-law texted me and said, if your neck starts to hurt, you need to go to the emergency room.

Well, in Sevierville, Tennessee, there is not an emergency room. So we went to urgent care, and they said I had whiplash. I did not have a concussion, and they wanted me to have a CT right away. However, their CT tech wasn’t going to be in until Tuesday because it was a small country town. So I asked the doctor, on a scale of one, I’m going to be dead, and ten, I’ll be fine, where am I? And he’s like, you can make it until you’re home, but see your doctor as soon as possible.

So I attempted to drive home, which was stupid. I made it 30 minutes and my husband took over. But that’s my personality, to just power through everything, which is one of my lessons I’ve learned in my recovery, that you can’t do that anymore, that you have to listen to your body. But that was a long fight that many of my care providers stood with me in.

So when I got back to Fort Wayne, it started to set in what had happened. There was only enough room between my head and the top of the car for a hand, and I knew in that moment that I should have been dead, that the only reason I wasn’t was because God chose to save me, and I’m very grateful for that.

But when we got back, I went to work full-time, and my job’s pretty stressful, so I had a really great adrenaline high from the accident and then the crises I was dealing with. But once the last crisis was solved, my symptoms hit immediately and I could barely move. I couldn’t walk up the stairs by myself. My vision wasn’t clear, and the pain was nothing like I’ve ever experienced.

So we did get into my doctor within a week after we got back. She sent me for a CT scan, which was pointless, and sent me for physical therapy, which I was really thankful for. So we started physical therapy almost right away, and I was still expected to work, and so I did.

My physical therapist was amazing. She helped—I couldn’t move my neck at all—and she helped restore rotation to my neck, and she did dry needling, which was super helpful. But she’s the one that caught that I had a concussion, and she sent me back to the doctor.

My husband is still very angry about this. My doctor told me to rest my brain for two weeks and that I would be completely healed in two months. So I did that. She wrote me a letter to get out of work for the time being, and so I sat on the couch for two weeks coloring and watching ABC Family over and over and over again. And there’s only so much you can watch.

I’m a person that loves to learn and I love to be doing things. I don’t like to sit. So there was a constant battle between my brain needs and my body needs. And my doctor was not right. I was not cured in two months. In fact, it was worse than what it was.

So I was working with my physical therapist, who kept me on as a client, but then she referred me to somebody more specialized, and I started my journey with them. That helped with my vision, because I would get dizzy anytime I stood up or anytime I turned around, and that was really scary for me because it felt like my body was out of control.

And I am a very control freak person, and I don’t like to be out of control. So at one point in my recovery, I had 20 hours of therapy a week. It was literally a part-time job.

I started to go back to work because I love my job and I wanted to be normal again, and I was ignoring everybody about rest, including myself. And I needed to work. I couldn’t work. It was very rough. I could only see one or two people a day, and for most of my recovery, I could only see six people a week, which is not very easy for me.

So life just kept happening. It didn’t pause for my concussion, even though I needed it to. And I lost more of my cognitive abilities and the activities of daily living. People kept dying and funerals kept happening, and relationships with close family members kept the struggle real. I couldn’t travel anymore. I couldn’t drive for more than 15 minutes, and I was very, very discouraged and very, very defeated.

So part of my concussion is how it impacted my mental health. I had the subtypes for vision and anxiety. My grandmother, who’s my best friend, got really bad during that time of my recovery, and she passed away in August of that year. That funeral was, in many parts, the worst day of my life.

But I couldn’t function because of my concussion symptoms—because of the patterns on the carpet, the noise everywhere, the lights being so bright, and then the stress and emotional toll, among other stressors and things in my life at that time—and my concussion symptoms were not getting easier.

I started to engage in self-harm. The other part of my concussion symptoms that were not my favorite was the impulsivity issues. I did not have that before the accident. The inhibition part of my brain got damaged in the accident, and I couldn’t control what I was doing. Again, not my favorite. I’m a control person.

So I started cutting, and that quickly led to suicidal ideations that were not coming from me. At this point in my recovery, between all the therapy I had—mental health therapy and concussion therapy and everything—there were two different sets: one was trauma-based, one was concussion-based.

My self-harm was more trauma-based, and my suicide was more concussion-based. I kept it a secret for a while, and then I told my concussion therapist first, and then it kind of just spiraled down to me telling my husband. I have a great support system. It did take me getting hit in the head to realize what support system I had, which I am really grateful for.

I had attempted suicide, at this point where I am today in my recovery, six times. Most of them were out of my control. Some were because they tried me on different medications and I had severe medication reactions to it. On top of that, I didn’t know what I was doing until just before it was too late, which is the scariest part for me.

The other scary part of all of that is I felt completely alone. No one was understanding what I was going through. They tried so hard, and I’m so grateful and appreciative of that, but no one knew. My brain injury was telling me I was dangerous to people and that I was a burden to people and that I would be better off dead, which is very common with concussion survivors who are experiencing this behavior.

But I couldn’t find anything on the internet, and I couldn’t find anybody who had been through the same thing. So I felt even more alone, which is not great when you’re having suicidal ideations. It just kept building and building and building, and it took people not leaving me and forcing me and fighting with me—I call it threatening me to go to the hospital, but it wasn’t a threat, it was just a way to make sure I stayed safe.

So I was really thankful for that, and I continued with mental health therapy. We cut a lot of toxicity out of our life in a lot of different ways, from literal toxins from the food we eat to toxic relationships. In doing that, we saw how much the toxicity was correlated to my concussion recovery and how much trauma work I really did need to do.

I have a wonderful therapist who has stuck with me through my entire recovery that I wouldn’t be where I am today without her. In making those breaks from those toxic cycles and toxins in general, I’ve been able to return to work full-time. I can take a shower by myself, which doesn’t sound like much, but it’s huge. I can do my own hair, which is another big one. I can drive four hours. I’m exhausted and don’t ask me to do anything or talk to me afterwards, but I can do it.

Like I said, I’m back to work full-time. I’m talking today without stuttering. I do lose my train of thought a lot, especially when I’m stressed or nervous or talking about hard things like today, which is not my favorite symptom. I still have it. I would’ve rather picked another one, but that’s okay. That’s what God gave me. And you know what? I’m still alive, and that’s what matters.

Through this, my faith has gotten stronger, and I’ve been able to release a lot of strongholds that I’ve had on me. I’m starting to feel happy now that I’m in my third year of recovery. I started with an energy healer, which has been a huge game changer for me, and really starting with mindfulness and grounding, and most importantly, having grace for myself.

I’m not saying I haven’t been told that a thousand times in the last three years, but I finally listened. When I get overwhelmed, my brain literally feels like my nerves are on fire and my body feels like it’s going to explode, and then I start to panic. So I have to stop and give myself grace, like your brain is injured still. You’re not 100% cured. You may not be, and that’s okay.

Look at everything that’s come from this. I’ve gotten my family back, my dad back, friends back. It’s usually the opposite—people leave—and yeah, I did have people leave, but in my recovery, I had people come, and that’s what brought me here.

My cognitive abilities are getting better. It was funny because you were saying giving me a list of items to do, and I was like, dude, do you not know me? That’s impossible, but I’m doing it. Inside I’m like, all right, we did multiple steps, and I haven’t been able to do multiple steps in three years.

More and more, I’m starting to see my progress, which was a huge barrier up until this January. Everyone would say, you’re doing so well, and I was like, they’re wrong. I could not see it because I still felt awful. I still was dizzy, and I still get dizzy if the weather changes—I’m out for the day.

But I can see it now. I went on my first family vacation, all three of us on a plane with the delays, the TSA lines, and I managed that all by myself through apps and phone calls. I would not have been able to do that six months ago, let alone three years ago.

I think the biggest lessons I’ve learned in my recovery are to have grace for yourself. I do teach that to my clients because that’s a huge one that I ignored people about. There’s a famous football player—I don’t remember who—but he said you can’t tough out a concussion, and he’s 100% correct. You can’t tough it out. You can’t fight it out. You have to work with your system, your providers, and your support system.

That ambiguous loss that comes with it needs to be treated and acknowledged and honored because we have changed so much. I have changed so much from the accident in good ways and what I think are bad ways, but no one else seems to think they’re bad ways. We’re still working on that part.

But that ambiguous loss is really hurtful and really hard—to see what you could do before and then what you can’t. But it is so rewarding when you can start to see what you lost and gained back, and now you’re this 2.0 person.

I have a second chance to live, and I’m so grateful to God that I have this, because without him I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to help the people I help. I wouldn’t be able to have fun and live life with my husband and my daughter and my dad and my aunt and my uncle and all the cousins.

I still wish sometimes that it didn’t happen to me because it literally changed everything, and it put me in the darkest parts of what can be dark. I’ve never felt so alone, and I wish I didn’t have to experience that. But in the same part, that’s what brought me closer to God, closer to my family and my friends, and figuring out who I am as a person.

And now I can help people with concussions because I didn’t have, like, I had providers, but I didn’t have the firsthand people who go through it type situation.