Recovery Jealousy
By Mitchel Tunnell
Hello everybody, I hope everyone is doing well, and adjusting to the new year. Recently I have been listening to several different concussion recovery stories with the intention of inspiring hope with my own recovery. Some of the stories included people who recovered in a shorter timeframe than me and some longer. I thought after listening to these I would feel better and ready to take on my recovery full charge but I realized I actually felt worse and I couldn’t understand why. Then I had an epiphany I was feeling jealous of the people who recovered in a shorter timeframe than me or who appeared to be doing better than I was. And so I thought this would be an important topic to unpack.
As I began unpacking, I realized a few things. First, was simply that jealousy has a negative connotation to it. Much like concussion, jealousy as an emotion has a lot of stigma around it. So, I am going to try and unpack both separately and then bring them back together. But first let’s talk about stigma in general. The definition of stigma is “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person”. Stigma has three dimensions in which it’s perpetuated: the first-dimension manifests as stereotypes; the second dimension comes from fear or judgment of that circumstance, quality or person; and lastly the third dimension is related to the feeling of control or social control.
So how does this pertain to jealousy?
I think it starts with not wanting to be seen as a jealous person. The stereotype of a jealous person would be someone who is selfish or ungrateful because they lack something that somebody else has. In this case, the expectations and timelines of a concussion recovery and the perception of my own recovery in comparison with someone else’s may cause the feeling of jealousy. Furthermore, I don’t think anybody really wants to be seen as an ungrateful or selfish person. This ties into the second dimension of stigma and is perpetuated by the display of jealousy and the worry that it may evoke judgment from other people, or that you now fit the jealous stereotype. The combination of these two things can lead to a ton of guilt and shame that can be silencing. Silencing as a way to protect yourself so that you don’t display the feeling of jealousy. Now tying this all into the third layer of stigma, you might be showing a lack of control of your emotions and how you feel, leading you to be labelled as a “jealous person”. Meanwhile part of the issue is that your emotions are already out of whack because of your injury. The feelings of jealousy then, may be attached to your identity. Now you are somebody that exists as a jealous person rather than someone who is feeling jealous. The difference being that feelings have time constraints. They will go away eventually. Bootstrapping jealousy to your identity means that you behave and exist as a jealous person. It’s a lot harder to change and let go of something that you exist as compared to something that you feel.
Now let’s talk a bit about the stigma around concussion. First let's talk about stereotypes, the first dimension of stigma. Before I had my first concussion, the stereotypes around the injury related almost entirely to professional athletes. I always thought of the NFL and NHL players who had suffered several concussions, so much so, that they have to spend the rest of their life in a dark room, often having severe mental health issues that coincided with suicidal ideation. This original stereotype feeds into the second layer of stigma perpetuation by causing a lot of fear of having or sustaining a TBI. Although I also think this runs a little bit deeper in the sense that our capitalistic and productive culture also causes people to fear having a disability instead of accepting and perhaps even embracing it as part of the human condition. I read somewhere that TBI is the leading cause of disability and so I think this point is very relevant to TBI. As for the last layer of stigma perpetuation, often times concussion recovery seems like it’s out of control of the injured and the recovery timeline is often very uncertain.
Now you may see how it all comes back to the feeling of recovery jealousy. Listening to or knowing that there are other people who recovered in a quicker timeline than you can intensify the feeling of lack of control and uncertainty for your own recovery.
Now that we understand how stigma surrounding recovery jealousy and concussion can be perpetuated, we can begin to understand that jealousy is a feeling and not part of our identity and that we shouldn’t feel ashamed of this. I would argue that the feelings of jealousy I described are a fairly natural feeling given the situation at hand. So, what can you do when you’re feeling this way and how can you let it not spiral out of control? As always, I think the first step is awareness. It’s important to honour the feeling as a feeling and know the feeling will eventually change. That’s the first step anyways. Here are some other things to keep in mind if you are feeling this way:
Each recovery is unique. Just because you haven’t reached a point where you’re happy with your recovery does not mean you won’t get there.
Wherever you are in your recovery you can always make gains. I heard a story of a 70-year-old woman who had been dealing with concussion symptoms since she was three years old and found the right treatment that was able to help her. Of course, it’s unfortunate she spent 67 years with symptoms but still, the message here is that there is always hope no matter what.
I think it’s good to keep in mind that neurology and particularly brain injury rehabilitation is in its infancy and is not to scare people into thinking we don’t know anything about the brain, but rather were going to keep getting better at treating this. Brain and neuroscience is one of the most rapidly evolving science today.
Recovery is almost never a straight line especially considering the psychological effects that can come with sustaining a TBI.
Don’t sugar-coat it. Accepting where you’re at is really hard, so if you’re having a bad day accept it for a bad day and it doesn’t have to be anything else.
Lastly, what we do know about the brain is the fact you can grow new brain cells until the day you die. Your brain is learning at all times, rewiring and creating new synapses (these are the spaces between neurons that release chemicals to communicate between neurons). Nourishing your own neural plasticity should inspire hope for anybody recovering from a TBI.
To end this blog, I thought I would share some of my final thoughts about this topic. I would like to firstly ask people to Challenge The Stigma. Yes people, a TBI manifests many different symptoms and often times they can be debilitating, but that’s not everything that a TBI encompasses. There are some positives that can come from it as well. My TBI has helped me form new relationships, help me realize how intelligent I am, and once again, as in my previous blog there has been so much growth that has happened from this TBI. Furthermore, I really wish that our society didn’t see having disabilities as an issue or a burden or even as something “bad” but rather something that is part of the human experience and something we can use to grow from one another. If you have or are going through it, the feeling of jealousy in response to someone else’s recovery is just a feeling, it’s not who you are. Acknowledge that it’s just jealousy and it will come and go.