Written 6/17/2024
Hello Dear Readers,
One of the abilities I lost after my stroke was taking a shower by myself. It is ironic, but taking a shower is one of the private activities I enjoy a lot. For the first several months, I had my wife help me take a shower. I always wanted to regain the ability to shower, so I determined to train myself.
It took longer than I would have liked. When you get severe brain trauma, you will forget how to move your limbs. You suddenly feel like you are in a body that I have no control over. I had to be patient about it; it would be dangerous if I started to take my shower without being in control of my ability to move. Slowly, I started to regain mobility.
When I tried to take a shower, I noticed that some of my overcalculated versions of impulsive tendencies due to stroke started to creep into many of my behaviors. In other words, some of these behaviors suddenly overwrite my activities. I need to remember to do some clearing. I quickly realized that I have to be systematic with my activities to control my impulsive tendencies.
How can I overcome this challenge? I decided to use exactly the same method to control my other impulsive tendencies. I used a method very similar to how I trained myself to remember to do many things. I do a series of rituals in the shower. I must remember normal things are not normal for me.
When I realized and contemplated what I thought was normal, I gained the habit of anticipating what would happen throughout the day and deciding how I wished to respond. Believe me, when you don’t have your body’s normal movement, there are many anticipated events. I think about it a lot while I am showering.
Some people may say it is a mental simulation. My wife will say disaster or risk management, and I say that is my normal life. In some ways, my reaction was still impulsive when an anticipated event occurred, but it was at least one more in line with how I had previously decided was preferable. There were also times when my planned response was different from what I should have wished to do. Yet, I find myself with the planned response taking the place of the impulsive reaction.