Brain Injury

Hello everyone!

My name is Shiloh Cline. I have been misdiagnosed with a neurological condition from a Bio toxic brain injury that nearly took my life. After being dismissed and left with no answers I was left to figure it out on my own. Almost 3 years ago to the day I was a vegetable ion the floor unable to walk talk or remember my kids. I was brushed off after labs came back "normal" when my body and brain were being severely damage and shutting down. After years of fighting for my life for the truth. I now am using my voice to share and spread awareness to these conditions and a broken system that completely failed me and left me for dead.

Hi, my name is Morganthainmiller. I'm here because

#MightyTogether #BrainInjury #Depression #PTSD

Hi Mighties!

I’m Lauren (aka the Phoenix Rising) 💫

I’m a filmmaker and advocate, currently working on a documentary called Fall of the Phoenix—a magical realism journey through brain injury, healing, and reclaiming identity. It started with my sister’s concussion, but the deeper I dug, the more I realized I had my own history of undiagnosed TBIs. This film has become my way of understanding, healing, and giving voice to a community that’s often invisible.

I’m here to connect with others navigating brain injury, mental health, trauma, or just passionate about storytelling as a tool for change. If any of that resonates with you, I’d love to connect. 💛

You can learn more at fallofthephoenix.com or watch the teaser vimeo.com/1090834674!

Has anyone here used creativity to process or make sense of their #fallofthephoenix health journey?

#TraumaticBrainInjury #MentalHealth #ChronicIllness #invisibledisabilities #Documentary ##invisibledisabilities

People know the story. The coma. The brain injury. The machines. The moment they told my mother I wasn’t coming back.

But what they don’t know — what they can’t know — is what happened to my soul in the aftermath.

Because my real awakening didn’t happen in the hospital bed. It started after. In the silence. In the confusion. In the unrelenting questions that wouldn’t let me rest.

Who am I now?

What happened to the “me” that floated somewhere beyond this world?

And how the hell am I still here?

That’s what cracked me open — not just the trauma, but the mystery. The sense that there was more. Something deeper. Something ancient and invisible, humming just beneath the surface of everything.

I didn’t come back chasing normal. I came back chasing truth.

I started asking questions people don’t usually ask — not out loud, anyway.

What is consciousness?

Where does it live when the brain goes quiet?

If energy can’t die, did part of me cross over and return?

Or… did I die in one version of reality and just wake up in another?

It sounds crazy until you’ve lived through it.

I began to see that everything is energy. Not metaphorically — literally. Thoughts, emotions, bodies, trees, sounds, memories — all vibrating, all connected, all flowing. And I realized we’re not just in the universe… we are the universe, experiencing itself through fragile, flawed human form.

The brain isn’t the source of consciousness. It’s the radio — picking up frequencies from something far greater. What I touched in that coma wasn’t a dream. It was pure awareness. No fear. No time. Just a knowing. A presence. A deep, peaceful current that said, You’re not done yet. Go back.

And so I did.

But I didn’t come back the same.

Now I move through life like someone who’s seen behind the curtain — someone who remembers the stillness beneath the chaos. I can feel the world vibrating. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s way too loud.

I live with pain. Headaches that pulse like thunder. Anxiety that wraps around my chest like a storm. Sensory overload. Exhaustion. A body that still feels stuck between realms.

But I also live with a kind of knowing. Not a belief — a knowing — that there’s more to all of this. That we are not broken. We are becoming.

Energy doesn’t die. It shifts. Evolves. And sometimes, it wakes up in a hospital bed, gasping for a second chance.

So here I am.

Still learning. Still unraveling. Still following the breadcrumbs left by that otherworldly peace I felt when the lights went out.

I don’t have all the answers. But I know I’m here for a reason.

And if you’re reading this, maybe you are too.

Maybe you’ve felt the weight of this world and still heard a whisper through it.

Maybe your pain is the beginning of your becoming.

Maybe your story — like mine — didn’t end where others thought it would.

We are more than our bodies.

More than our scars.

More than anyone has told us we are.

We are light wrapped in skin.

We are memory wrapped in soul.

We are here. Still.

And that something.

Hi, my name is jenannlynn. I'm here because I just heard about this website & I am checking it out. When I made an account, I said I have OCD, but actually I have OCPD (OOOCD-personality) I was also surprised not to see options for "stroke survivor" OR 'traumatic brain injury."

#MightyTogether #OCD #Anxiety

It is clicking and I hope it stays.

Since my second brain injury it has been different how I can use my brain. I have now short term memory loss, more easily distracted by little stimuli, movement around, lights and sound or change in lights and sound… but most of all when trying to talk/communicate with anyone, words make me think other thoughts and forget what is going on.

My brain used to be over intensely exhausting from electrical output. My brain made too many connections at once, I saw everything from every single angle or point possible. I ran into problems of people not knowing what I talked about in conversation, because my first thoughts were 10 thoughts ahead of who I was talking to. I had to explain until they would say “ooooooohhhhhh” and they would have an “aha!” moment. I had more control in being able to keep my thought while helping someone get to theirs.

This was easier because I could keep dozens and dozens of trains of thought straight in my head. I didn’t forget. I always have a lot to say.

After injury, I get a lot of thoughts but they go away before I can try to remember or write down. If I try to speak out of my mouth, I get distracted by anything and it is gone.

Even with words hiding, I still feel all of the thoughts. I still have so much to say but not ways to say it and have deep conversations on it. It is lonely and exhausting. It is weird because I physically feel my thoughts, it is like the urge to make a quick witty joke at the right moment, but when you go to open your mouth to say it, no words come out. Everything inside was ready to speak, but my brain disconnects and I am left with a “just about to” feeling. Like something is forever right on the tip of your tongue, but can’t come out.

Now, I see more in my head than I have the words for. I say to people “my word bank is gone”, I still have some and have knowledge, but when I go to retrieve knowledge I have, my brain gets lost and I can’t find any of the words, but I can feel it.

What happens now is not words that come to me quickly or in response. Instead of words in my head I see pictures, video clip replays, some memories, colors, gestures, movements, charts, graphs, diagrams and more. The problem is, I do not have words for these things I see in my head, I cannot translate what I see into words.

What I see though is in direct response to what someone is trying to talk to me about. So I have times I know what is being talked about, have responses, but cannot translate to words.

I get frustrated a lot. I used to talk a lot and be able to help many people a day.

With my brain injury, when I have a change in any emotion at all, function goes down. When I get frustrated with all that I have to say but do not have access to the words, it then instantly drastically harder to try to speak. My speaking gets choppy and I think I sound like a baby, which frustrates me.

I ask “what should I do?” “What do I do when this happens?” My therapist tells me to write again.

Writing got fun for me just before my injury. I had mild brain damage from meningitis as a 6 month old. At 19 my psychiatrist ordered a QEEG to see if there was a physical reason my mental illnesses are so treatment resistant. We instantly found the brain damage from meningitis as a baby. Before knowing about the damage, I was blamed for not trying hard enough, not having enough self control, being too overdramatic, wanting attention, etc…but it was brain damage.

In 2021 I was 27. I had a breakdown and had a plan to take my life. I was sent inpatient and was assigned a doctor who coerced me and forced me to have electroconvulsive therapy. I had said no, and was told this was my option for treatment, or I could get released to go through with my plan.

After first ECT, I learned the excruciating pain it causes. It feels like what I imagine getting hit by a bus feels. Whole body feels like it was crushed and jelly. The jaw feels like a baseball bat full force at the hinges of the jaw.

Aside from pain, I was thinking responses in my head to nurses questions, in Spanish. I took Spanish throughout high school and into college.

The nurses thought I was speaking gibberish because they did not know Spanish, and put me to bed. I was forced to spend a month in the hospital getting these treatments.

It got better. Then instantly worse than before.

It got better because I had memory wiped and did not know traumas that happened to me anymore. Did not have societies thoughts in me anymore.

Was discharged from the hospital and medically abandoned, no follow up care, no answers to call backs requesting referral or asking where to go for help.

I started to notice after 8 weeks, what was lost was not coming back. More issues communicating and with memory, have never been able to contact Doctor who did this to me. Was told by many random doctors after, that what I described “can’t happen”, but it did happen.

I used to be able to bring these writings more full circle, for now I will just be proud of what I was able to write today.

Hi

I am 45 years old, I like to read, and trying out all things in the arts and crafts area.

I live DID and C-PTSD as a result of highly organised and transgenerational severe abuse throughout childhood and adolesence.

Also diabetes 1 since I was a kid, fibromyalgia for as long as I can remember but diagnosed when I was 35, osteoarthritis in knees and hips diagnosed at the same time, and a few years after I developed psoriatic arthritis (no, that did not make either the diagnosis or the symptoms of fibro go away, and you're not the first to ask as this can just be confusing)

So I am used to living with fatigue, pain, nausea, thd fun package of 'self-regulation' that comes with diabetes type 1. And chaos, hypervigilence, etcetera in the mental department. I've long made my peace with that and try to make tomorrow a little better by coping well today (and then there's those days...)

But last Autumn I got a covid-19 infection and developed post covid/long corona. I have been told by thd medics that my autonomous nerve system has been affected by the virus during the acute infection state. That leads to different symptoms for everyone, fatigue being the most prevalent.

In my case the symptoms are that mild exercise or stress can cause severe illness that may last from hours to days (pem), palpitations when I stand for more than 10 seconds (oi/pots, shortness of breath, nausea and digestive problems, muscle tension and spasms, problems expressing myself, problems with concentration, coordination, memory, focus, language processing and reading. And of course the fatigue which is FAR worse than I am used to.

I feel powerless and lost.

I hope to find some peers here who know what I'm going through.

#Diabetes #Fibromyalgia #PsoriaticArthritis #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #DID #PTSD #PTS #CPTSD #postcovid #long_corona #Fatigue #PEM #post_exertational_malaise #POTS #BrainInjury #pais #post_acute_infection_syndromes