xgoodvibesx

I would have that valued and insured if you haven't already.

Bloody smart arse biologi... oh, it's you! Carry on.

http://inception.davepedu.com/noflash.php

When you get angry it's especially noticeable, you find yourself almost detached looking out at yourself from somewhere inside thinking "I'm not like this". This new person I seemed to be wasn't the person I remembered being.

I think the original me came back in the end though, more or less. It's long enough ago (seven years) that it's hard to tell now what's changed because of it, what's just natural personality change, what's me adapting around, and what's me having a rose-tinted view of things.

For example I still have a good memory, but the indexing is poor (to put it another way, I'll remember a conversation from yesterday perfectly well, but only if you remind me we had it), so I bought a whiteboard and write things down to trigger memories. Works great apart from when I forget I have a board :/

I get super angry over trifling bullshit, so I either just consciously stop worrying about it (which was a learned skill), or just cut away from it and come back at it from a different angle later on. I don't think your detaching from things is necessarily bad - if you can learn to do it on purpose and at will, then go outside and chill the fuck out, then come back in and re-engage, it's a very useful tool. I used to be so relaxed I was almost horizontal (which was what made it so noticeable to me that I was behaving very out of character), but now I'm so chilled out I think I'd give Owen Wilson a run for his money. That's all on purpose - it was a conscious choice and an act of will to behave that way. The anger's still down there somewhere but it's battened way the fuck down and I know well enough when it's bubbling up that I can head things off.

I don't think I've done anything that "undamaged" people who have problems with memory or anger management do to help themselves, so definitely if you feel you're struggling with things like that there's no reason not to go to a regular doctor and ask for regular help. Your brain can re-learn and adapt and burn new pathways around the damage. It's an incredible thing. For me, that memory of old me who used to be able to do those things / was like that helped me along the way a lot. I miss him sometimes, but hey fuck it, I could be dead or a drooling vegetable.

To paraphrase Richard Hammond from the excellent "Hammond meets Moss", it's like I want a t-shirt - on the front it says "I'm fine now, thank you" and on the back it says "I'm still ill, you know".

Good luck :)