Emotional changes after Traumatic Brain Injury

Please remember - The Ocean Matters

Recycle, reduce, reuse.

And please, change your wasteful attitudes!

Walk yourself out of it and into life again!

Memorial Day

They should make another day for remembering the veterans left with visible and invisible scars.

Gray Matters Support Group at San Diego Sharp Rehab

 

                       Gray Matters

             Brain Injury Support Group

Sharp Rehab Conference Room

2999 Health Center Dr. 

First Tuesday of each month, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

Be supported and feel encouraged

·      *  Survivors, family & Caregivers are all welcome.

·      *  Everyone is valued, encouraged to participate and heard.  
      In this way, participants are a part of a caring community.

·      *  We share resources, strategies, methods that have worked for us,

plus uplifting attitudes!

·      *  Enhance social skills-communicate & develop better interpersonal prowess

·      *  Laugh and have some fun.

                      
                       Heidi also is a personal Life Enhancement Coach.

         She helps people to cope with their injury  and enjoy life again.

                              Become more expressive and self-satisfied.

                                    Live a life beyond your brain injury!

     Heidi Lerner, M.A.

Support Group Facilitator

Life Enhancement Coach

heidi@graymatters4u.com

www.graymatters4u.com

     (858) 465-0465

High Self-Esteem

• Every person deserves the right to live with HIGH SELF-ESTEEM.

• If anyone ever told you that you were anything less than wonderful...   they lied.

• The problem now is that at some time in the past you swallowed and believed and you are still living them out in the form of your current problems.

• A coach can help you uncover the lies you have swallowed, so you can explore your WONDERFUL self!

• A coach can help you to stand tall.

HANG WITH UPBEAT PEOPLE

Emotions are contagious.   "You can catch a mood, just like a cold," says Marco Iacoboni, M.D.,  author of Mirroring People: the Science of Empathy: How We Connect with Others.   When you watch a person doing something, the mirror neurons in your brain are activated, even if you're not doing anything yourself. So if you see someone smile, your mirror neurons  for smiling fire up, whether or not you're in a good mood.   "Spend time with happy people and you'll eventually feel happier yourself," Dr. Iacoboni says.

EPIS - Visual Therapeutic Recreation

Of course it is a "touch more real" in person!  Awesome to experience the blooming of these plants!  On  The note about these plants is that they are a form of succulent and are VERY EASY TO GROW!  They do their own thing!  They take water once a week or every two weeks in the winter.

These pics are from the Epiphylyllum Society of San Diego's Mother Day Sale.

Epiphylums come in a wide variety of colors; some (mine) flower only for one night.  Many of the colored Epis flower during the day and stay around for 4 or 5 days.

Theme was from up in space.

THE OCEAN MATTERS

RECYCLE!!! RECYCLE!!! RECYCLE!!! RECYCLE!!! 

THE OCEAN MATTERS

Every so often, this Gray Matters blog turns to The Ocean Matters, so I can express my heart to you.

I want you to please understand what is happening to the dolphin and whales (as well as all marine mammals) under water.

THE OCEAN MATTERS

http://us.whales.org/issues/pollution

Also, please read the next below,

where I reveal my experience while sea-kayaking

with a baby whale

in the La Jolla waters,

out past the caves...

THIS MATTERS TO ME:

Cetacean Advocacy

- Low Frequency Active Sonar causes brain injury to sea mammals

  (These photos are not of Heidi, but were chosen 
so you could imagine her experience.)

The intention of this letter is to increase awareness of the devastating health risks that whales and all sea mammals are facing due to Noise Pollution and powerful sonar sound waves.  My experience with an injured whale deeply saddens me.  I have been a kayaker for about 20 years.  On November 2014, I went on a paddle with two fellow sea-kayakers.  We put in at La Jolla Shores and paddled out past the caves.  A whale surfaced about 30 feet from my boat.  It was a baby.  It was alone.  It swam right up next to my boat.  I could see the barnacles on its back.  She (or he) stayed relatively close, giving us some time to admire her.  Yet her mother was nowhere around.  What could cause a mother whale to separate from her young?

It is not new news - sonar has been used in California waters by the Navy, for quite some time.  I recently found out that most, if not all Navy ships have sonar-firing capabilities!  Sonar uses very powerful sound waves that can damage whale and dolphin’s hearing and brains.  I can explain to you a little about brain injury, because this is my field (www.graymatters4u.com).   Whales and dolphins being injured by sonar can be compared to soldiers being injured by blasts from Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).  Sonar has caused whales to hemorrhage (or to bleed) around their ears.  Their hearing is essential for survival; when their hearing goes, they are mortally disabled.  I feel an ache in my heart for their disability.   Their hearing being blasted by sonar, threatens their survival; mothers get separated from their babies!

I am sharing this because all those above water need to know about the condition of the ocean environment in which the sea mammals exist.   They are traumatized by screeching loud noise under water.  I looked at that baby whale with no mom’s love or support and I felt what s/he was going through.  He was fully disoriented.  I have seen people disoriented from a brain injury.  I know what they go through.  I have experienced it myself.  When the baby whale went underwater, we paddled on for about half an hour around the cove and then paddled back (one hour total) and when we returned, the whale was still there!  It was still alone and notably DISORIENTED!!!

I am writing to advocate for the whales and dolphins.  I hope to educate about the devastating effect of sonar on the brains of sea mammals.  For more information about the effects of noise and its impact under water, see http://ocr.org/.

The Ocean Matters!

Heidi Lerner