Maybe TBI Didn't Make Me More Sensitive. Maybe It Made Me More Aware.

I recently watched Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testify before the United States Senate about technology, screens, and what may be happening to our ability to think and learn. His argument, at least the part that stuck with me, was that we have spent decades putting more and more technology between human beings and the real world, particularly in education, without stopping long enough to ask whether all of that technology is actually helping our brains.

That caught my attention for a very personal reason.

After my brain injury, my relationship with technology completely changed. Screens became exhausting. Artificial light bothered me. Too much information coming at me at once could wipe me out. I couldn't sit in front of a computer indefinitely anymore and pretend there wasn't a cost. Eventually I started printing things again. I started writing on paper. I turned the television off more. I became protective of silence and started paying attention to how much energy different activities were actually taking from my brain.

At first, I saw all of that as disability. Now I'm not so sure.

I think those of us living with brain injuries may have been given a strange kind of early-warning system. I'm not saying TBI survivors universally hate technology or that we're somehow immune to the same habits as everyone else. I'm saying that after a brain injury, the neurological cost of some of this stuff can become almost impossible to ignore.

There is science behind at least part of that experience. People recovering from concussion and traumatic brain injury commonly report problems with light sensitivity, visual fatigue, concentration and cognitive fatigue. Screens can aggravate headaches, eye strain, nausea and other post-concussion symptoms. Rehabilitation programs often teach us to modify our environments, reduce competing stimulation and pay attention to the amount of cognitive energy an activity requires.

But here's where I want to step away from the research for a minute and talk as somebody actually living with a brain injury.

I wonder if an injured brain sometimes forces us to recognize things that a healthy brain can simply compensate for.

A person without a brain injury can sit at a desk with three monitors running, a phone buzzing, emails appearing, music playing, messages popping up and ten browser tabs open. They may tolerate it just fine. They may even feel incredibly productive. My brain eventually says, "Nope. We're done."

For a long time, I thought that meant my brain was failing me. Lately I've started wondering whether sometimes it's actually protecting me. Maybe all of this stimulation isn't free for everyone else either. Maybe their brains are simply better able to absorb the cost, recover from it, or hide it from them.

That is a very different way of looking at disability.

Horvath's testimony made me think about something even bigger. We keep inventing technologies designed to make thinking easier. We have automated remembering, navigation, calculation and communication. Now artificial intelligence is beginning to automate parts of writing, research and reasoning. Some of these tools are incredible. Hell, I use AI constantly, including to help me capture thoughts that my injured brain might otherwise lose. So this isn't an anti-technology argument.

The question for me is whether technology is helping us use our brains or quietly replacing the need to use them.

That's a distinction I never really thought much about before my injury.

Before TBI, I could bulldoze through fatigue. I could stare at screens for hours, work through noise and overload myself because that's what productive people were supposed to do. My injured brain doesn't let me get away with that anymore. If something is costing me cognitive energy, sooner or later I know it.

Because of that, I've actually gone backward in some ways, and strangely enough I think some of those steps backward have moved me forward. I print things instead of reading everything from a screen. I write things down instead of demanding that my brain remember them. I read physical books. I walk away from the computer when I feel myself slipping. I spend more time outside and more time in silence. I try to have conversations without simultaneously doing three other things.

I've also learned that there is a huge difference between using technology as an accommodation and allowing technology to replace a human ability altogether. My memory isn't what it used to be, so I use technology to capture information. That's incredibly valuable to me. But the goal is to free my brain to think, not to eliminate thinking. I want technology carrying the stuff my brain struggles to carry so that I can use the cognitive energy I have left for curiosity, creativity, conversation and understanding.

The irony is that we live in a world desperately trying to make everything smarter, while my brain injury has slowly been teaching me the value of making parts of my life simpler again. Paper doesn't interrupt me. A physical book doesn't suddenly show me something an algorithm thinks will keep me engaged. Walking outside doesn't require another notification. Sitting across from somebody and talking doesn't need an app running in the background. These things aren't technologically impressive, but maybe that's exactly the point.

I'm certainly not suggesting everyone throw their phones away, and I'm not suggesting traumatic brain injury is some magical road to enlightenment. TBI can take an enormous amount from a person. Independence, careers, relationships, memories, abilities and sometimes the basic confidence that you can trust your own brain can all be affected. I would never minimize that.

But I also refuse to believe that every single thing my injury changed in me has to be categorized as a loss.

Some of it has been adaptation. Some of it has been awareness. And, as strange as it may sound, I believe some of it has been a blessing.

When cognitive energy becomes limited, you start learning what deserves it. When overstimulation can wreck the rest of your day, you become much more selective about what you allow into your head. When your brain can no longer effortlessly filter noise, screens, notifications, conversations and competing information, you suddenly realize just how much unnecessary information the average human brain is being asked to process every waking hour.

That's the part I wonder about most.

Maybe people with TBI aren't experiencing an entirely different world. Maybe we're experiencing the same world with fewer neurological filters protecting us from it.

And maybe that means we notice the problem sooner.

We know what cognitive overload feels like because our brains don't allow us to pretend it isn't happening. We learn that attention is finite because ours becomes precious. We learn that rest isn't laziness because we've experienced what happens when we don't take it. We learn to protect our cognitive energy because once it's gone, no amount of determination can magically bring it back.

In doing that, many of us eventually find ourselves returning to things human beings have been doing forever: writing, reading, walking, making things, sitting outside, having actual conversations and occasionally doing absolutely nothing. Not because we're rejecting the future, but because our brains are reminding us of something incredibly basic that modern life makes very easy to forget.

The human brain evolved to interact with the world, not just representations of the world on a screen.

Maybe that's one of the stranger gifts my TBI gave me. It took away my ability to comfortably ignore what constant stimulation was doing to me. At first I desperately wanted that ability back. Now I'm not entirely sure I do.

Because maybe my injured brain isn't always telling me that I can't keep up with the modern world.

Maybe sometimes it's telling me that the modern world needs to slow the hell down.