16min chapter

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The Invisible Injury: Champion Cyclist Rebecca Rusch On Healing From A Traumatic Brain Injury, Concussion Awareness & Why Acceptance Is Strength

The Rich Roll Podcast

CHAPTER

Healing and Connection After Trauma

This chapter explores the emotional needs for connection and community in the context of personal recovery from a traumatic brain injury. The speakers discuss the balance between self-care and helping others, emphasizing the importance of personal healing as a foundation for service. They also highlight the significance of holistic recovery approaches and the transformative power of engaging in diverse mental and physical activities.

00:00
Speaker 2
It's sort of like you had this emotional need that wasn't met. Yeah. So you wanna give, you wanna prevent people from. Instead of fighting
Speaker 1
and just being like, nobody loved me, or, you know, elbows out. It's more like, oh, okay. Well, like you said, we're all in the human condition. Everyone wants to belong. They want to feel purposeful. They want to feel loved, me included. And so maybe part of the story of the next chapter is, is opening up to more people, bringing them into bike races, bringing them into, you know, an athletic healthy lifestyle, instead of proving and showing and winning more things. It's like help other people reach a podium.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's also back to Chip Conley, like that's sort of like this age that we're at, right? Like where we turn our, like if we want purpose and fulfillment, we need to stop looking at our own career trajectories and shift our focus on other people. Like that's the source of kind of meaning.
Speaker 1
It is and look, you get to that place, you don't need to take psychedelics to get to that place. That just happened to be what helped me. And to Chip's point, and actually I called in, you were doing a podcast with Michael Gervais. And I actually called in a question when I was in a really dark place in my concussion recovery. And I called in the question of when does self-care become self-absorption? And I was so like fatigued of like trying to heal myself. And I was just like, I'm so tired of dealing with myself. And I wrote that question, you answered it. I was really excited to
Speaker 2
hear my question come up. I'm fearful of what I must have said, but I'm sure Michael had a very good answer. You
Speaker 1
both did and it came back to service and it came back to giving to other people, eventually heals you, giving of yourself. I will say I was not at a point in this concussion recovery, at that point, I wasn't at a place where I could give of myself.
Speaker 2
Yeah, if you're in that hole, you're not supposed to be giving.
Speaker 1
I wasn't strong enough. And I kind of heard the answer, but now it's like, so yeah, strengthening, fortifying yourself so that you can actually be in service to the world around you. And so people who are in that really deep, dark suffering space, they first need to heal. And then it starts to expand to the people around them.
Speaker 2
Yeah, because you can't give something you don't have. Right. You have to be healed yourself or you have to take care of yourself in order to be able to give. Enough.
Speaker 1
I don't think you have to be perfectly whole or perfectly, but you have to have enough strength to get up off the floor. Yeah. And there, I mean, at the time that I called in with that, like I didn't have that. It's hard for, like, I can talk about all this now. It's hard for me to articulate. And I don't think people believe how dark it was and how weak I was because I didn't articulate it. And you were
Speaker 2
just hiding.
Speaker 1
I was hiding and I'm well enough to be able to talk about it with some sort of articulation and knowledge. But I fear that people won't understand how dark a brain injury is when you're in the throes of it. So
Speaker 2
you're three years out from it, like, where are you now? Like, do you still have the headaches? Do you still have the bouts with depression? Like, what does it look like? I
Speaker 1
do still have those things. They're less, I have more tools now, more coping mechanisms, but I'm not, I'm not through it yet. And I think that is, it's kind of the dangerous part of an injury. Like if you've, if you've had an injury, then you're not in the trauma stage of like, you know, a cast on your leg or whatever. You're like getting through this therapy, you're starting moving again. I think that's actually the hardest time because from what I know of my PT friends are like, that's when people start slacking off a little in their recovery because they feel better. They're kind of back to doing what they're doing. And so I think I'm in that place where I'm moving again. I'm able to work. I'm excited about some of the things in my future. But there is this easy slide back that I recognize maybe a little bit of a slippery slope. I'm still sort of like finding my way. I'm not just machete through the jungle, like trying to figure it out. Like there's a trail, but I'm still on it.
Speaker 2
And who keeps you honest and on that path so that you're not slipping backwards? A
Speaker 1
therapist does, but now it's also me, which is really cool. And you had a guest on recently, we were talking about how gurus come in many forms and teachers come in many forms. And I feel like the beauty what my dad's teaching me is that I can be my own healer and that I'm the one who can give myself a hug. You
Speaker 2
don't need to chase a ghost for that.
Speaker 1
But I have to really implement some of the practices of self-care for myself because, yeah, while I'm not chasing a ghost and I feel my dad is really part of me, I still feel like an infant in this sort of spiritual, emotional development part of my life. So I'm like this kid who's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna run and just recess, I'm gonna run and play. But I'm also unsure of myself, if that makes sense. I mean, even talking about this is actually really hard.
Speaker 2
Because that's part of the journey, right? You're not really supposed to know the uncertainty. Yeah, but I wanna know. You can't have it without the uncertainty. Of course you wanna know, we all wanna know. That's
Speaker 1
the controller. You know. Yeah, I don't get to know. Yeah, you don't get to know. And
Speaker 2
what are some of those self-care tools?
Speaker 1
I got really, I got into breathing exercises. I really got into meditation. And, you know, I dabbled kind of same as therapy. I dabbled in all that stuff, but I never really, I never really needed it. And so breathing, meditation, journaling, I'm doing some art. I've never done art ever in my life. Um,
Speaker 2
like painting, painting.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Painting. I've, yeah. A little bit of sculpture type stuff. Um, which is, I'm not good at it. You know, I started playing a little bit of music in honor of my dad. I have a ukulele and I can play like four notes, but they're all brand new, um, experiences where I'm not very good at them. But what I'm understanding about the brain and the nervous system, and this is part of all the therapy, is when we use all of our brain in different ways, it strengthens. You know, there are it strengthens different pathways. And I've developed certain pathways in my brain and some are neglected. So a lot of that therapy is, is again, opening up, you know, the other side of my brain, the feminine side of my personality. I'm having a hard time articulating it. And this is one of the symptoms of the brain injury is that something is often very clear in my head and I can't quite get it out. Right. Perhaps
Speaker 2
an analogy might help. It's sort of like, you know, these grooves, right? These like neural pathways. It's like, you like to ride your bike. You're really good at riding your bike. You like riding your bike. And like, I just wanna ride my bike. Yeah. But if all you're doing is riding your bike, then there are other muscles in your body that are gonna atrophy. You're gonna overdevelop some. And these underdeveloped ones are gonna ultimately, you know, lead to an instability or an injury, right? So like doing sculpture or painting is a way of developing other aspects of your brain that are underdeveloped because you've just been doing this one thing for so long. And I get that, like, I just wanna do what I wanna do. I don't really wanna do something I'm not good at or have never done before because that sounds hard. And like, what I like to do is like get on my bike and ride all day or go running or something like that. Like, can I just keep doing that?
Speaker 1
I was trying to keep doing that. Right. And then I got thrown in my head. Yeah. And what's interesting, again, going back to psilocybin in particular, is that they do... So
Speaker 2
you have that experience also on top of MDMA.
Speaker 1
Yeah, MDMA first, then psilocybin. And they do say that, whereas MDMA is a little bit of like pulling a veil off, so you can look around the house. Psilocybin is, is like a whole new way of looking at things. And they actually say that it develops different neural pathways in your brain that you haven't used. And so what I understand is there's, this window that's open, you know, for a month or a while where you practice those pathways and you can kind of get those using again and develop kind of the cross-country ski tracks of a different way of looking at things. And so that's really fascinating to me that, and again, you can get there with therapy. You can get there with breathing. You can get there with a lot of things. Those compounds were just accelerators for me. And really, like literally I saw in psilocybin, like animal figures and like strength. And I saw my family and like all these women nurturing me around me, taking care of me, like people who are dead, alive, you know, felt and saw that kind of energy and my dad's energy. But then I also saw actual like neural pathways, like cool lights. And I was sitting there going, okay, my brain can heal. It was like reassurance to me that I'm not broken and that while I might be injured, that I can heal. And the science, you know, there's a lot of research to be done, but that's what it made me feel like, like there's hope I'm loved and I can heal. And actually seeing those visual representations of like those pathways, just like pew, pew, pew. It's like, you know, star Wars or something. Um, and that's exciting to me to know that I don't have to accept that I'm injured and I'm never going to be the same again, or I'm, you know, I probably, I never will be the same again. I actually believe I'll be better. That I will be more cognitively, emotionally, spiritually aware person. What
Speaker 2
an incredible journey you've been on. I'm just here thinking like, what if you just happened to be in LA, like this hadn't happened and you called me up, and you're like, I'm in LA, you know, do you wanna have me back on the show? And you were sitting across from me, you know, and had just progressed on your track, your route, whatever that looked like, you know, taking the whole head injury out of it. Like what would our conversation have
Speaker 1
been like? We would be talking about, you know, the I did a trail or the know, expedition I was doing. And, you know, there's still a part of me, like, I hope that's not gone in my life. You know, I hope I'm not mourning the loss of like that person that goes adventuring and exploring. But right now, yeah, I'm on a different exploration, but we would have been talking about something entirely different, which to me, maybe isn't as interesting.
Speaker 2
I think that you may and may in fact, may probably find your way back to those sorts of experiences, but it's not gonna happen until or unless you completely let go of that. Like if you're still holding onto that, like- That's right. I'm gonna find my way back to that. Then it's unlikely. You have to completely say, that's not who I am anymore. And then that will lead you back to that. But with a whole different perspective as a different version of yourself.
Speaker 1
Yeah, sport and athletics with a completely different mission or goal. You know, when you say that, it made me think back to when I was a little kid, I would like play in the dirt in the backyard and dig around and hide in the trees and camp in the backyard. Like that's the explorer I want to get back to, that curious kid who wanted to be outside instead of the high achiever who needed to win and needed to do what no one else has done before. Like-
Speaker 2
You did all that, you did it. I did and I wanna return. You don't have to prove anything else. Right, but I wanna return
Speaker 1
to that
Speaker 2
kid. And honestly, like even if you were, it's like, okay, she did another one, you've already done a bunch of those. Like what else, you know, there's always something longer, harder, further, whatever. And there's always other people that are doing crazier and crazier things. Like on some level, it's a hamster wheel.
Speaker 1
It is. It's
Speaker 2
like a heroin addict who's chasing the first high. Like you've proved yourself. There's nothing left for you there. And literally- Those experiences can still teach you, but that's not the lesson you need to learn. There's other lessons I think.
Speaker 1
Which is why I was thrown in my head by my dad. Because I was so stubborn, I wouldn't stop. But you're right, there's another frontier for me. And instead of feeling hopeless and desperate, and I can see like some excitement in that, which is why I'm talking about this, because I know there, there are a lot of people who are really, really suffering from brain injury and our medical system is not supporting those people. And they're trying to just give them a drug and mask the symptoms instead of looking at the whole person and looking at how to heal a whole person. resources together in a better place for somebody to access, whether it's breathing or therapy or movement or whatever healing modality works for them. Because yeah, like there was, there's no trail map. And so I guess I'm going to try to help people navigate that a little bit better. Because it makes me really sad to think about what I went through and hear the stories that are coming up for me. I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, the journal entries I wrote and I went back and read those for this podcast series and like I almost couldn't read them myself. Like I don't know who that person was and I know there's a lot of people suffering. So my hope is that this frontier that I'm on is for me, but it's also for a lot of other people who have this injury.

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