Poll Results: Do You Have a Challenged Brain?

Summary: The latest poll question has been answered and closed. You shared openly and honestly about your brain challenges. Now let's explore more together, over the coming weeks, about the communications challenges they present you and how you can grow to overcome them.

I've already asked if you have a challenged brain. Many of us do--most certainly when we're worked up emotionally. But other challenges can pressure our brains, our bodies, our outlook on life. Some examples you know are:

- Attention Deficit Disorder, also known as ADD or ADHD (for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): Commonly diagnosed in children, this brain challenge can also affect adults, especially those who have had it since childhood. It's commonly characterized by difficulty focusing or paying close attention to one subject at a time; simple mistakes in tasks or homework that are made even when the person knows the right answer or the correct way of performing tasks; chronic disorganization and forgetfulness. (Tara McGillicuddy, a blogger who not only coaches people with ADHD, but also has it herself, just posted about a workshop she'll be presenting this fall on self-advocacy strategies for adults and teens.)

- Mood disorders: These run the gamut from short-term and seasonal depression to Type I Bipolar Disorder, which can contain periodic hallucinations and psychosis. Substance-induced mood disorders can mirror other such brain challenges, but are only brought on by the intake of substances like drugs and alcohol and/or their withdrawal from the body/brain. (Some mood-related blogs I recommend are Julie Fast's "Bipolar Happens," "My Son Has 2 Brains"--a mother's perspective on raising a young child with a mood disorder--and Helia's health blog about Seasonal Affective Disorder.)

- Autism: A brain challenge that may or may not involve brain chemistry, but definitely involves the size and shape of the brain and its hemispheres, autism--like most brain challenges--appears on a sliding scale, or spectrum. People with High Functioning Autism and Aspgerger Syndrome have the ability to socialize, but are often somewhat confused by the hidden 'rules' of social life and society. This confusion becomes increasingly deeper the further you go into the autism spectrum; those with full-blown autism frequently seem to live inside their own heads, rarely communicating verbally with others, except via sound bites they may have taken from TV shows, music and movies. (From a parent's perspective, "The Joy of Autism" is an interesting blog; from that of someone with an autistic brain, visit "Aspitude!")

Of those who voted, only one reader indicated, "My brain is only challenged whenever I am emotional," meaning that several of you with additional challenges were interested in this poll.

What didn't I include in the poll? Psychiatric and personality disorders like schizophrenia and Borderline Personality Disorder, Oppositional/Defiant Disorder and Histrionic Personality Disorder are just a few. I could also have listed other learning disorders or challenges that affect the senses like deafness or blindness. (Incidentally, the blogger at "Aspitude!", Elisia Ashkenazy, is also profoundly deaf.)

All brain challenges can be 'overcome' through hard work and a desire to grow. The first step is recognition. Over the coming weeks, let's look at some specific challenges to communicating clearly that these and other brain challenges give you. More importantly, let's solve some challenges--together!


© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2010

WEEKLY UPDATE: Taking the First Step

Summary: A year ago, I started a 12-step journey, based on the original 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So many 12-step groups exist today; their premise is always the same: inner growth through intense self-honesty. Taking the first step is the most important part of this and any personal journey.

This week, I dusted off some old journals and workbooks and re-read them to get some perspective on my life. What a difference a year makes! One year ago this month, I started working with a 12-step program—based on the original 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—in order to gain a deeper sense of personal responsibility and inner peace. (These two ideas may seem antithetical, but they can coexist!)

A number of different groups have co-opted the 12 steps for a variety of different reasons—from staying sober to breaking abusive cycles in any number of areas. (See Wikipedia's list of just some of the growing number of programs available today.) My own first introduction to working the 12-step concept was through a prosperity consciousness class.

Gaining intense personal insight is the ultimate goal of any 12-step-based course or program. And the first step—with any personal journey—is always the most important, for it's with that first footfall that you make your commitment to your course. And none of us can move forward without serious honesty, both with ourselves and others.

Here is a generic version of the 12 steps:

(1) Admit I am powerless over (my problem); that my life has become unmanageable (because of my futile efforts to control the problem)

(2) Come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity (this often varies based on religious/spiritual beliefs)

(3) Make a decision to turn my will & my life over to the care of this power as I understand it

(4) Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself

(5) Admit to this power, myself, & another human being the exact nature of my wrongs

(6) Am entirely ready to have this higher power remove all these defects of my character

(7) Humbly ask this higher power to remove my shortcomings

(8) Make a list of all the people I've harmed, & become willing to make amends to them all

(9) Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so injures them or others

(10) Continue to take personal inventory, & when I am wrong, promptly admit it

(11) Seek through prayer & meditation to improve my conscious contact with the power greater than myself as I understand this power, praying only for knowledge of (my power's) will for me and the ability to carry that out

(12) Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, try to carry this message to others (who face my problem), & to practice these principles in all my affairs


© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009