Today I want to talk about finding balance in your life.
It’s hard to find balance.
In fact, I think that it takes a constant daily effort.
You can do pretty much anything too much or too little. And what is too much or too little looks different for everybody everyday.
But don’t worry, it’s definitely possible.
Take scripture study for example. I choose to read just a few verses a day and that suffices for me and my schedule. I used to make myself read a chapter but I felt like I would lose touch with the spirit and be focused instead on the length.
So for me I was reading too much and needed to tone it down to get the benefits I wanted from it.
But, most days, reading just one verse feels too short for me. So by reading a few to several verses I found that balance.
Another example of this is with food. I go through phases where I eat a little too much food and gain a little weight and where I eat a little too little food and lose a little weight. I think that this is a normal part of eating food, but it demonstrates the daily effort that it takes to maintain a balance. It’s a lot of little adjustments of a little more than before or a little less than before until you have inevitably slipped up and tipped the scales and have to restart.
Another way to describe balance I think is a daily changing to be a little bit better than you were before, or a correcting of mistakes. In the LDS religion we also call this repentance.
I think finding balance is a beautiful daily struggle that is part of the purpose of life.
I wish you all luck in finding balance in your daily lives and believe that you will find joy through it.
Feel free to share any struggles that you’ve had finding balance in your own life and what you have learned.
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Aluminum vs Aluminum Free vs Natural vs Clinical Strength
I’ll be honest, I’m a pretty sweaty person. And smell, up until several months ago when I found my winning deodorant, was a problem for me. In the past, despite showering everyday and putting on copious amounts of deodorant, I still would end up smelling bad by the end of the day. This usually only happened on school days, or times that I spent outside my house, because I tended to get nervous around people which caused my sweat glands to secrete nervous sweat which smells bad.
I was so embarrassed by this and I would try to wear jackets to cover up the smell to no avail. Sometimes they even made it worse because they made me hot which caused me to sweat more. I hated lifting my arms to do anything because it would release a whiff of BO and I would cringe inwardly while feeling ashamed because people around me could probably smell it.
Those were the days that I was wearing a normal aluminum deodorant which clearly didn’t work for me. I bounced around a few popular brands, never really feeling satisfied with the results. I even tried men’s deodorant which I thought would work because it had to be stronger, right? Wrong. It worked just as poorly for me as the women’s deodorants.
A couple years after those situations I was taking time off of school because of a brain injury that I had. If you want to learn more about it check out my previous two posts! And one of my doctors had me switch to a natural deodorant because he told me that aluminum deodorant was super bad for you, and could even leave calcium deposits in your brain.
Today I googled this and google said that aluminum deodorant doesn’t cause calcium deposits in your brain. But at the time I believed him and got rid of my aluminum deodorant as quickly as possible and switched to a natural one.
Now, the natural deodorant mostly worked for me since I wasn’t spending as much time around people or nervous sweating. But, when I did spend time around people, usually at church, I ended the time with a bit of a bad smell. I thought this was ridiculous because it wasn’t even a whole day, it was only a couple of hours and the deodorant couldn’t have my back for even that long.
Later, I tried a different natural deodorant brand which I liked the smell of better, but it was the same story with me ending up a little smelly after a couple of hours around people.
I wasn’t satisfied with this outcome and decided that natural deodorants weren’t it for me. But, unfortunately, I was still scared of aluminum and hadn’t yet discovered that it wasn’t as bad for you as my doctor had said. So I switched to an aluminum-free deodorant by Secret that I hoped would be a little more powerful than a natural deodorant.
This deodorant worked for a little while, even when I was working long days in a physically demanding job. I ended the eight to ten hour days with little to no bad smell that I did not think was very irritating or noticeable to others.
This was all good and fine until I started wearing closer fitting clothing that ended up catching the sweat and holding it against my skin for longer instead of letting it evaporate which caused there to be more of a bad smell on me.
I was discouraged because the aluminum-free deodorant that I had been satisfied with had at last let me down. It reminded me of the times a couple of years ago when I had felt shame and embarrassment from my body odor. This is when I considered finally going to the doctor for a prescription strength deodorant.
Before I had a chance to do this though, I heard an ad on YouTube for Secret Clinical Strength Deodorant that was available in stores. As soon as I could I raced over to my local Walmart and found my favorite scent out of the options–which is now one of my favorite scents of all time–and started wearing it. This deodorant had aluminum in it, but I was determined to smell good and leave the embarrassment of the past behind, so I decided to wear it anyways, at first as little as possible, but now I put it on once a day or more.
This deodorant has Aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex GLY in it which is found in some prescription strength deodorants, and is an antiperspirant as well. This powerful deodorant has been the deodorant of my dreams and has 9.9 times out of 10 left me smelling fresh and good. Finally, the battle of the deodorants had found a winner!
No more days spent worrying that I smelled bad, and no more people that didn’t want to sit next to me because of the smell!
The one downside to this deodorant is that I got a mild rash from it for a couple days, but it went away pretty quickly and I didn’t have to stop using it.
I had also gotten over my fear of aluminum, figuring that even if I ended up with calcium deposits in my brain, at least I would have friends and be spared much heart-ache and embarrassment. Luckily, with writing this post and researching deodorant I have found out that very little aluminum from deodorant is absorbed into your skin, and what is is filtered out by your liver. Pro tip: do your research when doctors that you don’t completely trust give you advice.
The only times when I smelled bad despite wearing this deodorant were on a date that I was very nervous for and a bridal shower that I shaved my armpits for before which shaved off the deodorant. I did apply more after that in the morning, but it is meant to be applied at night which can account for the lessened performance.
Battle of the Deodorants winner: Secret Clinical Strength Deodorant!
My favorite scent: Stress Response.
The embarrassment and shame of days of old is gone and now I feel more confident and assured knowing that I smell good!
I wish you all luck on your own journeys of conquering personal battles! I hope this post helped someone that may also be trying to find a deodorant that works! But, whether it be deodorant or something else, I hope you find what you are looking for and grow in ways you never thought possible!
In part 1 of this series I explained what happened the night of my accident, some symptoms I noticed, and frustrations I had concerning my functionality post-concussion. In this post I want to provide a more detailed list of the symptoms I experienced, describe what life was like with them, and describe some of the treatment I received.
After a couple weeks of having a concussion I had accumulated many symptoms. I experienced:
Visual impairments: problems with tracking, fixation, reading, and light sensitivity.
Dysautonomia: easily startled and issues calming down after being startled, problems breathing–I couldn’t stop thinking about my breathing at times and got out of breath after saying only a few sentences, anxiety, and gastrointestinal issues, muscle tightness–especially in my neck.
Insomnia: I could only sleep 5-6 hours a night, took a long time to fall asleep, and woke up during the night.
Muscle spasms: mainly in my neck, but they occurred all over my body
Cognitive issues: severe brain fog, memory issues, concentration issues, and word retrieval issues.
Fatigue
Noise sensitivity
Depression
Exercise intolerance
These symptoms were constant and only got worse the harder I tried.
There was also the matter of overstimulation. If you don’t know what overstimulation is, it is when your brain receives more sensory input than it can process so your energy spikes, then crashes and it leaves you feeling exhausted with exacerbated symptoms. This happened to me within five minutes of waking up and happened several times throughout the day. It is an exhausting way to live. It also left me questioning whether I really had a concussion in the energy spikes and discouraged in the crashes.
Later, after six months of having this injury, I developed tinnitus and speech issues.
My main symptoms were brain fog and vision issues. Incredibly, I didn’t develop headaches as a continual symptom. I had only a few headaches over the period of time I had a concussion.
Life was a living hell with these symptoms. I couldn’t enjoy the activities I normally enjoyed like reading and running, and couldn’t even do the things that I did to rejuvenate myself when I was tired like watching a movie or YouTube because even those simple activities were exhausting and left me with severe brain fog and anxiety about what was going on in my brain.
I felt very angry and felt that it was a great injustice that I had to go through this. I thought that God was trying to teach me a lesson in patience or compassion, so I made sure to learn my lesson real quick so that God could heal me from my injury since I had the faith for him to do so. Passing months proved that God was not healing me from my injury as I had hoped.
I was also ashamed to be going through this. Why, when thousands of people are healed from concussions every year was I left to suffer on my own? I felt shame when I had to tell my parents to finally take me to the doctor two months later since I wasn’t healing.
One quick recommendation I have for anyone suffering from a concussion is to go to the doctor or emergency room as soon as possible after you are injured.
The doctors appointment left me feeling misunderstood and in tears. The doctor had simply asked me a few questions, diagnosed me with a concussion, and referred me to a sports medicine doctor, leaving me uneducated about my condition and unsure of what to do next. Didn’t the doctor see the severity of what I was dealing with? Couldn’t he see the pain and suffering I handled every day? I had expected some empathy and some answers and got neither.
When I left the doctor’s office crying my mom asked me in an indignant tone why I was crying and I told her that it was a big deal to have a concussion. She assured me that we would figure it out and not stop until we had. It gave me a little bit of comfort, but I still felt alone and broken. My life had seemed to have stopped while the world had kept going and I didn’t know what to do.
The only thing I could figure to do was keep going which in hindsight was not the best idea. I should have focused on getting treatment instead of work and school. Alas, I obtained a job working at a produce stand for the summer after high school. The customers probably just thought I was exhausted when they saw me mess up multiple times, or not understand what they were saying to me. I did my best, but most days I was overstimulated to the point of not knowing for a few seconds whether a red light meant stop or go. Luckily I always figured it out in time, but the consequences could have been disastrous.
I spent my days organizing corn, dealing with angry customers, and lifting watermelons. Even without a brain injury someone working this job would end the ten hour shift being exhausted. I felt like I was yanking my brain on the end of a leash along with me. I also felt trapped in my own body, and that if my brain could just cooperate for a few seconds I could find freedom.
Soon, I went to the sports medicine doctor that I had been referred to and he referred me to a brain injury clinic that finally gave me some education on my concussion and also gave me some much needed hope.
Beginning treatment there was a blessing because at least I was working on healing. Unfortunately, the treatment was minimally effective and only lasted a month because I had to move away to college. Although I continued doing the treatment exercises on my own for a few months, they were still minimally effective for my severity of concussion.
The treatment consisted of physical activity, cognitive activity, and rest. The physical activity was often cardio intervals and the cognitive activity included things like sentence unscrambling, balance work, and puzzle solving. These were recommended to be followed by ten minutes of rest.
The also taught me about the science of concussions. They said that brains had pathways built up from use that were like highways, and when you got a concussion those highways got broken and the “traffic” in your brain got all clogged up which caused your brain to use less efficient pathways which caused the symptoms.
Goal of treatment was to use the brain a little bit at a time before many symptoms got going, and doing that built up the broken pathways in the brain and restored blood flow to those areas.
Moving forward to college time, I moved out to college, met my new roommates, and started a new life. I don’t know what I had expected for my first semester of college, but it definitely wasn’t dealing with a concussion while trying to learn to live on my own and navigate freshman college life. It felt too busy and overwhelming.
One thing I dealt with during my concussion was feeling like my brain had to refresh (like with a computer) itself every five to ten seconds. I dealt with this in class, taking it in five to ten second intervals. Every interval I had to remind myself to keep going.
I had a hard time reading the professor’s powerpoints and reading my notes. It was also such a struggle to concentrate in class amidst all the brain fog, fatigue, and overstimulation.
I would come home and either crash on my bed or struggle through some homework where I could barely read what was written in the readings and could barely comprehend it even if my visual reading skills had been working.
Next I would attempt to do some treatment exercises and be my own doctor. This usually led to me having a daily existential crisis of why I was even in college and I would grapple with my injured brain, trying to find something in there that felt normal or a little bit better. The exercises didn’t seem to be helping.
Aside from that I still made some great friends that semester of college. The awkward part? I never told them that I had a concussion. It felt too heavy to bring up to them, and I barely understood why I was in college with a concussion, I couldn’t tell them why I was here if they asked, so I never brought it up.
After three months of this I went home for Christmas Break. It was a blessed time off of school, but I had nothing but time to face my debilitating symptoms and I felt more depressed than I ever had been.
Christmas break was coming to a close and facing another semester of school felt like too much for me. It was one day that I had a raging panic attack with hyperventilation while thinking about going back to school that I decided I just couldn’t and it was time to get more help.
On the day I was supposed to start Spring classes I went back to the aforementioned concussion clinic and I was diagnosed with Post-Concussion Syndrome, the diagnoses that people receive when a concussion lasts more than three months. I was referred to a more intensive clinic that I had to wait five weeks for, and received treatment at the less intensive clinic in the meantime.
Those five weeks were some of the longest weeks of my life.
There was a lot of time spent sitting on the couch and staring at the wall. Sometimes I stared at the wall for two hours straight. I would try to not get overstimulated if possible throughout the day which meant taking breaks every time I started to get a lot of extra symptoms, but sometimes I felt like they didn’t do anything and that I got overstimulated just staring at a wall, which is quite severe.
I also hated driving in the car so I didn’t really go anywhere. I had this “fun” symptom where if I got jostled or bumped my head a little bit I would feel a rise in symptoms, as if I had gotten another concussion, even though the bump or jostling would be too soft to have caused an injury. This gave me an intense fear of riding in the car, jumping, sports, hugs, or sometimes, in my worst times, even walking. I got into the habit of walking as lightly as I could and reveled at how I had even walked normally before my injury. I must have been so tough, I thought.
I remember one day I was listening to a talk from the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I think it was on something along the lines of faith without works is dead. I felt so much despair when I heard that talk that I couldn’t finish it, which is not normal for me. Usually those talks are inspiring and uplifting for me. I thought, how was I supposed to have good works when I can’t go five minutes without getting overstimulated? I needed the blessings that came from performing good works, but couldn’t carry any out. I felt for a moment like I had been spiritually check mated, that I had been put in a position where I couldn’t receive blessings of healing because I was too broken to act in faith. I couldn’t even watch the whole video for crying out loud. How was I supposed to put in more effort in my life? I knew that God gives grace, but I wanted the blessings mentioned in this talk specifically, and I couldn’t bless other’s lives in a way that I felt would give me those blessings. I laid down for hours, staring at the ceiling after that.
I often felt empty inside like this. I would sit on the couch with the lowest amount of stimulation possible and try to feel something, anything, but nothing would come. Concussions come with a reduced ability to feel emotions.
Alas, the five weeks did come to a close and my time for treatment at the intensive clinic started. It was a boot camp format with two weeks of intensive treatment with six to eight hour days. The therapists were supportive and we got delicious lunches which made it enjoyable, but it was sometimes repetitive and difficult to drag my exhausted brain through the exercises.
What kept me going was the incredible fact that it was working, and I could feel it. I would be going during an exercise, about ready to give up, then I would feel a rush of blood flow to an area of my brain that had apparently been lacking in it. This happened several times. It was a miraculous experience.
I experienced leaps and bounds of improvement during those two weeks, and the neuroscientists that worked there were even impressed at how much improvement I had made. They told me that my brain was back to a normal healthy range which was remarkable.
At the end of two weeks I was given a regimen of exercises to do at home and an assignment to go to a vision therapist. I later chose to go to a therapist and chiropractor as well.
Unfortunately after those two weeks my brain was receiving blood flow in a healthy range, but I didn’t FEEL better. I still felt like something was off, but didn’t really know what it was. I went through a vision therapy program which was not very successful and I am still working on my vision skills to this day. And I went to a therapist which didn’t really help me with the “off” feeling. And I went to a chiropractor which didn’t get rid of this feeling either.
I have this feeling to this day, and don’t really know what it is. It may be depression, it may be mental health related, or it may be a bit of lingering brain fog. Along with that I have muscle spasms, tinnitus, mild reading and fixation problems left over, and I still get some symptom aggravation when I get a soft bump to the head, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was before. I can hit bumps in the car and be fine, and even some direct hits haven’t bothered me. But other than that, I am doing great in the brain injury department.
I think it’s important to mention that there is always hope. This is probably the hardest thing I have ever done and I miraculously got through it.
Not to say that all I had to do was “get through it.” That seems like an understatement compared to what I really did.
I lived it.
Every day for a year.
I experienced the lowest of lows that I didn’t even know I had the capacity to experience.
I think it’s also important to mention that I have faith that everything happens for a reason. In a talk that I love called By Divine Design by Elder Rasband it talks about how in the Book of Mormon a man named Alma was preaching to people in a city called Ammonihah. But, soon he left the city because of the wickedness of the people, but an angel appeared to him and told him to return and preach again(1).
Alma did just that and as he entered the city he was hungry and said to a man: “Will ye give to an humble servant of God something to eat?”
“And the man said unto him: I am a Nephite, and I know that thou art a holy prophet of God, for thou art the man whom an angel said in a vision: Thou shalt receive.”(2).
That man was Amulek. He is the man that would become Alma’s missionary companion and that would do much good(1).
This is an example of there being no coincidences in life. Alma did not just happen to find Amulek there, it happened by divine design.
A quote by President Thomas S. Monson says, “There is a guiding hand above all things. Often when things happen, it’s not by accident. One day, when we look back at the seeming coincidences of our lives, we will realize that perhaps they weren’t so coincidental after all.”(1).
I don’t know for sure why I had to go through this, perhaps it was to develop more compassion or patience as I thought before, or maybe it was for another reason entirely. But I believe there is a darn good reason for having to go through this. It wasn’t for nothing.
Looking back now, I think it helped me develop strength. It worked my spiritual and mental muscles to the max, and, it seemed, to the breaking point, and now they are healed and stronger.
If I could give myself a message back then it would be that you can cry and crying is worth it.
If you are experiencing or have experienced a brain injury I would love to connect with you so we can compare stories!
Strobing red and blue lights flash all around me. Loud dancing music echoes off the brick walls. Exhausted from the night of dancing, I stop and rest for a moment in the middle of a crowd of sweaty teenagers. Everything seems normal. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a girl who’s head is speeding towards me at an unusually fast pace. She’s not in line to hit me, I thought. I don’t need to move. Boy, was I wrong.
What she was doing to achieve this kind of velocity I’ll never be completely sure of, but as far as my understanding goes she was either doing a back handspring, or threw her head back super hard while dancing or laughing.
Either way, amidst all the chaos and my exhaustion, she managed to hit my left eye with the back of her head. Stumbling back in the crowd, I couldn’t see anything for several seconds, I don’t know if that’s because my eyes were closed, or because my vision blacked out. When I recovered I had the sense that something had been hurt, and I suspected immediately that I might have a concussion, but I brushed the suspicion off at first, not wanting to face the implications of having a concussion.
I immediately went back to dancing, hoping that no one had seen me get hurt. Then I stopped, because I was worried that jumping itself might aggravate a possible concussion.
I first noticed evidence of something being wrong when I tried to walk and my body didn’t respond for a couple of seconds. Then, after trying harder, I got my body to initiate walking. It was a confusing couple of seconds. I was doing everything I normally did to start walking, but nothing in my body moved. Luckily, this phenomenon didn’t occur again.
After thinking for a while and stalling for time by lightly dancing (no jumping) I came to the decision of going to the bathroom to see what my face looked like in the mirror. As I reached the bathroom mirror and inspected my left eye I saw some minor redness above and below it, but nothing serious. I then got some ice from a kind Teacher’s Assistant and sat out the rest of the dance.
My mind was reeling while waiting for the dance to end. I had taken an emergency medical responder class, I should know the symptoms of a concussion, but the only things that came to mind were nausea and tinnitus, neither of which I had. In addition to that, I couldn’t stop overthinking whether you are supposed to put ice on your eye.
As the night wore on we transitioned to the after party of games and a movie where I noticed some confusion, brain fog, and had the overarching sense of everything being harder. I didn’t want to accept these symptoms though, because I liked to consider myself invincible. It took several hours of constant symptoms for me to accept that I probably had a concussion.
When I got home late that night I tentatively told my mom that I thought I had a concussion. I asked her if I should go to the doctor and she said no because she didn’t think it was that severe. That was a Saturday night. The next week happened to be the last week of school filled with all the senior activities that I longed to go to. The pro that I saw of not going to the doctor was that he couldn’t tell me that I couldn’t attend any of my senior activities. Similarly, the con of not going to the doctor was that he couldn’t tell me that I couldn’t attend any of my senior activities, which in hindsight, should have been abstained from.
The biggest set back was going to a rollercoaster park. Riding rollercoasters + a concussion = an unhealthy time. I’m pretty sure I got at least one more concussion on those rollercoasters since it’s easier to get another concussion when you already have one. I was also risking a lot by going on those rollercoasters because there is something called second-impact syndrome where you get a hit-even a soft one-after your concussion and it can cause your brain to rapidly swell and your breathing to stop, and it puts you in the emergency room if you even get that far before you pass away.
Doctors don’t know why some people get second-impact syndrome and some people don’t, but I was in the lucky category of not getting it.
The loud noises, jarring rollercoasters, and long, crowded walks left me dreadfully overstimulated and fearing for my life. This experience is why I will never ride a rollercoaster again. That being said, I did survive the day, but met my ride home being so exhausted that I was unable to speak even if I wanted to. Unfortunately, not speaking is a typical state for me so my ride (my dad) didn’t think anything of it. I wanted to scream that something was wrong in my head, but I couldn’t get any words out. I felt trapped.
The next few days were exhausting, but not rollercoaster riding, fearing for your life exhausting. Soon, came my high school graduation. To be short, it felt like a fever dream. I was out of it, had difficulty comprehending conversations, and was worried I was exacerbating my symptoms the entire time. Looking back on those pictures I look slightly pained and have a small red bruise just below my left eyebrow.
In general, what was worse, I felt like with every previously normal thing I tried to do after getting a concussion, I discovered a new deficit in my functioning. I felt like I was exploring my brain in a way I never had before, and not in a comfortable way. More like in a depressing and excruciating way. Try reading? My eyes couldn’t follow the words and frequently skipped. What about watching a movie? I was exhausted and got pressure in my head and brain fog. There was a similar story with every activity I did. I also had a strange sense of physical areas in my brain being activated differently and it was a constant reminder of my brain not working properly. I couldn’t even get my mind off the symptoms long enough to fully comprehend how bad they were.
I will leave this entry here since I don’t want it to be too long. In part 2 I will talk more in depth about my symptoms and what life was like with them. I hope this helps some people in putting words to what they may be experiencing, because I know I felt like I couldn’t put the proper words to it when I was experiencing it.
Thank you for reading this far. This has been a very cathartic experience for me and I feel more whole after writing this. I guess a part of me was still emotionally broken from this experience even after 3 years and writing it has helped me work through some of it.
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