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In 2001, during my outpatient neurorehab at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI), I enrolled in a 10-week stress management course as part of TRI’s clinical research. TRI tested our stress levels and had us rate our primary coping strategies. At that point, I was still grappling with my closed head injury diagnosis, understood I had a brain injury, and falsely believed that I’d be better soon, for I had not grasped that the medical system didn’t provide healing treatments and their strategies wouldn’t restore neurons and neural networks. As a result, I understood the test results but not the ramifications on my life or my familiar coping methods.

My top coping strategy prior to my brain injury was reading, and years later, brain biofeedback proved its physiological relaxation effect.

Prior to my brain injury, I read every day. I read newspapers in the morning; novels over lunch and during afternoon breaks; materials for my work throughout the day; literary tomes as a challenging habit; and emails and e-newsletters. I visited the library weekly and restricted myself to three mystery mass paperbacks per week. I could’ve read five. That was my biggest regret after brain injury: listening to complaints about my prodigious reading and cutting back, even though I read when they weren’t around or while keeping them company during TV watching.

About three months before I enrolled in the stress management course, my rehab team had informed me I couldn’t read anymore. The stress management assessment showed me reading as my top coping strategy; eating ice cream and chocolate as second. Guess which one became the top one by default?

Worse, my Life Change Index showed an 80 percent likelihood of experiencing illness in the near future. I had the worst combination: the highest stress levels, the loss of my top coping mechanism, and the elevation of an unhealthy coping strategy, which, along with changes to my hunger and appetite signals,........

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