Transcription:
Bill 0:00
Bill from recoveryafterstroke.com, you know, stroke is not about you. It’s about me. What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is often we go about making the world about everybody else if as parents we make the world about our kids.
And about what to do for them and how to help them and how to do stuff for them as husbands and wives we make the world about our partner at work, it’s about everybody else.
Bill 0:34
Very rarely do we make things that happen in the world about us. And, you know, stroke is one of those things that is really about you. It’s not about anybody else. And I understand that that can be difficult for some people around you to appreciate that to understand what that means and how to deal with this change in the dynamic of the family or work or of any situation.
Bill 1:04
So how do you make a stroke about you? Well, it’s very difficult for other people to understand how stroke is to experience because they’re not going through it. And if you’re somebody who’s had a stroke, that hasn’t got any outwardly visible signs that you’re experiencing neurological challenges, it’s really tough for the other person who sees a supposedly perfect looking exterior, to comprehend what’s going on internally.
Bill 1:35
And this is really where conversation and communication is going to make a difference. Those people need to be given the resources to make it possible for them to understand how stroke is impacting you. And one way that you can do that is you can have them listen to the recovery after stroke podcast, for example, they can go on and check out the podcast episodes we stroke survivors talk about themselves.
Bill 2:02
There’s over 80 episodes now. And there’s sure to be one there that’s going to relate to the particular situation of the person who is living with you working with you, or is struggling to cope with what has happened to you and how you’ve changed, and how they need to change actually, to adapt to the situation and expect less of you and understand that what you need to do now is heal.
Bill 2:32
What you need to do is rest. What you need to do is reassess. You need to deal with the emotional challenges that stroke has caused. All those things that have just popped up out of nowhere. And if you’ve just got out of hospital or you’re at home, those changes are happening rapidly. And as they happen rapidly, we need to quickly skill ourselves with additional resources to make the transition to this new way of using your brain, an experience that is going to be less traumatic one that you can learn from one that you can grow from.
Bill 3:14
And hopefully, one that you can reflect on in the years to come as being an experience that has taught you a lot, if nothing else, and understand that stroke can be difficult and very different for many people across the planet. And I only speak from my experience of stroke, because that’s all I know. But I did seek out other people from the stroke community to understand what their experience was like to see if I can bring that to you and share it and make it more widely known as to what it is that people are going through.
Bill 3:47
Now, carers become carers overnight as well, they have their entire world changed immediately. So they need resources and they need the tools as well. So what other ways can we help to try and bring other people from outside of the stroke world into a space where they can at least get some understanding and get a bit of clarity or get a little bit of a feeling of what it’s about, especially if they’re really keen to help and support. Sometimes they make stroke, your stroke experience about them.
Bill 4:24
And although they’re not intending to be non compassionate, or they’re not intending to be challenging to deal with, they are attempting to find a way to relate to the stripe experience. So they might say like, yeah, you know, this one time this thing happened to me and, you know, I forgot that I had an appointment to go to, and they do that to try and see how they can relate to you in a new way and they’re not doing it to try and minimize what’s happened to you.
Bill 4:59
They’re just doing it to try and understand and they make stroke about themselves, especially sometimes carers will make stroke about themselves and about how that experience that you’re going through is going to impact their lives negatively or interfere with their lives because let’s face it stroke does interfere with the lives of carers.
Bill 5:20
And that’s a really good thing to consider if you’re a carer, that’s something that you need to understand. And that’s something that you need to adjust to as well. So stroke is not an experience that happens just to the person that’s actually going through the neurological challenges and the physical challenges also happening to the people around them. And it’s the right time to get together and it’s the right time to find out ways of how we can all support each other and help each other as well as and really importantly look after our own well being individually, from time to time.
Bill 5:59
Cares do it really tough I know, a carer’s often will sacrifice almost everything that they love to do for the person that they’re caring for. And that’s not a good recipe for a good life. It’s not a good recipe for a feeling of wellness and mental clarity and feeling like that, being able to contribute and enjoy their own life.
Bill 6:24
So we need to come together and we need to create a conversation around the issues that carers and stroke survivors face. So when stroke happens to people, it’s about the person that has happened to at some point, it will become about the other person on the other side, the carer, and it’ll be a conversation that the carer has to have about which part of stroke is about them.
Bill 6:51
And it’s clearly not the part of experiencing the neurological challenges and their fatigue. There’s definitely other parts of the stroke extreme that are about them. So I think also it’s okay from time to time for a stroke survivor to say something like, you know what, this stroke is not about you, this is about me. And perhaps the carer could say something like, you know what this situation that I’m in now, because of the stroke that you’ve experienced is not about you, it’s about me.
Bill 7:25
And that means that each individual takes a little bit of responsibility for the challenges that they’re experiencing, and responsibility for how they would love to live their own lives as well as how they would love to care for the person that they have been charged to care for. So stroke is definitely not about you. It’s about me, and it’s definitely not about the stroke survivor, it’s about the carer.
Bill 7:57
So if it’s about all these individuals we can best support each other and come together when we make it about us. stroke is definitely about us. It’s about everybody involved the children, the grandparents, the parents, it’s about the mums, the dads, it’s about the aunties and uncles and together as a community, we can come together.
Bill 8:20
So, if you would like some assistance and understanding of how to deal with your challenges after stroke, perhaps you might want to consider recovery after stroke coaching. You can find out more about recovery after stroke coaching at recoveryafterstroke.com/coaching or just send an email to [email protected] if you have any questions.
Bill 8:43
In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy the podcast episodes that are available at recoveryafterstroke.com on iTunes, or anywhere where you get your podcast episodes from. This is Bill from recoveryafterstroke.com thanks for watching.
