inbetween

I have 3 week of 9-5, well actually 8.30 to 7pm.

I am normally freelance, each day is pretty much different from the last - it keeps me on my toes and makes  my little  vertical filofax year planner (the most light-weight diary I can find) the most precious thing in my life.

So now I have three weeks and a day of heading to the same destination each day. I have been looking on it as a kind of retreat, a kind of holiday. I am working up to 13 and a half hour days, yet it's a holiday of sorts.

The job is 'chairing' an audition process. It involves dealing with people which is familiar ground and a strength of sorts. It also involves overseeing a system that has several components: student helpers (who in the very first moments of arrival perform at least 5 different functions for starters), a student leader, panel members, candidates, the admissions department, the school's reception, the maintenance team sometimes and 13 - 14 rooms with slightly different setups and different functions. It involves looking at tabled lists of panelists, student helpers and remembering the protocols for each of these roles. It involves knowing the time flow for the day for each of these different roles and mini protocols and holding in mind do's and don'ts. It also involves a lot of collating and cross checking. It also involves making sure things happen on time and it requires a lot of running up and down stairs. There are three pathways on the course with shared aspects and different criteria and priorities. There are a host of panelists who work in shifting pairings and often in different rooms each day and they all have names and faces to remember. There are special considerations - among the 100 or so candidates daily there are up to 15 people whose disabilities must be communicated to the panelists so they can take these into consideration. There are 4 panels and three kinds of workshops (one of which is mixed between two pathways).

At lunch my colleague and line manager and I must open 10 folders containing 7-10 candidates each (sometimes more), open each applicant's UCAS form, check the markings from each of three different panels and initialise these in the appropriate column on a table format form on the front of each of those ten folders. There are other names on this form - there are always no- shows and we mark these accordingly and record on the folder form as well. We move the forms of successful candidates to the appropriate folders (now six of these) for the afternoon sessions. We create a flow sheet for the afternoon - some candidates get called for all 3 pathways, some for two, some for just the one. This must be written manually in duplicate - well really in triplicate. If I don't write my own copy I can feel at sea or embarrassed in the afternoons.

The old me could never have even written all that. I am proud of my enhanced ability to categorize and list. This is due to knuckling down as my ability to begin to learn this system predates the brain training.
When, at moments, I flail at this task, I wonder - would anyone find it difficult? Is this just what is entailed in learning a system? Is it particularly hard for me? Is it because I led such a solitary childhood and even adulthood (solo performer from 1983 to 1988 - therefore simple lack of habituation)? Is it due to brain damage from the car accidents?

My colleague fires questions at me sometimes and in the name of honesty I must record my immediate experience is fog - then reach for a piece of paper. I notice she has the ability to remember first and last names of candidates over a period of minutes. I must have it written down or I am lost.

Day 1 - unusually, a duplicate of the form stapled to the front of the folder is also contained inside (uncollated by the Student Leader) - for some unknown reason I fill out this duplicate. As I am stacking, with a cautious sense of satisfaction the folders, I am amazed and perplexed to see the front form black and I hurriedly complete it, wondering worriedly at my brain ....'I thought I did this'  is a horrible thought. Later I find the loose sheet (and erase it). 'Oh ok, I did do it, and I can trust my memory...to a degree'. But now the worry is - 'how did I confuse that loose sheet of paper with the normal format?'

I have instigated checking and checking again procedures for previous mistakes I have made - eg two pathways share a form for a certain workshop and I get a bit blind when a yes and a no are both circled.


Today on the front - of folder forms I forget to highlight the name and pathway of two successful candidates. I had counted and recounted. Three times in all and was feeling pleased and confident. But I failed to run my finger carefully down the column to ensure I had highlighted. I counted and courted and could not match my colleagues' count. Disorienting and humiliating.

I am so thrilled to be doing this work as it is a growth area for me. I am really am not methodical /was not been taught how to be methodical. Years ago I was doing a mailout of scripts and introductory letters for a cast for a play I was directing. I felt it was boring to do each task one at a time and would vary it by changing the order. Completing three steps for one envelope, then having to open the envelope because something was not included etc etc...


Today I also noticed myself failing to see a name on a tabled form right in front of me. I am getting better - a year ago I spent a panicked hour looking for a person's form - I had placed it in the wrong folder because two people had the same surname. It sounds dumb but I was so overwhelmed before - now the boxes on the table panic me less (it took a while for me to get that I only need scan the highlighted names in the afternoon/evening process - now I can scan first and last names).



Several times today and yesterday I said ' I am a moron.' That unpleasant feeling of not being able to trust oneself, of fearing people will lost confidence in me. The look when people raise an eyebrow at such an obvious mistake.

Yesterday at lunch I got in a flap form filling under time pressure. I am working through forms when my colleague has moved onto the flow chart. Today I was thrilled to do my own flow chart - I did it as I went, but that made me miss the highlighting step, I think. My aim is to be Zen and clear headed and unflappable and professional and an exemplar of non-violent communication (Marshall Rosenberg) and clear and nonreactive and impartial and flawlessly professional and helpful and quick to pick things up and a great role model and loving to all. I want to be clever. I want not to make any mistakes.

My sense of humour is outspoken and clownish. To some degree a coping mechanism. Can be fun - and occasionally it doesn't serve me. I feel I have undermines myself and that's when I crave a demeanour of 100 percent Gravitas or Zen-like-calm!

brain training sessions 3 & 4

I got confused about the time this morning. Got to Oxford Circus and the shops were closed. 'This is odd, have the clocks changed?' I thought. Trying to write about it now I can't even imagine HOW I got the time wrong - did I suddenly think my appointment was at 11am? Did I momentarily forget/trust my memory that shops in the West End open at 10 and think they opened at 9, and think it was 9, therefore they aren't open and that explains it?

[It's a week or two later and I venture in this bracketed-bit, an attempt to fathom out for myself what happens in a moment like this. Here goes: My brain was juggling 10am and 11am and 9am around...To do with 9 an 10 being closely associated because with the appointment at 10, I have to leave at 9. Then, concentrating on the 10, thinking, (but all non-verbally) well, perhaps I left at 10 for 11 and then: '....why are the shops closed at 11 am? They should open at 10 am?' Then thinking more about clocks back and not having the brain space to think 'it's a week day they never go back on a week day'...and finding it impossible to remember the mnemomic 'Spring forward, Fall back' and even less possible to compute what that might have meant...let me try that now: it was 10 therefore it would have been 11 and the shops would have been even more likely to be open...even if ti were a Saturday. And then just writing that I got the real situation - and am astounded at how simple it is. My appointment was for 10am...therefore it would have been 9.50am (with a 10 minute walk from Oxford Street to New Cavendish Street ahead of me) and it was a mere ten minutes before the shops opened. From this I see one of my coping strategies - relate to the number of the hour strongly...this is why 50 and 40 minutes past the hour are hard for me. And 28 minutes and 48 minutes...forgetaboutit. 
I feel a bit ashamed having written all of that.]

Anyway, that's a little sample of the unnecessary confusion I normally hide and keep to myself, and which I am hoping will become a thing of the past.
I got to my appointment at the right time, ten am. 
I also slipped up on texting a friend possible dates to meet. I was a fast texter on the Nokia (not predictive text, just inputting) but now my iphone has a spellcheck thingy which if you are not vigilant corrects you and getting used to the touch screen doesn't help. I had asked my friend about 24th and 25th when I meant 14th and 15th.

Dr P is struggling with email when I arrive. She wants to send me a questionnaire. 
I ask Dr P some questions - might this brain training help my friend who has just been diagnosed with MS. Yes. When will we work on my tinnitus? We will correct these two brain areas and then move onto that. 
I work again on pumping up the green thermometer - low beta waves are go.
'A brilliant scoring rate,' says Dr P.

'How's the fatigue?' she asks. I say : 'well I am less sleepy tired, and I seem to wake more easily and more refreshed.' Hm, it's true, I feel less of that dragged from the depths of the earth with alarm, by the alarm. Less of the buried-in-concrete feeling on awakening.

My brain waves (or angles - this particular readout is linear) are flatter, more coherent, with occassional jumps in to jagged lines.


'That looks much healthier now, that's what we would have expected,' says Dr P.


We are integrating the systems. We work on the two brain areas and we add a new 'protocol' or programme. I do FOUR lots of looking at hte bars pump up and down.
I am thrilled about this - I am getting more work done, yes!


The first minute of each programme is all about the machine getting a 'baseline' reading, so it can set up targets. Dr P praised me and my brain made a negative blip. 'What's your relationship to praise?' Interesting question.
I remember being praised and my brother being criticized in the same question. It was normal practice at home and you'd think a positive thing for me to hear, but I guess actually stressful: to have Paul insulted and almost being the cause.

It's hard to describe this process of improvements. It's not liek recovery form a car crash I suppose - 'I took ten steps yesterday, twelve today, I am getting better!' I have a buzz of expectations, fears, hopes, aversions and frustrations around the process.


I do feel tired over lunch after wards, 'I could sleep.' I write in my journal. Am I just a malingerer? Am I babying myself?

I sleep badly that night - I aware at 2 am buzzing. I have to read for a bit, get up and rinse my arms with cold water. A long day traveling and teaching in Cambridge. Fun work, but tired on my way home. 


Next day it's session 4, the four training sessions. Not much to report. I try not to watch the score. I was getting the the 4 or 5 hundreds, now it's more like 200 something. But overall I can see there is a new trend. when the graph line starts to incline up again, Alan stops it in case it's tiring the brain. I never feel tired doing the training, though. I feel hungry for it.
I ask if protocol is just another word for programme. Alan tells me that 'protocol' is a term for when two electronic systems communicate with one another. 


I have a wonderful afternoon with my friend and her gorgeous baby looking at the Susan Hiller exhibition at the Tate Britain. The following day I set the alarm for 6 but snooze till 9. Damn. 

It's Thursday 24th March. I take the new ampules. I put the homeopathic pills in a little tin to take before lunch, and start to look for something for the ampules to go in realize. It's then I realize my mistake was even more disastrous. It's one of each of three ampules, three times a week. I was taking one of each three times a day, every day. Dear sweet lord. My fear is that I have made my self even dumber.

I am a moron

Today I realised I took the ampules wrongly - it should have been only 3 times a week and I took them every day. Julia had told me and written it on the back of the prescription slip and I had remembered it on the first taking, but then completely forgotten.

Also last night, despite constantly referring to my diary, I went to the student showing I had booked for on the Friday, and had carefully arrived at the Diorama in plenty of time...but a whole day early.

People were helpful and I got the comps re-organised without having to pay for my ticket. Will this nonsense become a thing of the past? I certainly hope so.

Have I made myself stupider by taking the ampules wrongly? I will have to wait to speak to Julia to find out, having left a message at the Clinic reception for her to call me.

brain training session 2

Yesterday I started taking the remedy for the brain scarring. 7-10 drops in water.

Not with Dr P, today, with the same colleague who did the brain-cap reading.

We work with the same two areas of the brain.

I learn on this session that the chirruping noises the programme makes are part of the training. I had wondered but just assumed they were a 'programme running' sound. There are cicada-like chirrups, tweets and little clunks, a bit like the closing of a small metal bin.

The machine sets targets on an increment. Small changes to the start pattern are targeted to lead the brain to decrease or increase the various waves. When your synapses change the pattern (or whatever the heck is actually going on), it  results in a reward. The noise is the reward. It's hardly a trip to Paris, but the brain, like a good dog, takes it as a treat. Fascinating.

The instruction I am given is to 'relax and let the brain adapt.' Oh that's interesting , last session I was willing the green to go up..in a soft playful way.

Today my green medium waves start low. First test I score 483, around 48 correct changes per minute. I am told that anything over 14 points per minute is good.

Next, the central motor strip. I see on the desk the name of the conducting gel : 'alpha conducting solution.' At least I imaginge this is the one that's being. used to connect the electrodes.

I get a score of 530 which sounds good to me. The sluggish green bar has been raised up, but so has the yellow bar, which I should have lowered. I had one or two less than pleasant thoughts during this session - is that the cause?

Alan, who's running the session says: 'it could be hyper-vigilance or over-analyzing it could be compensating for something else.' But my theta waves went low and remained like that for the whole session.

I come away feeling grumpy. 

I wonder why we only do two things in the session.

I wonder when it will start to help my tinnitus.

brain training session 1

I cut my finger on one of the ampules on the morning I have been looking forward to - my first brain training session.

Still hitting the snooze button on awakening but more calm on the tube. The lack of caffeine in my system is the big factor here I think.

I feel disgruntled, though. Today I am full of doubt whether this treatment is going to work and whether the investment of my time and money will pay off.

I go upstairs for the session - Dr P wires me up with I think three electrodes. Two on the top of my head and one behind my right ear. 

The computer programme measures three waves that my brain makes. These are expressed as 'thermos' i.e. bar graphs with thermometer type bulbs at their base. Inside the base there's a minus or plus sign. 

The first 'thermo' is black - a pumping black line pulsing like mercury in a thermometer. That's my delta wave and I have too much of it. Over on the right is a yellow bar and it's showing my high beta wave - I'm also pumping out too much of that. In the middle, the green one has a plus sign in the bulb - I need to create more of it.

One session of ten minutes is for my prefrontal cortex.

Then a second session focuses on my sensory motor strip.

Apparently the high jumping yellow bar - excess fast wave - is a classic fatigue disorder.

I tell Dr P how depressed I was about giving up coffee and how uncertain I was about Homeopathy. I used to be a believer in all things from a Health food store but I've recently read a number of articles that say there is no scientific evidence at all for homeopathy.

Dr P says she understands. As a scientist, she loves the hard data. But she has also has seen unequivocal change in many patients taking homeopathic remedies like the ones I am taking. You can't do blanket control testing for Homeopathic remedies, she explains. 'It's so specific. You and I could have the same condition, but the same remedy will not treat us both.' We are complex and unique. Dr P finds the effects of Homeopathic remedies 'powerful'.

Anyway back to the graphs. I still have far too much fast and slow waves....'possibly one trying to regulate the other.' Although I have had the three car accidents and one drop on my head, I suddenly feel impelled to ask Dr P. 'Can this condition come about due to emotion, for example, being hyper-vigilant as a child.' 'Yes, possibly,' she says.

DR P talks about getting a adrenal test - it could be expensive so she wants me to know how much so I can make a decision on it.

DR P keeps popping up different graphs. There's the kind of earthquake scratchy line graph and another graph that fills the screen from the top down like a woven rug. It's all fine, then every so often big jagged holes open in it. 'Pattern of regulate and dis-regulate,' says Dr P. 

She asks me in a hurried voice - 'are you okay?' I am surprised and answer 'yes, fine'. I could do this all day.'You have good stamina for training.' And apparently my brain has scored well.  

'You have a very bright brain,' Dr P says and I love to hear it. I know I am articulate but often the mistakes I make, make me call myself 'stupid'. Down by the front desk, Dr P kindly show me how she opens the ampules.

I walk out from this session feeling braver, taller. I feel I can see more clearly, but then it's a glorious sunny day (perhaps that's all it is?) I have lunch with a friend, and explaining the gooey dabs in my hair from the conducting gel, I tell her a little about the treatment. She looks at me as if I am mad. She's seen me pursuing a number of things in pursuit of fixing myself, making myself better, and I think she thinks I am mad.

I feel in a fantastic mood all day. I walk with a new calm. I feel more quietly alert. I seem to misconstrue objects less. Often, before today I would see a shape, say from the corner of my eye, or  a silhouetted shape on a brand logo and see it a several random things before I work out what it actually is. I sit in a health food cafe waiting to my friend and I see that teh store's logo of two ducks is just that, two ducks. It's an upmarket place I've not been in before. I enjoy looking at all the unfamiliar brands and products on the shelf, noticing the absense of a kind of fug of overload. I cannot wait for the next session. Relaxed, playful, in a good mood all day, even on the tube.

Last night I watched a dvd called 'Is Anybody There' with Michael Caine dissolving into dementia. I think of my father and trying to relate to him in his declining years.

I read the news of Japan, ashamed to be thinking so much about myself and feeling grateful for the normalcy around me.

pills and ampules

The first package arrives I think on Wednesday 9th March. I have 3 types of pill to take and three types of tonics and various remedies in ampule form. 'Just crack them at the yellow mark,' said Julia, the Homeopath.

I put the still-sealed box on the dining table, along with my other unopened mail. My flat is a mess. I do my work, but life is exhausting. Other people have had that bad virus I I stayed well. Maybe I am fighting something off. Julia said that physically I was strong, though. Good. As a self employed person I must always be well. sometimes I see illness in others as a sign of moral weakness. (When they were all coughing on the tube late last year I judged them harshly. Anger is always borne out of fear. I had to work all through December, I wanted and needed that money. 'Malingerers, and selfish for having ventured out' I would be judging the coughers silently.)

I have a lot of uncharitable thoughts on the tube. I am not proud of them. I had been noticing how angry I got on the tube lately. Always charming with friends and colleague but invisibly angry with the anonymous world. I started to think: my father was very angry before his last stroke - crikey I better be careful.

I look at the box. Food needs a half hour halo round it and coffee needs an hour. I would need to wake up so early to take the remedy before breakfast. My usual breakfast being morning coffee. I start to reduce my coffee intake, each day a smaller ration. I am amazed, I should be wanting to get started. I am waiting for one more remedy from a different supplier - the one that's going to take the old scarring away, apparently. 

It's now Friday and I should really get started. I work too late emailing and have to leave in a rush. I am determined to start the dashed remedies though, so I start to attack the pills. The caps are not just child and moisture proof, the are adult proof. They rip my fingers, they damage my nails. I am internally cursing the manufacturers, Homeopathy in general and myself for my clumsiness and lack of preparation. I grab one each of the ampules and put some water in a bottle and head out of the house.

On the bus I struggle to open the ampules. Ok first one snapped. It's in half but each  half is like those joke brandy glasses when I was a kid - the liquid is still somehow sealed in each half. Did I not break it correctly? I try to pour the contents into the mouth of the water bottle. Nothing doing. I try to shake the liquid free. I wait for it to settle and try to pour, to shake. Finally I suck the halves. 'Great, I will have a moment of pure genius and mental clarity and then die of cracked glass in the stomach', I rail silently. I am aware of more than one person looking at me. They must imagine I am a methadone addict or perhaps someone with nitroglycerin and a nefarious and panicky plan. I go onto the top deck to repeat this frustrating process two more times.

At least I've begun. I forgot to mention Julia gave me some treatment - by sending pulses down those wires? - when I was there. Something for the endocrine. She mentions she expected to see something to do with epilepsy. Epilepsy? No you are not going to develop epilepsy, she explains and I guess it's some tendency or condition that just includes that term.

These are the first remedies and maybe my system will 'ask ' for that one later.

At least I have begun. First session of bio-feedback with Dr P tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.

I had the weakest little coffee this morning. I wend through two days of headache, thankfully not at migraine level. Monday will also give me a chance to see if my tube rage has subsided due to the phased out coffee.

testing testing

The first test is an undignified process of having head measured and cap fitted and a strap put under ones arms to which the cap is attached to pull down for a snug fit.

Then a needle of sorts pushes conductive gel through holes in the cap to make a connection. There are about a dozen holes that have to get a good reading. Then the machine is switched on and your brain waves are recorded. A combination of high tech and medieval grotesque. It's done sitting in a chair in a small office.

There were two recordings - two sessions of 6 minutes just sitting there with the instruction 'try not to think unpleasant thoughts'. Before he presses record, he asks me to first blink and then to clench my jaw so I could see for myself the massive impact that has on the series lines the 'needle' is making. So I sit there with eyes open for 6 minutes and then I sit there with eyes closed. Apparently I have to take care not to go into too meditative a state. He says he will assess the data - presumably some mathematical procedure to cancel out the irregularities from blinking etc and spot the real brain wave irregularities.

A week or so later I am back at the clinic. This time with Julia. I have wires like straps around my ankles and wrists and one around my head which annoyingly scratches the top of one of my ears. I am comfortably on a reclining treatment bed for the duration of the visit. I don't enjoy the 'patient' state I have gone into. I guess what was happening was I thought I was going to have a reading taken. Like the last time, I have had to answer a lot of questions again. Maybe that's a good process, in case something new comes to light. But I feel  little like now I am creating a story of my symptoms. I don't like answering the questions from the bed. It makes me feel passive. I wish I were in a chair. 

Here's a thing. Since seeing Dr P and her suggesting fatigue I have been feeling quite tired. I worry that I am overly suggestive. I am, I know that. Alternately, I wonder whether it's because I have been given permission to feel the fatigue rather than fight against it.  Dr P or Julia mentioned something about adrenaline. The injured, limping brain fights against its own disability by trying harder - that's how I understand it. And is doubly fatigued, from the impaired function and also from the fight.


I have been more at rest on the tube, a feeling of not trying so hard, or not being so self-conscious (hyper-vigilant?), as if before I felt on show at some level (even as I tried to exclude the anonymous others) and now I am just there, simply taking up space. As I know from Chi Gung practice less extraneous energy is good. And from my own teaching right energy, more relaxation, empty mind is best. So this must be a good thing (even if 'worry brain' tells me it a greater excuse for laziness and babying self and inaction). Perhaps it's a moment of surrender as one does - 'ah, diagnosis has been made and cure is at hand', that has to have a big psychological impact.

I didn't realise that Julia is prescribing homeopathic remedies. I am concerned that it is an unexpected added expense to this already expensive procedure. I have read articles recently that say there is really no scientific evidence for the efficacy of these medicines. The Homeopathic hayfever cure never worked for me. I figure out that what she is doing over there at her desk is reading the output from my wiring and then going over to the cabinet to get various remedies and popping them into a little box which is part of the circuit and that is affecting the readout. She calls Dr P on the phone and even calls her in and keep saying that 'she's asking for this or that remedy'. Julia is saying not brain stem but scarring. I will be given remedies to break up the old scar tissue. 


My other adverse reaction to Homeopathy is my beloved coffee. I know I shall have to give it up. I feel resentful, or the addiction does. And I am so tired, lying there on the bed. What I am not appreciating is that I have worked all or part of the last 3 weekends. I had two days off the previous week but it really hasn't made up for it yet, it seems. I am now really feeling that I am allowing myself to slump into being in love with having a problem. I remember how happy I was in a way when I was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 (now all clear). It was a delicious excuse to stop. It was terrifying financially and psychically and identity-crushing and often anger-making but so many aspects of it were comforting. Not least the drugs they gave me as pre-med. I felt a well-being that I realised even normal healthy or at least pre-diagnosis life had never afforded me. Just writing that now I realise, of course, that's some opiate - but st the time I took it as a sign that I was living life wrong, or not having the perfect life, when I should be feeling that all the time. Despite all the darn meditation I was doing.


Julia is telling me about all the different remedies and when and how I take them...I feel more stupid than usual - again, is it because I feel I have an excuse now that my brain has flopped into inattention. Or is it that I feel I don't have to pretend here and so I am not employing my usual social maskers: 'Ah,' said cheerily and eagerly, 'let me just jot this down so I've got it.' Or when I get off the table, can we go trough that again. I don't like what has happened to me on this table. Julia did say at the start of the session that I could rest and gosh I certainly had and look what happens then - no resistance to fatigue, impassive and can't think straight.

a bruised brain

In February this year (2011),  I went for my first consultation with Dr P.

She asked me a whole list of questions. I'm here to get smarter. I think I have Dyscalculia. I have Tinnitus. I want to be smarter with numbers. I hope to be able to categorize things better, to think more systematically. To retain information better. 

Did I also tell Dr P this: I want to remove all the impediments that stop me getting on with projects. I've tried to work on the courage and commitment and passion, but still some important things stall me: doing budgets (can't won't) doing timetables, thinking in terms of schedules, projecting plans and sticking to deadlines (aversion and mental shutting down). I've heard and fear the term self-sabotage but have never read about a clear cure for it. Although the CBT work I did last year was extremely helpful.

I have done all the soul searching involved in re-inventing myself after a personal crisis and come back to theatre (while continuing to enjoy doing coaching work). But applications for Arts funding (necessary, because it's hard to save on Theatre earnings) involve form-filling and budget-making and systematic thinking and reading up on funding schemes (I dislike reading from the computer screen). 

But there's only so much time left. I urgently need to be better, cleverer, quicker, smarter, more accurate and more confident.

Dr P asked about blow to the head. In my physical theatre work I have received a number of blows of various kinds, including being dropped on my head. As an actress in Brisbane in the 70's, I was slapped on the face nightly (theatre in the round, can't really fake it) by a tall young man with a large hand. One night I felt my jaw swing what felt like inches in what seemed like slow motion. There was a period in the 80's when - heaven knows why - I repeatedly would crack my head opening the kitchen cupboards.


There were also car accidents. I walked away from each with no blood or bumps that I recall, but no doubt with whiplash injury. One when I was 20 and rolled my car - an interesting experience, with total calm and slowed time: 'ah, doesn't the cracking windscreen in the rain look pretty!'. Another around 1997, misjudging the time I had to turn and a car coming at a greater speed than I thought. The last in 1999 when a guy ran into the taxi I was in. I really remember this as I had perform that night. I was lucky to be able to book some kind of a session - osteo or shiatsu. I felt my whole torso to be hanging or bending over to the left. I mean I was standing straight but there seemed to be some kind of invisible shock body pushed over in a curve to the left of me. 


Dr P wired me up a little and had a first look. I mentioned the invoices and Dr P said, yes, you find detail difficult. She said was thinking possible Brain stem injury. Sounds scary - 'all fixable' says Dr P 'and it's good you do this now so that you don't have more problems later'. Good point.

She said she wanted to send me off for two diagnostic sessions with two different people. Car accidents can cause bruising. And sometime scarring.


She asked about fatigue and I was puzzled, I knew I liked to chill out in the evenings but wouldn't have used the word 'fatigue'. I replied 'well, I can sleep for Britain, but I thought that was me being lazy or depressed'. I can always get up to make work appointments. At 5am if necessary. And stand for hours and be attentive and alert, and hold the focus for a group. And I do my yoga and pilates routine before I leave the house. I can get by on 5 hours a night or even 4 and teach or coach well. But on days when I am working for myself, at home...it's the snooze button again and again. If I can be released from that, that's a significant plus.

I want to be smarter

At school they told me I was smart. Scored well on tests. Even an aptitude for Maths they said - I should have asked for a copy of the papers.

I was top of my grade mostly, but was mystified that at high school I was not ripping through the reading lab system that we had as quickly as others. I wasn't scoring high enough on comprehension or speed. But I loved English and I wrote well. Well especially the creative, imaginative stuff.

And in high school I hated Maths. It was so abstract. I wasn't getting it. I must have heard about others who bunked off - this was so not in keeping with my scared good girl style. I think maybe it started when we hid from sports and there were no repercussions. I stayed away from Maths for so long it became irrevocable and I had to shift from science to arts.

But there were problems before this - telling time. I could do it but it took a while to do it on an analogue face. 'Iiiii'ts 4 thirty (six seven eight) 4.38!'. I notice that when I teach an hour-long class I'm fine, but a 1 hour 40 minute class - what are they trying to do to me? Or a 1 hour fifteen class - I recently taught at a school with three of those sessions in a day - remembering the start and finish times was a chore. Once, years ago, I finished a class a whole half hour early. For a couple of years I got behind on my tax. (My now-divorced husband and I used to share an administrator who did it, but my husband's business got so big he took her on full time and I was on my own.).The columns, the numbers, the fear. When I run workshops and schedule day events...it's a pain to have to clunk my brain through the timings and check and double check, because I had noticed that people get really angry at something so obvious being wrong. It was unprofessional.

I was tempted to put these things down to an emotional reason. For example: my bully of a Father taught me to tell the time - in the garage where I had once received a beating, could that be it.... Or a weakness of character - I'm lazy. I dislike it and am nervous of it. 

I'm creative and was for many years a nervous scardey cat (cortisol was my middle name). Once I lost an opportunity to make a lot of money on some shares (sadly no, I am not stock-market savvy) I had been told to buy them as a sure thing by my then boyfriend's father on my coming into some money from my grandmother.I had moved abroad and thought I had set up everything so that action could be taken in my absence. I looked at this letter which in later years I looked at and realized that it simply required signing and sending back and I was frozen. I could not take action, the boom passed and...ugh I can't talk about it anymore.

Maybe that's more about nerves and unworldliness than brain function but I'm not smart enough to know....

I was having lunch with a friend. Have you heard of Dyspraxia, she said. Yes, I said. 'I never knew', she said, I thought  that was 'just me' banging cups down on the table and stuff like that.' I joked that i thought I had the same thing with numbers. Two days later she emailed me - 'it's called Dyscalculia!' I googled the symptoms and (I know, risking classic google hypochondria...) a number of them, including difficulty inputting numbers in a calculator (years ago a friend kindly led me through how to do my tax myself).

I have also trained myself to think more clearly by writing up notes for my coaching Clients and starting to write down exercises I taught and formalize my theatre teaching, too.
Perhaps my laziness and aversion are a character flaws. I applied new strategies and practices to shake them loose.

Last year I had a few inaccuracies on Invoices. I had been feeling good about myself training my 'bohemian brain', teaching myself to love being professional and organised, affirming that my memory was amazing, comprehensive, perfect. I managed to remember to attach the attachments. I got more savvy on the computer. But here I was again this year putting the wrong date on or adding up wrongly. Each year when I do my tax I fancy I get better with the arithmetic. But I caught myself the other day doing a sum half addition and half subtraction.

Though Dyscalculia is about numbers it also mentioned problems with names.... I would notice that I was quite capable of thinking Sunday and saying Wednesday. Thinking November and saying April. I would have to concentrate really hard to know whether I was being told Liverpool Street or London Bridge....that sort of thing.

For years I have been into self improvement. 22 years of deep meditation, which was meant to prolong life, support health and I hoped, make me smarter, too. I have used NLP and Holosync. I bought a photo reading course to help me read all the piles of books I have bought in the hope of getting smarter. My work as a facilitator and coach in the business world began as 'us in the arts bringing something wonderful to the poor people in conservative clothing'. As the years went by my work in the corporate sector evolved through facilitation to coaching and I had realised that there were some fine people with very good intellects and cultural lives in business and I was also grateful for learning how the systems of the world worked (I had no uncles who were lawyers or doctors or even in business so my general knowledge was very poor and my parents had been terrified about and reactive to tax, accounting, legal matters, all the systems stuff). 

I had learned what a big impact people's preferred perceptual modes had an incorporated that into my teaching and coaching work. I had gone from being unconsciously smug about my creative nature to realizing that even the art world required you to be good at the business side  of Show Business. I started to will myself to develop better left hemisphere brain functions. Logic, systems thinking, numbers.

Recently friends recommended bio-feedback. A woman called Dr Lesley Parkinson - specialist in Neuropsycho-Physiology. In fact: Dr. Parkinson is possibly the United Kingdom and European most experienced consultant clinical-psychologist in BioFeedback, Neurofeedback,  Hemoencephalography  and quantitative electo-encephalographic assessment (QEEG) and brain health. 

My friend went because he wanted to sleep better and remember names better. He said he felt a creative boost after treatment. Another friend was prey to fatigue and he became cured of that and also became more verbally adept and even seemed more socially at ease afterward. Another friend reported that she felt she was better able to write applications. They also told me Dr P can cure tinnitus. I have had tinnitus since 1997 and although I have made my peace with it, it would be a bonus to hear silence again.

Dr P has been part of a small experiment with dancers doing a production - some were having 'brain brightening' treatment and even though artistic endeavours are hard to judge to subjectively, this group was somehow pronounced superior to the other group. By rights, and by my limited understanding of science research there may have been three groups. One group to do nothing different, one to try harder and the other to try the research. Any rate the other, or one of the other groups who were meant to just do what they would normally, worked super hard - and still lost to the brightened brains.