The man who used to shrug - one man's lived experience of TBI

Stress is common to the experience of TBI. Stressors challenge physical and psychological coping abilities and undermine wellbeing. Brain injury constitutes a specific chronic stressor. An issue that hinders the usefulness of a stress-based approach to brain injury is a lack of semantic clarity attaching to the term stress. A more precise conceptualisation of stress that embraces experienced uncertainty is allostasis.

An emerging body of research, collectively identifiable as 'the social cure' literature, shows that the groups that people belong to can promote adjustment, coping, and well-being amongst individuals confronted with injuries, illnesses, traumas, and stressors. The idea is deceptively simple, yet extraordinarily useful: the sense of self that individuals derive from belonging to social groups plays a key role in determining health and well-being. The objective of this research was to apply a social cure perspective to a consideration of an individual's lived experience of TBI.

In a novel application of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) this research has investigated one person's lived experience in a single case study of traumatic brain injury.

Paradox, shifting perspectives and self under stress, linked by uncertainty, were the themes identified.

A relational approach must be key to TBI rehabilitation.