Train The Brain - Part 1

So we thought he was fine until he got to fifth grade. When he got to fifth grade, he came to me and he said, Mom, you have to help me. My brain is broke. And my response was, Oh honey, 5th grade is a hard year. And he said, Mom, you're not listening to me. And he was right. So I said, Okay, sit down. And we talked, and the more I listened to him, I realized, he thinks he's got this figured out. So I said, Well, what do you think is going on? And he said, Well, I've been on the internet.

And I am sure I have ADHD. At that point in time, I had never heard of ADHD. Uh, my first life was in human resources. I was running my own human resource consulting business. So I said, I got this. I'll go to the school. I go to the school and talk to the counselor. I said, my son thinks he has ADHD. And she said, no, your son does not have ADHD. He's never failed anything. He's never been a behavior problem. Your kids, lazy. I said, okay. My son wants help. What can I do to help him?

And she said, put him on ritalin. And my response was, well, you just told me there's nothing wrong with my kid. So why would I give my kid speed? And the answer was that's all you can do. And that's when I really started my journey to figure out what I could do to help him. I found a neurologist, Dr. Walker, and he was doing neurofeedback and I, you know, back then it was old school neurofeedback. This was like in 2003 and it.

It took a lot more sessions, but you know, once I started to see my son's confidence improve, I thought, well, maybe this can help me. I've been in ICU twice with brain injury. And at this point in time, I had only had one brain injury. And I had lost my sense of smell. And when I came out of the hospital, That are out of ICU. The neurologist said there's nothing you can do about it. You, you know, your sense of smell is gone. And at that point in time, those twins were two years old.

I had to see. I had to hear. So I'm like, okay, well, losing your sense of smell is a lot. It's a lot more. Complicated than that. There's more emotional memories tied with smell, smell, plays. It is a much bigger sense than we, I appreciate it at the time. So I'm there twice a week and I said, well, maybe I should try this. Do you think I could get my sense of smell back? And Dr. Walker like, ah, I don't know. I said, well, I'm going to try it.

So we did the brain map and looking at it, looking at the brain map, when we're going over it, he said, well, How's your visual processing, which is done in the very back of your head. I said, oh, it's great. I love people magazine. I read it all the time. And he said well. Okay. Do you read anything else? And I said, well, you know, I really haven't read since I had my kids. Because I had just finished an MBA program. I had just finished a leadership development program. I had my kids.

Twins who has time to read? So he said, okay, so I did the, the brain training and I got my sense of smell back. Which was amazing. But what, what I noticed right away was I started reading. Books, I hadn't read books in years, and that was my visual processing. So that was a game changer for me. I figured out what I was going to do. I figured out I'd get my go to UNT and do my didactic training. My undergrad was sufficient to get me started.

And doing an internship with him and then get board certified, which I did in 2005. And I ended up working for him until 2005 from 2005 until 2009. Great guy loving, still good friends. But I wanted to do other things. I wanted to bring other things in. I want to do. At that point in time, like these people gotta talk about it. I need to get started about it as a coach. Okay. So I did.

And then I wanted to do biofeedback and there was so much I wanted to do and he would laugh and he would say, well, when you start your practice, you can do all of that. I don't think he ever thought I would right, but in 2009, I was in grad school for counseling. I had realized that. The coaching wasn't going to be sufficient. So I was in grad school for counseling. Had completed all my coursework, all I had to do was take the national counseling licensing exam.

One Saturday night, I got up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and I slipped on my robe that I had left on the floor and hit my head on the floor. And immediately my husband says, we're going to the emergency room. I said, I am not going to the emergency room on a Saturday night. It's wild and crazy. He said, will, you go in the morning. I said, yes. So we get up. When we go, we get there and they do a cat scan and stuff and they look at me so well, you can't stay here.

And I was like, see, told ya told ya didn't need to be here. And they said, oh no, you need to be at a hospital where there's a neurosurgeon. You have a blane, a brain bleed. At any point you may need surgery. So I did. And of course I got through that, but when I came out of that, I, my memory was next to nothing. All I had to do. Was take the national counseling licensing exam. And I couldn't remember. Hardly anything.

So did some research and figured out what I need to learn whole brain training. And Dr. Walker did not want to learn whole brain training. So. I learned it myself. And in the midst. I have a brain injury in the midst of a brain injury. And, uh, got my sense of memory back. And then in 2009, I started my own practice. And I had a neurologist as a medical director and followed down that path. He and I had such a big dreams. Dr. Rokicki.

we were going to form Timary Texas integrated medical research Institute. He lived in the insurance world and I lived in the cash world. And he thought that he could push. You know, people would want to come over and do it. And they didn't. And in 2011. I said, you know, he love, you still love him. But I'm changing my model. I'm changing to a behavioral model or. Behavioral health model.

And so it's really evolved, but when I've seen one of what brain injury can do, and one of the first ladies that joined me was a lady that I had worked with her son back in 2007 at Dr. Walker's. When he was 16 years old, he, they thought he had a sinus infection and he had encephalopathy. He went into the hospital. He went into a coma. He was in a coma for over six months. Everyone told her. That she needed to let go.

And she refused to, he had to learn to crawl again, walk again, eat chew again, swallow again. And he did. And when he got to the point in 2007, where he was ready to work on his brain, they came and I, I was the primary person that worked with him on us. Neurotherapy. And we made great progress. Yeah. And off he goes to Austin. And 2009, when I started my own practice, my phone rings. And this hysterical woman. Ms. Leigh Ms Leigh you have to help me. You have to help me. And I'm like, okay.

I'll help you. But who is this? And she said it, Sally Cokin. And I'm like, oh my gosh, Sally. So she brought her son over. We got him back where he needed to be. And she had learned so much as I'm sure both of you ladies and everyone that that's a member of BIND knows, you learn so much in your healing process. And I said, you have got to share your knowledge. So she joined me and she got board certified and she's been, uh, the, my primary partner in crime ever since then.

So I've learned from her. I continue to learn from clients that come in that have had brain injury. And it. What I think the hardest thing for me to accept was is that it just, things just quit working. Yeah, it just quit working and you know, we all want to fix it. I can fix this. I can pick. And the good news is, is you can fix it, but you can't do it on your own.

And I think that's one of the things that was hardest for me, but I so wanted to get that license as a professional counselor, I started researching, what am I going to do? I'm going to get my memory back. First thing you see on the internet is supplements, right? So after trying like four different supplements and all my, well, I don't remember. I don't even remember what supplement I took today. That wasn't working. Right.

And so it made me get more adventuresome and try to figure out what would, right.

How did that become so inspiring to look on yourself? Because it was, they were kids and it was a car accident. And then for you. To look into. How, how did that happen? Like, did you just feel like your kids and how they were affected and was that similar to how you were affected?

And that's what really inspired me. Is it, there's gotta be something else out there besides synthetic chemicals. Right.

And it was amazing to me that I had never really reflected on my visual processing because I read people magazine. And, you know, it's written at a first grade level sure and there's nothing wrong with that. I still read people magazine. Right, but it just, when you have young kids, the amount of reading that you do really does change. And what you read, I mean, good night.

But without the, it was, that was my philosophy is, oh, I just haven't used them in a while and they've shut down.

lost sense of smell kind of thought your re didn't think anything about your reading till later. Then your son has one and his effects didn't really start to show until his brain finally started maturing. Then you had another fall and actually end up with a brain bleed and. Did you have any like residual effects from that one? I mean, you've seen like three different types personally, you know, I mean, as I'm sure you're aware, as we're aware, as we try to tell our listeners.

Just because you've met a brain injury doesn't mean you understand brain injury. Every single brain injury person is totally different than the person you talked to five minutes ago. Absolutely.

That increases your confidence. Your confidence goes up, your self esteem goes up. Your curiosity goes up. You want to learn more? You want to try different things. And that's what I encourage people. That have had a brain injury to do is don't quit trying. But take your time and show yourself some grace and be kind to yourself. Because it takes time. And maybe. After I got out of ICU the first time it took me probably a couple of months to stabilize.

Then when I went back in ICU, when I came out the next time. By the way I did. Lose some of my sense of smell after that second concussion. And that's normal. But the recovery from a second concussion is much different from the first. And while I didn't really realize it because. Other than that. I was good. But if you, when you think about Thanksgiving, I think about last years Thanksgiving. I can't tell you who sat, where I can't tell you what they were wearing. I can tell ya. It's the food.

What I smelled when I walked in the house. Who I can tell you who brought the sweet potatoes. Who brought the pie, I mean, those were things and that's all, that's your that's memory from your sense of smell, right?

My skill and, and my time to, to be able to donate what she needs.

You can find us on our website, the bind.org/bindwaves and follow us on Instagram and you can also we'll have Leigh's contact information, um, in the show notes, in the description, so that if you want to learn more about her story, And her experience with them brain performance center, which we're going to get into that some more in depth later, and we'll have all that information available as well.