Now, before I start, I am not putting myself down nor trying to. So Emma, please don't tell me off :).
BUT, do you guys ever feel like you are completely invisible?
I wonder sometimes if it is anything to do with my speech as I suppose it isn't that clear to some, but I might be sitting in the middle of a conversation listening and all of a sudden someone might ask something and something sparks off in me and I tell them but they don't listen to what I have just told them.
I am sitting there with the answer, know for myself that the answer is genuine but the person I am talking to doesn't listen.
It just makes me think "Suit yourself then, have it your way. I hold the answer but you clearly do not want to know it".
I swear, sometimes people must think I am invisible or partially haha.
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Matt2584
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I sometimes think that but if youre anything like me at the moment i don't think i need any small excuse to feel sorry for myself.
what i do to grab their attention is just quietly throw in like 'ooh and i won 100 thousand the other day.....they soon prick up their ears and acknowledge youre there.
i talk to our two dogs alot.they always listen to me lol
ill listen to you matt.tell me
karen
in reply to
Karen.
Dogs are the best listeners ever. Us humans could learn a lot from them. The patient look on their face and the love that shines in their eyes. But best of all they don't come out with trite, quick fix answers or tell us to get over it - or they have it too
in reply to
I know youre right they just sit there and soak it all up.they even come back for more-at least i say the right things to some one lol
I sometimes think that but if youre anything like me at the moment i don't think i need any small excuse to feel sorry for myself.
what i do to grab their attention is just quietly throw in like 'ooh and i won 100 thousand the other day.....they soon prick up their ears and acknowledge youre there.
i talk to our two dogs alot.they always listen to me lol
if your listening but not in the conversation people will struggle to switch focus, most people are remarkably good at not noticing or to put it another way filtering life.
I'm spectacularly bad at filtering life, so i notice everything. the rise and fall of my colleages haircuts, etc. or today pointing out that we had a sealed door in one room that one else had registered.
And I ask questions and get told lies, conflicting info,feels like on purpose.
I try to listen and learn but forget then too late, have to relearn coz didn't understand/forgot,wasn't concentrating. Used to be much better (alert) even sinceABI but now so overloaded = worse memory.
I talk but unless I try to act confident (even when aren't) nobody wants to hear what I say.
Can't present ideas well enough/too scrambled and exhausted now, shame.
Try to not look at mess but exhausted/stressed and it shows = lost confidence and people (I think) pick upon that.
But hard to act, hard to cover up how you feel.
Must we? Why?
So others feel more comfortable?
Unacceptable to feel low and depressed even when good reasons for?
Sometimes Matt people don't like hearing the truth or others' answers. Some people think they know best about everything even when they don't, me too sometimes by mistake (or believed stupid stuff I've read), I'm far from perfect!
And since ABI I feel useless, dumped, alone, excluded, sad I can't do the things could before, a failure and hopeless.
Do we all feel like that, sometimes/often?
The counsellors' silly tests for depression,anxiety and post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) asked me to say if I felt something (a feeling or a symptom) sometimes or often (and always and never) but had no idea what those words meant. Nor 'I feel unhappy' - to me that didn't really mean anything. Loads I didn't know how to answer,just did the best I could.
But oddly none of the questions asked you what MADE you feel like that, WHY I was depressed or WHAT made me feel anxious. Odd that, didn't they want to know so they could try to fix it and make me feel better?
I told them WHY I felt so bad but they didn't care, after 'assessing' me they dumped me.
The promises of help were lies.
Silly me, I believed them.
So yes, I feel invisible (no help with things really need help with) and dumb: my voice is silent or they go la-la we can't hear you, block it out.
Makes me feel and know I don't matter, my difficulties aren't real or serious enough, I don't deserve any help, others need help more than me. I can go get lost, not worthy, a waste of space.
Why must we feel like that Matt?
Does it make others feel better when they ignore us?
To me, when I speak, it sounds pretty normal to me as if not much of a difference of volume before BI and after BI. But after certain scenarios in my life, I sometimes question myself, is my voivce too loud at times and too quiet at others? I mean, I have spoken to people before who were not a far distance away, and because there was a lot of chatter in the background, I cannot hear myself so I end up practically shouting. If the room is quiet and I can hear myself perfectly, sometimes people might not hear me. But saying this, the problem can also be with certain people and how they hear or perceive things. I do sometimes think that when it seems people are not listening to what I am saying, they might very well be choosing to not listen or they cant hear me, their fault I suppose haha. My Mum really annoys me sometimes. I have been in the middle of talking to my bro and my mum comes along and completely interrupts me as if I wasnt there and was not saying anything. Her excuse is that she says because of the way I speak, my tempo, she thinks I have finished the conversation when I clearly haven't. I do honestly see that as just an excuse though. My mum has a loud voice at times, much louder than mine and she loves to be heard. I would like to be heard more as well really because what most people see here or whenever I cha online is a good sense of humour and although I do show some of that offline, I would like to show more of my wit but people just dont listen sometimes. Also, because I have weak muscles, mainly in my face, it can be difficult to get the word accross and I think some people dont want to listen to me. I have said something that I thought was funny and the person I said it to clearly did not hear me and that was the end of the conversation :). Oh well, I guess some people are missing out :).
I've found these posts really upsetting, especially those of Muddled and Matt. It's so sad how abandoned others are feeling beneath their exterior pretences.
Some of Muddled's comments are heart-breaking ; the silent voice, the la la we can't hear you, and many more. But it was the final comment which rang so true ; 'Does it make others feel better when they ignore us ?'
I believe it does make them feel better. I visited a friend whom I haven't seen since my SAH and, after asking me how I've been, she might as well have stuck her fingers in her ears and done the la la la thing . . . . . . . . . . . so we talked about her and her holiday and her job and her new couch . . . . . . . . .
Some so called 'friends' only want the company of those they can use to bolster their egos and keep their list of 'fun' people topped up.
And even true friends are often scared of facing up to who we are now and prefer to laugh off our visible incapacities with comments like 'Oh we all get like that'.
And professionals . . . . . . don't get me started . . . . . . . unless you fit neatly into one of their text-book categories, as Muddled so aptly put it, you're promptly 'dumped'.
Thank god we all have each other here to sound off to and share issues (and have a laugh) with. xx
I've felt like that too. I struggle to keep pace with conversations because my mind processes things slower than others and hence I need more 'think time'. I've always been a quieter more reflective kind of person even before my accident. Unfortunately, these introvert qualities tend to be undervalued by society and you only have to watch big brother to understand why - the loud-mouthed extrovert kind of person typically is the most popular amongst audiences.
So, I'm hit with the double whammy of naturally being immersed in thought and wanting more time to construct a response. So I've often given up trying because I know I'll slip up eventually and that would feel humiliating. Accordingly, I tend to give short abrupt responses because I know I can handle these without it impacting too much on brain reserves. I do feel as a result that people regard me as a simple person and tend to gloss over what I say.
My friend once said I had a way with words, I kind of thought at the time "You dunno what you're talking about" but I kind of understand it a bit more now. I come out with short abrup words or sentences sometimes.
I find that if I speak for a long time to somebody, I can here myself to begin with OK but later on my voice sounds quieter, at least it does to me, and I think this could also be part of the reason why I feel some people dont really want to speak with me or see me as invisivle... Or 'not see me' I should say :).
Sometimes I can't remember what I've just said or what they said. And sometimes after seen people andwe'd talked I can't remember what they or I said. I try to write bits but too hard.
It doesn't happen all the time but I mostly get it if I and my Mum are talking to a friend then a while afterwards I might say, "What did they say again?". Or I might miss a portion of what this person was saying or I might hear something that was said differently.
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hehehehe 
The importance of just 'being'
Lyrics for those with a head injury
upset sad angry and alone
18 months post brain haemorrhage and feeling terrified most of the time.
