Gordon Johnson: Talk to me about what brain injury people can do to do a better job of managing frustration. Dr. Erin Bigler: Well to a certain extent your mother’s old counsel of count to ten before you react is still a very worthwhile thing that I tell patients all the time. In head injury, if there’s more frontal injury, then the frontal inhibitory centers of the brain that may dampen down our over emotionality, they’re slower to respond. They’re still there, but they may be slower to respond, and if they can slow down that response to anything that they feel may be emotional, they’ll probably be able to generate a better response. Also, for families, if the person has this problem, then redirecting them very quickly. It’s not that the person will necessarily gain insight via talk therapy, you shouldn’t feel that way, or don’t do this, but redirect them. Get them toned down and then give some feedback to them. Gordon Johnson: And try your best not to take it personally. Dr. Erin Bigler: And try your best not to take it personally, and in actual therapy where we work with patients on this, well in, in our clinic here, we videotape.
We do a lot of videotaping of individuals both in individual therapy as well as couple or, or family therapy. And then when emotional control is balanced, you can go back and show the person where maybe they were getting agitated and talk about trying to experience those emotions, and then recognizing them. And then we also use what’s called biofeedback to help patients regulate emotional outbursts and dysregulation, is what we call it..