Brain injury support group helps heal

They come to room 018 of the Speech and Hearing Center on the first Monday of every month. They come with their burdens, their personal tragedies and their faults. They come with fears, doubts and uncertainties.

But they also come with something greater. Something powerful.

They come with their stories.

The Brain Injury Support Group (BISG), founded in 1999 by Laura Karcher, a clinical associate professor, and several other members, was designed to be a place where people with Traumatic Brain Injuries could come to tell those stories, to share their experiences and to create a support system to help them get through their situations.

“It was started by myself, a girl who at the time was working on her master’s degree in social work and a brain injury survivor,” Karcher said. “The three of us started the group.”

The group attracts anywhere between six and 15 members per meeting. They come from all walks of life; as clinical associate professor Rebecca Eberle put it, “brain
injury doesn’t discriminate.”

“We have people who are in their late teens, early 20s. We have people that are in their 60s,” Eberle said. “We have people who haven’t pursued higher education. We have people who have Ph.Ds.”

So they come, and they tell. They tell, and they listen, and they learn. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they laugh. But they all share.

“They really derive a lot of information and support from each other,” Karcher said. “We’re there to facilitate. We’re not lecturing. It’s a collaborative group.”

Within their stories there is tragedy, triumph and power. They tell them so they can be heard, so others might find within themselves similar characteristics and be inspired by their struggle to continue to fight on. Eberle said she believes this communication between members facilitates a great support system.

“One of the things I find powerful in the group is how their own personal experiences can help another person understand their own circumstances better,” Eberle said. “I can’t tell you how many times someone comes into the group and someone starts sharing an experience. And there’s this epiphany and somebody else going ‘That’s just how I feel. I didn’t think anybody else felt like that. I thought I was the only one.’ I think those moments are beautiful, and I think that’s why people come back to the group.”

The impact of BISG goes beyond how it affects those who have suffered a traumatic brain injury. It also affects those who learn from their stories, who listen and see how they develop and grow despite their circumstances. Caitlin Ufer and Anna Sonner, both second-year graduate students, work with the members of the group, and they have shared a number of different experiences through BISG.

“I’ve learned that everyone has something to give,” Sonner said. “That people may come feeling depressed or frustrated with their injury, but they’re still able to arrive at therapy and give an insight or a technique to the others that they’ve found useful.”

The members of BISG have learned to live with their injuries, and have even found ways to shed a positive light on them.

“They talked about finding the positives,” Ufer said. “Nobody wants a brain injury, but you have to find a positive outlook. You have to find the positive spin. You have to find the good things in life. They talked about learning new things about themselves and just finding little things in life that make you happy and being satisfied with what you have. Being glad that you can walk and that you can talk and see. Just being grateful for what you do have as opposed to being ungrateful for what you don’t and what has been taken away.”

The group will meet next at 6 p.m. Nov. 3 in the Room 018 of the Speech and Hearing Center. For more information, Karcher can be reached at 855-6251.