10 concussion-related reasons why you shouldn't smash your skull on something hard

Yes I’m making fun of click-baity titles and list based articles.

But I said what I meant and I meant what I said. I’m gonna dig deep in my personal experience of living with a TBI (traumatic brain injury) and provide ten reasons why YOU should avoid getting concussed. (supplemented with *minimal* research.)

First: what is a concussion?

It’s pretty much a secondary injury after a blow to the head…. Where your brain sorta bounces around inside your skull. This leads to swelling which damages the tissue of your brain.

Second: why should you trust a thing I say about concussions?

I’ve had one recently. I was rough housing with my son, and when he smacked me with a pillow I threw myself backwards onto the couch. Unfortunately, my aim was crap and I smashed the back of my head on the wooden armrest.

Boom, concussion.

Then I went to my very physical job and worked up a sweat running back and forth with boxes from an evening delivery. In retrospect I think that was a bad choice.

Because when I stopped moving I got so dizzy I couldn’t stand. The world felt like it was a kaleidoscope, and I couldn’t remember a single item I’d personally handled during the receiving process. It was like a black out and severe inebriation.

So I can explain first hand, a whole bunch of reasons why head injuries are not desirable!

If you were thinking about sustaining a concussion, here’s 10 reasons why you should reconsider:

1. It’s not fun or necessary

So if you boil down all of human motivation, I can identify two general lines of reason that keep us people doing… things: wants and needs. Things you want are things you’ll enjoy or consider fun/ worthwhile. Head injuries aren’t, so it’s not a good use of your time to get one. Things you need are things that are vital to your continued existence and one might argue, your well-being. Short of some sadistic Saw-like puzzle game I can’t imagine any scenario where a head injury would be vital to your continued existence.

So with no wants or needs to make sustaining one fun or necessary, it would at best be a frivolous waste of your time to smash your head against anything hard.

2. It costs you money

Or atleast it will probably cost money. Potentially a lot of money.

It cost me money through two primary avenues: lost work hours, and medical bills.

I missed roughly 3 weeks of full time work, at 25 $/hr… I can’t math because of my concussion, but that’s like… a lot. Especially when you’re barely scraping by and need that stupid money for things like baby food and diapers.

Then there’s the medical bills. If you live in a country with universal health care, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad…

But here in the states, I had to visit my primary care once and shell out a 20 dollar copay (shut up, to me that’s a lot), just for them to refer me to a specialist. Who I had to see once during my acute recovery phase, and three times during my long term recovery for chronic neurological problems. That’s another 60 bucks. Oh and I went to an urgent care the day it happened. Can’t remember how much that bled me. (Can’t remember much from that day at all.)

I also had to pay for medicines to treat the pain and other symptoms, and two separate MRI’s of my brain. Even after insurance the procedures ran about 500 dollars a piece! If I hadn’t been insured that probably would have come out to close to 6,000 dollars total!

Luckily I didn’t need any surgery, an overnight hospital stay, or long term care/ rehabilitation, since that would have been an impossible bill to foot— to the order of a five-digit sum.

So don’t smash your skull, because you might get concussed and that can be expensive.

(Don’t take my word for it! Consider this study published on the website for the National Center for Biotechnology Information: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7653506/)

3. It hurts (and the pain can become chronic or recurring)

The acute injury wasn’t the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, honestly it wasn’t even that painful. Think just average, run of the mill pain. Enough to notice, but not enough to worry too much over. My chronic knee pain hurts a smidge more than my concussion did.

To give you a sense of my rating system and where that pain fell: a stepping on a thumbtack is a 1, a sunburn is a 2, falling off your bike and scraping your knee is a 3, a bee sting or a second degree burn is a four, a concussion following a single impact I’d rate about as painful as a stiff neck and that’s a 5, stubbing a toe or getting stabbed in the hand with a screw driver is a 6, tearing away half a toenail is a 7, testicular torsion or having appendicitis, or falling on a trailer hitch and tearing a disc in your spine are all 8s…. Spasm of the diaphragm during acute double pneumonia was painful enough to make me sob like a baby and beg my wife drive me the ER in a panic, and that pain was a 9…. I’ve never experienced a 10, but I’d classify that level 10 pain as any pain that makes you wish you’d just die to escape it.

So a concussion doesn't hurt that much upfront. But still, why would you want more pain, even if it’s not that bad?

Well, this was accompanied by a dazed, soupy sensation that left me very worried. If you’ve ever been injured and felt that something was “out of place” you can imagine what I mean.

It felt my brain was in the wrong spot. A constant anxiety surrounds that kind of discomfort.

Now that was just the acute injury. Prior to concussing myself, I had never once experienced a migraine. In fact I don’t remember having any headaches of any kind ever.

Maybe a little sinus pressure, but nothing I’d bother complaining about let alone trying to manage.

A few months after the date of my head injury I had my first real headache and the most painful one of my life: an especially severe migraine. It felt like somebody had hit my temple with a hammer. I’ll rate it an 8, it was just as miserable an experience as having a twisted nut.

Each thud of my heartbeat was a pulse of intense ouch. I fantasized about scooping out my eyeball and using a drill to bore out whatever physical thing was in there gnawing on my pain receptors.

The pain lessened, but now I get migraines of varying intensity (5-7) pretty much every week and they can last for 2 or 3 days (with medication). My longest migraine actually lasted 20 days… luckily the pain only hovered around a 6 or a 7. The long duration for this migraine got me that second brain MRI and a prescription for an NSAID called indomethacin.

And even when I don’t have a migraine, any time I bend over, my head hurts about a 4.

So don’t smash your skull, because it can increase the hurt in your life in a lot of ways and for a long time!

4. It impairs your senses

So you know how in the cartoons, when someone gets bonked on the head they see stars dancing around their eyes to whatever?

That’s actually not so far from the truth.

When I was concussed, I felt like the world was completely out of focus, and blanketed in fog. I had immense difficulty with bright lights, everything seemed to dance.

A room lit by fluorescent tubes would feel like an ocean of waves.

I couldn’t use my phone or laptop or tv without wincing and tensing up my face.

My balance was also very off kilter. I constantly felt in fear of falling, even when sitting down. And aside from being unpleasant, this is downright dangerous!

A fall and an impact to the head could have lead to a second concussion before my first one had healed— that can be deadly and it’s called “second impact syndrome.”

“Can be deadly” was a bit misleading, SIS has a 50% mortality rate and a near 100% risk of permanent disability!

Yeah, I said I’d give you 10 reasons to avoid concussions but #4 counts for two because this is a bonus. Here it is again: If you get SIS you’ll probably die and if not, you’ll almost certainly become permanently disabled. But the good news is you can’t really get SIS if you don’t ever smash your head on anything hard!

Still, sometimes accidents happen. If you or someone you love might have a concussion you (they) absolutely should err on the side of caution— don’t go to work, don’t play sports… don’t do a single goddamned thing if that thing can afford to be avoided. Avoid driving, or even riding, and wherever you walk, go slow, use handholds, and if you fear you might fall sit the fuck down!

If I still haven’t convinced you not to concuss yourself, read on:

5. It reduces your cognitive abilities

I’d always been a bit of an idiot. Now I’m a huge idiot.

I pretty much can’t math. Some days I’m more numerically lucid than others, but at my worst basic addition gives me a headache.

There have been times, working as a cashier, where little children have reasoned out the correct change for their parent’s transaction faster than I have.

Thank God for calculators though.

More than a year since my concussion and I still have very poor working memory. Luckily paper and pens exist. If I don’t use lists I will forget 50% of what I want to remember.

Cooking is a danger because I sometimes (always) forget to turn off the stove when I’m done. A couple times I've even straight up forgotten that I was cooking.

I've had ADD all my life, and post concussion my attention span went from poor to on-existent on bad days. Multi tasking is extremely difficult and if someone speaks to me while I’m focusing on something complex it pretty much triggers an instant tension headache.

Also, word-finding is really hard, which sucks for anyone who wants to speak or write.

The first few weeks after my concussion I was saying “Um” every other word in conversation and people couldn’t help but feel impatient by how dreadfully slow I put voice to my thoughts. While I’ve recovered a good deal, there are still moments in writing and speaking, where I hit a wall and can’t figure out a way to phrase what I’m trying to communicate. I'm inarticulate compared to my past self, it actually feels like a minor aphasia.

When I’m writing I sometimes catch myself typing the wrong word. For example I might mean to say “find”, but my brain fixates on the “fi” and I end up typing “fight”.

The fact that I still often feel this way, more than a year after my brain injury is discouraging to say the least.

It’s not to say I’m not functional, where and when I need to be. But things that were once easy as hell now demand effort.

It’s definitely an unpleasant sensation to know that your brain is less capable than it once was.

And while the acute impact of a concussion on your cognitive abilities is often temporarily debilitating, it’s important to recognize and fear the possible long term cognitive difficulties you may face as a result of an impact to your head.

6. It can be socially embarrassing

Stammering over your words and struggling through unwanted pauses in a conversation, these things aren’t just an obstacle to practical communication. They’re also socially embarrassing.

When you can pick up on the subtle, unspoken reality that people are only being polite in conversations where you’d hope they’d be engaged, that’s embarrassing.

Ditto being schooled on addition by school age children.

At the most basic level, losing some of your competency and capability will probably negatively impact your confidence and that will affect your ability to socialize effectively. It might result in the development of social anxieties, which you probably don’t want.

I doubt any body would describe that as a value or a gain.

So try your best not to injure your brain.

7. It negatively affects your mood and your mental health

Since my concussion I have almost zero patience. I get frustrated very easily.

Part of this might be from that awareness that I’m not as capable as I once was. Things that were easy are now difficult and that’s hard to deal with.

And I’ll remind you— my focus is severely limited. So interruptions to any detail work necessitate a complete halt and then a somewhat arduous effort to “find my place” again.

Fortunatley being internally aware of this setback means I can make an effort to not let it ruin my mood. Unfortunately, being aware of it doesn’t mean it has no affect on me.

My lack of patience makes it harder to tolerate everyday annoyances.

On that note, have you ever heard of misophonia? That’s where certain sounds are psychologically painful to hear— where you hate a specific sound or group of sounds so much that hearing it kind of ruins your day. A common trigger for people with misophonia is the sound of people chewing. I have a bit of misophonia post concussion. A common trigger for me is the sound of high pitched voices, and those are pretty much everywhere.

So, babies crying, or children speaking. Even certain coworkers chatting will grate my nerves. I have nothing against babies or children or my coworkers. Through no fault of their own, their voices simply hurt my ears and put me in a foul mood.

Obviously, I have to try my best to hide this annoyance, since it would be unacceptable to treat someone poorly on account of their speaking voice.

But damn, if it doesn’t bleed through a little bit.

So to all my high pitched friends and acquaintances: I’m sorry if I’ve ever seemed abrupt or annoyed at you for no reason. I don’t have anything against you. Your voice just annoys the hell out of me through no fault of your own.

Ditto, even to my own kids who’s voices sound like alarm bells. I love you Faff, Gomic, and Car. You kids are amazing and you deserve to feel nothing but adoration. So for your sakes I’ll grin and bear it when you shriek for happiness, and I’ll find compassion when you shriek for pain or frustration.

But internally I’m screaming too, because damn that’s brutalizing my poor ears.

And aside from these internal factors that I can actually identify, I also have a general sense of emotional malaise. I’ve not had any diagnosis but I feel a great deal of anxiety, and a deeper depression than I’d ever felt before my head injury.

Lots of other things have changed in my life since then, obviously covid was a thing, and finances have only gotten harder. So it’s not as though I can blame all this on the concussion alone. But I truly believe it has been a compounding factor in what I’ve seen as a general decline in my emotional health.

8. It can be ruin (or slow) your career

After my concussion I ended up stepping down from a retail management position. Increased difficulty with the work was certainly not the only reason that I stepped down. But it played a part in my decision.

A definite loss in cognitive ability translated to a loss of confidence in a leadership role, a loss of capability within the parameters of the job, and a decrease in my ability to support the people who depended on me.

This was part of my motivation for voluntarily stepping down. But if that hadn’t been enough to motivate me, and if other factors in my personal life hadn’t demanded a change in my work life, if id attempted to stay in that position there’s no doubt in my mind that my performance would have suffered throughout what I’m deeming my “acute recovery phase”. I’d have been less effective in that role, and probably received poor reviews and missed raises.

Nobody forced me to step down, but my concussion impacted my decision.

Now, over a year later, though I still deal with cognitive setbacks, I have developed work arounds and adapted as needed. I’m applying to jobs similar to the one I voluntarily left.

Eventually I’ll be back in the same sort of position I was, but a year+ of setback on my resume amounts to lost time and lost potential.

I accept that, but if you have bold aspirations for your career, try not to get a concussion. It can be a wrench in the gears, so to speak, and while it might not ruin your prospects it will very likely cause a temporary delay in your professional mobility.

9. It can change who you are

… in a manner of speaking. My kids still know me as dad, and my wife still knows me as her husband. But what I know and think of myself has changed.

A loss in ability, and a corresponding loss in confidence has certainly had a broad impact on my self-schema.

My definition of self has necessarily changed. Not radically, or completely, but I’m no longer an unconcussed man. My identity has shifted.

Granted I don’t usually introduce myself as a concussed man. But it’s almost always there in the back of my mind: I’m different than I was.

And sometimes I like who I am now, but not as much as I liked who I was before the impact on my skull and the swelling in my brain.

Ultimately I miss the old me, more often than might be healthy.

Though the past is gone I can’t help but regret getting concussed.

I also regret working the day of my concussion. Did I already mention that? I can’t remember. Thanks concussion for wrecking my short term memory. Ass.

The injury itself was just an accident, but working through it after the fact was STUPID. Not only because of the risk of second impact syndrome.

Strenuous activity raised my pulse and my blood pressure which couldn’t have possibly been a good thing for the swelling of my most sensitive and important tissues.

In fact I really believe that my symptoms were directly worsened, and prolonged by my foolish insistence on just toughening up and working through it.

10. It can leave you permanently impaired, or disabled

So obviously I’m still dealing with long term negative effects of my head injury. Slower thoughts, poorer memory, spotty attention, diminished focus, weaker word-finding, less patience, sensitivity to noise, and math incompetence.

Those things suck, and while they cause difficulty in my life, they could certainly have been worse.

I’m still basically functional. I can perform my duties as a father. I’m competent and capable enough to work almost all the same professional fields as before the injury.

BUT, I’m not gonna ever choose to do a sudoku again, and I used to enjoy those. I’m not gonna help my kids with their math homework either. Or atleast, when I do I’ll get a massive migraine and hate every second of it.

Still it could have been much, much worse. The tissues in your brain are pretty damn important for just about all the things you do. Damage those tissues enough and you can develop a permanent cognitive disability.

For example, damage Broca’s area badly enough and you’ll not be able to speak. Damage the right fusiform gyrus badly enough and you’ll not be able to recognize human faces, maybe even those belonging to the people you love.

Point is, a brain injury can absolutely shit on your entire life, by drastically impacting and reducing your cognitive abilities and all manner of behavior.

So there’s ten reasons why you should not get concussed. I hope I’ve convinced you to generally try and avoid head injuries. Wear protective head gear when your doing dangerous stuff. Don’t take unworthy risks with your skull and brain. And if you do sustain a head injury absolutely do not work through it! Give your body the time needs to heal, so your recovery can be as smooth and complete as possible!

(And so you can reduce the risk of Second Impact Syndrome!)

11. (Bonus!) It can kill you

I know I said 10, but here’s 11.

Even excluding SIS and secondary risk factors that come from an active concussion or long term impairments: a blow to the head can straight up kill you out right, if it’s hard enough or in just the wrong spot.

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So please, play it safe as best you can.

Good luck! I wish you all good heads and healthy brains and an absence of hurt to your skull.

And if an accident should happen, take your health and recovery super seriously. It can make a difference in your quality of life long term.