Severe avoidant behaviors & frontal lobe brain injury
Can traumatic brain injury cause extreme, uncontrollable avoidant behaviors?
I recently found out that my avoidant ex was beaten to within an inch of his life with a bat when he was younger and, instead of going to the hospital, he just tied a bandana around his massively swollen, broken skull every day until soaking up the leaking cerebrospinal fluid was no longer an issue. This happened in his early 20’s and he just turned 50. Honestly, when I first met him, I thought he might be autistic or was dealing with early onset Parkinson’s but when I look up the mental & physical symptoms of traumatic brain injury, specifically in the frontal lobe, i found the answer to every single unanswered question I’d ever asked my avoidant. I even found the answer to the “How could you do this to me?” question. . Although I wish this never happened to him, I have to admit that knowing what I know has made it a lot easier to let go of the anger & pain and to just let go of him along with my last hope that he’ll one day change. When I look at him now I no longer see an evil man, just an injured one that I’m not willing to trade in my sanity to take care of for the rest of his life.