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Why following instructions with a brain injury can be challenging

Follow me:

Having the discipline to follow instructions properly in order to obtain the expected result is a skill we learn as children. We get plenty of practise of it at school where we pick up on the rules and what is expected of us, plus how to apply ourselves to be able to succeed academically. I was a very well behaved pupil who was usually a top student in my classes, therefore it would be fair to say that I had mastered the ability to follow instructions. However, since my brain injury it’s a different story.

Since running a website and a fairly consistent presence on social media I have looked for ways to reduce my workload whilst continuing to make my work easy to find. You might be surprised to know that other than posting the odd goofy photo of nights out with my friends to Facebook, I really didn’t use social media before starting my blog. Honestly, I didn’t even understand the point of Twitter, so it was a steep learning curve. Anyway, these days I schedule a lot of my posts well ahead of time so my followers still get the content no matter what I’m up to that day. Especially when you’re battling a brain injury which can throw its toys out of the pram at any moment this is a very helpful way of doing it. For Twitter I use a couple of spreadsheets which have hundreds of articles I’ve come across post one automatically every 3-4 hours. These were templates that I found online somewhere and fortunately was able to implement. However, recently they stopped working and I couldn’t work out why. Even the people who posted the templates originally seemed to have taken down the pages with them on, so it might have been a change in the way Twitter was working. (I know this isn’t very interesting but bear with me, I’m getting there.)

I found a clever chap who said he could write a Twitter bot for me that could run my spreadsheets for me. (Yes bots are allowed on Twitter for the purpose of scheduling posts, it’s direct messages that they frown on more but even there they are beginning to relax a bit.) His fee for this service was very reasonable so I asked him to go ahead..

My first mistake.

I didn’t ask him anything about how this process would be set up and just assumed that I needed to give him a few access codes and he could do everything else. That was pretty naïve of me as he needed me to complete actions. I’m not a coder, and whilst I am pretty au fait with computers and the common terms I’m not confident when it’s a screen I haven’t used before. He gave me instructions which he had put succinctly so each step was just a sentence. They were well thought out and even though English wasn’t his native language they were clear.

Having to look for each item meant I kept getting lost.

Clicking away in different menus to find what I was looking for was testing my limited attention span. My brain injury massively truncated my ability to stayed focused but I have worked have to rebuild it. However this was testing me in a much more challenging way. Even when I found what I was looking for I wouldn’t be sure why I needed it and have to go read everything again. It’s not that the steps were difficult, it’s retaining the information each time I went to do something that I was struggling with. Essentially I would miss steps out and be confused why it wasn’t working. As we were is very different time zones it wasn’t easy communicating via the message service on the platform I had found him on. This job which should have been very easy for him took a couple of days to sort out. He wasn’t working non-stop on it, just when we were able to message each other, but I’m sure he was getting frustrated with me. He was very polite but I could sense how irritated he was becoming. But he stuck with me and thankfully the Twitter bot works.

Please work with a brain injury survivor one step at a time.

When a person has put the instructions is the simplest and clearest format that they can it’s difficult for them to understand why you’re not able to follow them correctly or how else they can explain it. For me I think I would have done better if he had given me one step at a time. Not telling me the next one until I had completed the last would have forced me to focus on that action. His numbered list of instructions I’m sure works perfectly well for most people, and had I been using a more familiar format I think it would have been fine for me too. But on this occasion I made it look like a bus driver being asked to launch a space rocket. I didn’t confess to him that I have this problem due to a brain injury until right at the end. If I’d explained it at the start it might have saved us both time and stress so the moral of this story is communication again. This isn’t the first time I’ve reframed from telling someone about my disability and therefore they haven’t had the opportunity to adjust how they interact with me to accommodate my deficiencies. I still feel weird about telling complete strangers about it but it’s something I must try to change the avoid situations like this.

Since your brain injury do you find it harder to follow instructions? Are there any tips help you?

4 replies on “Why following instructions with a brain injury can be challenging”

I also cannot for the life of me follow instructions after my injury, I avoid at all costs, no unfortunately I have not come up with anything that helps, its nice to know I’m not alone ❤️

That’s right Wendy, you and I will stick together as the troublesome twosome who try hard but don’t get it quite right

To achieve a good result I have to work completely alone and without distracting noise. I manage my cognitive fatigue easier if I’m not under pressure from anyone, including myself. Going from being a skillful multitasker to having to do one thing at a time extremely challenging.

Yes, good point Janet. I’m the same, I can’t cope with an distractions.

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This website and it’s content is general information and education that may or may not be right for everyone. It should not be considered as a replacement for medical advice from a licensed health care practitioner. You are encouraged to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional..

I am a brain injury survivor who offers support based on my own unique story and experience. My advice isn’t something that has just been read in a book, it’s based on what really had results for me. I’m not a licensed therapist, but I have real insight on the struggles a brain injury can cause for survivors and their families. I’m always keen to put the client first, and if I believe someone would benefit from speaking to a therapist before working with me, I am always honest with them, and will offer to refer them to a suitable therapist.