Left Brain Right Brain, page 2

reply to post by leolady

I'm ambidextrous but typically use my right to write because I'm lazy so I'm a little faster writing with my right (lol so many rights are wrong!). I recollected getting busted as a kid for switching hands when learning to write in grade school. Apparently, I was doing it wrong, lol. I've always known that I could write with both hands and concurrently (ie. I can write "cat" with both hands with equal legibility at the same time). Twice I've had to switch to left only due to severe bone bruises in my right radius and was stuck in a cast for both for a few weeks. Didn't notice anything different.

Last time I had to switch for medical reasons was a torn UCL in my right hand in mid 2011. I was in a splint, then a cast, and a splint again for about 6 months in total. Whereas previously I divided tasks between both hands pretty equally, I ended up fully switching all right hand activities to the left even after my right hand was liberated. For instance, I learned to use chopsticks with my right hand as a teen. Now I'll start using my right hand but switch to my left because it's more stable (tremor in right, hand never fully recovered). Forks and spoons may end up being held in my left for the same reason as well as my mouse.

As far as changes go, that's where it gets really interesting and makes me scratch my head as it's kind of neat. Hadn't thought that there could be a connection with what's happened to me. I started having very sharp pains in my right hemisphere a few months after the swap. I still get them and it feels like somebody is splitting my right hemisphere in half--very sudden, extreme, head clutching pain that is blessedly brief. I suffer from a diffuse and very severe amnesia due to childhood trauma (dx'd childhood PTSD and dissociative disorder but not with MPD/BPD). By 2012, I was undergoing severe personality changes and was starting to recollect some of my childhood. The personality change was quite severe. Had to do a MBTI for a class and had been INTJ for years. I had swapped to ENFJ with up to 60 point jumps. Prof thought that was amazingly weird. I've since restabilized back to INTJ. Thank god, lol. However, I'm still recollecting childhood events--something that I had been unable to do for 30 years previously.

Another weird change was in gaming. I was an inverted mouse gamer as playing non-inverted gave me vertigo. I will never forget the day that I launched a game that I'd played for 5 years on inverted mouse and started experiencing severe vertigo. I turned off inverted mouse and the vertigo stopped. I had to basically lose my muscle memory in order to still play video games. I can no longer play with inverted mouse. It still gives me intense vertigo. It was very abrupt. The previous day, I was playing with inverted mouse with zero issues. Next day, I couldn't.

I know that in the case of dissociative amnesia, there is a theory that, in cases of prolonged trauma, the right hemisphere actually starts to deteriorate and shrivel due to cortisone, I think. In order to protect the brain, it's been suggested that the corpus callosum (the stuff between the two hemispheres) starts to diminish, separating the two hemispheres. Hence why dissociatives tend to be emotionally flat. Considering that I was forced to switch to left dominant only, it makes me wonder if I basically rebuilt broken pathways doing so. My fiance and I have been wondering "why now?" and maybe that forced switch is the answer.

I did discover that I could write different words with both hands at the same time in 2012. I don't know if that always existed as I never thought to try previously. All in all, I did basically go SNAFU after prolonged left use. Interesting to consider that that forced switch from ambi/right preferred to ambi/left preferred may have been that thing that unleashed it all as it kind of makes sense. Very interesting. All and all, although it felt pretty catastrophic, I don't regret the changes. I wouldn't say I'm more creative but I definitely changed.

Another variant of the OP article without the creativity bit. www.bbc.co.uk...