Five Basic Steps to restore the Mind With Critical Thought

Overcoming Vaccine Injury

After I started treatment for my vaccine injury, It was clear that I had to work on setting goals again. Back then, I was much worse off than I am now. But even through the fog of issues, I still knew that I had to get better – I needed to set a direction for myself.

So I decided I wanted to go on with applying for college. I felt lost and overwhelmed. I needed to reorganize myself from the inside out if I wanted to be able to apply to and attend college. My lungs hurt desperately after my vaccine injury, making talking difficult. I had suffered neuropathic damage, making walking and using my hands difficult. These are some of the steps I took with my loved ones to help me restore and hone my critical thinking process.

1: Reading

One of the first things you can do to help yourself improve critical thought is first to improve your focus, and reading comprehension. Before my injury, I was an avid reader. During and after my hospitalization, I noticed my ability to focus on and follow written text had decreased substantially. I found this unacceptable, and I knew I’d need to gain back my patience and comprehension of literature; without that, I’d struggle more to improve my critical thinking and I wouldn’t be able to thrive academically.

Comprehending text was a muscle that needed to be retrained, and trying to make myself be the reader I was overnight wouldn’t work, just as much as making someone run who had hardly walked in eight months run would be impossible in a day. I had to take smaller steps.

I made myself start reading two chapters a day. Repetition makes for a habit. In a month I was ready to read more, and I moved up to three chapters, then five. Soon enough I could read as well as I ever had if not better. My hunger for books was back and I was better able to focus on reading articles to help in my recovery.

2: Create your S.M.A.R.T. goals

Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Chose one aspect of your recovery to focus on and ask yourself, “what am I trying to accomplish, how am I measuring these accomplishments, is this goal achievable, am I  able to commit to this goal, and when do I intend to achieve this goal by?” 

If you’re unable to achieve one or more aspects of your S.M.A.R.T. goals, ask yourself why and try to make a set of S.M.A.R.T. goals to accomplish that task, or chose an alternate, more approachable goal for the time being. If S.M.A.R.T. goals are too complicated for you right now, try working with the five w’s. Who, what, when, where, and why.

3: Break down your problems into smaller parts and know when to stop

Don’t try to climb your mountain in a day. Each ledge and handhold is an individual, more manageable problem than the whole. Each one is another step toward your goal, and there will be plenty of stops along the way. If you feel overwhelmed stop. Give yourself 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the size of the task, and try again.

4: Improvise, adapt and overcome.

Pen and paper aren’t working for you? It certainly doesn’t for me after developing neuropathy. Whatever your limitation, don’t force yourself to do it the way everyone else does. Use an alternate solution. Take a note on your phone or laptop, use a digital reminder or do anything else that will help you to be more effective. Doing things because that’s the way, “normal people,” do them is not an acceptable reason if stands between you and your personal goals.

5: The rubber duck method

Describing your problems out loud to someone else, or even a rubber duck, a rock, or your cactus can help you to find the solution on your own. This is a method commonly used by programmers to help themselves solve complicated problems, as an idea for a potential solution often comes to them in the process of explaining the issue in plain English to the uninformed. When you have a human recipient listening to your problems that’s uninformed of the nuances involved, their outsider perspective can help you to correlate the concept of their proposed solution into a tangible idea. I have often found myself using this method, sometimes without realizing it. It can be a shockingly effective way to stumble onto solutions for problems in a passive way.

I hope this list helps you to overcome your problems with critical thinking. These were many of the core parts of my recovery exercises that helped me to develop into the straight-A student I am now, despite the other limitations and difficulties I faced after developing my Covid-19 mRNA induced Antiphospholipid Syndrome, and surviving the resulting pulmonary embolism, blood clots, and neuropathy. I walk with a cane, and I’m an English major within the Florida state college system. I’ll be writing many more articles for Northstar in the future. But you can learn more about me on my Substack page, including about how I lost my friends because of my vaccine injury and more. Thank you all for supporting my work, as well as the work of Northstar and its volunteers.