....but.....and I actually wrote a grad school thesis on this topic.....exercise is the number one thing that helps mitigate the Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms. I describe it as mental lubrication where before working out I'm foggy/hazy, emotionally sluggish/weepy/depressed, less sharp/lucid....
....and after the workout I'm exponentially better. I describe the experience as being similar to a water soluble lubricant....where prior to working out it my mind is like a dehydrated, gummed up, sticky tacky water soluble lubricant....
....but after working out it's like rehydrating the lubricant...it's slick.....and my mind/emotions are quick/sharp/lucid, etc.
I’ve noticed the same, purely anecdotal, of course. Did your grad school thesis get any traction? Though I’d love to go to grad school, it didn’t seem to be in the cards for me at the time, so I’m unfamiliar with how a thesis written at this level is received.
It was just a Masters program thesis. Actually a dry run prep course (2017) for the end of the program thesis...which ended up being "confirmation bias in the age of Trump" (2018). That was the first time I tried to incorporate my theories on dopamine in politics, but the advisor made me remove it.
....because "that would take a whole career to study, and we don't have the time or resources". Obviously, I've incorporated a lot of that into my public writing/speaking since. I actually had a really hard time finding a brain injury population to study. I was struggling with my own symptoms...
....particularly social anxiety/isolation. So having to pursue human interaction was really difficult. It didn't help that many support groups are understandably very protective of their TBI members, and don't want them to be exploited. At the suggestion of a professor I sought out a support group
on Facebook. I was incredibly moved reading the personal stories on the site of people. It was the first time that I had encountered people who were struggling with what I had struggle with, with people who had their relationships destroyed because family members couldn't understand our experience
I was so moved that I wrote a 7300 word introduction/explanation of my experiences of dealing with changes in brain functioning/personality...while trying to navigate a Cluster B wife/divorce...and all of the pathological dishonesty/alternate realities/revisionist histories that accompanying that.
After pouring my heart out in that letter and sending it to the support group, I was subsequently blocked by the moderators of the group. It was pretty deflating. All I could think was: "My ex wife is right. I am pathetic. Even my own people don't want anything to do with me".
I could see how that’d be disheartening. To feel rejected by your in-group is tough. But it seems to me it could have just been a small subset (or even a singular person) who complained loudly to the mods. So from what you’ve written it doesn’t appear conclusive that your “own people” reject you.