Dr. Daniel Andre Ignacio, PhD MS MA PSY LMFT CBIS
Social Director & Developer, Up N Out Social Club
We are grateful to have Dr. Daniel Andre Ignacio as our Social Director & Developer. Dr. Ignacio has devoted his life to serving traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors—with good reason. He himself is a TBI survivor. In 2008, at age 18, he was pushed off a three-story balcony and left lying unconscious. After being taken to the hospital, he remained in a coma for three weeks, as family and friends waited with bated breath.
When Daniel finally woke up, he was surrounded by his parents, Enid and Willie Ignacio, and several friends. He was crying. He had no idea where he was, what had happened, or why his body didn’t work; he could only blink his eyes. He couldn’t lift his arms, move his head, or speak, except for the one, faint word that came out of his mouth when he recognized his thankful mother: “Mama…” She hugged him.
Daniel recalls he was “trapped in a broken shell with many exploding emotions and no way to express them.” Enid recalls the doctors saying, “There’s no chance your son will recover; he’s going to be a vegetable.” They didn’t understand Daniel’s undying spirit, his resilience, or his will to live. There were days when he felt hopeless and wanted to give up, but he couldn’t. Neither would his parents or friends. Their steadfast support gave him the will to persevere and the motivation to recover—that plus a lot of hard work.
Recovering From TBI, One Step at a Time
Relegated to a wheelchair, over the next few months Daniel underwent hours of physical, speech, and occupational therapy, and relearned how to walk, talk, eat, and use the bathroom—in short, how to live again. But overcoming physical disability was only part of his Herculean challenge. The mental and emotional scars were devastating. His memory was fleeting; his ability to focus was poor; he felt angry, frustrated, and depressed. His identity, self-esteem, and dreams seemed shattered. He found himself looking in the mirror, thinking: “What am I going to do?”
He did plenty. Daniel didn’t allow himself to be consumed with regrets. Instead, he started a relentless regimen of running, exercise, and diet, and he enrolled in college. He had serious doubts about succeeding in school, but his 4.0 GPA the first semester erased them. And he hasn’t stopped feeding his mind ever since. As Daniel says: “I kept pushing myself until I cried, exercising until my feet would bleed, studying until I fell asleep on my desk, and praying until I had nothing left to say.” He turned his grief into gratitude, developing a profound appreciation for life and the “beautiful brain-injured perspective” that life had given him.
This perspective has fueled Dr. Ignacio’s inspiring journey and his passion for working with TBI survivors—children, adults, athletes, anyone in need. Today Dr. Ignacio feels “honored and privileged” to share his perspective with TBI survivors, who “embody the definition of human resilience,” and to nurture a support network for them like the one that helped him survive his darkest hours. He has used his experiences to give individuals with disabilities the gift of getting their lives back, so they can find meaning in life and reach their full potential. Dr. Ignacio believes that “only those who are broken can truly know the value of being fixed.” Recovering from TBI—being “fixed”—might seem daunting, but as a TBI survivor he is living proof that it can be achieved with just the right amount of support from your “system” – whatever that may look like for you.
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Besides being Social Director & Developer of the Up N Out Social Club, Dr. Daniel Ignacio is a Certified Brain Injury Specialist and Brain Injury Program lead at Providence St. Jude Medical Center’s Brain Injury Network, director of the neuropsychology department at OMID Institute, licensed Marriage & Family Therapist at Empowered through EMDR Psychotherapy, and the Data Analytics Committee chair of California Department of Rehabilitation’s TBI Advisory Board.
