Let's see if an analogy will work

[TrogL]

I inherted an old TV from my parents. It had three idiosyncracies:

There was a problem with the design of the flyback transfomer that caused lines on the screen

There was a loose connection somewhere that would cause the entire screen to go blank, but if you pounded just the right spot on the side, it would come back. Every TV technician in the city had looked at it - it was unsolveable.

No way, no hell was it ever going to display colour. B&W TV's don't do that.


My brain is similar.

A section of my brain devoted to socialization is broken. It has always been broken. It always will be broken. You can't take it out and replace it - it's in the design.

Under stress, my brain cannot cope and it reacts with a meltdown. You can drug the hell out of me or send me to a dozen shrinks, put four people talking in my face for any length of time and bad things will happen - get over it. Have a cat handy just in case.

I am NOT going to remember who you are if I haven't seen you in the past week. I scare myself in the mirror. Yesterday I mistook my son for one of my daughters (he's got long hair). The section of my brain that does facial recognition has about as much hope remembering a blurry photo of your grandkid as my B&W TV does coping with Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Colour.

No amount of vitamins, hormones, iron lung therapy, chelation, fatty acids, magnetic fields, prayer, handwaving or screaming in my face is going to make my brain rewire itself. It can't. It doesn't know how. I don't own a copy of the genetic code to do it with.