Brain Injuries and Personality Changes

How a Traumatic Brain Injury Can Alter Your Personality 

Personality changes are very common after a traumatic brain injury (TBI), because brain injury affects how people understand and process information. It’s not an exaggeration to say that a person who has suffered a TBI is just not the same person they once were.

Below, we will discuss the way that a brain injury may affect a victim’s personality. If you or a loved one has suffered a TBI, you may be entitled to compensation. Our brain injury attorneys at West Coast Trial Lawyers are always here to answer any questions you may have about TBI.

To schedule a free consultation, please contact our 24/7 legal team by calling 213-927-3700 or filling out our quick contact form.

Personality Changes

After a TBI, personality changes typically originate from either: 

1. Specific and tangible changes to the way a victim’s brain expresses, understands, and experiences emotions. This makes it very hard for brain injury victims to ever live a normal emotional life. 
2. Emotional changes brought on as a response to unwanted changes caused by a victim’s brain injury. 

A TBI causes marked personality changes because it has damaged important connections going from the cerebral cortex to the limbic system. The cerebral cortex plays an important role in awareness, memory, attention, cognition, and perception. The limbic system is important because it supports motivation, behavior, and emotions. 

Emotional Responses

The brain is very delicate. It goes without saying that a serious brain injury will have the unfortunate effect of disrupting connections inside the brain, which help people with emotional awareness, as well as being able to react accordingly to certain emotional situations. 

Once these connections are disrupted, a victim’s emotional responses will become much different than what they were prior to their injury. For obvious reasons, these sudden changes to a loved one’s personality will cause serious challenges for both the individual and their loved ones. A brain injury victim cannot control what is happening to them and may, in fact, become unrecognizable. It is especially heartbreaking for a brain injury victim’s loved ones to try to adapt to these dramatic changes in personality. 

A brain injury is very emotionally traumatic for a victim. It is common for brain injury victims to feel depressed, angry, frustrated, scared, and anxious about how their lives are no longer the same. It is perfectly normal to feel this way, and in fact, it is healthy to express these emotions as you adapt to your new personality and way of life. 

To further add to the stressful changes a victim typically undergoes after such an injury is the fact that a brain injury victim’s brain sometimes will get stuck in a permanent state of fight or flight. This makes it especially challenging for an individual to ever truly enter a state of relaxation because his or her brain is constantly attempting to “survive” the injury and process what has even happened. 

Contact Us 

If you or a loved one were the victim of brain injury due to negligent acts committed by another individual, our skilled brain injury attorneys at West Coast Trial Lawyers will help you recover compensation for the losses you have suffered, including medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and more. 

We offer a free, no-obligation consultation at our firm. No fees are paid until your case has been settled. Reach out to our 24/7 legal team by calling 213-927-3700 or filling out our contact form.