Suffering from a blow to the head can result in life-changing injuries. A traumatic brain injury (TBI) in particular has the potential to do a lot of damage.
While many people focus on memory issues or the physical disabilities that TBIs can cause, they can also create dissonance and damage in a victim’s personality. For many, this serves as one of the most surprising effects and also one of the hardest to handle.
Damage to the frontal lobe
The CDC Injury Center looks into the impact of TBIs on personality. TBIs can affect personality in several different ways. First, if the frontal lobe suffers from impact, this will affect a victim’s temperament and impulse control.
Victims with frontal lobe damage often have trouble controlling their temper. They will often find themselves snapping at others for annoyances they would not have felt bothered by before. Their tolerance for irritants will often drop.
On top of that, they may struggle to hold back their impulsive reactions, actions and words. This can lead to a victim saying or doing something in their anger that they regret later, but they no longer have the ability to stop themselves from saying or doing these things due to their hampered impulse control.
Loss of coping and control
Also, many victims will also develop different forms of anxiety and often cannot cope with stress as well as they once could. This can lead to a constant feeling of freneticism and an inability to handle even low stress situations without reacting in an overly-emotional manner.
Combined, these factors can make a person seem entirely changed. For both the victim and their loved ones, this is often a hard pill to swallow and one of the most difficult parts of recovery.
