Change in personality???

Before I had my brain injury I was quite an introverted person and very quiet.  I wouldn’t really speak out and kept to myself.  I didn’t have a problem with this as I had been this way for most of my life.  Well now I feel that I am a different person, I don’t seem to have any problems with confidence anymore and I really like this new person I have become.  I am not sure if everyone I know thinks this but I see it as a change in my personality.  Every week I attend Headway where we learn about brain injury and the particular problems that occur after acquiring one.  Well a few weeks ago we did a session which was all about personality differences after a brain injury where they basically said that your personality hasn’t changed!  This causes lots of disagreement and debate.  They quoted research from psychologists and other medical people but they really need to talk to people who have gone through it such as brain injury survivors, family and friends.  I love the people at Headway but they did not know us before we had our brain injuries, they just see the people we have become.  I thought I should Google what personality is defined as and I quote, personality is ‘the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual’s distinct character’. When I think of my personality now it is a lot different to how it was previously.  Like I said I was quite introverted and unwilling to do anything new or that would draw attention to me.  As I have written before I am now a person who wants to do everything.  I have lost the inhibition that I used to have.  I would say that my personality has changed.  My Mum said that is the first thing that she noticed about the ‘new’ me.  I think what the people at Headway were trying to say is that we always had these personality traits but either didn’t realise that we had them or we hid them.  When I was in middle school I was really sporty and very confident.  Something happened at school which put me in a really embarrassing situation and my confidence just left me.  I have been told that it was always there but I just hid for fear of being embarrassed again.  So I guess in a way what they said at Headway those traits were always there, but hidden away.  But you can’t say that my personality hasn’t changed because I know it has and it is a bit insulting to say that it hasn’t.  I like the person I have become.  It took a pretty awful way to get there but I guess you have to look at the positives and not dwell on how you got there.  It does really piss me off that that person at school changed me but there is nothing I can do about that now.  I just have to make up for all those years I shied away from doing things and try to do everything I want to do now.