It is such a difficult aspect to grasp isn't it? Losing one's own mind that is. Everything you once knew and controlled about yourself slowly but surely slipping out of your clutch on reality. Throughout her "Month of Madness  (Cahalan cover) Susannah struggles with a rare disease that makes her paranoid, hallucinatory and causes her and her loved ones to question her sanity. In the end, the source of her condition proved to be a physical one, a unique disease with a name that does not make the nature of the disease immediately apparent to the untrained eye. However, the disease, NMDA-autoimmune encephalitis, is thoroughly covered by Cahalan in terms that are clear and understandable. In the beginning when Susannah's mental state starts to deteriorate, do to her disease, she starts to act out and try to take control over every situation she is involved in. This is very different then how Susannah normally carries herself. Susannah is acting against her social norms because of the effect her disease is having on her brain. The disease is making her lose control of her impulses and abolishing all of her social etiquette. In chapter 12 of Brain on Fire Susannah Cahalan, the main character/author, is being taken to the doctor to get examined because she has had two seizures and her friends and family have notice that she is not acting like herself at all. This car ride was absolutely a nightmare for everyone involved, Susannah acts like a stubborn pre-teen when everyone is first trying to get her into the car to go. She says things like, "'Nope. Not going. Nope. '  (Cahalan 61) When they finally get her into the car, not only does she act out even more by yelling and screaming about the coffee she wants, she also has a hallucination of Allen calling her a slut, "I can hear him distinctively, though he wasn't moving his lips. You're a slut. I think Stephen should know  (Cahalan 61) and actually tries to jump out of the moving car! Under normal circumstances, a regular person would never attempt something like this. Their subconscious would work through the pros and cons of jumping out of a