SELF Nicely-Learn E book Membership: ‘Intercourse With a Mind Damage’ Is Our January Decide

Every month, the SELF Nicely-Learn E book Membership highlights a well timed, pleasant, and essential ebook on a topic that helps readers reside higher lives. Up to now, we’ve coated all the pieces from the politics of working to the state of contemporary motherhood.

While you hear folks talk about traumatic mind accidents (TBIs), you would possibly consider soccer gamers, boxers, or cheerleaders. TBIs are a medical occasion that really feel confined to skilled athletics or another scenario that’s notably unlikely and violent. In actuality, an estimated 3.8 million concussions happen in the USA annually—and as many as 50% of concussions go unreported, which means most of the individuals who have them won’t even bear in mind.

So goes the story of Annie Liontas, who fell off their bike and hit their head on the age of 35. On the time, their prognosis was “traumatically induced transient disturbance of mind operate,” which, Liontas quickly understood, is interchangeable with “concussion,” “gentle head trauma,” and “gentle traumatic mind harm,” or mTBI. They element this incident and its deep, rippling results in a brand new ebook, Intercourse With a Mind Damage, SELF’s January Nicely-Learn E book Membership choice.

Over the following 12 months, Liontas skilled two extra concussions, exacerbating their signs. In a brief span of time, Liontas went from being a “wholesome individual”—a author, a instructor, a accomplice in a wedding—to somebody who identifies as Sick.

Within the weeks and months following the accident, Liontas couldn’t learn. They forgot the place the numbers went on a clock; they couldn’t stand being outdoors within the solar; their short-term reminiscence was shot. They get “arousal migraines,” tinnitus, and nausea throughout foreplay—which means intercourse, which was once a supply of pleasure and confidence for Liontas, grew to become one thing virtually feared. “A head harm will take rather a lot from you,” they write. “Loud music, fragrance, storms, sprinting, delight, however what it takes out of your accomplice is insufferable…. You realize 48 to 78% of marriages collapse after mind harm, don’t you?”

Their story is without delay a cautionary story in what can occur if you journey a motorbike with no helmet, a mirrored image on how little we actually learn about our our bodies regardless of all of the science and well being care out there, and a private historical past of what occurs when our bodily relationships with most of the issues we all know and love—our households, scrumptious meals, and, sure, even intercourse—evolve past our management.

We hope you’ll be a part of us in studying Intercourse With a Mind Damage. Seize your personal copy of the ebook under, and keep tuned for a Q&A with Liontas on self.com later this month!