SELF Properly-Be taught Book Club: ‘Sex With a Brain Hurt’ Is Our January Steal

Every month, the SELF Properly-Be taught Book Club highlights a timely, delectable, and basic book on a field that helps readers stay better lives. Up to now, we’ve lined the total lot from the politics of running to the say of contemporary motherhood.

Whilst you occur to hear folk reveal about demanding mind injuries (TBIs), you would possibly perhaps judge soccer players, boxers, or cheerleaders. TBIs are a clinical match that feel confined to expert athletics or some different peril that’s in particular unlikely and violent. In actual fact, an estimated 3.8 million concussions occur in the US each and each yr—and as many as 50% of concussions trail unreported, that methodology many of the those which accept as true with them would possibly perhaps perhaps perhaps not even endure in thoughts.

So goes the narrative of Annie Liontas, who fell off their bike and hit their head on the age of 35. On the time, their prognosis was “traumatically precipitated transient disturbance of mind characteristic,” which, Liontas quickly understood, is interchangeable with “concussion,” “peaceable head trauma,” and “peaceable demanding mind hurt,” or mTBI. They detail this incident and its deep, rippling ends in a brand recent book, Sex With a Brain Hurt, SELF’s January Properly-Be taught Book Club preference.

Over the next yr, Liontas skilled two more concussions, exacerbating their indicators. In a transient span of time, Liontas went from being a “healthy particular person”—a creator, a teacher, a associate in a wedding—to somebody who identifies as Sick.

Within the weeks and months following the accident, Liontas would possibly perhaps perhaps well not learn. They forgot where the numbers went on a clock; they couldn’t stand being outdoors in the solar; their transient reminiscence was shot. They pick up “arousal migraines,” tinnitus, and nausea all a few of the most sensible ways through foreplay—that methodology sex, which feeble to be a supply of enjoyment and self belief for Liontas, turned one thing practically feared. “A head hurt will catch plenty from you,” they write. “Loud tune, fragrance, storms, sprinting, pride, however what it takes out of your associate is insufferable…. You realize 48 to 78% of marriages tumble apart after mind hurt, don’t you?”

Their narrative is as we reveal a cautionary tale in what can occur whenever you occur to gallop a bike without a helmet, a reflection on how tiny we genuinely learn about our bodies despite all of the science and health care obtainable, and a non-public ancient past of what happens when our bodily relationships with many of the issues all of us know and love—our households, appetizing food, and, yes, even sex—evolve beyond our hang watch over.

We hope you’ll be a part of us in studying Sex With a Brain Hurt. Grab your savor reproduction of the book below, and hang tuned for a Q&A with Liontas on self.com later this month!