My Mind And Me

Responsible for skin repair and regulating mood, a good night's rest is one of the most important processes in the proper functioning of the human body but with a mind constantly racing, falling asleep can feel like an almost impossible task

- Amanda Leo

Last December, I was hit by a van during my usual walk to work — I’d already crossed most of the two-way street, and was looking towards the other side of the road when I suddenly found myself, quite literally, head over heels in the air. Confused, screaming, and surrounded by screeching sounds of metal and glass shattering as I rolled along the cement, all I could do was pray fervently that I would come to a stop.

Talk about ending the year with a bang, right? With my glasses knocked off and tears streaming down my face, I was whisked off to the hospital in an ambulance called by a kind stranger. All things considered, I was blessed to have come away from the accident with nothing more than deep abrasions on my knees, a swollen jaw and skull, and major rips in my favourite tote bag.

But over the next two weeks, I found my mind constantly replaying the moment of the crash just as I was about to fall asleep. It was a frustrating process. The moment of impact kept creeping into my mind when I was thinking about the most mundane of things — it happened so often that I eventually grabbed my phone and typed “Do I have PTSD?” into Google.

Doom spiral aside, Kathy Gabriel, somatic educator and founder of Soma Haus, says that the act of sleeping is more complex than we think, especially after such a traumatic incident. “Sleep is a state [during which] we’re not consciously aware. You can also think of it as an act of surrendering and giving up the illusion of control. There’s a feeling of wandering into a world where the stories that are not processed in the conscious world are starting to get that subconscious processing in the unconscious world, which disrupts sleep.”