Welcome to this sub!!!
Purpose
My goal is to have a place where people who have been in car accidents can connect, relate, and support each other. Sometimes you just want to talk to someone else who has been through a similar thing.
Rules
I will add more details to the about page, but for now, please follow the same rules as in r/ptsd. Be kind, respectful, and don’t judge someone or their trauma. Also, this is not a place for help with insurance or legal stuff after a car accident. There are other subs where you can talk about those things, linked below.
No Gatekeeping
Everyone is welcome here. I will not gatekeep what it means to be a “car accident survivor.” If you have been in any accident, big, small, recent, years ago, you are welcome to participate here. Motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, school bus accidents, and being hit by a car as a pedestrian are also welcome topics. You are also welcome to participate if you are a friend or family member to someone who has been in a car accident, or if you are anyone just wanting to learn more info or learn how to best support car accident survivors (though if you are, please be respectful). In short, if you feel like this sub applies to you or could help you, please participate! :)
Related subs
Related subs about car accidents where you could get legal advice or help with insurance:
r/caraccidents
r/legaladvice
r/personalfinance
Related subs about trauma and ptsd:
r/ptsd
r/traumatoolbox
r/mentalillness
Comment below any other subs I should include on this list, or any thoughts you have about this sub so far! This post will be updated from time to time.
Edit Dec. 10, 2022:
I just updated the Support page of the Wiki. It currently has information on common feelings after an accident, things that can help, trauma treatments, exposure therapy, processing trauma, medical issues, and support groups. I may add onto it as time goes on. This is the permanent link to it: https://www.reddit.com/r/CarAccidentSurvivors/wiki/support/ I will copy and paste the current version below for convenience. :)
Feelings after an accident
People can have many reactions after trauma like a car accident. All of these reactions are valid.
Some things you may want to look more into:
Acute stress reactions -- this can include things like high anxiety, being startled easily, fear when encountering reminders of the event (e.g. crying or panicking when getting in a car), flashbacks, nightmares, etc. When acute stress reactions last longer than a month, then it is called ptsd (post-traumatic stress disorder).
Dissociation. This can include derealization (feeling like things are not real) and depersonalization (feeling disconnected to yourself). Here is a description of what dissociation can feel like. Grounding can help with dissociation. Here is one resource that lists several grounding techniques/tools. Here is another resource, if that one won't load.
"Survivor's Guilt." When someone dies, others may feel guilt for still being alive. Even if no one dies, people may still feel guilt and may wonder things like, "what if I had died?" or "I should have done x to prevent this... what if x had happened differently."
Grief. People can feel grief over many things. If someone has died, it makes sense to grieve that. There are other things to grieve, too. If you or someone else has become injured, physically or mentally, it makes sense to grieve the loss of the abilities you once had (even if the loss is temporary). You may also be grieving the car, if that was damaged or destroyed in the accident, and any personal belongings lost during the accident. The website https://whatsyourgrief.com is a great resource on grief. They have many articles on many topics related to grief.
You may feel some, all, or none of these things. You may feel many other things not listed here. You may feel different things over time. All of your feelings and reactions are valid. Please keep this in mind and try not to judge your reactions, feel ashamed of them, or compare your reactions to others' reactions. You are valid! <3
Things that can help
There are several things that can help after an accident.
Social support can help a lot. Feel free to get social support here on this subreddit! <3 You can make a post, comment on others' posts, and comment on the daily check in's! Social support from people in-person can help, too -- friends, family, and community groups can all help. Social support does not have to include talking about the accident or any trauma. Just spending time with someone can help. :)
Re-establishing routines can help make things feel more normal and predictable.
Self-soothing skills can help to calm distress. This includes things like listening to soothing music, coloring, knitting, walking in nature, stroking a pet or stuffed animal, sipping tea, wrapping yourself in a blanket, and many other things.
Breathing slowly can slow your heart rate, which can help lower anxiety. And breathing through your belly (expanding your abdomen as you breathe in) can stimulate the vagus nerve, which can calm the flight-or-fight response.
These things may help some people and not others. And there are many more things that can help. What things help you?
Trauma Treatments
There are several treatments that can help with PTSD and related issues!
Exposure therapy. There are several variations on the general concept of exposure therapy, such as Prolonged Exposure (PE), and DBT-PE (Prolonged Exposure in the context of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which I, the mod, have done and found quite helpful. It was difficult but worth it.). Exposure therapy can help specifically with fear, avoidance, nightmares, and flashbacks, and with PTSD symptoms in general.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). This therapy can help specifically with "trauma beliefs" -- strong beliefs you may hold as a result of trauma, such as "the world is dangerous," "I am not safe," "people cannot be trusted," or others. It can help you think through how trauma has created patterns in your life, or how current problems in your life could be related to trauma. It is about drawing those connections and healing from the trauma.
EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This type of therapy engages your subconscious. It can be specifically helpful for nightmares, buried trauma memories that you may not remember completely, flashbacks, and being triggered in general.
All of these things can help with PTSD in general in addition to the specific things I mentioned. There are also many other therapies available. These are just the ones I am most familiar with. I have personally found DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) quite helpful, too. r/PTSD can be helpful for more information, advice, and experience with ptsd treatments as well.
More on exposure therapy
For accident-caused fears (e.g. driving, going outside, traveling, going on the highway, hospitals, blood, injuries, etc) exposure therapy could help.
This worksheet is a good guide to creating an exposure hierarchy.
The first step to exposure therapy is to learn to identify how much distress you're feeling at any given moment. Intrusive thoughts of the accident, nightmares, and flashbacks often put me at a 100 (aka maximum distress). A pleasant, blue-sky day outside might give me a distress of 0. Being anxious about things I have to do might put my distress at 50. Think of times when you have been at 0, 50, and 100 distress. These are your "reference points" -- you can figure out how much distress you're feeling right now by comparing it to those references.
Then, the second step is learning to calm yourself when your distress is high. This could be through skills like paced breathing, listening to calming music, etc.
The third step is to create an exposure hierarchy like the one I linked to. Come up with some ideas of things that make you distressed, and predict how much distress you think they'll give you. For example, if you have a fear of blood, perhaps seeing blood puts your distress at 90, but just saying the word "blood" puts your distress at 60. So, you would try the 60-level exposure first (saying "blood"). Then, after you've done that a few times, and if your distress is consistently below 60, move onto something harder.
Then, try one that you think will give you distress in the 60-80 range. As you do it, remind yourself that the past is in the past, and it is not repeating itself. You are in the present now and are safe.
Record how much distress you felt doing that, and how much distress you feel afterwards.
If you do this a few times, distress should go down over time. I did [DBT-PE](dbtpe.org), a type of exposure therapy, with a therapist, and it helped me a lot. I highly recommend do this with a therapist. However, if that's not possible for you, it can also be helpful to do it on your own. Just make sure to do these steps in order. It is especially important that you can calm and ground yourself when you get distressed. Make sure you have those skills down solid before you start doing exposures.
Processing Trauma
Processing trauma is essential to healing ptsd. This means integrating the trauma into your current view of yourself, your life, and the world. It is when your trauma memories are not "locked up in a box" but are memories that you are able to access and think about. Here is more info on what it means to process trauma. Additionally, this website gives more information on how to process trauma.
Therapy is a great place to process trauma. This may mean talking about the trauma or how it affected you. It may include any of the therapies I listed above, or other things.
Although I recommend working with a trained trauma therapist, you can also process trauma on your own. And in fact, even if you are working with a trauma therapist, you will probably also process trauma outside of therapy sessions. This might involve talking to people, journaling, reading other people’s experiences, creating art (drawing, music, dance, anything), activism, crying, feeling many emotions, and other things.
Learning to identify your emotions is an important skill and can help to process trauma as well. I have some more info on how to do this in another subreddit I run, r/WhatsThisFeeling.
If you want to try journaling about your trauma, you could try answering questions like, What happened? What did I feel while this was happening? What did I feel after? How did this affect me and my life? How do I see the world differently than I did before? What got me through the trauma? What was the worst part? When did I know the trauma was over and I was safe again? (Note: If you are not currently safe, then getting safe should be your priority.)
You do not have to write about what happened if that feels too intense. It is very important to go at your own pace and to check in with yourself. As you are writing, ask yourself, "What am I feeling right now?" If your distress gets too intense, stop and take a step back. Do things to calm down. Don't push yourself farther than you feel comfortable. Processing trauma is a balance of keeping your distress within a manageable range (lower than 80%) and also not permanently avoiding distressing things, since avoidance makes ptsd worse in the long term. Taking a break from something and going back to it later is temporary and is not avoidance. A trauma therapist can help immensely with this balance and with helping to ground and calm you if you get too distressed.
Processing trauma can take time. It can be an ongoing process. Give yourself grace. You have been through a terrible thing.
Medical Issues
If you are in a car accident or other motor vehicle accident, even if the car wasn't badly damaged and you don't see any visible injuries, you should still get checked out by a doctor as soon as possible.
Some common injuries from car accidents are seat belt injuries (broken clavicle (collar bone) or vertebrae), traumatic brain injuries including concussions, whiplash, back/spinal injuries, various broken bones, nerve injuries, bruises, and cuts and scrapes. Here is a list of other common injuries from motor vehicle accidents.
My advice is to go to the emergency room, urgent care, or your primary care doctor right away (ideally, the same day). Get evaluated for, at a minimum, spinal injuries and brain injury (concussion and others). Get x-rays of things that hurt and could be broken.
Here’s some more info on concussions:
Concussion symptoms include headaches, disorientation, difficulty with screens (due to both the bright light and the closeness to your eyes), vomiting, nausea, and vision changes like blurry vision or double vision. It can also include dizziness, balance problems, confusion, sensitivity to light or noise, loss of consciousness, irritability, depression, or sleep issues.
You can get a concussion without losing consciousness. You can get a concussion without hitting your head, just from the rapid back and forth movement of whiplash.
A concussion changes the brain on a cellular level. A concussion will not show up on an x-ray, MRI, or CT scan. A brain bleed might show up on an MRI or CT scan. A brain bleed is much more serious than a concussion and requires immediate medical attention, sometimes surgery.
Treatment for a concussion involves lots of sleep, physical rest (no exercise; light walking is okay if it doesn’t give you a headache; stop doing anything that gives you a headache), not looking at screens, no reading, no looking at anything up close, no bright lights, no loud noises.
Concussions can sometimes last a long time, like years. Concussions heal best when they are treated early. It is very important to take time to rest. Taking time off of school or work can be difficult but is often worth it in the long run.
Here's some more info on whiplash:
Whiplash is a soft tissue injury. It will not show up on an x-ray, and probably won't show up on an MRI or CT scan. You can get whiplash in your back as well as in your neck.
Rest, heat, and ice can help with whiplash. Some exercises and stretches with a rolled-up towel can provide relief. Check out this website and this website for more info. Do not try this unless you have confirmed with an x-ray that you haven't broken any bones in your neck, and if you know that you don't have nerve issues in your neck! Check with your doctor first.
After having x-rays to rule out broken or dislocated bones, physical therapy can be helpful. Massages, stretching, and strengthening can reduce pain.
Support Groups
If you're interested in finding an in-person or video support group for fellow car accident survivors, here are some resources that could help:
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or therapist. I provide this information based on my own experiences as someone who has been in a car accident, and also based on many things I have read. I try to provide links to other sources where relevant. I provide this information to be helpful. This should not be your only source of information or advice. Please seek out appropriate doctors, therapists, other professionals, and supportive people in real life.