My Account of Dealing with PTSD from a Car Accident
Last year, my chums and I experienced a motor vehicle accident when we were on our way home from a wonderful summer vacation. I didn’t expect that after such an excellent time with them, such a bad and extraordinarily tragic event to happen. That event was extraordinarily traumatic and it took me months to be entirely recovered from it.
A day after the accident, I was a victim of unwanted and recurring thoughts about the accident that kept running through my mind. Also, I was having sleepless nights and lost all appetite. Above all, I was just having a tough time moving on because the memories and thoughts about the accidents kept on bothering me.
I’d been suffering from the previously mentioned emotions for a few days and that was negatively affecting my daily activities. Due to this, my mom and dad decided to let a counselling service see and check me. According to the psychotherapist, I suffered from PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a mental disorder that’s due to tragic and very traumatic events that have occurred in a person’s life.
PTSD customarily occurs when the individual is not able to cope up with the event which happened. The majority of the people who suffer from PTSD have experienced an especially traumatic experience for the first time. And, in my case, it was my first time to experience being in a car accident.
With the aid of the counsellor, I was able to get over this disorder. During my sessions, I underwent a large number of therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapies, decatastrophizing treatments and also learned about various “thought stopping” methods. I was able to lose the unwelcome thoughts about the accident and was able to fully move on from it. If you have experienced something similar to this in your life, I would like to suggest making contact with a counsellor in your city, as they might be able to help overcome this!
Jennifer Catigan is a student of counselling in Vancouver, BC and also frequently writes blog posts for local counselling related blogs.