Even a minor car collision is enough to leave anyone reeling and feeling anxious about getting behind the wheel again. So it makes sense that a major accident can be overwhelmingly traumatic for everyone involved. Depending on the severity of the experience, your emotions may grow increasingly intense in the coming days and weeks following the collision.
Emotional trauma is common in accident victims, and some even experience post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety, and eventual depression as day-to-day life becomes more and more challenging to get through.
While you can reach out to an experienced personal injury lawyer at Lamber Goodnow Tucson to pursue fair compensation that reimburses your medical expenses and vehicle repairs, these tips will help you navigate the emotional trauma of the experience.
You can also head on to Edulize and find more articles with the useful tips.
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Understand The Common Psychological Impacts
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Emotional trauma, unlike physical injuries, is not apparent at face value. Instead, the psychological impacts of the accident are more likely to cause invisible damage to the victim. Sometimes, even the victim may be unaware of the true nature of the emotional trauma until later, when the impacts become unbearable.
These impacts include anxiety, irritability, anger, shame, fear, depression, insomnia, nightmares, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and even social withdrawal. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms following a car accident, it’s essential not to disregard them.
Acknowledge The Trauma
The first and most important step towards overcoming any kind of trauma is accepting that your experience was traumatic. It is perfectly natural to have an extremely strong reaction to a traumatic event. So, allowing yourself the grace to feel the emotions that come with the territory is crucial.
Attempting to convince yourself that you are okay when you are not will only delay your recovery and worsen your symptoms of trauma.
Practice Self Care And Self Love
Whether or not you have experienced a traumatic event, self-love and self-care are fundamental. When you are feeling stressed and on edge for any reason, it’s easy to fall into negative habits and self-destructive thought patterns.
Try to maintain a healthy, happy lifestyle by prioritizing sleep, spending time doing the things you love, getting exercise, eating healthy, and only indulging in moderation. When it comes to self-care, pampering yourself when you’re feeling uneasy can transform your mental and emotional space.
Grab A Pen When You’re Overwhelmed
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Journaling is a highly-recommended practice to overcome trauma and come to terms with various kinds of hardships. When feelings become too complex to process, writing your thoughts down can help ease your mind, let out troubled thoughts, and regulate your emotions better.
Writing things down on paper also enables you to get a clearer perspective of the situation and will provide relief as a result. Some studies even prove that journaling difficult emotions and negative thoughts can reduce the physical symptoms of stress significantly.
Know When To Reach Out
Hyper independence is a common issue that keeps many adults from receiving the support they need. Refusing to accept or ask for help from your loved ones is a response to various negative experiences.
Sometimes, this stress response can emerge after a traumatic car accident. You might feel that you need to carry your emotional distress alone. Or you might think that others would cope better in your situation. These thought patterns can have you isolating yourself from the ones you love.
Instead of pushing yourself to cope alone, know when to reach out to loved ones for support. If you aren’t able to take this step, then it’s essential to reach out to a trauma therapist or counselor.
Visit Your Doctor
Even if the car accident was a minor collision and you don’t think you sustained any physical injuries, it’s still vital to visit your doctor as soon as possible. Undiagnosed injuries can cause emotional stress, while hidden injuries like internal bleeding and whiplash can be severe and life-threatening.
Instead of trying to avoid healthcare costs, visit your doctor immediately after the accident and hold onto your medical bills to claim compensation for all of your expenses.
Consult An Attorney
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If you have not yet consulted an attorney, it’s essential to do so as soon as you can. Even if you have not sustained major physical injuries, you can still claim vehicle damages and the psychological impacts, should they be severe enough to impact your quality of life. The right lawyer can also maximize your compensation payout.
With this, in order to prove pain and suffering damages in this kind of injury lawsuit, you must provide valid evidence. A mental health expert must diagnose your trauma and evaluate how severe the impacts are on your well-being. Once you have valid evidence, you must follow recommended treatments and consult an attorney to calculate the value of the case.
Give Yourself Time To Recover
It’s easier to estimate the average recovery period of physical injuries than it is to determine how long psychological impacts will linger. Unfortunately, every one processes and overcomes trauma in different ways. But just as you can’t rush physical recovery, you cannot rush psychological recovery from emotional anguish. Your recovery will be substantially easier if you are patient with yourself.
Car accidents can be traumatic events that lead to catastrophic injuries, minor physical injuries, or severe psychological distress. Irrespective of the severity of the incident and the consequences, you can claim compensation for all costs that stem from the collision if you were not at fault.
But when it comes to claiming fair compensation, you will need to find an experienced injury lawyer that can build your case and negotiate a payout to cover your losses. Finding the right lawyer might feel like a complex undertaking, but by considering experience, fee structures, reputation, claim success rates, and lawyer personality, you can find a lawyer that will manage the legal details of seeking justice.
That said, you can claim compensation to cover your legal expenses as well. The costs of legal protection also stem from the accident, so your lawyer should include their fees in your claim.
