are you or a loved one suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder after a
motor vehicle accident if yes i'm going
to help you today i'm going to talk you
through the most effective treatments
and there are effective treatments for
ptsd
after car accidents and i also want to
let you know that you or your loved one
are not alone
are not strange
unfortunately
there has been research that has shown
that over 30 percent of motor vehicle
accident survivors develop
post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms
which is an enormous percentage so i
will talk you through this
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if you're new to my channel my name is
barbara heffernan and i am a specialist
in anxiety and trauma i'm also a
buddhist and a mindfulness meditation
instructor and i created this youtube
channel to help bring more information
and more joy into people's lives so if
you support what i'm doing here i would
really appreciate it if you would
subscribe to my channel and give me a
thumbs up on this video if you like it
and make a comment below say hello let
me know what you thought let me know if
you have any questions
today i'm going to cover three things
one the symptoms that you might be
having if you had a car accident and are
developing ptsd symptoms
two
what makes it more likely and less
likely that you will develop
post-traumatic stress disorder and then
three what the treatment options are
that can help you recover and you can
recover so common symptoms after a car
accident can include nightmares
distressing thoughts recurring thoughts
about the accident
flashbacks full-on flashbacks feeling
like you are smelling or hearing what
happened during the car accident and all
of those fall into the ptsd category of
intrusive symptoms you also might find
it really hard to get back in a car
you might really not want to drive you
may not even want to be a passenger and
you may definitely not want to drive in
the area where the accident happened and
all of that would fall into avoidance
symptoms and i do have some other videos
on this topic that would be worthwhile
watching one of them is called ptsd
avoidance symptoms and we're going to
talk a little bit later about how
avoidance symptoms can actually make
ptsd worse but we'll come back to that
so you have your intrusive symptoms you
have your avoidance symptoms and then
there are also hyper arousal symptoms
you might feel constantly on edge you
might have difficulty sleeping your
startle response may have gotten very
very strong you might just feel anxious
all the time
you might develop
psychosomatic physical symptoms that tie
with anxiety like stomach aches
headaches
sometimes people develop panic attacks
after car accidents unfortunately where
their heart races they might feel like
they're having a heart attack but
they're not but they just feel like
their panic is out of control
and then the last grouping of
post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms
are in the negative cognitions you might
develop some negative thoughts about
yourself or the world
in terms of
i was that was my fault i was stupid i
never should have done that there might
be negative thoughts about the other
driver
and overall negative thoughts about the
safety and your safety and those
thoughts and those cognitions can go
around and around and they can make all
of the other symptoms
worse
so there are aspects to a car accident
that might make it more likely that you
would develop post-traumatic stress
disorder symptoms and i would put those
into the category of powerlessness a
feeling of not having any agency when
people have described this to me it's
often been a feeling that they knew the
accident was happening and they just
kind of have to let go of the wheel
and
wait so it's almost like there's a
freeze mode that happens or if the
freeze mode happens after the accident
where somebody is trapped but that
freeze mode that powerless mode really
in all kinds of trauma
can make
traumatic response
more difficult and the symptoms worse
so that would be one thing another thing
obviously would be tied to the
fatalities in the accident and the
severity of the accident but sometimes
it's not even necessarily a horrible
accident it just might be one in which
you felt
that you or someone else was likely to
die and that terror and that panic
can create
a traumatic response to the incident and
then traumatic responses that continue
to happen after the car accident is over
and then after the accident there are
things that might make post-traumatic
symptoms worse and there are things that
might make them better the things that
would help
a person not develop post-traumatic
stress disorder symptoms afterward would
be a quick response on the part of
emergency personnel and understanding
response from their support network the
quicker that the person's physiological
arousal can be calmed down the quicker
that they can be moved to a feeling of
safety
the less post-traumatic stress disorder
symptoms they are likely to have
the quicker the person is able to start
driving again
probably the lower the post-traumatic
stress response will be as well
so avoiding driving unfortunately makes
all of these symptoms
much much worse and then there are a
number of things that can make ptsd
symptoms worse after the accident one is
not getting treatment the sooner you get
treatment the quicker you'll get better
absolutely
two is self-medicating with alcohol or
biphasic drugs byphasic drugs being
anything where you get an initial
release when you take the drug and then
after the half-life of the drug is
finished in your body you are left more
anxious than you were before
blaming self if you or your loved one is
blaming yourself for the accident that
can also exacerbate symptoms and then
finally obviously if there are
fatalities in the accidents it's going
to be much harder to recover it still is
possible but it will be harder and if
there is a grief response happening then
that can actually mask some of the
post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms
so please look out for that and watch
out for that and be clear that you can
be both grieving
and having post-traumatic stress
disorder symptoms
one of the most effective treatments for
post-traumatic stress disorder after a
car accident is emdr eye movement
desensitization and reprocessing and i
have a number of videos on emdr i can
link them here
and
there is a lot of research demonstrating
the effectiveness in fact there is an
article on the national institute of
health website
about neuroimaging studies of the brain
after car accidents
and the effectiveness of emdr and they
can actually see the changes in the
brain from both the accident and the
post-traumatic stress disorder and then
from the emdr treatment
other effective therapy treatments
include cognitive behavioral therapy
and exposure therapy and with all three
of these treatments at some point you
will need to start driving again to
recover fully from the post-traumatic
stress disorder and obviously it's also
very helpful to be driving fully if you
want to return to full functioning but i
also understand that for many car
accident survivors
that thought is
like way out of their mind so hopefully
the therapist that you work with will
first begin to give you tools
to physiologically relax to calm
yourself and ways to regulate your
emotion so that when you do get into a
car you're able to calm down your
emotional brain
that is sort of on fire with ptsd
symptoms and the more you can calm down
and be in a car at the same time the
quicker your recovery process will be so
the last piece about recovery that i'd
like to address are medications that are
sometimes used in conjunction with
treatment but before i do that i want to
let you know that i do have a free
mini course which is basically three
guided visualizations that i do with my
clients in the office in person to guide
them through methods to physiologically
relax to be something that you could
start immediately that you could begin
to use some of these tools and practice
on your own those physiological
relaxation tools they really help with
the hyperarousal symptoms which will
then help with the whole thing so
medications
one medication that sometimes prescribed
is a beta blocker and beta blockers are
not addictive they do lower your blood
pressure
help you feel a little bit more relaxed
they help with hyperarousal symptoms and
they sometimes can help with flashbacks
and intrusive thoughts as well another
thing that is often prescribed are ssris
antidepressants and while they're an
antidepressant they also help with some
types of anxiety and they can sometimes
be helpful for somebody who has post
traumatic stress disorder
and then the last medication that i've
seen that can sometimes be helpful for
people if they are having a lot of
flashbacks a lot of nightmares
difficulty sleeping is an antipsychotic
and a very very low dose now i need to
add a caveat here because i am not a
doctor i did not go to medical school
so i do not prescribe medications and i
do think that most people or many many
people can recover from post-traumatic
stress disorder without any medication
at all but sometimes depending on the
person depending on the situation it
does seem to really help treatment so
this would be something to talk about
with your therapist
and with your medical doctor or
psychiatrist
and to see what might work for you
and the one thing i would really like to
caution against is the taking of
benzodiazepines
now benzodiazepines are things like
xanax valium they are very very
frequently prescribed by physicians for
situations like this and in my view
they really impede treatment for a
number of reasons
benzodiazepines are biphasic drugs which
means that when you take it it's
flooding your body with your own
feel-good chemicals all at once
and then once you hit the half-life of
the medication your body is left with
fewer of those chemicals than it would
have had
to begin with so after the half-life of
the drug you are more anxious
than you were to begin with
that is what makes these medications
addictive
and then the medications also teach
people that the answer is outside of
themselves so instead of the person
developing the agency
of i can learn to regulate my own
emotions i can learn to recover from
this the person becomes dependent on an
external substance
now this is a very controversial subject
and there will be people who don't agree
with me but there is also a lot of
research that also supports this and the
world health organization actually comes
right out and states that it does not
recommend the use of benzodiazepines
for post-traumatic stress disorder of
any kind
and there is also research showing that
benzodiazepines can actually impede the
processing portion
of emdr treatment in particular so there
is definitely research behind what i'm
saying and in my personal experience
i find this to be a very large
problem for people because they might
end up taking the benzodiazepines for a
very long period of time
now i want to read you this piece from
an article i found in the american
family physician on post-traumatic
stress disorder after car accidents and
it's talking about the medications
that people can prescribe
and while it lists benzodiazepines as
possibly helpful it says
caution should be used with
benzodiazepine therapy because of the
possibility of short-term memory loss
which may already be compromised as a
result of the dissociation that occurs
in post-traumatic stress disorder
patients may also experience rebound
anxiety after the medications are
stopped in my opinion they can
experience rebound anxiety after the
half-life of the drug has moved through
their system and the article also says
to avoid chronic daily use of the
benzodiazepines
and it suggests some alternate
treatments
so my biggest recommendation for
somebody who has post traumatic stress
disorder symptoms after a car accident
is that they get therapy and i do have a
video called how to find an emdr
therapist and it's also very useful for
finding other therapists as well and i
also work with a very small number of
people via video therapy and i do do
some emdr online so that would also be
an option if you wanted to book a free
consult with me there's a link in the
notes to this video you can do that as
well and there are other online options
now for therapy so if you're feeling
unable to get out and drive to get to
therapy there are some online options
that can help you and then eventually
you'll need to work with that therapist
on a behavioral plan to begin driving
again so i hope this video was helpful
for you please do subscribe to my
channel give me a thumbs up if you liked
it and give me a comment below
till the next time
you