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San Diego Therapist Specialties:
Auto or Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVAs)
Therapy and Treatment
MVA accidents, as well as all kinds of accidents, can frequently result in PTSD, not only because of the accident, but due to additional trauma such as:
- Uncaring or harsh treatment by someone at the scene of the accident
- Death of someone in your vehicle or the other
- Problems with health care treatment
- Continuing pain
- Potential for abuse of pain medications
- Insurance trauma (i.e., the other driver first took blame, but then changed his/her mind)
- Legal trauma regarding a court case
PTSD (Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) symptoms include flashbacks, anxiety attacks, numbing, or crying. Other potential results of an MVA include phobia of driving and fear of medical personnel. Though the accident can range from minor to serious, either kind can result in long-lasting pain.
Once the pain moves from acute to the chronic stage, pain messages are now traveling through the negative emotional processing centers of the brain (the insula and anterior cingulate). Thus, when dealing with chronic pain, it is essential to deal with the emotional trauma. EMDR and other trauma therapies are ideally suited to treat pain memories from motor vehicle accidents because they target the negative experiences and assists the brain to naturally let go of material that serves no useful purpose. Talk therapies rely on sheer will power and repetition to overcome negative thoughts. Trauma therapies assist the brain to get into a more optimum mode in ways clients describe as “fast” and “amazing.”
Witnesses to an accident may also have flashbacks of the disturbing sounds, sights, and even smells that they experienced. This is called “secondary traumatization." One need not simply be a witness to have secondary traumatization. For some people, including children, hearing the story of the gruesome details can give them trauma.
The treatment assessment for a victim of a motor vehicle accident includes listing all the aspects of the incident that the client may find traumatic. Physical discomfort and pain associated with difficult memories, as well, can be processed and desensitized so that the client is again freer to move forward in his life.
Though a number of clients may fear going back to painful memories, once they experience the release of symptoms through EMDR, they are more eager to clear out any remaining remnants of the distress. Pain and fear can move from a “front and center” place in a person’s life, so that he is able to move forward to seek and create fresh, positive new experiences.
We hope you will call today to get going in this healing direction.
Back to Psychotherapy Specialties for San Diego
Auto or Car Accidents, Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVA), Chronic Pain, Whiplash, Driving Phobia
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San Diego Therapists Specializing in Treatment of Auto Accident Issues:
Dana Terrell, LCSW
San Diego
See more info on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder >
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