Over the course of my practice, I’ve consistently heard many variations of this same report from clients: “I was in a wreck in April of 2014, then in two more in the next six months.” (Or any version of this, with multiple auto accidents, or falls, or other impact injuries – that seemed to “cluster” or repeat.)

I would wonder…are they just bad drivers? Are they a statistical anomaly? Was it just bad luck, or randomness? 

Well, it could be any of that, but after studying and practicing SE, I’ve come to consider another possibility: For those clients, their wounds may have healed after the first accident, but something in their system never quite recovered. While driving, or in certain situations in their car, their system keeps re-experiencing the same threat. When faced with a challenging moment on the road, something causes them to over-react or under-react, to get too aggressive or frightened or to blank out for a moment. 

When that happens, they are just a little more likely to over-swerve, or under-react, or go a little fuzzy and not see the danger. Or drive too aggressively, or so fearfully that they become less predictable to the drivers around them. In short, their nervous system is still, in the right (or wrong) conditions, momentarily thrown back into its state of reaction to danger, that it was never able to complete from the first accident.

So I’ll offer this story, of an auto accident I was in, in October 2018. It was in Denton, Texas, and it was, in a bit of irony, while I was attending one of my SE practitioner training weekends. And in a further irony, it was the evening of the day, of the entire three year training program, that we were learning how to work with clients who had been in auto accidents.

We had a nice day, seeing our instructor work with one of our classmates on a past auto accident she had been involved in, then breaking into triads and working in turn with each other (almost all of us had at least some personal experience with either car wrecks or other high-speed accidents.) It ended up being a lovely day, and in addition to the valuable things we had learned about working with clients, virtually all of us felt better after having received our own sessions. So afterwards, me and Myra and Giselle, two of my classmates and friends, piled into my car and headed to downtown Denton for dinner. 

We were enjoying each others’ company in the car, laughing and sharing about the day. Then, near the restaurant, we had a moment of slowing, looking for a parking spot, and we saw a parking lot and I turned left into it. And then in mid-turn, a car slammed into mine, right into the drivers door, really hard. (It was my fault. In that stretch, the left lane comes and goes, and I turned without realizing the pullover parking lane had become a full lane again, and I never saw the driver in my blind spot.)

We were all stunned, but  from the nature of the impact, I took a large part of the damage. It felt like the other car exploded right through me. After we got oriented, we pulled in to a parking lot and I gave my wallet to Giselle, who totally (and thankfully) took over, dealing with the other driver and handling the exchange of information. Meanwhile, Myra hung with me while I got out and tried to walk around. She asked, “Are you ok, Sam?” I said “Yes, just a little foggy.”

We walked a little more. She waited a moment or two. Then, “Are you ok, Sam?” “Yes, just a little woozy.” After another moment, again. “Are you okay, Sam? This time…”No, I don’t feel so good. I need to sit down.”

So she had me sit on the curb, and sat right next to me and leaned in to me, so I could feel the reassuring warmth of her shoulder against mine. Her calmness and patience and the security of the contact let me relax a little. I felt some trembling start to come up. She felt it too. “You’re doing great, just let that happen, it’s a good thing, I’m right here.” (When you’re in a car wreck, and they are both thankfully not hurt, it’s really good to be there with two trauma therapists.)

It kept up for maybe a couple of minutes, some trembling and shaking, with a little emotion/fear that came up with it. Then afterwards it gradually faded and I felt settled. I told her, “I think I want to walk around.” So we got up and walked and she hung right with me, and after a minute or two, “How are you doing, Sam?” “Uh…I think I need to sit down again.”

This time she had me sit in the back seat of the car, with my legs out the door and my feet on the ground, feeling its solidness. She went around and got in and scooted up right behind me, so I could lean back a little and feel her support. I had another wave of trembling come through, for maybe another couple of minutes. Then I got up and felt a need to move, to discharge some of the energy I felt inside me. So while Myra stayed behind and chatted with the other driver, Giselle and I walked around the parking lot, partly to look for a space to park my car, and partly because it felt like I needed the movement. After a few minutes, I surprised myself by telling them that I felt settled and okay to have dinner. Ten minutes earlier I had been shaky, a little nauseous, in a bit of a panic, feeling guilty about having put my friends in harms way, and sure I was going to have to miss the rest of the class. Now I felt, at least for the moment, okay.

That night some soreness started coming up. I could feel how my ribcage and my hips had taken a blow and were hurting. It felt like they had been yanked out of place. By the next morning I was a little better, but assumed I’d be sore for a few days and would probably need a Rolfing session or two. But that morning, before class, I already had a case consultation scheduled with Linda, one of our assistants, as part of my class requirements.

Linda was there waiting when I walked into our little cubbyhole for the consult. I told her, “Um, the case consult is going to be me today.” I described what had happened and how the trauma first aid from Myra and Giselle had helped so much, but I knew there was more to do. So we took the entire hour and just took our time with it, sitting in chairs across from each other. I’d describe a bit of it…what it was like at the moment of impact, or what it felt like just afterwards, with my head resting on the steering wheel. How it felt to have the other driver back up and to feel my car stuck to his. What it was like to have my friends’ reassuring presences there with me.

Whenever I’d notice anything, an emotion, or peculiar sensation, or a need for my body to move, how my hand wanted to move up to protect myself, to turn, or recoil, or an image, she’d have me slow down and take my time, see what sensations I was noticing and stay with that. And we’d just follow it, nice and slowly. She would pause me at times, to have me feel the solidness of my weight in the chair, and of the ground under my feet. She’d have me look around and orient to the room, so I’d stay grounded in the present moment while I was tracking all this going on in my system.

At one point, I felt – and had this really strong image – of the other car coming right through the driver’s door, like it was a projectile that exploded into my hip and passed right through me, out the other side. At another point, I had a vision of a shark coming through the door at me. At another point, I felt my left hand want to reach back, to the left in the direction of the other car. Linda encouraged me to allow that to happen, to follow that movement, that my system was trying to complete an impulse, and to let that to happen. I had this strong image that, even though it was impossibly late, it was trying to reach back and stop the impact.

I had another strong image of my hand and arm trying to reach back again, way too late, and protect Myra, seated behind me. I felt a flash of sadness and guilt that I hadn’t protected my friends, that I had put them in harm’s way. Later, I felt my right foot wanting to dig in to the floorboard near the gas pedal, and to push hard, as my body turned to the left and my hands wanted to extend. I wanted to push the invader back out of the car, to protect us all. However odd this sounds to the reader, my body knew what it wanted. Linda was just offering me encouragement to let my body complete all those impulses and movements.

Linda just kept allowing me to take my time, to let my right foot sink into the floor slowly, to feel its solidness, to feel my body as it went through its protective impulses. An auto accident happens so fast that your body can’t catch up. It may have these odd impulses, to recoil, to reach out in protection, to throw an arm up to shield ourselves, to flinch and turn away, to try to avoid the impact if we see it coming. These were initiated and, in a microsecond, were thwarted. So we took our time and slowed it down and let my body complete all the protective responses that it couldn’t in that blink-of-an-eye moment, with the accompanying sensations (and bits of emotion at times) that emerged.

As we went through this, I felt the pain in my left hip move to the middle of my pelvis. Then a little later, it moved to my right hip. Then, somewhere during the session, it gently went away. My ribcage felt like it was back where it belonged. After it was over, my body felt none of the tension or soreness. I had no residual pain, from that moment on, then or later that day or afterwards. I was very lucky, there was no damage that would take time to heal.

I thanked Linda and left the session, and my housemates were there to check on me. Our instructor, Maggie, came up to see if we were alright. I told her briefly about the first aid from the night before, and the session with Linda. She said “Okay, this is important, I want you to share this with the whole class this morning. This is how good it is to get help very soon if possible, and how you prevent lingering problems after a wreck, so let’s have this be a teaching moment.”

So I told the whole class, especially about the session with Linda, and how my body guided me through it, and how settled and centered I felt afterwards. Maggie’s comment to the class afterwards was, “See, Sam won’t be a setup for another wreck after this. He’ll probably be extra cautious for awhile, but he won’t be prone to over-react, or under-react, or panic, in the car. Because his body got all that out of his system, it completed what it got stuck in during the accident. He’s not going to carry it around.”

That’s how ptsd can be prevented, or resolved. I was lucky to have good help, in the moment and the next morning. But the important thing is that my system was given the safety and time to settle and release the rush of energy from the collision, and then later to complete what it needed to in order to leave the incident where it belonged, in the past. And not to carry it with me in the background every time I got in my car.

If you have the chance to read Peter Levine’s book “In an Unspoken Voice”, his first chapter is a moving story in which he describes, in his seventies, being hit as a pedestrian by a car and thrown to the ground. He tells his story that, while different than mine, is the same in its essentials. Even with the scary subject matter, it ends up being a beautiful story.

It is good to be able to get help quickly. I’m grateful I had that chance. But our systems, in their genius, will wait patiently until it is safe, even if the wait is months or years or decades, to tell their story in the language of the body, to safely and slowly release the pent-up energy, and to complete the incomplete. Like our animal friends, we have the innate, hardwired drive to complete and heal, if we can just be given the opportunity to listen to and honor that quiet language.