I got in a car crash yesterday, and it was my fault.
I got in a car crash yesterday, and it was my fault.
I don’t want to talk about the details because I’ve discussed them with many other people already and, frankly, I’m embarrassed by the whole ordeal. But I’m fine, the other person is fine, we both have insurance, and the car isn’t completely destroyed as far as I know. I’ve received a ticket and will receive points on my license, but the ticket itself doesn’t seem like it’s too much money. It could have been much worse – a split second difference could have meant that I got T-boned on the driver-door side of my car. Instead, only the front was hit.
I’m trying to stop moping. But I wanted to write about some of the feelings that I’m noticing I’m having so I can better notice them in the future. Specifically, I want to discuss the physiological signatures of these feelings.
One feeling that I notice I have when something like this happens is a sort of heavy, drooping feeling in my head. I stop visually focusing on anything, my gaze turns slightly downward, and my default mode network mostly turns off. It doesn’t always fully turn off though, because sometimes I find myself thinking very negative thoughts – things like “Oh woe is me, my life is awful” and all that.
As I had expected, when I notice this is how I’m feeling, if I really start to focus on my breath (and breathing slowly), the feeling goes away after about a minute or two. Sure, the feeling comes back, but at least I have a coping mechanism to return to.
What I find interesting is how consistently I end up in this mood when something bad like this happens to me, though. This is how I felt for several days after crashing my bike, for example. I’ve felt this way before when getting into previous car crashes. I’ve felt this way before when I’ve wronged people in other ways and I’m unable to apologize to them (or apologizing won’t fix what I did).
This isn’t my first rodeo with this feeling, and I wish that this feeling had a specific word associated with it so that I could search it online and see what others have to say about it. If you can relate to this feeling, or if you know anything more about it, please let me know.
Another aspect of it is sort of like a looming headache. It’s not exactly painful per se, but it’s the feeling you might have if you have a slight hangover, or maybe you just overslept (or maybe I just overslept today which is why I’m feeling it right now).
A different thing I’ve noticed is that I frequently replay the traumatic event in my head. This isn’t too surprising to me, but it’s interesting how this is similar to when people replay embarrassing or cringe-inducing events in their head. It seems to be a mechanism that’s hard-wired into peoples’ brains so that they replay the events over and over in order to deduce what went wrong and to avoid it in the future. But it often ends up leading to intrusive and painful thoughts which leads to anxiety and depression.
Is this “trauma,” but only for the short-term? Is saying something embarrassing in front of other people “trauma” because you consistently recall the events at inopportune times? Is it insulting to consider this “trauma” compared to real trauma victims (for example, people who have experienced truly violent and scarring events)?
There are other feelings I’m having too, but none of them are really that interesting. They’re mostly related to frustration from not having control over the situation.
I’m frustrated that I no longer have a car to get places, I live in an area that requires a car to survive, and I don’t have a loaner set up yet.
The intersection that I crashed at has a much higher-than-normal crash rate, and I’m frustrated that the DOT of my state uses the frequency of crashes up to some arbitrary, unknown threshold to determine if an intersection should be prioritized for redevelopment instead of just looking at the intersection and realizing that speeds are too fast and visibility is too low. More people are going to get in crashes and possibly even killed at this intersection before the DOT does something about it.
I’m frustrated that this whole ordeal is going to cost me a lot of money.
And I’m frustrated that this intersection is only a few blocks away from where I’m moving to in a few months, so I will be using it frequently.