by Deniz Sidali, M.A.
The other day, I was involved in a really bad car accident. Actually, I wasn’t even driving and an 18 wheeler truck pinned me against my car, scraped the door off my car and nearly crushed me. After the initial shock wore off, I found myself asking a multitude of self-pitying, irrational questions and statements such as, “Why do bad things always happen to me?”, “Why couldn’t I have stepped into my car a few seconds later?”, “I can’t stand it any longer”, “This is the worst thing that could ever happen to me”. I felt a number of different emotions immediately after the accident like rage, fear, and sadness. The entire incident and my reaction towards it literally drained all the remaining energy from my body. I fed into one of my main core ideas which is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. Even though I am a therapist, I felt like I still needed help from others. So the car insurance representative reassured me that I wasn’t at fault and that my car would be repaired. The office manager at the clinic where I conduct research called to inquire about my whereabouts and consoled me over the phone telling me, “At least you didn’t get hurt. Your car can be repaired.”
But, it was an overwhelming sense of fear promoted and maintained by my “What if” thinking that was difficult to shake off. “What if a bystander hadn’t stopped the truck driver?”, “What if the truck had crushed my feet and legs?”, “What if there wasn’t a red light which signaled the truck to stop?” Friends and family told me to stop engaging in the “what if” thinking. A bystander did stop to help by calling out to the truck driver to stop. The truck didn’t crush my legs and feet. It did, however, snap the door off my car like a tree branch. The truck halted at a red light in front of my car giving the bystander enough time to alert the truck driver that he hit a pedestrian and her car. Initially, I was shouting at the careless truck driver, especially when he shouted at me, “What? You didn’t see my truck?” Then, once both I and the truck driver calmed down, I realized that he too must have been scared and shaken up. He was probably afraid of losing his job. Eventually we exchanged pleasantries and he apologized for meeting me under such bad circumstances.
I realized he wasn’t a terrible person but a human being who made a mistake by driving too close to my parked car on a narrow street. I challenged my irrational statements and questions by stating to myself, “Although something bad happened, I survived and my car will be repaired”; “Bad things happen to everyone, it’s not the end of the world”; “Asking what if questions won’t help me, but instead will increase my fear and unhealthy anxiety”; “Although I was about to step into my car and was struck by the truck, I didn’t get physically hurt”; “Although this accident was a bad experience, I have been through and survived worse things”.
I didn’t immediately buy into these rational statements, so I practiced them over and over again until I eventually believed and accepted them to be true. So, the moral of my story is, accidents will happen and when they do happen we can deal with them.
