Physical and mental stress
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At the very beginning of 2025 I was in a car accident. Another driver hit the left side of my car, causing it to run head on into a pole. All parties seemed fine as we got out of our cars on our own and waited for paramedics. Despite being able to move around normally, the paramedics told me that my body was running on adrenaline and I would feel pain within a couple of hours.
This turned out to be the case as by the time my brother took me to the ER and I was checked in, I had to be given pain medicine for chest pain. I was also told I had a concussion as I passed out for a brief period during the accident and had a CT scan done. This would only be the beginning of the physical and mental treatments I would have to go through for the rest of the year.
Physical treatment
I would need to see a physical therapist for chest, back, and neck pain. The point of physical therapy is to manage pain in different parts of the body by doing certain exercises. For example, for neck pain, I stretch in certain ways to help with whiplash effects from the car airbag. To determine what these exercises were, my physical therapist would have me do certain stretches to see exactly where pain was.
During the time I went through physical therapy, I would not be able to do my regular exercise routine as those exercises would hurt too much. It would feel like I could no longer move my body the same as before. I would feel less pain over time but there would still be tension in parts of my body. I’m now able to do my regular exercises but there are days where I still wake up feeling like my body went through something rough the day before.
I’ve recently started meditating again after being out of practice for a couple of years. While meditating, I do a body scan exercise where I pay attention to different parts of my body and focus on relaxing any tensed up muscles. After a few weeks of doing this, I now feel better waking up in the morning. It’s as if I’m releasing tension that my body has been holding on to since the accident!
Mental treatment
Since I had no car after the accident, my girlfriend would take me places and I found I would have pretty bad anxiety with each trip. So much so that I didn’t think I could drive again. To help with this, I decided to see a mental health therapist. Talking to a therapist about it, I learned it was from going through a traumatic experience that my body is subconsciously reacting to.
EMDR therapy is used for traumatic experiences to help mentally process the traumatic event and reduce the anxiety around it. The therapist will have you tap back and forth with your left and right hands or feet, or use a device that assists with it. While people (like me) often mistaken it for hypnosis, it is actually more a form of meditation and stems from walking.
In an EMDR session, my therapist would put me in the mindset of going through the accident, trying to analyze what I was thinking in those moments. Doing this had quite the effect on me, both emotional as I would end up crying during sessions, and physical that I would feel lightheaded afterward. The effects would surprise me each session and over time I would feel less anxious being in a car. And I’m now able to drive again!
Physical and mental
To deal with my concussion, I needed to go through an MRI machine to determine the effects of the concussion. Thankfully, nothing extreme was found, but I had headaches and brain fog that made it difficult to focus on activities throughout the day. I would lay in my bed for hours, barely able to process thoughts and make decisions. It felt like I had no control over my own mind.
A concussion specialist determined that I have migraines and recommend taking some medication for them. It was pretty amazing how well the pills worked. At least to me, since I had never taken any medications for headaches in the past. Eventually, I no longer had to take the medication and would only get occasional brain fog symptoms when I woke up in the morning.
Each treatment affected me physically, mentally, emotionally, in unexpected ways that helped me learn about my body and mind, and how they worked together. I found a renewed appreciation for healthy habits. A daily walk and exercise. Eating plant-based. Proper sleep and rest. Meditating and journaling. They all feed on each other. And in the daily stresses that we deal with, we’re unaware how much they help with those stresses.