I was sincerely hoping that this week would be an easier one for me and my family and that I could do my next post about toddler tantrums as originally intended….but life happens, and it felt unfitting (again) for me to proceed with posting as if all is well when that has not been the case. 

Earlier this week my husband was in a serious car accident where he was hit hard by another driver and his car completely flipped over. Thankfully he will be okay, but the incident has had an impact on him both physically, and perhaps more so, emotionally. Today we were driving to an appointment and he commented to me “even though I feel uneasy being in a car, I feel better being the one who is driving. At least in the driver’s seat I feel like I can have some control. During that whole experience I felt so completely out of control.”

I found this comment very interesting, especially given that he had been the one driving in the accident too. But since another driver was the one at fault and who hit his car, he felt like control was totally taken away from him. In hearing him speak about his experience, I realized how similar this is to various forms of trauma and traumatic experiences. 

Being or feeling out of control is at the heart of trauma. People typically feel powerless when traumatized and often feel like someone else infringed upon their sense of safety. Even though a person may partially recognize there is no immediate threat to their safety, when someone has experienced trauma, their mind can’t always fully discern that they are now safe. The mind and body do not forget the impact of that trauma. This is important because it means that a person cannot simply try and forget their experience or outsmart their brain. Their brain remembers the impact and is now operating in a way that often assumes even much lesser situations are a threat. Being in this state, a person may feel anxious, depressed, scared, or even a bit paralyzed. And it doesn’t necessarily take only a severe trauma to have this type of impact on the mind and body. 

In these situations, identifying and naming that you feel out of control can be helpful in starting to move through a traumatic experience. With this acknowledgement, you can decide how to move through it and how to regulate that feeling of being out of control. Whether it’s lying on the ground and feeling your body fully supported, practicing mindful breathing, talking to a therapist, or using other helpful tools to process your experience, you can move away from that out of control feeling and become more deeply rooted into regaining equilibrium in your mind and body.