How To Provide Emotional First-Aid After A Car Accident

Assuming that you weren’t directly involved in the accident and traumatized yourself, here’s how to offer comfort that might prevent someone from developing long-term residual trauma.

1. Obviously if medical procedures are immediately required, they take precedence.
2. If the person is not in danger remaining where they are, encourage them to stay still and lie down. People often tend to want to jump up and do something, trying to give themselves a feeling of control, but this doesn’t allow the energy of the trauma to dissipate properly, which makes it stick.
3. Ask them at any point if there’s anything that you can do for them. For example, would it feel good to them for you to hold their hand?
4. Keep them warm. Often people will feel cold, even in warm weather. Ask first, but expect that it might feel good to them to have a light blanket or your sweater, for example.
5. Stay with them and assure them that you will stay with them until help arrives. Assure them that they will be OK, as long as you can honestly say that this is the case.
6. Encourage them in relaxing tones, assuming that the accident isn’t too serious, to feel themselves – their bodies - on the ground, to notice their body sensations, and breathe. Don’t encourage deep breathing. Simply suggest that they feel the air going in and out of their noses and pay attention to their breathing and their bodies, as best they can.
7. You might let them know that it’s common to shake or tremble, feel hot or cold, and feel an adrenaline rush and that it’s perfectly normal.
8. Reassure them that it’s OK with you if they shake and that shaking is the body’s natural way to discharge a frightening experience.
9. Stay with them until help arrives and continue to stay, if you can, until they are taken by ambulance or until transportation arrives. (When I had my accident, I couldn’t reach anybody by phone and had no one to take me home. One of the police officers grudgingly agreed to take me home. It was less than five miles from the accident! Asshole.)
10. On that note, be prepared to advocate for the person you’re helping with EMS and other personnel, if this is something you feel able to do. Offer to make phone calls for them. They may be in shock, at least their body is, and they shouldn’t be expected to do this for themselves.
11. Once you’ve done what you can for them, be sure to get some help for yourself. It’s normal to feel traumatized yourself – or at least keyed up – and we are wanting to help release the trauma in the world with this process, not add to it!

 
Please let me know if you have any questions or would like more information.