Fear

     At some point in our lives, we all become afraid of something. Whether it's a small fear or a big fear, it can leave us feeling scared and/ or helpless. I want to talk about what my fear was, how it made me feel and how I was able to overcome it.
     After the accident, once I started driving again, I wouldn't drive on the interstate. I avoided the interstate like someone with a peanut butter allergy avoids peanuts (I was gonna put the infamous saying, "like someone avoids the plague,”  but I wanted to try and spice things up a little). I didn't mind if someone else drove, I was just deathly afraid of being the one behind the wheel. I was horrified of potentially being at fault for causing an accident and hurting my passenger/s or hurting passenger/s in another car/s.
     The reason I thought like this was because for months, I let the opinion of a strong influence in my life, convince me that I "wasn't ready" to drive. I let this person's fear become my fear, which became my reality. This "reality" of mine, became debilitating. Any time the thought of driving on the interstate even crossed my mind, my shoulders would tense up, my breathing got heavier, and I would stare off in space (my mind was trying to run away from my intense anxiety).
          Well, you may be wondering "why were you only afraid of the interstate, the accident happened at a stop light?" That's a great question, which I have asked myself on many occasions. Here's what I came up with, when I first got back into driving, my reaction time was slower.
        I stuck with in town driving because I was able to stop and pull over if need be. If I was on the interstate, I didn't really have the option to pull over; it was almost if I were "stuck" on the road until I had reached my exit. Plus, interstate driving was a lot faster, and I wasn't sure if I could keep up with the flow of traffic. After driving in town for about a year (I became a more confident driver and my reaction time got a lot faster), I knew I needed to take the next step and let go of this fear of interstate driving, and finally close the "accident chapter" in my "life book."
      While I was in Therapy dealing with my marriage issues, I brought up my fear of driving, with my Therapist. She told me we could do "EMDR." "EMDR" which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR is a newer psychotherapy technique. "EMDR" is on average an 8 to 12ish session process. At the beginning of the initial process, my Therapist had me set an end goal for myself. The goal I had set was to drive on the interstate towards the end of the 12 sessions.
     The first 3 to 4 sessions my Therapist just focused on talking  about how my fear  made me feel both emotionally and physically. About the 4th or 5th session we began the "eye movement portion of the EMDR process. Instead of doing "eye movement," my Therapist did taping. I laid my hands out, palms facing up, and she would go back and forth taping on each palm.
      As she was taping my palms, my eyes were closed and I was focusing on an image that reminded me of the accident. After about a minute of taping, my Therapist told me to open my eyes, take a few deep breaths, and she asked me what I had imagined.
        After telling her what came to my mind, she then told me to re-close my eyes and re-focus on the last image that I had envisioned. She then began taping on my hands again for about another minute. She repeated this process about 7 or 8 times (this was all done in one session).
      After that session was over, my Therapist said, it was not uncommon if I went home and felt exhausted. I just kinda laughed that off, I thought, "oh I feel fine," haha, yeah right. I started driving back home and I automatically zoned out. Thankfully I only lived about 15 minutes from where her office was. Once I was home, I laid down and fell asleep for about an hour (for the next few days, I felt pretty drained).
     Once I woke up, I started looking back at pictures I had saved from the accident. I continued to look at these pictures every day (sometimes twice a day) for about a week straight. By doing this, I hoped that I would become numb to the severity of the accident. Sure enough, by the end of the week, the anxiety of the accident had greatly decreased.
     I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off me. I felt so confident that when the weekend came I decided to take a short road trip on the interstate to go visit a friend for lunch (I’ve only been back on the interstate since April of this year, so for about 2 to 3 months).
     About two weeks later, I had another Therapy session. When I went back to see my Therapist, I had told her my accomplishment. Since I had achieved my goal after 5 sessions, I only had one more step in the EMDR process to complete.
     The last step was to reset my mind and focus on a happier image when thinking about the accident. My Therapist followed the same taping technique. This time I was able to create and store images in my mind that were more joyful instead of tragic (I created the image of my family and I going out for pizza, then we all safely drove back home). Now when I think about driving on the interstate, I don’t have these awful images of almost dying.  Instead, these horrible images, are now stored in the back of my memory bank.
     We are now coming to the end of this portion of my blog. My main goal for sharing my story was to be able to give at least one person hope. There have been many days that I’ve just wanted to give up, but with Christ’s strength he doesn’t let me. God, through Christ, and I, have invested way too much in my recovery to give up now. I believe Christ, will help me continue with my recovery, so when it’s all said and done, the glory will go to God.
     The “accident” chapter in my life is finally closed. I am now continuing to focus on God, further recovery, and my daughters.  So now I want to move onto another topic that weighs heavy for most all people, if not for everyone. That topic is “insecurity.” Next post, I will get into my insecurities, and how I “try” to overcome them.