He told me he no longer felt safe getting into a car.
It had been a few weeks since his motor vehicle accident. Physically, he was recovering, but emotionally something had shifted in a way that did not resolve as quickly as the body’s healing. Even the thought of driving brought immediate anxiety—his body reacting as if the danger were still present.
As he described this, I recognized something familiar.
Not because I was hearing an unusual case, but because I had seen—and lived—how easily the nervous system can disconnect present reality from internal safety.
Years ago, after my own motor vehicle accident, I remember sitting in the aftermath feeling my body still in shock. Even though I had been medically evaluated and told I was physically okay, my internal experience lagged behind that reassurance.
I could not imagine getting back into a car. For a moment, I truly believed I might not be able to drive again.
In the immediate aftermath, while I was still waiting for EMS, my hands were trembling. My body felt narrowed into a survival state where everything unnecessary fell away.
I remember instinctively reaching for something in the car. There was a snack bar left on the backseat floor from my toddler. In any other moment, I might have seen it as clutter or inconvenience. But in that moment, it became something else entirely—something small, tangible, and grounding.
I ate it while waiting. It did not resolve the fear, but it gave my body something steady to hold onto while everything else felt unstable.
Later, I had to navigate getting the car towed and transitioning into a new vehicle. I moved step by step, still shaken, still not fully internally settled, while life externally continued forward.
Looking back, I understand something more clearly now: there was a narrow window before the fear fully consolidated. Movement was still possible. Support still existed. The nervous system had not yet locked the experience into permanence.
That is what came back to me while sitting with my patient.
Because when fear becomes repeatedly reinforced, it can begin to reshape identity. “I cannot do this anymore” begins to feel like truth rather than a temporary nervous system state.
As I listened to him, I was also thinking about something broader—something I have come to recognize both in patients and in my own life.
If a person grows up with a relatively stable sense of emotional safety, they often have easier access back to themselves during moments of external instability. There is a kind of internal baseline they can return to, even when shaken.
But when someone grows up without consistent emotional safety—where being themselves felt uncertain, criticized, or emotionally risky—then returning to a sense of self in moments of stress can be harder. Not because the self is absent, but because access to it has been shaped by earlier experiences of instability.
In those cases, external disruption does not just create stress.
It activates older patterns of self-doubt, vigilance, or disconnection.
So in my patient’s case, what I was seeing was not just post-accident fear—it was also a nervous system struggling to find its way back to internal safety.
I am not his therapist or psychiatrist. My role is grounded in primary care. But even within that space, there are moments where something simple can be offered: a point of orientation.
So I told him that before the accident, there was a version of him who moved through the world without this fear. And that version is still there—not gone, not erased, but temporarily covered by the nervous system’s response to what happened.
When fear arises, I suggested, he might gently return to that steadier part of himself.
Not as a cure.
But as a reminder of continuity.
After the visit, I found myself reflecting on why this felt so familiar.
Because I have also had to learn how to find my way back to internal steadiness during times when external life felt unstable.
And over time, I have noticed something important: safety is not only about what happens around us. It is also about how consistently we can return to ourselves within what happens around us.
That ability is not always equally accessible at the beginning.
But it can be built.
Slowly.
Through experience.
Through recognition.
Through moments where the self is not lost, even when everything else feels uncertain.
And perhaps that is what both the patient encounter and my own reflections point to:
That healing is not the absence of instability.
It is the gradual return to oneself within it.If this reflection resonated with you, I share more about these experiences—nervous system safety, identity, and the process of rebuilding internal steadiness—in my upcoming book.
I went through an experience where I was continually triggered in a family setting. The natural flow of ideas in that experience revealed how this could be practically applied to recover from an emotionally activating situation. I share that in detail in my book, Divine Detox: Healing With Love. Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, please share in the comments how this sense of safety in a triggering situation has shown up for you.
