How To Maintain Your Mental Health After Being Seriously Injured

As most people believe, the injuries sustained from a serious incident, like a car accident, are mostly physical. The real truth is that this isn’t always true. There are plenty of ways that an accident can or will result in bodily harm, but a lot of the damage may be unseen and below the surface.

What these injuries are is damage to your mental health. The unseen effects of an accident and its injuries can be seriously harmful to the emotional and psychological well-being of an individual. Here are some helpful tips on how to maintain your mental health after being seriously injured.

Talk to Loved Ones

Your immediate support network is a group of people you shouldn’t cut out or push out of your life. They may feel like they are getting in the way at times, but it’s important to remember that they’re there to help you feel loved and supported. It can be a difficult time, so going about it alone is not something that is advised. They may not have world-class training in mental health, but you need to relay to them what you need and hope that they understand your wishes and try to help in return.

Reach Out for Legal Support

It might be surprising to hear, but legal support is something that is incredibly useful for emotional support following a serious injury. It’s also important to note that mental health impacts resulting from a personal injury are often associated with incidents ranging from car accidents, slips and falls, or even assaults, so who knows it best than the people who handle these cases for a living? Legal representatives are not just there to defend your case, they also want to help their clients get the emotional support that they need in such a trying time as well.

Find a Counselor/Therapist

On the topic of emotional support, your friends, family, and even your legal representatives are not always the best equipped to help out, as much as they can or will try. In this instance, it’s best to leave it to the professional counselors and therapists trained to help people through traumatic ordeals in their life. A personal injury can leave last scars on your mental state that take a long time to heal. Counselors/therapists can help work on practices like cognitive behavioral therapy to help you mend and heal. It is always important to seek out some true expertise if you feel your mental state is suffering as a result of an injury.

Practice Meditation

On your own time, meditation can be a good way to tap into your emotional state to help soothe and relax the mind. Meditation is free, it is easy to learn, and enjoyable personal activity, and it is helpful for anxiety, depression, and other mental issues stemming from or related to the injury you suffered. Practicing meditation is a smart choice for those who need some clarity during a time of confusion.

Don’t Avoid the Incident

A major problem that occurs when people suffer through a traumatic event, such as a serious injury, is that they attempt to block out all thoughts or recollections of the event. This is not doing any good, contrary to what you may think. It is very crucial that people face their fears and acknowledge what events they went through, understand why they feel the way they do, and what parts of the event impacted them the most. It is good to remember how they felt in those moments as it is beneficial for moving on, something that therapists and counselors can help you with. Avoiding the incident and trying to block it out will not do as much good as you think it will.

Occupy Your Time With Healthy Activities

Lastly, you don’t want to hold yourself up in your home and avoid the world. It can be hard, especially if your injury was very serious and caused changes to your lifestyle, but getting back into the normal swing of doing chores for yourself and seeing people is good for your mental state. Similarly, you need healthy hobbies like light exercise or even reading, drawing, writing, anything that stimulates the brain in healthy ways.

Figuring out these steps towards being a healthier you, in small steps or big ones, will allow you to conquer your fears and face yourself in the mirror even after the most serious of injuries. All it takes is some help and you can be back to your regular self in no time.