Rachel Turner

Rachel Turner was twenty-seven when the road accident that took her colleague's life also shattered her sense of safety in the world. Physically, she recovered — three months of treatment for a fractured pelvis and multiple soft tissue injuries. Psychologically, she did not. In the eighteen months that followed, she stopped driving, stopped sleeping well, and stopped being the person she had been. Flashbacks arrived without warning. Crowds felt dangerous. She quit a job she had loved because the route to work passed the accident site, and she could not make herself drive past it. A friend, recognising the signs, encouraged her to seek help. She was referred to the trauma psychology service at Silvaris Regional Hospital in Dallas.

Her initial assessment with the consultant clinical psychologist was the first time Rachel had described the accident and its aftermath to a professional without feeling dismissed or told that time would heal it. 'He took it seriously,' she says. 'He named what was happening — PTSD — and he explained why my brain was responding this way, what the flashbacks were doing neurologically, why the avoidance felt protective but was actually maintaining the problem. Understanding the mechanics of what was happening to me was genuinely helpful. I stopped feeling like I was going mad and started feeling like I had a diagnosable, treatable condition.' A pharmacological review resulted in the prescription of an SSRI to address both the PTSD and comorbid anxiety while she began psychological therapy.

Trauma-focused CBT was conducted over sixteen sessions, once weekly. The work was not easy. Trauma-focused therapy requires approaching the memories that the avoidance response has been designed to keep at bay — a process that initially worsened Rachel's distress before improving it. Her psychologist prepared her meticulously for this: explaining the rationale, the expected trajectory, and the fact that feeling worse in the short term was a sign that the work was happening. 'He told me the graph of recovery in PTSD looks like it dips before it rises,' Rachel says. 'And he was right. Around session six or seven I felt the worst I had felt. And then slowly, week by week, the flashbacks became less vivid. The past started to feel less present.'

Alongside the psychological therapy, a structured return-to-driving programme was coordinated through a specialist anxiety-management service. Rachel began by sitting in a stationary car, then by short journeys with a therapist in the passenger seat, progressively building her confidence and tolerance for road-related situations. The approach — gradual, graded, always at a pace Rachel could manage — stood in deliberate contrast to the avoidance that had been shrinking her world. Her psychologist and the driving rehabilitation specialist communicated directly, ensuring that the behavioural work was integrated with the therapy. 'Everything was connected,' Rachel says. 'It wasn't a collection of separate interventions — it was a coordinated plan.'

Two years after beginning treatment, Rachel drives confidently, has returned to full-time employment in a new role, and has not experienced a flashback in eight months. Her anxiety remains something she manages actively — therapy has given her tools rather than a cure — but it no longer governs her life. She has joined a peer support group for trauma survivors, finding both community and purpose in sharing her experience with others at the beginning of their recovery journeys. 'PTSD stole eighteen months of my life,' she says. 'The team at Silvaris gave me back everything that followed. I am not the person I was before the accident, but I have made peace with that. I am someone who survived, and who knows how to ask for help.'