North Carolina Truck Accidents: Getting Past the Anger

June 8, 2011, by Michael A. DeMayo

If you or a close friend or family member got hurt (or suffered property damage) in a North Carolina truck accident, chances are that you’re carrying around a lot of anger and other destructive emotions. Obviously, you want (and perhaps need) money to pay for your vehicle as well as to compensate you for surgical bills, ongoing medical therapies, long-term rehabilitation, and the pain, suffering, and trauma that you’ve experienced. But there is a big difference between acting effectively to get this kind of compensation – and to demand that “justice is done” – and getting sucked into the frivolous and destructive anger that often consumes victims of North Carolina truck accidents.

Truth is, what you and your family want most of all is a return to relaxed control. Basically, you want to “get back” to where you were before the accident overturned your car (or motorcycle) and your life. This is a lot easier said than done.

You might find you’re angry at a lot of different people and institutions for a lot of different reasons – and you have other emotions mixed in there, such as frustration, confusion, “sense of overwhelm,” panic and depression. Lots of good scientific research (along with thousands of years of anecdotal observations) suggests that mindfulness meditation/prayer can be quite useful in terms of recasting how you mentally frame events both in the past and in the future.

Champions of this general philosophy of forgiveness and mindfulness believe it may be possible to obliterate even the most seemingly totally entrenched feelings of anger, frustration, and depression. But retreating into a shell of “total forgiveness” may not be everyone’s cup of tea, nor may it be particularly resourceful. After all, if you’re a parent, for instance, you feel a tremendous sense of duty to care for your children. Thus, if you are too hurt from the accident to work, your children will suffer. Ergo, you need some kind of compensation.

So managing anger and frustration does NOT mean that you shouldn’t take active steps to get help and even to demand (nonviolent) justice. For instance, consider scheduling a free consultation with a North Carolina truck accident law firm to go over different possible mechanisms to get that due compensation.

Many different parties might be liable for what happened to you. You might think that the “runaway trucker” himself would be the only person who should be blamed. But perhaps the trucking company was liable for allowing him to drive on a suspended license. Or perhaps the truck he drove was improperly loaded, in which case, the company that did the loading job could also be liable. The moral here is: Strive to manage your anger or other difficult feelings, but don’t short change yourself and your family.

More Web Resources:

Moving Beyond Anger

non violent communication