Dealing With Rage When Someone Else Causes Your Serious Injury

Look, we all know that accidents just happen. Indeed, Centers for Disease Control statistics show that U.S. accidents happen in enormous numbers, where every year:

– about forty million visit their doctor’s office for unintentional injury;
– about thirty million go to the emergency room for unintentional injury;
– about 167,000 die from unintentional injury;
– about 62,000 die from unintentional poisoning; and
– about 38,000 die in unintentional motor-vehicle accidents.

Yet knowing how common accidents are, doesn’t make them any easier with which to deal personally. And accidents are one thing, but to suffer serious injury because of another’s carelessness is a very different problem. Getting angry is senseless when an accident has complex natural causes. But we rightly fill with anger, even rage, when someone does other than they should have done with our own safety. Every society follows the Golden Rule to do to others as you’d have them do for yourself. When another breaks the Golden Rule at your cost, you naturally feel right to be angry.

Getting a Grip

Rage, though, hurts no one worse than the one who feels it. To recover from a serious-injury accident requires more than healing bones. It requires healing the figurative heart, which is to find peace of mind and calm emotions.

One approach well-meaning friends sometimes recommend for anger is to ignore it or perhaps to get over it. And true: carelessness, or negligence, as the law calls it, doesn’t mean that the wrongdoer hated anyone. Negligence isn’t desiring anyone’s harm. It’s just not caring as much as one should about another’s harm. But that’s precisely the problem: the wrongdoer didn’t care, which is bad enough. And when the not caring was something like going 80 miles per hour in a 55 zone, or driving drugged and drunk, then the rage rightly returns. Ignoring it does little good.

A better approach mental-health professionals sometimes recommend for anger issues is to deal with it, process it, maybe share it. The American Psychological Association recommends these steps for dealing with rage:

• breathe deep from your diaphragm;
• repeat a calming word or phrase;
• visualize or imagine a relaxing experience;
• do slow, yoga-like exercises;
• use logic to change the way you think;
• communicate better what you think;
• use silly humor;
• make some personal time; and
• ease up on yourself.

Taking Action

Lawyers, though, have yet another approach, one that for some is clearly the better, indeed the best, course. While talking about loss and using mind-easing strategies can help, true recovery from profound loss often takes meaningful action. No, the law doesn’t authorize vengeance or retribution. Law today isn’t an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and two harms don’t make a healing. But the victim’s civil tort action against the wrongdoer calls the wrongdoer and their insurer to full account.

Pursuing a negligence claim is genuine, satisfying action, rather than mere talk. The victim’s lawyer representative can force the wrongdoer to appear and answer the hard questions. For the first time, the victim has the upper hand. And in proving a negligence case, the victim may recover a substantial monetary award with which the victim can do other justice, like pay medical bills, replace lost wages, put food on the table, and keep a roof over the family’s head. That meaningful relief is exactly what the civil justice system is all about: responsibility and redemption for the wrongdoer, and genuine recovery for the wronged.

Getting Effective Help for Your Personal Injury Claim

The McGraw Law Group’s experienced and compassionate lawyers have walked clients through the galling experience of horrible loss of life and limb. They know why those who suffer serious injury from the carelessness of another feel rage, and they know how to help victims move actively forward to financial and emotional recovery through aggressive enforcement of their full rights. Call at any time of day or night, weekday or weekend, or go online, for a free consultation. Act, rather than ruminate. Get over it in the best of ways.