Nine days after the crash, a trolley hits a shelf two aisles away in the supermarket. Metal on metal, nothing more. Your body jumps before you know why. Your heart is pounding, your hands have gone cold, and you leave the basket next to the tomatoes and walk out to the car park.
The crash itself was not dramatic. You were stopped at a red light, the car behind you didn't stop, and there was a bang and a jolt, the seatbelt biting into your shoulder. Nobody was badly hurt. A doctor checked your neck. The car is at the body shop.
So why do you wake at night with the bang still in your ears? Why do you brake hard whenever a car comes up fast in the mirror? A colleague says you have been through a trauma and should talk it all through with someone straight away. Your aunt says the best thing is to stop thinking about it. Both mean well. Neither answers the question you actually have, which is whether something in you is now broken.
This article is about the first weeks after a frightening event, such as a crash, an assault, a bad fall or a near miss. It is general information. It does not diagnose anything and does not replace a doctor or a mental health professional. If the danger is still going on, for example violence at home, your safety and practical help come first.
What the first weeks often look like
In guidance for the public published in March 2026, the Royal College of Psychiatrists lists what is common after a traumatic event: distressing memories and dreams, getting upset near reminders, avoiding anything that brings it back, feeling on guard or easily startled, anger, guilt, poor sleep. Then it says something you rarely hear at the office or over Sunday lunch. Having these symptoms does not automatically mean someone has PTSD, and most people who go through a traumatic event find that the effects go away over time.
Richard Bryant, who directs the Traumatic Stress Clinic at the University of New South Wales in Australia, gives rough proportions in a 2023 article for The Conversation. Long-term studies suggest that about 75% of trauma survivors have no lasting distress. Others go through a stretch of distress and then adapt. A minority, usually around one in ten, develop chronic problems. That minority is real and deserves proper care. Jumping at a trolley nine days later still puts you in very large company.
A snow globe that has just been shaken
Picture your mind in those weeks as a snow globe that someone has shaken hard. Everything is in the air at once: the bang, the other driver's face, the what-ifs, the tiredness. You can't see through it, and from inside it looks permanent. Snow in a globe has one reliable habit, though. Put the globe down and leave it alone, and the snow falls. Slowly, unevenly, a few flakes still drifting long after the rest, but it falls.
Research on the months after trauma draws a similar curve. A 2022 meta-analysis from the University of Bath, by Diamond and colleagues, pooled 78 studies of 16,484 adults followed after a traumatic event. One month after, 27% had symptoms at the level of PTSD. At three months the figure was close to 18%, and after that it changed little. The studies were very different from one another and the numbers describe groups, so they cannot tell you what will happen to you. They do show that much of the settling happens in the first three months, and the authors suggest three months as a sensible point to check for symptoms that are staying.
Putting the globe down is a practical matter. It starts with noticing what keeps picking it up and shaking it again.
What keeps shaking it
Pressure to tell it all, right away. For decades the standard response to disasters was psychological debriefing: a single session within days, in which survivors were encouraged to go back over their memories and feelings. Bryant sums up where the evidence ended up. Debriefing does not prevent PTSD, and for the people who are most distressed at the start it can make things worse. The NICE guideline on PTSD, the clinical guidance used in England, says not to offer it. The trouble is the pressure and the timing. Talking itself helps: the Royal College notes that avoiding memories and feelings tends to make people feel worse, and that talking about the event and your feelings, when you are ready, can help. Your colleague and your aunt are each half right. What matters is who sets the pace, and that should be you.
Watching it again. The dashcam clip, the short piece in the local news, the comments under it. The Royal College suggests not watching or reading a lot of media about the event, especially if it upsets you, and muting related words on social media. After the Bondi Junction stabbings in Sydney in 2024, the clinical psychologist Kim Felmingham gave the same advice: look for information from trusted sources, and avoid being saturated by images and speculation.
A drink to get to sleep. It can take the edge off one evening. The Royal College warns that alcohol and drugs can make recovery harder in the long term.
A cloth over the globe. The opposite move is to stop looking altogether. You never take that road again, you change the subject the moment it comes up, you stay out of the supermarket. Under a cloth the snow still falls, but you never get to see it lying on the bottom, so every reminder feels like the storm all over again. The Royal College's short version is “avoid avoidance”.
Putting the globe down
None of this is a treatment, and none of it has to be done perfectly. These are the everyday things that the Royal College and the clinicians quoted here describe as helping.
Keep the shape of your days. Same alarm, meals at roughly the usual times. In the first week it may feel pointless. Routine gives the snow a still place to fall.
Stay near people. The Royal College notes that being around other people makes poor mental health after a traumatic event less likely. Felmingham adds that this works even if you don't want to talk about your feelings: dinner with a friend, the sofa with your family in front of the TV. Wanting some time alone is fine. Disappearing for weeks is something else.
Go back to ordinary places in small steps. The supermarket on a quiet morning, the drive to work with someone in the passenger seat the first time. You choose when.
Take extra care for a while. According to the Royal College, people are more likely to have accidents after a traumatic event, possibly because it is harder to concentrate and you startle more easily. Leave more room on the road, and take your time at home too.
Look at the globe once a week. The Royal College suggests paying attention to how you feel during the first few months. One way to do that without checking on yourself every hour: pick a day, say Sunday evening, and ask whether this week was better, the same or worse than the last. When a wave hits in between, grounding techniques can help you get back into the room you are in.
When the snow doesn't settle
The Royal College gives two simple markers. If your symptoms are very bad and having a big impact on your life one month after the event, speak to your doctor. If they are milder but have lasted more than three months and don't seem to be going away, speak to your doctor too. If at any point things are getting worse instead of better, you don't need to wait for either date.
Effective help exists. NICE recommends trauma-focused cognitive behavioural therapy for adults with PTSD, and it can start within the first month for people whose symptoms are already strong. EMDR, a therapy that uses eye movements while you work through the memory, is another option NICE recommends from three months after events such as a crash or an assault. PTSD, the Royal College writes, is not a sign of weakness. If, long afterwards, your body still acts as if the danger were close, we wrote about that in surviving is not the same as feeling safe. If you have thoughts of hurting yourself, contact local emergency or crisis services now.
Sometimes the hardest part is that everyone else has moved on and you are still on day nine. NoOneToTalk offers anonymous listening from peers, a place to say it at your own pace to someone who doesn't know you. It is a place to talk. It is not therapy, and it is not medical treatment.
Five weeks later you are back by the tomatoes. Somewhere behind you, a trolley hits a shelf.
You jump, a little. Your heart goes up and comes back down, and you put two more tomatoes in the bag.
