Welcome to Dr. Zender’s Psychology Today blog, The New Normal.
Traumatic accidents can seriously impact every area of your life. However, with the proper information and support you—or someone you care about—can reclaim the life you were meant to live. In Dr. Zender’s blog, you will find tools, tips and ideas to facilitate your recovery process —tools that will help you to cope with your physical and psychological injuries and conditions. You will learn to do more than just survive, you will learn to thrive!
A note to auto insurance companies: You will find valuable information here that will help you better serve your insured customers. In fact, when patients get the proper supports, needed care and treatment up front, they need far fewer resources in the long run than if support is withheld. That translates into a big win-win for your company and a boost to your bottom line!
Should We Ban Autonomous Vehicles?
For many years during the brief drive to my office in downtown Mt. Clemens, I would daily pass an elementary school near the train tracks on Cass Avenue. The school sits within eyeshot of the old train station where Thomas Edison once learned to operate the telegraph. The legend goes that Edison one day saved the station master’s child from [...]
On Keeping Faith Following Severe Car Crashes
Now that you have survived a horrible car crash that has turned your life upside down, you may find yourself thinking frequently about how you could have died or suffered even more serious injuries. The fact of the matter is you were a victim and now you are a survivor. You would think the road ahead is just a matter of getting [...]
Mental Health and the Holidays: Focus on Self Care
From the highly evidenced-based field of psychodynamic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, we have known for decades that the holidays in America are traditionally a time ripe for off-the-chart stressors and wide-spread emotional regression. For those already challenged with health problems, or conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries or chronic pain, the additional stress of the holidays can [...]
How We Carry Trauma in the Body
A powerful adjunct to post-trauma psychotherapy is body-oriented therapies and methods. Yoga, massage therapy, and Pilates are powerful tools that should be considered and included in the comprehensive treatment plan. In my work with auto accident trauma survivors I daily see the value of combining massage therapy and methods such as Pilates with the verbal working through of trauma in psychotherapy. I believe auto insurance [...]
King of Sparta Injured in Motorcycle Accident
Gerard Butler, as King Leonidas, famed Spartan King in the movie 300, was able to hold off a Persian army of 150,000 soldiers, but he was recently dethroned from his motorcycle when a lady allegedly made an illegal U-turn in front of him on the streets of LA. According to Butler, he crashed into the car and went flying through the [...]
Montel Williams, PTSD and TBI From Auto Accidents
I just returned from the fall conference of the Brain Injury Association of Michigan which was truly an amazing conference. I made many wonderful connections and learned a lot of new things about brain injuries and our health care delivery system from some of Michigan’s top neurologists, psychologists and case managers, and most of all, from the people who have sustained brain injuries. I gave a [...]
