The pain and suffering of PTSD is in part, I believe, the brain's attempt to get the person back to a situation where he or she felt in control--the fight or flight situation in which the person did something that led to his or her survival. Reliving the horror of the trauma is equivalent to being back in the traumatic situation. Once the initial trauma ended with the person's survival, and the person was safe, for some reason, safety didn't feel good like it was supposed to. The neurochemicals that flooded the brain during the crisis--dopamine, adrenalin, etc.--are missing now, and the brain is in a state of neurochemical deficiency. If the crisis went on for months or even years, the brain was constantly in a fight-or-flight mode, bathed in neurochemicals that made him or her feel better. Now that he or she is safe, but not feeling better, the brain wants the person to be in danger again to bring back the neurochemicals that made him or her feel energized, powerful, and (paradoxically) calm because he or she did something to control his/her environment, to save his or her life. So the brain induces memories and dreams to recreate the trauma for the person's benefit (according to the brain, anyway).
But the brain is not making a good choice here. It may seem like an efficient solution, but it is not. The brain needs to stop trying to put the person back in crisis; it needs to be trained to do something else to bring on the good neurochemicals. That something else could be one of the many therapeutic treatments that are available to trauma sufferers currently. I find that any kind of scanning activity does the trick--meditation, channel surfing, Solitaire, jigsaw puzzles, bird watching, writing, taking photos--but it's important to me that they be neutral and peaceful activities so that I don't acquire a new habit that is equally detrimental (gambling, for instance).
Anyway, just my two cents from decades of personal research and experimentation.
But the brain is not making a good choice here. It may seem like an efficient solution, but it is not. The brain needs to stop trying to put the person back in crisis; it needs to be trained to do something else to bring on the good neurochemicals. That something else could be one of the many therapeutic treatments that are available to trauma sufferers currently. I find that any kind of scanning activity does the trick--meditation, channel surfing, Solitaire, jigsaw puzzles, bird watching, writing, taking photos--but it's important to me that they be neutral and peaceful activities so that I don't acquire a new habit that is equally detrimental (gambling, for instance).
Anyway, just my two cents from decades of personal research and experimentation.