I have done my research to know the symptoms but I was speaking to the root cause.
Well, the root cause is - literally - the mental illness itself.
In simple layman's terms: A traumatic event occurs, one that is of sufficient intensity to truly kick the brain into fear overdrive.
Then, the traumatic event ends.
What should happen next, is: over the next three to six months (so think the neuroscientists), the brain should gradually smooth out the edges of that very profound fear - take what was an intense experience and turn it into a
memory of an intense experience. And then, a slightly more distant memory of a frightening experience. Then, more distant, and while you can recall the fear - it's truly a memory of fear. It's in the past.
You might still be able to become upset by really remembering it deeply - but generally, you'd be able to relay the story of the event without becoming overwhelmed.
PTSD happens when the brain doesn't manage to smooth out that intense experience. Instead, it remains stuck in the present, and doesn't join other memories that are filed to the past. It's a glitch, a kind of trauma deja-vu. Part of the brain perceives the traumatic event as still being in process, still occurring.
Now, most of the other neurological functions are operating correctly - if they weren't, the person with PTSD would be living in an extremely painful state of either continual psychosis or near-catatonia. What is more typical (or common) is for the person with PTSD to experience this "stuck memory" sometimes intensely enough to truly perceive it as experiential (flashbacks), sometimes like it just happened yesterday (intrusive thoughts).
It's exhausting for the brain to be stuck like this - because it's always on edge, somehow (hyper-vigilance). The sufferer will try and find ways to quiet the memory (avoidance, maladaptive coping mechanisms such as isolating, self-harming, substance abuse), and under all that mental strain, will often find themselves losing control of their emotions (dysregulation), either lashing out or becoming profoundly sad, or re-enacting aspects of the trauma out of some misguided attempt to 'conquer' it.
Treatment for PTSD will accomplish two things. One: It will move the fear experience that is stuck into the file where memories are supposed to go. The end result is referred to as "memory re-consolidation". The process of getting there is called "trauma processing". What is happening inside the brain is sometimes referred to as "fear extinction" - which doesn't mean all your fears go away, it means that this singular fear that is looping is finally extinguished.
And Two: the maladaptive coping mechanisms, dysregulations, patterns of avoidance....all those symptoms...will be identified, recognized, and through conscious determination (in which the sufferer can now choose to re-direct these harmful behaviors into more sustainable and healthy ones), they will be gradually smoothed over as well.
PTSD doesn't fully go away. Whatever that tangled bit of trauma was, the neurological-circutry that was caught up in it will retain aspects of the fear experience. That will cause flare-ups of symptoms. But, the PTSD sufferer gets to know their symptoms very well, over the course of treatment. So, they become better at recognizing when they are affected, and taking steps to reduce stressors in their life so they can ride out the choppy waves of recall, eventually becoming more regulated again.
When you're inside of it, it's very hard to see it from
outside yourself. After a decent amount of therapy, that gets easier; but, as I said at the beginning of this very long post - that inability to see exactly what's happening to you is a direct result of a memory function inside the brain becoming looped.
Or put even more succinctly: When you have PTSD - and it's untreated? - you're not in your right mind. Your mind isn't working right. And you can't just fix that through sheer force of will - in fact, you'll just display more symptoms.
You've got to engage in some form of memory re-consolidation and fear extinction. You've
then got to start re-routing your thought patterns and your behaviors. And you need to be prepared for things to sometimes get very hard.
When we push to communicate for insight and understanding why does that feel so invasive?
Because we ourselves don't fully understand what's happening. How can we teach you about it when we're busy learning about it and living inside it?
We do it to really know, for you, for us and the relationship.
No, actually. It's more common that you do it because you're insecure in the relationship in some way, and you want to feel re-connected. You want to understand because you feel bad - powerless, or incompetent, or afraid - and you think that us leaning on you will help you feel like you are on solid ground again, as partners.
But that's not how it works for us. It's as if we are trying to do a difficult task - surviving being neurologically stuck in the worst moment(s) of our lives - and you would like us to come out of our intensely focused struggle in order to explain to you what's happening, or reassure you that the relationship is still ok...That's the sort of thing that someone in relatively decent mental health can do. Not someone with a mental illness.
That's why being a supporter is hard. The term is a bit of a misnomer - or rather, it's not really that you are supporting us - you need to be able to support
yourself. That's how you support us. You keep the ground steady under your feet, and you hold space for the relationship when we are struggling.
Not that you wait and put up with all sorts of shit - more like, you're strong and rooted and we can
trust that about you. You can hold onto our present-day partnership even when we kind of suck at it, because we're not living in the here and now, we're dealing with this trauma-brain Groundhog Day.
