Knowledge and decrease in symptoms

This is a good question, @Betty Boop. One way that I think about all of this is that it's all about power.

We exist because of our brains. Our brains are literally in charge of every single physiological and emotional and intellectual process that we have. The brain is in control, and it's the one with the power.

We have our conscious brains, which are hopefully rational, and we have our unconscious or subconscious brains which get things done, or do things for us, without our awareness. I think(?) that neuroscience tells us that a lot of our brain power goes to the unconscious or subconscious processes. I seem to recall that we've also been told that we don't use a lot of the power of our brains!

What I like to call the TMS mechanism is a very primitive part of our brain which was designed to automatically and unconsciously take over whenever there is a perceived threat to our safety and survival. The mechanism creates what we call the Fight Flight or Freeze response, which involves a number of physical reactions, including inflammation, tension, adrenaline, cortisol, emptying of the gut to make fighting or running away easier, etc. It also cuts off any emotional activity which will only get in the way of needing to take action.

This mechanism worked great in the primitive world where the different kinds of threats were very few, and had a clear beginning and end, with time in between to recover - if you survived the threats. Clearly it worked well for human survival because here we are today.

However!! The modern world is far from simple, and the number of stresses we encounter every day are infinite. And here's the problem: our brains have not evolved for the modern world. They still don't know the difference between one of those primitive life-or-death threats, versus the constant stress we feel from things like bad relationships, aggravating traffic, social media, looming world disorder and environmental disaster, or, in the worst cases, childhood trauma and adversity.

So what happens is that we end up in a constant state of Fight Flight or Freeze, with all of those physiological responses occurring which were designed to help us survive - including emotional shutdown. But these responses were never meant to be employed 24/7. And it turns out that a constant state of Fight Flight or Freeze is very unhealthy in the long run.

So back to the concept of power. Having this knowledge is powerful. Knowing that our brains are making a mistake takes away the power of our brains to keep employing these physical responses and emotional shutdown. The so-called Sarno book cure is proof that many people with very mild TMS from adult stressors often recover with that knowledge alone, although most find that employing some basic techniques for anxiety reduction and emotional release is also helpful. Still, this knowledge is truly that powerful.

People with more complex and lengthier stress, most especially anybody with childhood adversity and trauma, need a lot more than a book to essentially rewire their unconscious survival response. In these cases, I believe that the survival response becomes even more powerful and quite resistant to change, because it is built up over such a long time during the vulnerable years of childhood.

"Complex" is, of course, the "c" in your cptsd. And speaking of power, I appreciate that you give your diagnosis less power by using lowercase letters! I don't know if you did that consciously, but I like it!

I reference a resource in my long list (on my profile) called "Meditations to Change Your Brain". It's actually more lecture than meditations, a collaboration between a neuroscientist and a well known therapist/author. It's where I learned about this primitive wiring of our brains and what we can do about it. Highly recommended, and in my city it's available from my library.