PTSD - An Engineering Overview

By John Schreiber

While a little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, a lot of knowledge is quite

cumbersome.

Those reading about PTSD might have heard a term like “the reptile brain”. While we
may think ourselves highly evolved, the truth is that portions of our mammalian brains
are similar to those of reptiles. This portion, lying beneath our conscious mind, is
commonly referred to as the “sub-conscious”. We do not know what muscles make our
heart beat. It is performed automatically by the subconscious. We need sleep because
this reptile mind must perform routine maintenance, and the tests to ensure everything is
fine are interpreted as dreams.

Little thought is given to the subconscious by the vast majority of individuals on this
planet. It simply does what it is supposed to do. But the reptile portion of our minds has
a huge logic error in its design. Nature knows about this error but, rather than fix it
permanently, adds a mechanism to account for this error. When the subconscious detects
that the error condition exists, it triggers this mechanism. This mechanism changes the
way the brain functions, and the symptoms that result have become known as “Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder”.

The first question which must be answered is “What is this flaw?”

To answer this we must first discuss the effect of knowledge. While a little knowledge
may be a dangerous thing, a lot of knowledge is quite cumbersome. Imagine if there was
a single phone book for all of the world. It would be too big to sit on a desk. Knowing
everything may be a scientific goal, but in the animal kingdom, the mass of this
knowledge slows an animal down. Nature is content with providing an animal with
enough knowledge of survive and reproduce. Everything else is a burden.

The next issue is one of timing. Imagine the plight of a teenager starting to work at
McDonald’s. At first there is a lot of information to learn such as where each button is
on the register. Have you ever stood in line with such a teenager who is trying
desperately to find where the Apple Pie button is? After a week or so, everything that
needs to be learned has been learned. The teenager must then just repeat the same
procedures over and over again.

Nature noticed this pattern in animals where their first few months of this earth are a
desperate search for the knowledge needed to survive. After that, the animals just repeat
the same procedures. There is no requirement for a simple animal to learn throughout its
lifetime. A short interval after birth would be sufficient to learn what they need to
survive. After that, learning is stopped, and the animal uses its knowledge to live its life.

What benefit does this system provide? After learning has stopped, the response time of
the animal is decreased. In English, it has faster reflexes. In a world where survival is
often measured in tenths of a second when lions pounce, the animal with the fastest
reflexes survives. Like the old joke says, when hiking in bear country, your greatest
protection is to walk with a partner your can outrun.

In humans, this period of learning lasts for about 5 years. Children lose the ability to
learn quickly at about the same time as they are sent to school to learn. Thus, educators
stress the importance of parents taking the time to teach their children by reading to them,
teaching them to count, etc. at a young age. There are even some things which cannot be
learned after that short period in one’s youth. Language is one such example. If a human
were actually raised by apes, that human would never be able to speak. The effects
would not merely be Tarzan’s bad grammar. Tarzan would never be able to
communicate through language. Conversely, I have seen a documentary where
researchers are trying to teach a gorilla to communicate using icons on a board. The
gorilla never understood what the researchers wanted. They were about to declare the
program a failure when the young gorilla the mother carried reached out and
communicated using the icons.

There is a another issue of knowledge which must be examined. This issue is that of out-
smarting your opponent. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to survive. How
do you keep razor sharp reflexes but retain the ability to learn? You add a second portion
of the brain which can learn through an animal’s life. That portion is known as the
conscious which is the part of our brains we are aware of. Our conscious does not know
how to make our hearts beat, but our subconscious does. Our conscious knows how to do
long division, but our subconscious does not.

For those who may be confused between the conscious and a conscience, the conscious is
the part of the brain you are aware of. The conscience is that part of your brain which
questions whether doing something is wrong is a good thing.

I have stated that there is a flaw in the reptile mind which must be fixed using a
mechanism called “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. Thus, there is no need to delve into
the conscious any further. The important issue is the flaw.

In simple creatures with only the reptile mind, they learn for a short period and then
cannot learn any more. This system works extremely well only if the animal has met all
possible threats to its existence during the time of learning in its youth. What happens if
a new predator comes along afterwards? The animal cannot remember the predator is a
threat even after it has seen a companion killed and eaten. The reptile mind requires a
means of adapting to threats to its existence after its short period of learning. Therefore,
after a traumatic event, the mechanism will be used to incorporate the new threat into the
reptile mind.

Since it will take some time to complete, the mechanism provides an interim solution. It
increases the sensitivity of the emotions to the point of pain. This is done since an
encounter with another animal will provide an emotional response. By amplifying the
emotional response to the point of pain, the animal will run away regardless of whether
the other animal is a threat or not. It is this interim solution which causes the anti-social
behaviour amongst PTSD sufferers.

The next thing the mechanism must do is provide a permanent means of identifying the
new predator as a threat. No longer able to learn quickly, the mind is forced to use the
same technique students have used for countless years to remember important
information: it memorizes the event. And how does one memorize an event? Repeat the
event over and over again in one’s mind. The memory of the traumatic event is replayed
constantly through the mind of the PTSD sufferer because the reptile portion of the mind
is memorizing the traumatic event.

Once it has memorized the encounter and passed all tests to ensure the memory is firmly
in place, the mechanism reduces the sensitivity to emotions to the normal level. It then
stops repeating the memory. All the person is left with is the association of the traumatic
event with danger. For reptiles of old, this was the association of the new predator with
danger and the immediate response to fight or run away. For soldiers on modern
battlefields, the new association is warfare with death and the inability to return to the
fight. Pilots now identify flight with danger, and they cannot fly again. Sailors, a fact
that I can readily identify with, see danger on the waves and are not able to return to sea.

For those witnessing the individual who has gone through PTSD, this outcome often
leads to branding the individual as a coward. What they do not realize is that the
individual has not just gone through the incident once. The PTSD sufferer has lived the
event a hundred thousand times or more. Imagine if a pilot were to crash his plane, drag
himself from the wreckage, get into another plane and promptly crash that one. He then
repeats this curious pattern thousands of times a day, seven days a week for months on
end. If a pilot were to actually do this, news reporters would arrive for a humorous
human interest story on the pilot who would not give up. The world would not see the
man as courageous. They would think he was crazy. No sane person would repeatedly
get into an airplane after crashing so many times in a row.

And yet people who have gone through PTSD are thought to be cowards or crazy because
they let a single incident change them. It is not the single event that changes their minds.
People going through PTSD relive their traumatic event hundreds of thousands of times
as their reptile minds memorize the incident. The individual who has the courage to
stand up and refuse to continue is the sane person. They are the ones making the correct
decision.

PTSD has a number of other symptoms. One of these, the flashback, is a good example
to illustrate how completely the person is reliving the memory. Someone going through
PTSD is really living two lives. One is the current reality with data supplied by the five
senses. The other is the memory of the traumatic event as it was experienced through the
five senses. Normally it is possible to distinguish between them. However, if current
reality becomes similar to that of the traumatic event, the person will be unable to
distinguish between them. A combat veteran may hear a car backfire which would
provide a similar sound to that of gunfire. Current reality seems to indicate there is
gunfire and so does the memory. Suddenly he finds himself unable to distinguish
between reality and memory. He has, in effect, flashed back to his time in combat.

If PTSD is a natural mechanism built into the subconscious, why do humans have such
difficulties with it? That arises from the fact that PTSD developed long before there was
a conscious mind to take over the learning process. In the subconscious, PTSD will
proceed rapidly and without difficulty. It is the conscious mind which plays havoc on the
mechanism.

The conscious portion of our minds can generate huge amounts of stress independent of
what is going on in our surroundings. It is possible for the conscious to generate enough
stress to trigger the PTSD mechanism without any external trauma. Guilt is often the
driving factor in such cases and leads to a condition commonly referred to as a “nervous
breakdown”. If you can accept this statement, then all of the randomness which seems to
surround PTSD disappears.

The conscious has the ability to generate enough stress to trigger PTSD on its own.
Therefore, it also has the ability to generate enough stress to keep the switch which
triggers PTSD in the “On” position. What should only take a few months to process can,
if the stress in the conscious is high enough, continues indefinitely because the PTSD
mechanism is repeatedly triggered. For someone to minimize the time PTSD takes, it is
important to reduce stress to the minimum level possible.

I personally believe our society has problems with PTSD because the individuals are
being sent to the wrong specialists. I would rather send someone to a specialist who
teaches people how to live with chronic pain rather than a psychiatrist (or teach all
psychiatrists how to deal with chronic pain). The techniques I developed for myself to
reduce the stress work so well that I can literally ignore a pounding headache. I just relax
and divert my attention to some physical work. As long as I do not think about the
headache, I am not aware of it. Such techniques will work well for individuals who are
merely feeding back the stress caused by the incredible pain associated with PTSD.

Those individuals who have problems coming to terms with the event which triggered
PTSD must use a different method. They must talk out their problems or write them
down if they are alone. Such individuals should avoid reviewing the memory internally
since this causes the conscious to generate too much stress. They should use the
techniques for dealing with pain in between verbal sessions with the option of writing the
memory out if they are alone.

For soldiers who have seen combat and are reading this, my recommendation is to stay in
close touch with your comrades. Meet with them regularly and discuss what happened.
Do not keep it bottled up inside. If one is having problems, let the group keep a close eye
on that individual. Check with the family to see how he is while away from the group.
Make sure he does not pull away from his comrades for that will only cause him greater
agony.
I would also caution the wives of combat veterans to be careful when their husbands
return. Emotional hypersensitivity is like having a really bad sunburn. Even the gentle
touch of a lover brings excruciating pain. Keep a “Buddy List” close to the phone and, if
there is ever a time where you feel in danger, call one his buddies. Let his buddy come
over and talk to him. Do not try to do it yourself for that will only cause him greater
pain.

To finish, I would like to address those readers who know someone going through PTSD,
but have not experienced it themselves. I will begin with an event which happened to me
last week. I was walking along when I saw a man laying on the ground in agony. I saw a
bone sticking out of his leg, so I bent over and said, “Abracadabra!” Immediately the
man leapt to his feet and shook my hand vigorously while thanking me profusely. He
then skipped off merrily whistling a happy tune.

No one in their right mind would believe that story for the simple reason that there are no
magic words which will immediately heal a broken leg. There are no words you can say
which will make the pain go away. People with broken legs need to be taken to the
doctor to have the bone set and a cast put on.

As I have shown, PTSD is a mechanism built into the brain designed to account for an
inherent logic error. It is not something the sufferers just make up. Like any physical
injury, it takes time to heal. They need support and encouragement, not magic words
which belittle their pain. If all it would take to make PTSD go away was a good swift
kick in the seat of the pants, I would gladly have bent down to receive the therapy. No
one would expect Christopher Reeve to jump out of his wheelchair and “get back onto
the horse” simply because someone told him to do it. Then why do so many people
expect PTSD sufferers to do so?

And to the psychiatrists who deal with PTSD, when someone comes into your office
describing an incident which injured 18 sailors, had one suicide attempt and very nearly
killed 5,000 (a similar incident five months after mine killed over 2,000), please do not
ask him why he hates his father. Freudian psychobabble has no place when treating those
with PTSD. Not every mental problem is sexual or the fault of the parents.

John Schreiber