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metekillot t1_iv4x5he wrote

Reply to comment by ruesselmann in Has PTSD due to trauma and/or violence affected humans for centuries or is this a more recent phenomenon? Have there always been long-term effects when an individual experiences trauma and/or violence? by shooflydont

as long as you were more fit to reproduce and your offspring were themselves fit enough to reproduce, evolution will select for it. 25 years of mental anguish versus 14 of relative peace because you were an easy-going type in an extremely dangerous environment.

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ruesselmann t1_iv56rlt wrote

I believe there is more to selection than surviving. If you want to reproduce, you have to be able to function in a community which is very hard while suffering a mental illness (in a pre-modern community that would be). Also, one would probably not be a preferred mating partner.

I would tend to see it as a disfunctional process that may in some cases be useful but in other cases as a evolutionary disadvantage.

I'd look at it like a mental scar or wound, that sometimes can have a good and healthy outcome and sometimes fester and become infected.

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jejacks00n t1_iv59zdu wrote

In an environment where it’s always opt in, you’re probably right, but historically speaking, sex wasn’t always a choice for everyone.

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ruesselmann t1_iv5dohv wrote

And being more irritable and showing a faster fight flight reaction helps with forceful intercourse how?

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RatherBeATree t1_iv5joaf wrote

It's more like: fight/flight/freeze/fawn/faint. Most people can't feel sexually aroused in F mode, but plenty can. And trauma can absolutely be the thing to cross those wires. F mode isn't gonna produce an intimate social connection, but all that adrenaline is going to make it pretty easy to overpower someone and succeed in passing on the genes anyway. It's a pretty effective two-pronged approach. If the safe/social branch of the nervous system fails in a given environment, lizard brain is still there to save the species.

So, that's the male side. On the female side, cPTSD made me hypersexual. Before meds and therapy, I was always ready to go. And I was much more attracted to intimidating strangers than people I felt community with. Add in the fawn response which doesn't just make it hard to say 'no', it also makes it hard to not say 'yes'...

So not only did my body have a high drive for behaviors that would historically have lead to becoming impregnated, it was also driving me towards acquiring novel genes from strange, aggressive men. Thus passing along the PTSD response while combining it with genes more likely to prosper in an environment where the safe/social approach isn't working.

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sault18 t1_iv5e688 wrote

The difference is that most members of the tribe would have similar experiences instead of a ptsd sufferer being mostly unique in the tribe. So ptsd symptoms would be the norm. The nightmares and other symptoms of ptsd would most likely to be attributed to "bad spirits" or whatever the group's religious traditions said it was.

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