Those of us in Military Medicine (and Chaplains) talk about this a lot. We also speculate if this may have something to do with incidents of spousal abuse right after the homecoming. No good answers though.
I’m pretty sure that if you just get anyone talking about the details of an event that it will help them put it in context. You were in a car wreck? Information Questions: What time of day? What had you out? Where did it happen? What did you see? What did you hear?
Leave the pyscho-babble alone. “How did you feel in your soul at the sight of blood?” is almost a sure fire way to get people to shut up. Vets might get to that point with each other at spontaneous moments/triggers/reminders, but the odds of that with an outsider is remote.
My theory on the why of PTSD is that it’s the self-talk, internal post-mortem we all can’t quite get through after a crisis event in our lives. It’s a grief process internally by the person about who the person used to be prior to having gone through the crisis.
I’ve often felt that like the old fashioned “battle fatigue” for which the right answer was “3 hots and a cot” and not treating the troop as if they have a mental defect, that we can talk people into thinking there’s something defective and unfixable with them.
During early Vietnam, the family members left at home usually lived on base or close to one and bonded with those in similar circumstances. Friendships with older spouses who had been through separations before helped prepare newbies for the return home. That cohesiveness helped immensely. Later, into the 70s working spouses were not able to make time to share common experiences and a lot of comradery was lost. Coping alone isn’t healthy and apparantly that is what is happening.