Romantic love releases surges of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine and activates brain regions that drive the reward system in a way that is similar to addiction.
Hyperarousal causes traumatized people to become easily distressed by unexpected stimuli. Their tendency to be triggered into reliving traumatic memories illustrates how their perceptions have become excessively focused on the involuntary search for the similarities between the present and their traumatic past. As a consequence, many neutral experiences become reinterpreted as being associated with the traumatic past.
This wiring is manifest in well-worn neural network pathways, which are stimulated by triggers that remind us, implicitly, of childhood experience – our wounds, triumphs and longed-for experiences.