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A variety of things can cause a volcano to start acting up again. A common cause is the injection of a batch of fresh hot magma from deeper within the earth into a cooling magma chamber. This reheats the magma, usually from below, which can cause things like convection (hot material rising while cooler material sinks) and the release of magmatic gasses. Heating the magma also makes it less viscous, and therefore easier for it to rise through cracks or other paths within the surrounding rock.
In a few cases activity, culminating in eruption, has followed a major earthquake in the area near a volcano. This too can lead to an eruption in a few ways. It can change the stress conditions in the rock around the magma chamber. For instance if conditions change so that the rock gets “stretched” a bit, it can be easier for magma to find its way up through cracks or weaknesses in the rock. There can be slight changes to the shape of the magma chamber, or breaking of rock between magma reservoirs, or a release of gasses.
Sometimes, magma could simply slowly and quietly enter a magma chamber, inflating it and increasing pressure until it reaches a limit.
One other possibility is a bit counterintuitive; The cooling of a magma chamber can cause an eruption due to something called second boiling. As magma cools, it doesn’t solidify all at once: some minerals crystallize before others. Even as solid crystals grow in the magma, any gasses dissolved in it have to stay in the remaining liquid, so the concentration of gasses increases. Eventually the magma becomes saturated with gas, and the gas has to find a way to escape. It ends up forcing its away toward the surface along with some magma, triggering an eruption.
It can be hard to tell exactly what is happening beneath a volcano because we’re trying to study magma that is hidden beneath miles of rock.
A good therapist and sometimes the use of antidepressants. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, everyone has dormant periods.
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