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@Jeroen said:
Normal I think are those who are capable of expressing love, and co-existing with others without causing them too much damage. There are many routes to that, politeness, measured withdrawal, humor, to name a few.

I don’t think its possible to grow up without a few trauma’s. Especially if you are a sensitive child by nature. The question is, are these trauma’s so intense that it causes you a recognised illness such as PTSD, or is it more in the nature of background noise?

There are different levels of trauma. Researchers and therapists are finding, that there are mini-traumas that, while they're not on a level that would require PTSD treatment, still have an effect on our psyches and our health. Even the birth experience can be traumatic. Clearing all the little traumas that are rattling around in our body-mind, subtly gumming up the works, causing energy blockages that can lead to illness or that may cause us to hold ourselves back in life, has the potential to liberate energy and consciousness that can help us move forward. There are a variety of ways to do this type of "clearing" (with skilled help).

It seems that trauma is a common part of the human condition. It's much more common than previously believed.

@lobster said:
Any answers/examples that come to mind …

Om Mani Padme Huh Mhmm

Nothing makes sense so I'm just gunna set nothing and sense aside for a bit and go back to my cushion..

@FleaMarket said:

... Medicine comes in bitter, sweet and bizarre. What works is skilful …

How do you tell?

We already know.

Let us take an example:

• We are feeling low, what lifts our spirits? Spirits, sprites on a screen, habitual rites OR an uplifting experience. Bizarre how many 'solutions' are in fact toxic/fetters.

• We engage in practice, we feel better.
  Skilful? Eh … YES! … and I did shout. I will do it again YA! YES! YEAH! (Also available as a mantra)

Any answers/examples that come to mind …

I don’t think its possible to grow up without a few trauma’s

I guess....being born (birth) is a traumatic experience in itself...

One moment everything's nice and cosy 'Gemutlich', then all of a sudden, all the sense doors are exposed to the world/phenomena, shapes, smells, sounds, colours etc...

I see trauma as past experiences that generate emotions leading to strife in the mind which finds no outlet and instead reverberates within the mind until triggered by some event where it's vented in uncontrolled ways until depleted and then starts reverberating within the mind again. To me, traumatized people are people with that going on to higher degrees than normal. No idea what normal is though.

I'm not a professional so I don't know if that's correct or if I'd label my childhood as traumatic but it certainly felt traumatic and like you mention @marcitko, those experiences have caused complications in my adult life which favor the arguably unproductive emotionally driven way I live currently. Mild trauma seems fitting. Not enough for anyone to take seriously but enough to only function in a limited capacity.

Therapists are just regular people who went to school. Like everyone else they are subject to the same things-death, greed, delusion, conditioned states, trauma, and the rest. They can be in a worse state of trauma than those they help and still get a college degree and be allowed to practice. Dhamma at least allows me to learn tools to therapize and heal myself and leaves it in my hands to decide if I ever get very good at it or not.

There are wonderful techniques for resolving trauma these days. There's one called EMDR that's widely practiced by psychotherapists. It can provide relief in the first session, and does not require that the patient re-live the experience. The patient doesn't need to talk about it at all, except to provide a context. It works with eye movements to help the brain re-process the traumatic events subconsciously, so that the memories no longer have an emotional charge. The REM movements during sleep normally work to process the events of each day for us. Trauma can get people "stuck" and unable to process. EMDR mimics the eye movements during sleep, but the pt. is fully awake. In your e-friend's case, she'd need a short series of treatments for each trauma.

There are also therapists who offer a type of practice that goes by various names, some call it re-parenting. So if a client had an abusive childhood, for example, the therapist takes the role of a healthy, loving parent, so that the client can experience that. If in a group context, members of the group take on the roles of the family circle, and act out scenes from the client's life (per client's suggestions), but offering love and support in place of whatever the client experience: jealousy, scapegoating, anger, abuse. The client can receive hugs if they never got them in childhood. This can be a very powerful therapy .

Of course the one problem is affordability. I have no idea if your friend has the means to pay for this. EMDR can be had from therapists who are on Medicare's approved list, so at least she could have access to that, which would be a key first step.