Everybody's situation is individual. I guess it's possible that you're working with T solely because of emotional problems in the here and now. I think that in addition there can also be cognitive problems, difficulties with knowing and seeing and thinking. And I'd guess that frequently people have problems with both.

But if you're just talking about "way back when," at the beginning, when all of the crud was taking shape, the "problems" probably were all emotional. There may have been cognitive consequences, but unbearable "affect" is what starts all the balls rolling. "Trauma" is just shorthand for emotionally unbearable states of being created in reaction to situations imposed from the outside.

Trauma causes developmental issues. It's wrong to think that trauma issues and developmental issues are different categories. Anything in anyone's development that leads to later problems of feeling or functioning is called trauma.

Surely there are all sorts of non-traumatic early influences on everyone's life that play a serious role in making us who we are. But if pathology results, I can't see that the cause can be anything other than either trauma or genetics. Many of the most serious mental illnesses (autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.) seem to have a significant genetic (chemical? viruses?) causative element. But if the pathology is just a reaction to things that happened (or didn't happen) when we were very small, then I think those happenings are trauma. Even with oedipal issues.

Just one man's opinion.