Childhood trauma certainly can. I am almost 50, and was just diagnosed with it. When I was a boy, my father was very abusive to my mother, hated me with a burning passion, since he accused my mother of being a lying wh*** and denied paternity, both of which were only in his mind. As a teenager, he pinned me down a few times with the business end of a loaded rifle and told me he would blow me away because I was worthless garbage except he didn't want to go to prison. I always had vivid memories of this, things would bring it back, like sights, sounds, and especially for some reason times of day and light, weather and season. But otherwise I have always been perfectly functional until last summer, which was my own personal 9/11 -- I had a client threaten to come to my office and blow me away, at one point his girlfriend said he was coming, but then called back and said he wasn't. So, I fell apart, massive panic attacks, no sleep at all, walked around my town all night every night crying and throwing up in people's bushes. It was not a pretty picture. Still have a little twinge now and then in certain situations. OTOH, also had some breakthroughs. Was very uncomfortable going out at night, always felt like someone was in the dark to harm me, am no longer the least bit afraid of that. Hated going near water, now I'm learning to swim. So, it can be dealt with successfully. My method has been direct confrontation -- for example, I freaked out last winter pulling into a parking garage at Macy's -- it looked just like the parking garage at the hospital where I did the day program. Dealt with that by forcing myself to go back every day for a week until it didn't really bother me - desensitized myself to it. Now, it's just another parking garage.