A Dana Point psychologist and trauma specialist who has been treating New Yorkers says thousands of them are in mental anguish after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center -- experiencing grief, shock and denial as they struggle to rebuild the city and their own lives.

After treating employees for more than two weeks at Ground Zero, Sherry Rockman believes many Americans are suffering from debilitating symptoms that will affect their jobs and their ability to handle their daily routines.

"It takes enormous courage for many people to just go back to work, and back into tall buildings again,'' she said.

Rockman first counseled workers at a Los Angeles company that had several employees on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Rockman then went to New York for her employer, Crisis Management International, an Atlanta-based firm that contracts with Employee Assistance Programs to counsel workers after layoffs or workplace violence.

Some of the employees she counseled were in high-rise buildings on Wall Street and watched firsthand as the planes came within a few hundred feet of their buildings before hitting the towers.

"They not only saw the plane go by, they also saw the towers hit," she said. "The trauma for these people was intense, coupled with the fact that they either lost family members or knew people in the buildings."

At counseling meetings in New York, Rockwell held sessions first with up to 80 employees, explaining the various stages of grief.

She said many Americans are coping with the uncertainty and stress of terrorism by searching for a sense of control amid the chaos, some order in a period of constant change.

"Everyone needs to take better care of themselves," she advised.

"Take care of their children. Water the plants, feed the dog. There's comfort in getting everything back to normal. That's what is really helping the city heal."

Mental-health workers are finding that violence on such a large scale is actually rewriting the rules of treatment. For most trauma victims, the symptoms of shock and numbness typically subside within one or two weeks. Depression, irritability, sleeplessness, nightmares and anxiety are all normal reactions to traumatic events.

But Rockman found that such symptoms lasted longer than normal for some in New York.

"There were still people leaving phone messages for missing individuals, hoping for a response because they're in denial and disbelief more than three weeks after the disaster," she said.