Phenomenological Study on the Life of College Students Exposed to Interpersonal Trauma

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the lives of college students have been impacted after undergoing interpersonal trauma. For this study, in-depth interviews were conducted on 7 college students above the age of 18 who had undergone continuous interpersonal trauma from early childhood. Van Manen’s hermeneutical phenomenology method was applied in order to focus on the essence of the vivid experiences and to convey the incidents as they are. This topic of interpersonal trauma was chosen after carefully reading and reflecting on the transcribed text multiple times and also referring to other works of art. As a result of this reading and reflecting, 30 sub-topics and 7 main themes were derived. The main themes include <My parents are not like real parents>, <Uncontrollable rage>, <I am pitiful because I’m withdrawn and insecure>, <I cannot trust people>, <I am alone in the world>, <Put a lot of effort into maintaining relationships>, <Trying to become a different ‘me’ from before>. These themes were a series of processes in which participants partook in order to protect and restore their relationships because they had a ‘desire for recovery’, where they wanted to escape from pain and become whole again. By understanding the meaning of these students’experience, it is meaningful to provide basic data to prepare a plan to more professionally help students who have experienced interpersonal trauma, and suggest ideas for further research.