Compassion for Ethnically Diverse Individuals Who Reported Childhood Trauma: An IPA Study

This research explores the experience and meaning of compassion for ethnically diverse individuals who reported having experienced childhood trauma. Seven self-identified women living in Scotland were recruited via purposive and snowball sampling. Multimodal data collection included drawings, semi-structured interviews, and attention to participants' felt-sense. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, three superordinate themes emerged: "The interpersonal experience of compassion"; "The intrapersonal experience of compassion"; "The felt-experience of compassion". Participants conceptualised compassion as a multidimensional embodied phenomenon embedded in their relational context, exposing self-to-other and self-to-self dynamics. Methodological limitations are considered regarding the research design. Findings are discussed in the context of trauma literature on relational development, emotion regulation and ethnocultural considerations. Future research should build evidence on the meaningfulness of compassion within underrepresented populations. Clinical implications consider the relevance of compassion to culturally sensitive therapy.