OBJECTIVE: Childhood trauma has been widely associated with enduring psychological consequences; however, less is known about how such experiences are subjectively lived and made meaningful in contexts shaped by ongoing sociocultural adversity. This study explores how women seeking therapy in Kabul experience and interpret the enduring impact of childhood trauma in their adult lives. METHOD: A qualitative design grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed. Seven adult women were recruited through purposive homogeneous sampling from counselling and psychotherapy centres in Kabul (2025). Data were generated through in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in Persian (Dari). Analysis followed the idiographic and interpretative principles of IPA, attending to participants' meaning-making processes. FINDINGS: The analysis generated a set of interconnected experiential themes capturing the pervasive and ongoing presence of childhood trauma in participants' lives. These included constrained agency and enduring helplessness, a fractured self-concept marked by shame, disruptions in intimate relationships and a persistent sense of unsafety and distrust. Trauma was not described as a past event but as an active, embodied and relational experience shaping emotional responses, self-understanding and engagement with others. CONCLUSION: Childhood trauma emerges as a continuing experiential process embedded within sociocultural conditions, including gendered expectations, chronic insecurity and economic hardship. The findings underscore the need for culturally attuned, trauma-informed interventions and highlight the importance of addressing structural conditions that sustain psychological distress.
Ebrahimi et al. (Tue,) studied this question.