What Happened to Me

Do you struggle with anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, burnout, or relationship difficulties? These aren’t flaws; they may be the quiet footprints of experiences you never had words for.
You’ve spent years asking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ The kinder question is ‘What happened to me?’ That’s where self-blame ends and self-understanding begins.
Through real-life narratives from Indian families, stories of joint households, comparison, silence, and survival, this book gives shape and language to experiences that have long gone unnamed.

Why India Needs Its Own Conversation About Childhood Trauma
Based on 3,000+ interviews and 14 peer-reviewed studies, the authors show how traumatic childhood experiences surface decades later as anxiety, depression, PTSD, Complex PTSD, and relationship difficulties in adulthood.
Indian parenting has shaped generations of capable adults. But success and suffering can coexist.
Joint-family dynamics. Constant comparisons. Bullying. Emotional neglect. These Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) shape Indian childhoods and have been largely overlooked by global research.

Built on research, not opinion. Grounded in solutions, not just analysis.
• 3,000+ interviews • 14 peer-reviewed studies • 50+ illustrations • Real-life narratives

This book is for you if:

You struggle with emotional patterns you cannot explain
You’re a parent who wants to raise resilient children
You’re a therapist seeking evidence-based tools grounded in Indian family systems

What you’ll discover inside
Section I: The childhood experiences India has never named, and why trauma’s imprint is not limited to body or mind alone
Section II: Practical recovery tools: breathwork, guided visualisation, and the SEE protocol for self-hypnosis
Section III: A clinical framework for mental health professionals: evidence-based psychotherapy tools for trauma in the Indian context