00:00:01 Mansi
This is exactly the conflict we face. It’s, ‘How do I balance my marital life or my family life with my own needs?’ And for Indian women, we’re expected to sacrifice our personal happiness. So finding the middle way is why a lot of women come to therapy. ‘How do I find happiness in this patriarchal setup?’ Often they get advice, speak up, set boundaries. So I’d like to quote a very famous scholar on this. Her name is Kamla Bhasin. And she says that. “When you question something, you are told, this is our culture, this is our tradition, and when this is done, it means that logic has ended and belief has come in.” So a lot of this culture runs on belief, on irrationality as well, parts of it. And women are constantly trying to navigate this. How do I balance my family’s belief systems with my belief systems? And that’s where all the clash comes in. And women, even men, I would like to add, are the ones who are impacted by the fallout. And that’s the main conflict in most Indian families. So I do a lot of checking in with the body and seeing where they feel this, every statement that they make: “How does it land for the body? What’s the body’s truth around this?”

00:01:29 Rosemary
This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. Stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry.

Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma Podcast. I’m Rosemary Davies-Janes, and today I am so happy to be speaking with my CI colleague, Mansi Poddar.

00:01:57 Mansi
Yes, Rosemary, thank you so much for having me on the show.

00:02:01 Rosemary
I’m so glad you’re here because we’re going to be talking about the challenges women face within the Indian culture and how they can free themselves from toxic cultural conditioning. Mansi, I’m going to start by sharing just a few highlights from your bio, which is included in full in the show notes. Mansi is a certified clinical trauma professional and a certified Compassionate Inquiry^® practitioner, known for her grounded relational presence and deep expertise in trauma, embodiment and emotional healing. You’re the founder of Mansi Therapy and you’ve been recognized for your significant contributions to mental health in India. Wow!

00:02:43 Rosemary
Mansi, what would you like to share about yourself that isn’t included in your bio? Tell us, who is Mansi Poddar?

00:02:51 Mansi
Firstly, I’m going to start by saying I recently rescued a dog. So I’m a dog mom. I have two kids and I’m on the other side of the rainbow, as of now. But at one point in my life, I was really struggling. I couldn’t even imagine being here, having this conversation with you, because I was living the life of somebody who was really struggling with patriarchy, misogyny, abuse. This is a very big moment for me. Thank you so much. 

00:03:23 Rosemary
Thank you. I’d like to start with something that’s a Compassionate Inquiry tradition, setting intentions. Now I’ll start, because I gave you no warning. My intention is to create a space where you, Mansi, feel comfortable sharing your insights and wisdom, and where our guests feel welcome and safe, able to pause and truly take in what’s shared today, to expand the compassion they feel towards women raised in the culture we’ll be exploring, and also, invite curiosity into their reflections on the toxic conditioning they experienced in their own culture.

00:04:00 Mansi
Absolutely.

00:04:02 Rosemary
Mansi, what’s your intention for our time together today?

00:04:06 Mansi
My intention is that whatever I say resonates with women across the globe, because women have traditionally been victims of patriarchy and misogyny. And also I hope this lands with a few men and they can start making changes in their homes or in the way they approach dealing with women.

00:04:31 Rosemary
Beautiful. I love how you expanded that to include men. Absolutely. Men need to know what’s going on.

00:04:38 Mansi
Absolutely.

00:04:40 Rosemary
Now, to start, I’d love to understand from your perspective, Mansi, what are some of the biggest challenges women face in the Indian culture today?

00:04:50 Mansi
It’s very hard for me to define it on a macro level, so I’m going to break it down. It really depends where the woman is coming from. Her socioeconomic background, her location, her geography, her caste, her language. So all of these things play into what women struggle with. But today I speak more for the urban woman, and a lot of urban women still deal with abusive parents, which is shrouded under the name of culture and tradition. They deal with very difficult in-laws. They deal with husbands who are very avoidant. And they deal with joint families that promise them freedom, promise them individuality, but offer none of that. So they get married, they move into these homes, but find themselves struggling to even work. Some of them aren’t allowed to get jobs. And these are women who might be educated, have higher degrees, even PhDs.

00:05:50 Rosemary
Yeah, yeah. Can you share a story or two, your own or perhaps something that’s been shared with you, of course, keeping confidentiality, that paints a picture of what you’re describing for our listeners.

00:06:04 Mansi
Absolutely. We had a male come in to see one of the therapists at my practice, and he had this firm belief that women were meant to clean and cook. And his wife, highly educated, very accomplished, and his only goal in life was to ensure all women didn’t work. So he would attack the therapist, attack his daughter, attack his wife and just holding on to these ideals led to his wife and child trying to kill themselves. That was horrifying for all of us to hold and witness. And as for my own life, I’ve seen this a lot. I was raised to believe that my goal in life was to marry well, which meant marrying to a home that would financially provide for me, and be adjusting. So this is, I’m sure all the Indian women hearing this will agree, ‘be adjusting’ is a very common term we hear. So   get married and maybe as we go along I will share more about that, and how that unfolded.

00:07:10 Rosemary
I’m curious because what popped into my mind when you said adjusting, is that compliance showed up, like fitting in, don’t make waves. So I’m curious to hear… did you want to speak about that more later?

00:07:23 Mansi
Yeah. In fact, I would like to add, in Compassionate Inquiry, as Gabor says, we choose attachment over authenticity. And I think it really summarizes the Indian culture very well because all the people I work with, even men, it’s always attachment over authenticity. Now we can break down what that attachment is. It’s very fear based. It can be a trauma bond, but rarely authentic.

00:07:50 Rosemary
Yeah, yeah. It’s quite shocking the first story you shared about the husband’s attitude. I was almost in disbelief, like we’re in 2025, how can this still be happening? So I wonder. I’m going to change tracks a little bit. As a trauma-informed psychotherapist, how do you see this cultural conditioning impacting the mental health and emotional well being of Indian women today? You shared in that first story how it impacted the women in that household. But I know we’re speaking in general terms. 

Mansi: Yes,

Rosemary: But answer that however it feels right to do. Yeah.

00:08:29 Mansi
You asked how does it impact Indian women? For a lot of women, there’s a lot of physical abuse they experience, financial abuse, marital rape. And I’m talking again about the urban population, educated, probably great paying jobs, business owners. And women lose themselves. So a lot of women I work with will tell me, “Mansi, who am I? Where am I in this marriage? I’ve spent my whole life being told by my family that I need to adjust into my marital home. I need to look after my in-laws, care for my husband. But now when I step back after 10 years or 20 years of marriage, I find that I have nothing to show for it. Not even a marriage that feels emotionally fulfilling.” So I think that really impacts their self esteem, their identity. It causes a lot of depressi   on. That’s something I see.

00:09:24 Rosemary
Yeah. That makes sense. And it must feel like they’re caught in a bit of a time warp, because Western culture has infiltrated the world. So they might see a movie on, you know, a western movie about an independent Western woman on TV and think about themselves. I’ve done the education, I’ve got this high power, high paying job, and then I come home and my role switches drastically. Does that play into it at all? I’m just trying to figure out how they would balance these perspectives.

00:09:59 Mansi
Oh, it is very difficult to balance this, because like you mentioned, we are being educated. We are being told you should get a career, you should get a profession, you should be financially independent. But nobody is teaching men and their families to hold space, or create a culture that sustains this for women. So there is a conflict. There’s always a fine balancing act. A lot of women get diagnosed as borderline or bipolar because of this, because they’re filled with rage, and after talking, get people to mediate or communicate their needs. Nobody is hearing them. So they get these diagnoses. And a large part of my work is helping them peel off the labels and look at what’s beneath it.

00:10:47 Rosemary
Yes. And thank you. That was a question I wanted to ask. What are some of the unconscious patterns or beliefs that you find when you peel off the labels and look underneath?

00:11:01 Mansi
Oh, I find so many beliefs. One is, even women, even though they are told you should grow up, be independent… Somewhere, due to the culture, the water we swim in, we internalize that finding a husband or love is one of our biggest life purposes. I know at one point that was it for me. When I was younger, finding a husband was such a big deal, even though I was getting an education and even though I wanted to do something with my life, but my marriage was top priority. So they do unconsciously internalize that. They internalize appeasement patterns. Fawning responses. I think Indian women were born to fawn. Now it’s changing for a lot of the urban young adults, but even then, there’s a lot of people-pleasing that’s involved in families, keeping the toxic family member happy, building your life around them. So, yeah, a lot of us grew up with that. People pleasing, appeasement. A fawning response.

00:12:05 Rosemary
Yeah. You know, I’m seeing two hands.

00:12:07 Mansi
Yeah.

00:12:08 Rosemary
And it’s almost as if the left hand, the woman, has got the education, she’s out there in the world with a career, earning money, and then the right hand is the old culture. And the hands can never meet because there’s no common ground. There’s a gap they cannot come together with alignment. I can imagine how difficult that is. So how can women in this toxic culture navigate this tension between new beliefs, their education, their careers, cultural expectations and their own authentic selves? Or, or do they even get down to the level of their authentic selves? I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit and maybe you’ve come across somebody fighting that battle, you could share a story.

00:12:57 Mansi
Oh, so many women. So I do a lot of Compassionate Inquiry^® with women to understand where… because they tell me that, you know, I don’t know who I am.  I had this career, I’m achieving this in life. But there are certain beliefs that hold them back. So I really get the beliefs, and some of the beliefs that I see are, ‘women don’t say no.’ They bend over backwards to please their husband and in-laws, family comes first and my career is optional. So if there is a family crisis, if there’s a religious function, they might cancel a meeting to cater to the family, because they are afraid of the family getting upset or, or the family’s reputation getting impacted. So women also unconsciously hold a lot of these beliefs which hold them back. So the first thing is sacrifice is love. It’s a big one over here. The second is family honor is more important than personal happiness. So by the time they turn 35, 40 or 45 middle aged, they haven’t really explored what is working for them and what makes them happy. Good women don’t say no. So these are the three major beliefs I see, especially in this culture.

00:14:15 Rosemary
Yeah. And it’s so interesting. What’s coming up as I listen to you is Gabor Mate’s book When the Body Says No. With People pleasing and Fawning, he’s connected a lot of autoimmune diseases, serious diseases, to that type of overriding of our authenticity. So does it show up, I’m curious, in the disease rate in India?

00:14:39 Mansi
I would like to share a personal story if that’s okay.

00:14:42 Rosemary
For sure.

00:14:43 Mansi
So I have a friend of mine who was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year and I sent her a lot of videos by Gabor Maté talking about autoimmune diseases and the good woman syndrome and how in our culture people pleasing is such a large part of who we are. And she told me before she, in fact passed on this march, and she said, “Mansi, I realized I spent my entire life looking out for what people are going to say about me and I don’t want to live like this anymore.” And I sent her Gabor’s book. I highlighted, I read it for her. So I highlighted things, and she really resonated with every single thing he said. And that’s all she said. She said, “I’m going to tell you one thing. Do not, people please, do not sacrifice your authenticity and yourself for a man, for love, for marriage. Look after yourself, because nothing is more important than yourself and your health.” 

And that was, I think, a week before she passed on. And my heart broke. As I say this, I feel…

00:15:52 Rosemary
I’m feeling it, too. Let’s just… let’s just pause for a moment and think of your friend. Thank you for sharing that. What a hard lesson… A hard way to learn that lesson. 

00:16:06 Mansi
Yes. And she says, it’s too late for me. And so many women tell me this. I meet so many young people with autoimmune diseases.

00:16:13 Rosemary
And autoimmune diseases can be so painful. If you think of fibromyalgia, like, it’s almost as if many of them. And you can correct me if you have a different perspective, but many of them, MS, ALS, fibromyalgia, there’s so much suffering involved. It’s… a lifetime of pleasing others leads to perhaps a short or long experience of suffering within yourself. My logical brain wants to say, it’s not fair, but it’s also really scary.

00:16:52 Mansi
They have no choice, Rosemary, because their survival depends on pleasing the family or their husband. And a lot of women tell me this, that if they stand up for their rights, they feel shame and guilt, and they’re made to feel shame and guilt. That’s why I mentioned that I hope men watch this, too, because they are the key drivers of change in terms of patriarchy and misogyny. So when men start to advocate for women, be it family members, friends, partners, it goes a long way.

00:17:29 Rosemary
Thank you. I spoke to one of our CI colleagues about a year ago. We were talking about suicide. She’s based in India, and she shared something I found very interesting. You spoke about honor. She said that the flip side of honor is shame, and you’ve just brought that up. I wonder if you could share your perspective on the role of shame in this cultural dynamic.

00:17:56 Mansi
So, shame. I like to look at it as a tool that is used to perpetuate culture and tradition, which eventually causes trauma. And even men are at the receiving end of this. Women are shamed for their sexuality, their body, their choices, the way they choose to live. And men are shamed for not being a breadwinner or not earning enough, or not being manly enough, masculine enough. So shame is a large part of our culture. And how it starts off is in childhood. Parents start by comparing their kid to other kids. The neighbor’s son or the aunt’s daughter. “Look at her. Look at how thin she is. Look at how fair she is. Look at you. You don’t keep yourself well. You don’t dress well.” I grew up being shamed by my parents my entire life. “Look at your hair.” I’m born with this hair. I cannot change it. “Look at your nose. Look at your weight. You look pregnant.” And I’m 13 years old, so I’ve been shamed by teachers, peers, family members for being a certain way. I wasn’t a great student, so I was constantly referred to as a failure and shamed in front of a classroom of 45 kids. So shame is a very strong thing in this culture. Constant comparisons, body shaming, humiliation. So I meet adults who are 60 years old who are still being humiliated by their parents.

00:19:24 Rosemary
Yes, and I want to move into that. I’m just wondering. I grew up being shamed by my parents, and I know how that is in the Western culture, but I’m sensing that while it might be heavy here, it’s like monumental weight in the Indian culture. Can you just speak a little bit about how that constant shaming… you’ve experienced it. How does that land in your body?

00:19:49 Mansi
I’m just pausing to experience this and I remember how it makes me just get small, because even now when I meet a few relatives, they’ll shame me for not being social enough or getting out of the house enough or, you know, interacting with them. And I’m quite an introvert, so I stay by myself. I don’t really go for larger family gatherings or parties. And a lot of people will shame me for that. Seeing that you’ll have no relationships and you’re old now and you can’t afford to do this. And there’s a lot of shaming, humiliating, criticism that shows up in family dynamics or even with friends over here. Subtle put downs.

00:20:31 Rosemary
Gosh.

00:20:32 Mansi
And yeah.

00:20:36 Rosemary
I think you’re painting a picture that’s starting to emerge. I’m thinking for our Western listeners, Americans, the two hands that I mentioned, it’s like you’re asking a woman to be on one hand liberal and on the other hand conservative. Or you’re trying to create within one person… they just don’t go together. They don’t mix. You cannot blend the two together with any kind of fluidity.

00:20:59 Mansi
Yeah. Could I add to that impossible conflict?

00:21:00 Rosemary
Yes, please do.

00:21:03 Mansi
This is exactly the conflict we face. And it’s, ‘How do I balance my marital life or my family life with my own needs?’ And for Indian women, we’re expected to sacrifice our personal happiness. So finding the middle way is why a lot of women come to therapy. How do I find happiness in this patriarchal setup? And it’s often they get advice, speak up, set boundaries. So I’d like to quote a very famous scholar on this. Her name is Kamla Bhasin. And she says that, “When you question something, you are told, this is our culture, this is our tradition, and when this is done, it means that logic has ended and belief has come in.” So a lot of this culture runs on belief, on irrationality as well, parts of it. And women are constantly trying to navigate this. How do I balance my family’s belief systems with my belief systems? And that’s where all the clash comes in. And women, even men, I would like to add, are the ones who are impacted by the fallout. And that’s the main conflict in most Indian families.

00:22:26 Rosemary
Yeah. So in addition to that one bifurcation, we’ve got highly educated women who have been trained to think logically, being asked to accept philosophies that are not based on logic in any way, they’re just what they are. And I think this has been really helpful because if Western listeners have been wondering, like, why would a woman put herself in that situation? Why would she be financially dependent on her husband? Why would she live with her husband’s extended family? It’s not like the West. You can’t choose this, or not choose that. It’s. There’s such an interweaving, like you are a thread in a tapestry and the thread that gets woven in doesn’t have a choice to be woven in or not. That’s just where they end up. 

00:23:16 Mansi
Absolutely. And the men here are raised in a way that they are the breadwinners. Their identities are around earning money, so they are unable to self soothe or get in touch with their emotional component. And women have to take the burden of handling a lot of that emotional caregiving. And even though modern marriages in India are changing that structure, it’s still very prevalent. And of course, I do admit that as a psychotherapist, I meet people who do struggle with the traditional structures. But in modern day marriages, many urban couples are trying to change this dynamic.

00:23:54 Rosemary

Yeah, I wonder, could I… And if you want to say no, this is totally okay. How have you managed it yourself, Mansi? How are you riding this contradiction and making your life work despite it?

00:24:10 Mansi
I… actually, I’m going to be honest here. I was married before my current marriage, so this is my second marriage. And in my first marriage I married into a highly patriarchal and misogynistic culture. So I was not allowed to go to the gym, I was not allowed to wear western clothes. I was expected to cover my head, things that I didn’t have in my family because my parents focused on education, career, and if I can put it, they’re liberals. And I married into a very right leaning family. So very conservative. Women woke up earlier than the men, cooked, ate after the men in smaller plates. If there was takeout, we got leftovers. Things that culturally completely threw me off and shocked me. Eventually I tried to speak up, I tried to get my husband to advocate for me, but he would say, “Just ignore it. It doesn’t matter, just keep ignoring it.” This is something a lot of the men here will say, just ignore them. When you’re at the receiving end of injustice and discrimination, it’s really hard to ignore it. So thankfully I had parents who were very supportive and said, “You need to walk out of a marriage like this.” So I was able to walk out of the marriage. So yes, having supportive parents in this culture really makes a difference for a woman.

00:25:39 Rosemary
Thank you. Mansi. I’m going to use that as a cue to jump into parental abuse in the Indian culture. It sounds like your parents are exceptional.

00:25:48 Mansi
Yes, my parents are slightly different.

00:25:50 Rosemary
I’d like to start by sharing some data from a survey done by TNT and a quote, and then ask you to comment if you’re willing. And I’ll link all this in the show notes. The quote is: “For decades, Indian culture has practiced an authoritarian style of parenting where parents believe in having complete autonomy over their child’s life. In most cases, even during the teenage and adult years, tough love is a favorite with Indian parents. Traditional Indian parenting or conservative mom and dad are terms loosely thrown around in India to uphold and normalize acts of suppression and child abuse carried out for decades in familial structures.” And the study that they cite used a very small sample, just 50 adults between 18 and 35. But 55% of those in the study said they were verbally assaulted by their parents and 50% said that their parents used physical force to discipline them. So you’ve touched on much of this. I’m just wondering if you can speak on it, share a story or two that illustrates this dynamic, however you’d like to respond, Mansi.

00:27:02 Mansi
So a lot of this abuse is very normalized here because culturally parents are considered godlike figures, untouchable. In mythology, you worshiped your mom and dad and that culture trickles down. Even now, when I put out content on Instagram around parental abuse, I will get trolled for it and very aggressively. So it is a very hot topic here. Most people don’t see what their parents did as abuse because it is so common. And it’s also, how do I put this? Not balanced. But Indian parents also give a lot of nurturing and care to their offspring, and they support them, often financially through the lifespan. So that complicates matters, because financial support also becomes love and care.

00:27:58 Rosemary
What’s popping up for me, sounds like control. Is control part of it? Or are there other cultural factors that perpetuate these patterns?

00:28:10 Mansi
Again, I will talk about the macro culture, as we were discussing before in our conversation. This is something that depends from family to family. In a lot of families, financial control is the way to control offspring, even well into adulthood. A lot of men still ask their fathers for money or their mothers for money. They might be 50, but their finances are controlled by their families. So it is a form of control. And there’s a lot of psychological harm that is inflicted on many kids. Of course, with the rise of social media and parenting discourses and western media, we’ve seen a shift in how Indian parents are parenting now. There is a reduction in physical violence. Earlier, when I was growing up, taking out a belt and belting a kid was extremely normal. In fact, a lot of my peers will laugh about it and joke about it and say, ‘Kids nowadays are obnoxious because, spare the rod and spoil the child. Look at us. We turned out great because our parents whacked us up.’ And a lot of this abuse is covered with: “This is for your own good.” And if you’re a woman, you’re told: “You have to adjust to your in-laws. So we’re just preparing you for marriage.”

00:29:24 Rosemary
Yeah. Yeah. Oh goodness. You’ve just brought to mind a talk Gabor gave where he was speaking to someone and asked her about her childhood and her response was, well, I’m Greek. We got slapped around a bit. And he pointed out to her…. She thought it was normal. And he pointed out to her that’s actually not normal. That’s actually something else entirely. I’m not going to get into that right now. But it’s interesting how easy these toxic behaviors… how easily they can be normalized.

00:29:54 Mansi
Oh, a lot of it is normalized here in the name of ‘Parents know best.’ And, ‘They’re doing what is good for you. It’s done out of love.’ These are the common answers I get when I do Compassionate Inquiry . “But they did it out of love. They cared for me. They didn’t want me to turn into an obnoxious kid. They didn’t want to spoil me.”

00:30:14 Rosemary
I’m just curious, given that normalization, again it goes back to the whole trauma bond where the child makes whatever’s going on their fault. The parents support them in making it their fault. So what signs can people raised in this environment look for to identify abusive dynamics that tend to get swept under the rug as parental love, that get normalized as, we’re doing this for your benefit.

00:30:44 Mansi
So I love the question that we ask in Compassionate Inquiry about the other child. I ask them, would you do this to your kid or would you do this to any kid? And I have yet to hear another human being tell me, yes, I would hit them, or I would psychologically abuse them by shaming, humiliation, or I would control them. They often have a very different approach to their own child. And I ask them, where does that come from? Come from, because you say that your parents did this out of love, but you’re not going to do this out of love. So what happened here? And that’s when a lot of people sit back and I notice something shifts in that moment. And that’s when they realize that maybe this is trauma and something occurred that has impacted me in a painful, distressing way.

00:31:33 Rosemary
And going on from there. Mansi, how does awareness of trauma… and the other part of Compassionate Inquiry is somatic healing… It’s getting people connected with their bodies. How does this help survivors of parental abuse reclaim their agency and rebuild their trust in themselves and in others?

00:31:59 Mansi
So again, when I do Compassionate Inquiry, which is a large part of my work, as obviously you realize, I ask people, when they tell me, “Oh, my parents just did that out of love.” I notice that the body moves a different way. Maybe there’s a cracking of knuckles, there is support, they’ll touch the neck. And when I explore that deeper and I say, just let’s pause and notice how this lands. “My dad hit me to the point where I bled, out of love.” And rarely will somebody say, “Oh, my chest feels expansive, or I feel warmth.” They will say, “Oh, there’s a tightening. I feel pain.” And that’s how we get in touch with what is your body’s truth versus your cultural understanding and learning. So we really differentiate what was unhealthy and distressing and traumatic from what they needed through the body, if I’m making sense. So I do a lot of checking in with the body and seeing where they feel this, every statement that they make. How does it land for the body? What’s the body’s truth around this?

00:33:12 Rosemary
It’s so wonderful you’re helping people attune with their bodily sensations because the way you’ve described the normalization process in the Indian culture, in the west, we call it gaslighting.

00:33:25 Mansi
Oh yes.

00:33:27 Rosemary
That leaves you with the inability to tell truth from fiction. Is this wrong? What I experienced was painful and I was told it was for my own good, so it’s really creating a very unstable foundation for people to go forward. And I can see how it perpetuates, because it creates almost a dissociation from reality within people who are raised this way. So I can see that it’s been very difficult to shift out of those cultural beliefs, because everybody’s in this sort of different place, this suspended reality within the wider world. So how can people, like you spoke about, connecting them with their body, which would be one way for them to pull themselves out of this sort of gaslit, normalized, non-real world. Are there any other ways people raised in this culture can tune, or turn down the volume on all of these conflicts within them?

00:34:34 Mansi
So a lot of people, we work on finding, “Who am I outside of what happened to me and what I was told about myself?” So I do a lot of parts work around it. “There’s a part of me that believes abuse is love. So we do a lot of work around, “Who am I outside of what I was told, what I was raised with?” And a lot of people already have access to that core. I think the Gabor talks about this, that everybody has an authentic self. So we really work on accessing that. You know, we get curious, we do a lot of inner child work. So how do you parent this child? And that brings up a lot for people because that’s something they missed. So there’s a lot of release through crying, through anger, through grief. There’s a lot of grief work that goes into it. I don’t have the parent that I needed and wished for. A lot of my clients because I work with CPTSD and Developmental Trauma, they see families that are healthy, where parents aren’t abusing their children, where parents are extremely connected to their kids and adult children adore their parents, and that brings up grief. So we do a lot of holding space for grief through grief rituals, maybe ‘empty chair talking’ to the parent, expressing it. And also at some point, because as Indians, we’re really, I wouldn’t use the word enmeshed, but attached. Yes, attached to our parents, whether they are abusive or not. Most Indian adult children or even younger kids are very attached to their parents. So we work on understanding the parents’ cultural context and intergenerational trauma. What was your granddad like with your dad? What was your grandmom like? Even though I do tell them, I said, we’re not justifying the abuse, but we’re looking to contextualize it. And that has been really helpful for people, to understand where their parents come from. So it’s not me, it’s a structure, it’s the culture, it’s their trauma, it’s the political scene. A lot of parents have seen the India partition war, the India Pakistan partition, that has impacted them. So, you know, there’s a lot of history, a lot of geographical trauma that comes into this. So we look at multiple contexts. What could be going on for the parent as well? So I find that a lot of people find some semblance of peace around their childhood with that.

00:37:11 Rosemary
Yeah, that’s great because like, in addition to the generational trauma, the collective trauma that you’ve mentioned, there’s decades of colonial trauma by the British and then before by the Moguls. And it’s really interesting because a lot of us in the west look at India as really a font of ancient wisdom. So there’s another duality. This country that has birthed so much beauty and wisdom and caring, compassionate practices, also has this other side that’s lacking compassion and, actually very hurtful and damaging.

00:37:50 Mansi
Absolutely. So, yeah, a lot of parents are children who’ve been very deeply wounded by their own parents and families and cultures. A lot of them have experienced war, poverty, abuse, rape, all sorts of trauma for the adult child to look at the parent as a child going through all of this and not having access to the resources that we have…. Trauma healing, a podcast like this, or books that help us understand trauma. So that helps them soften a little bit towards what they experienced. ‘Okay, it’s not about me.’ So the shame reduces when they discover it’s… my meaning making was I did something wrong, but it’s actually not that.

00:38:37 Rosemary
Thank you. You’ve mentioned multiple times that Compassionate Inquiry is something that you depend on, often it’s an approach you depend on in your practice. And I imagine there aren’t that many Compassionate Inquiry  practitioners in India, so it’s a little bit unique. I’d love to learn a bit more about how you found Compassionate Inquiry^® and what attracted you to this as a therapeutic approach.

00:39:04 Mansi
I found Compassionate Inquiry  back in 2020, actually. I can’t recall how I stumbled upon it, but I like to think of it as I was sitting one day and I said, you know, I really need something to go deeper into my work. Something that uncovers more than what I’m doing with CBT. And I know I landed up on the website. I saw the course, it was starting in about a month and I signed up. I watched a few videos of Gabor, because I wasn’t very familiar with him till I found the course actually. And once I found the course, there was no looking back. It’s been so helpful to my clients as well. So all of this work that we do is through Compassionate Inquiry.

00:39:50 Rosemary
I know it’s a little while ago now, but how has going through the Compassionate Inquiry training, the path from starting initially to becoming certified, impacted you personally and professionally in your own healing journey?

00:40:06 Mansi
Compassionate Inquiry  has really changed the way I work. It’s made me see things from such a broader lens than just CBT or just the thought-based work that I used to do. Or, CPTSD. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I say this 800 times a day, so. So I work a lot with Compassionate Inquiry. That’s actually the backbone of my work. And I also bring in, because I’m IFS, Internal Family Systems-informed, I bring in parts work, I bring in narrative therapy as developed by Michael White. And I do bring in a lot of humanistic work. So Rogerian, existentialist, Yalom’s work. But mainly my work is CI, Compassionate inquiry. Yes. Internal family systems, Compassionate Inquiry, narrative therapy. I also do a lot of work with somatic psychology, somatic experiencing. So I blend all of these to create a more Compassionate Inquiry for clients. This is something I need to reflect on more. But I remember when I started studying Compassionate Inquiry, words like authenticity, or attachment over authenticity wasn’t in my lexicon. And now as I’ve charted the Compassionate Inquiry  journey, I noticed that I am kinder to myself, which is a huge gift for me because I have a huge self critic. I had a lot of shame and all from my childhood as well because I grew up with intense bullying and abuse. For me to forgive myself and to understand that this was my meaning making as a child, and I am not to be blamed for it, was a turning point in my healing journey. And as for my work, I now can compassionately inquire into a lot of things people say versus asking them. What are the thoughts that fuel this? I can go into the body, I can go into the emotions. I use a lot of Sat Dharam’s GPS coordinates. So I look for the belief, the emotions. Use the other child and all of these things work beautifully with clients, especially in unlearning cultural trauma.

00:42:24 Rosemary

We’re taking a brief pause to share what’s on offer in the Compassionate Inquiry  community. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. 

If you’re interested in experiencing Gabor Maté’s trauma healing approach, consider working with a certified Compassionate Inquiry  practitioner. Access healing, support for mental, emotional and physical symptoms, unresolved trauma, relationship issues, addictions, and more. In addition to their years of CI training and regular certification reviews, our practitioners bring the depth of their own personal lived experiences and skills in additional complementary therapeutic approaches. Use the link in the show notes to access our global directory of certified professionals. 

Rosemary: So thank you for sharing. Typically, any professional training Compassionate Inquiry  cohort attracts participants from all over the globe.

00:43:18 Mansi
Yes.

00:43:20 Rosemary
Was that helpful? Not helpful. Just to be in a group with people from all kinds of different cultural backgrounds.

00:43:28 Mansi
You know what was most interesting for me? I realized we are really not as different as the world believes. At the core of it, everybody wants the same thing, which is relational love, validation, and wants to come into their own authentic truth. And that was very enlightening for me because I’m constantly asked, you know, as somebody, I trained in the States. Oh, you trained in the States. How do you work in Indian culture? I see. Ironically, people are not that different.

00:43:58 Rosemary
No, we’re not.

00:44:00 Mansi
It’s just the cultural context that might be different and fuel different sorts of issues, but at the core of it, everybody is looking for very similar things.

00:44:09 Rosemary
Yeah. We can speak different languages, we can dress differently, we can be in different colored skins. But humans do have a lot in common. Once you get past all of that.

00:44:22 Mansi
Absolutely. Our core needs are very similar.

00:44:25 Rosemary
Yeah. I’m curious, when you work with your clients, do you use any practices that bring in creative expression, nature or food perhaps? Food is very big in the Indian culture that… That help women… (I’m going to say women because most of your practice is women) That help women reconnect with their inner resilience, perhaps their inner child, and perhaps their cultural identity in a different way. Something that fosters healing and empowerment. Can you tell us a little bit about what you might do, or share a practice?

00:45:01 Mansi
Oh, that’s such an interesting question. I actually was working with somebody and she is a wonderful cook, but she spent a lot of her life cooking for others. So we created an entire practice where she would ask herself, what do I feel like eating today as a way to access her own self and her own needs. Because there was a lot of disconnection. And. And that’s what happens with parental abuse or cultural trauma is people get disconnected from their needs. And she started to cook for herself and nourish her body, and that moved her from binge eating or emotional eating into eating more mindfully. So I utilize a lot of art as well in my work. Can you draw me a picture of that emotion? Can you use a color? If that part could speak, what would it say? So can you draw that for me? If it was a food item, what would it be? So just using a lot of metaphors as well. I think people find that easier to deal with.

00:46:03 Rosemary
Yeah. And do you bring in music at all? Are there any other creative or sensory based practices that you use as tools?

00:46:11 Mansi
I use a lot of self touch and mindfulness based practices. I do a lot of grounding, centering, orienting, a lot of practices from SE as well. And we utilize the senses. So if people are having a cup of coffee, we practice on drinking it mindfully and really getting in touch with the somatic sensations of drinking coffee. So there’s a lot of mindfulness-based work that I do. I find that it gets them closer to their own bodies and minds.

00:46:43 Rosemary
I’m curious. Obviously, SE is Somatic Experiencing.

00:46:47 Mansi
Yes.

00:46:48 Rosemary
So let’s pretend I’m your client. I’m sitting in your office. How would you take me through that sensory experience of drinking a cup of coffee? What would the prompts be that you would use? Because I’m trying to imagine how that might play out, and my imagination’s usually pretty good, but it’s failing me a bit here.

00:47:07 Mansi
All right, so usually I would ask you to first ground, and then I would invite you to pick up your cup of coffee and just notice the contact of your skin with the ceramic mug, the texture of it, the temperature. Is it a neutral sensation? A pleasant sensation, maybe even unpleasant? Too hot? So just really get in touch with that. Notice the steam as it touches your skin. Can you smell the coffee? Can you notice the pleasure it brings when you smell the coffee? Because a lot of people, I notice how their face emotes. And then ask them, would you be willing to take a sip and really see and sense the temperature? Notice the liquid in your mouth. Notice it going down. Notice how this warm liquid warms your insides as it reaches your belly and just really slowing the whole process down, so people can get in touch with every aspect of it. Maybe noticing the color of the coffee. Do your eyes find it pleasing? Yeah.

00:48:23 Rosemary
How does it land on your tongue? Is it too sweet? Too sour?

00:48:27 Mansi
Is it bitter?

00:48:28 Rosemary
Exactly. Do you feel pleasure? Coffee can be bitter, so. Yes.

00:48:32 Mansi
Yeah.

00:48:33 Rosemary
Yeah, I love that we had a chance to explore the creative expression aspects because drawing it, feeling it… I love that little practice you took me through with the coffee.

00:48:42 Mansi
Oh yeah, the mindful eating and drinking coffee is… It really gets clients in touch with. Oh my God, I never realized I hate coffee. Why am I drinking this?

00:48:53 Rosemary
And especially the food culture, like goodness, Indian food, there’s so many spices, there’s so much care taken to prepare it. Like, it deserves to be savored and really tasted and enjoyed.

00:49:07 Mansi
And food creates so much politics in families, it’s…. Oh, that’s a whole different topic. Food and family dramas…

00:49:16 Rosemary
There’s no getting away from it, is there? It’s just… It’s everywhere.

00:49:19 Mansi
It’s everywhere.

00:49:20 Rosemary
Thank you. And that points to something overall is… And perhaps speed is part of this. Does rushing through life help us ignore incongruent normalizations? Is this why it’s so important for us to slow down and be present in… your work?

00:49:41 Mansi
Absolutely. I feel that a lot of people are running away from pain and distress, towards substances which act as medicine, towards work. Like Gabor Maté talks about all addictions in a way, turn into self medication. So we work with getting people in touch with this, with the pain, with the distress, in a more contained environment with compassionate holding. You know, getting people in touch with their yuck and their yum. You know what feels great? Because a lot of people think the drink feels great, but it actually doesn’t when they pause and they slow down and they really taste the alcohol. So many people have said, “Oh my God, it’s disgusting. I don’t feel good when I’m drunk. I just think I feel good because it numbs me out. But I wake up feeling worse.” So it gets them in touch with what’s really going on. Their authentic self in a way.

00:50:38 Rosemary
Yeah.

00:50:38 Mansi
So what’s my yuck? What’s my yum? So that I also access resourcing.

00:50:44 Rosemary
Beautiful. Yes. Thank you so much. Now, Mansi, we’re coming to the end of our time together. What happened? I asked you that you think it’s really important to speak about, that you would really like to address before we wrap up.

00:51:02 Mansi
It’s very complex because we didn’t touch upon caste and socioeconomic context, but that brings with it a whole different world.

00:51:11 Rosemary
Is there anything you’d like to say about socioeconomic or caste before we wrap up?

00:51:17 Mansi
So patriarchy and misogyny looks different from family to family. And it also looks different in the urban population. It looks different in the rural population, even caste plays a role in how these families operate. India is a huge country and has many cultures. So it operates differently in each family, almost. So when we get married here or we get in contact with another family, it’s intercultural, even if the culture seems similar. So I think we need to keep that in mind when we work with clients.

00:51:56 Rosemary
Yeah, definitely. And economics play in as well.

00:51:59 Mansi
Huge role. We could look at signs that it’s abusive parenting versus strict but caring parenting. So this is something that a lot of people get mixed up, especially with the rise of insta-therapy. Some parents are just strict, but actually very caring and loving parents. So I asked them, did you feel emotionally safe when you were a kid? Did you feel respected? Did you feel secure? Did you know that, okay, if I drink too much, mom and dad are going to be angry, but at the same time, I know they love me. So I think it’s really important to differentiate between that because Indian parenting can really cross multiple boundaries. So to really separate both abuse from strict but caring.

00:52:47 Rosemary
Yes, thank you. That’s an absolutely wonderful addition. And I wonder if you bring in ACES at all. The Adverse Child Experience Scale, do you use that or is it…

00:52:59 Mansi
Yes, I do. I do get clients to fill that out. I use the updated version, which has. I think it adds sociocultural factors as well.

00:53:10 Rosemary
And for our listeners, I will link this in the notes as well so that people can take a look. So, Mansi, my last question. We tend to end the Gifts of Trauma by asking our guests about final words. If you could whisper something into the ear of the world, if you could provide a pearl of wisdom to our listeners, something for them to reflect on, something for them to contemplate, whether it’s a thought or a quote or a poem. Is there anything you’d like to share?

00:53:41 Mansi
Yes. I want to tell this to all the people watching or hearing this, that you are not broken for wanting more. Your dreams, your desires, your boundaries are not a betrayal of your family, your culture, your loved ones. They’re an expression of your own wholeness. And you are allowed to gift yourself that. That’s what I would like to say.

00:54:09 Rosemary
Mansi Poddar, thank you so much for sharing your unique insights and wisdom today. I’ve learned a lot and we really appreciate you illuminating these issues which all too often thrive in the realm of what’s unseen, unheard and unspoken. Thank you for being with us today.

00:54:28 Mansi
Thank you so much for having me on here, Rosemary.

00:54:31 Rosemary
An absolute pleasure. Thank you, Mansi.

00:54:33 Mansi
Thank you.

00:54:45 Rosemary
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, healing, transformation and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. 

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