What Happened to Me? vs What's Wrong with Me?: Indian Perspectives on Childhood Trauma and Recovery

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

Gunjan Y Trivedi is a co-founder of Wellness Space. He practises and teaches evidence-based psychotherapy using trauma-informed care. With over two decades of experience in a large corporation across India, China, Singapore and Japan, he brings well-rounded global perspectives and processes to the organization. Gunjan has done extensive work on childhood trauma, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and Complex PTSD. Gunjan’s PhD research explored the influence of humming (simple Bhramari) on mind–body health and heart rate variability. He is an NLP trainer, certified coach and a project management professional. He leads the research at Wellness Space and collaborates with educational institutions on well-being and mental health.

A former cricketer and classical music enthusiast, he continues to blend science, wellness and the Indian knowledge system in his daily work. You can reach Gunjan at [email protected].

Riri G Trivedi is a co-founder of Wellness Space and has a PhD on the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adult mental health. She practises and teaches evidence-based psychotherapy, focusing on inner child therapy, hypnotherapy and spiritual regression, and also conducts positive-parenting workshops. She promotes parenting and mental health awareness through her social media presence, with more than 1.4 million followers across Meta and YouTube. She has global corporate experience in countries such as Japan and Singapore.

She has recently co-authored This Book Won’t Teach You Parenting, published by Penguin Random House India. She is a mother of two and loves painting and playing the sitar. You can reach Riri at [email protected].

Hemalatha Ramani holds a PhD in Economics and has co-authored two books (Breast Cancer and Chronic Disease). Dr Ramani has taught at several educational institutes in India and abroad (Economics for Cambridge and IB curricula). She has also worked with the Behavioural Science Centre (St Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad), the Indian Institute of Management, Women’s World Banking (Ahmedabad), and the Samaritans of Singapore.

As a mentor at Wellness Space in Ahmedabad, Hemalatha has made significant contributions to the research in India on childhood trauma (Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs). You can reach her at [email protected].

The authors aren't questioning whether Indian parenting produced successful adults. It clearly did. But the book asks what it cost, what got buried, and what keeps surfacing in adulthood ― in our relationships, our inability to rest, our need to over-perform. -- Raj Shamani, entrepreneur, author and podcaster

By integrating neuroscience, evidence-based psychotherapy and the wisdom of the Indian knowledge system, this book goes beyond merely explaining trauma to offer a clear path to healing. A must-read for anyone carrying invisible wounds, and for anyone ready to finally understand themselves with clarity, dignity and hope. -- Dr Cyrus Engineer, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

The authors have chosen to present all the material very responsibly with care and caution as a self-help guide written in an easily readable and user-friendly manner. -- Dr Kiran Kumar K. Salagame, fellow, Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists

Every boardroom has people carrying wounds that were never acknowledged. As a business leader, this is the human behaviour manual I didn’t know I was missing. -- Chanpreet Arora, senior media and business leader (Reuters Fellow, University of Oxford)

Valuable, authentic, lucid, and helpful. Grounded in brain science, solid evidence with compelling case histories and therapy work. -- Dr Gopal Bhatia, MD, practising psychiatrist

Your adverse experiences as a child compound more when you don't deal with them. And later, it impacts not just you, but everyone around you. You become miserable. Know someone like that? Read this gem by Riri, Gunjan and Hemalatha. A masterclass on how childhood shapes you. One of my best reads of the year. Highly recommend to every Indian. -- Prashant Desai, health educator, Stanford School of Medicine

Simple, clear and deeply heartfelt. Well-intentioned, well-researched, and oriented towards making India mentally better. I’m personally going to use it as research material for writing the subsequent seasons of Perfect Family! -- Palak Bhambri, creator/writer, ‘Perfect Family’ series