Step 1 of 6 · Heal From Discrimination & Prejudice
What Happened Was Not Your Fault
What Happened Was Not Your Fault
Step 1 · 11 min
🎬 Video lesson coming soon
This program is for those who have experienced abuse — in a relationship, in a family, or in another close context.
Before anything else: what happened to you was not your fault. Whatever you were told, whatever you came to believe, whatever the story was that explained why you deserved it or caused it or should have known better — that story is not true.
Abuse is a choice made by the person who perpetrates it. It is never caused by the person on the receiving end.
What constitutes abuse — physical, emotional, financial, sexual, coercive control
Why victims often don't recognise abuse as abuse — especially emotional and coercive
Naming what happened: the importance of honest acknowledgment
You are not alone — and this program is safe
What abuse is: Judith Herman's landmark trauma research and Lundy Bancroft's work on abusive relationships define abuse as a pattern of behaviour in which one person uses power and control over another. This includes:
Physical abuse: hitting, pushing, restraining, or any use of physical force to intimidate or harm.
Emotional and psychological abuse: criticism, humiliation, threats, isolation, gaslighting (causing the person to doubt their own perception of reality), controlling behaviour, and constant undermining of self-worth. This form is often the hardest to recognise because there are no visible marks, and the abuser often denies that anything is happening.
Coercive control: a pattern of behaviour that seeks to take away the victim's liberty or freedom — controlling finances, monitoring movements, isolating from friends and family, dictating dress and behaviour. This is now recognised as criminal in many jurisdictions.
Financial abuse: controlling access to money, preventing employment, or creating financial dependency.
Sexual abuse: any sexual contact without consent, including within marriage (marital rape is a crime in India, though conviction remains rare).
Why it is hard to recognise: abusers are rarely abusive all the time. The cycle typically alternates between periods of tension, abusive incidents, and reconciliation ("honeymoon" periods of affection and remorse). The good periods are real — which makes leaving harder and makes it difficult to hold a consistent view of the relationship. Lenore Walker's cycle of abuse describes this pattern in detail.
In India specifically: many forms of emotional and coercive abuse in marriage are not culturally recognised as abuse — they are normalised as "family dynamics" or "husband's prerogative." Recognising what happened as abuse is often the first and hardest step.
Find a comfortable position · Read slowly
This exercise is private and for you only. No one will see what you write.
Find a quiet place. Take one slow breath.
At the top of a blank page, write: "What happened to me." Not "what I did wrong" — what happened to you.
Then write. Not in order, not perfectly, not trying to make sense of it yet. Just what you remember — the incident you keep returning to. The words that were said. The things that were done. The pattern you noticed but couldn't name until now. Let it come out messy, partial, non-linear. You don't have to capture everything in one sitting.
When you feel ready, look back at the definitions from this lesson. Physical. Emotional and psychological. Coercive control. Financial. Sexual.
Place a word beside what you wrote. Even a provisional one. Even just a whisper to yourself: "That was emotional abuse." "That was coercive control." "That was not okay."
You don't have to show this to anyone. You don't have to take any action yet. Naming is just for you — because clarity about what happened is the first act of returning to yourself.
Breathe when you're done. You just did something that takes real courage.
You do not have to have this fully figured out to be in the right place. You came here, you read this, you named something. That is a real and meaningful beginning.
What happened to you has a name now. And you are not that name — you are the person who is clear-eyed enough to look directly at it.
The next lesson is about why leaving is so hard — and why staying never, ever meant you were weak.
Tonight's Reflection
“What brought you to this module? What are you hoping to feel differently?”