Email: Info@thrivebeyondtraumacounseling.com
Call: (248) 392- 3733
Counselling
Counselling
The Heart Behind Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling
(By Akanksha Madan)
This story includes themes of childhood
emotional neglect, invisibility, identity collapse, betrayal, infidelity, and trauma.
Please take a deep breath and honor your pace as you read.
I grew up learning to earn love instead of receiving it.
My identity was shaped by invisibility — In childhood, in relationships, and even in marriage.
Helping others heal became the mirror that helped me reclaim myself.
My body became the final doorway back to belonging.
The Invisible Child
*A childhood shaped by invisibility — Always performing, never receiving.*
I wasn’t the typical ‘pretty Indian girl. ’ I was darker, stockier, louder, different.
I spent my childhood learning how to earn attention rather than receive love.
Somewhere deep inside, a quiet ache began to form:
“See me. Please, see me.”
When I wasn’t seen, I found ways to create the illusion of being visible
— Through stories, small manipulations, buying cards and gifts for myself, pretending they came from someone who cared. It wasn’t deception; it was survival.
*A home where visibility had a price.*
The Early Wound
It wasn’t attention I chased — It was the feeling of being noticed with gentleness.
*Attention became a substitute for love.*
By eighth grade, I failed a year and believed I confirmed my father’s unspoken disappointment.
So I decided I would win visibility through excellence.
*Fantasy became protection.*
By twelth grade, I was topping my class. Teachers knew my name.
The principal praised me. I wasn’t seen for who I was — Only for what I produced.
*The longing was never for people — But for gentleness.*
The Struggle for Visibility
Relationships repeated the same pattern.
I mistook attention for safety.
I created stories around men who barely knew me.
*Success brought attention, not belonging.*
I didn’t love them; I loved the moments when I felt seen.
*Relationships repeated the same wound.*
The Breaking Point
Even in marriage, I found myself in the same loop:
Visible when performing, dismissed when I wasn’t.
When my husband’s gaze shifted —
When infidelity and substance abuse replaced connection —
I faced a truth I could no longer run from.
*Infidelity and abandonment shattered the illusion of visibility.*
The Awakening
Helping others was the only thing that still gave me meaning
Each client who whispered, “I just want someone to see me,” became a mirror.
*Each client mirrored her own healing.*
The Embodiment
For years, I lived disconnected from my body — Carrying 370 pounds of protection, pain, and stories that weren’t mine.
*The body became the final frontier.*
One day, I decided my body deserved to see me, too.
I started small — A walk, a stretch, a breath
And discovered my potential had been waiting underneath my disbelief all along.
*Movement, breath, and aliveness returned.*
The Mission: Fighting for the Unseen
No one ever fought for me — So I became the person who fights for others.
*I fight for the unseen.*
I see who my clients were before the world taught them to hide — And I stand with them until they can see themselves again.
*Healing invisibility became my calling.*
The Legacy: Thriving Beyond Survival
Five years from now, I see Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling as
A global symbol of emotional reclamation
— A place where people no longer come to be fixed, but to remember who they are.
I help people come home to themselves —
To laugh again, to belong again, and to know that healing doesn’t end at survival.
It begins with thriving.
*Thrive Beyond Trauma Counseling was born from this truth:
healing doesn’t end at survival —
It begins with thriving.*
