Freeing women from being prisoners of their pain

Diksha Chakravarti, a long-practising therapist, explains how she uses “pain” as a wide lens that includes physical discomfort alongside emotional, mental, societal and spiritual suffering. She describes an integrated approach that brings together bodywork, mindfulness and hypnotherapy to help women meet their pain directly, understand what sits beneath it, and find a way through rather than around it.

The conversation explores how fear can keep people stuck, how vulnerability is often misread as weakness, and how confidence grows when someone is able to live more authentically. Joanne and Diksha also discuss the pressures created by patriarchal expectations, internalised competition between women, and the ways status and achievement can become substitutes for self-worth.

Diksha shares significant parts of her own story, including leaving Uganda during Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians, experiencing dislocation and bullying, and later navigating racism in the UK. She reflects on how trauma and disconnection shaped her early life, and how resilience, spirituality, and support networks have influenced her work and mission to help women feel less alone and more able to ask for help.