Getting Out Of Domestic Violence Ft. Haseeba Mohsin

In this conversation I sit down with Haseeba Mohsin, a certified Master NLP practitioner and women empowerment coach. But before she became a coach, she was a survivor of domestic violence that began just 10 days after her arranged marriage. Haseeba doesn’t offer neat solutions. She talks about what it really took to walk out, how she rebuilt her life, and why she now uses tools like NLP and hypnosis to help other women reclaim their power. This is not a story of smiling through pain. It is a story of embracing every scar.

The art of kintsugi and why it matters

Haseeba’s practice is called Kintsugi, after the 15th-century Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. She told me the story of a king whose favourite teacup shattered. Rather than throwing it away, an artist repaired it with gold glue, letting the cracks shine instead of hiding them.

“Rather than hiding the scar, if you embrace your vulnerability, that scar becomes what makes you beautiful,” Haseeba explained. She chose this name because it mirrors her own journey. The philosophy is simple but radical for many of us: you cannot grow if you refuse to acknowledge what you have been through. You can keep pushing the dust under the rug, but eventually the rug will not sit smooth. The only way forward is to clean it up and let the gold fill the cracks.

The marriage that started with a slap

Haseeba grew up in a loving, educated family, studied in London, and came back with a promising future. Then came the arranged marriage in 2017. She met the man only at the nikaah. Within the first week of moving to London, the violence began.

“I got the first slap after like 10 days,” she said. And like so many women, she stayed. She told herself things would get better. She thought if she cooked better, dressed better, compromised more, it would stop. She was not allowed to leave the house without him, so she shrank herself further.

“I started believing that maybe it is my mission to make this work,” she admitted. “When you are habitually in violence, you think there is no other alternative. You think you are part of it, that this is how life is now.” The cycle is frighteningly ordinary: hope, violence, self-blame, and then hope again. Haseeba stayed for two years, until one cold February night when he tried to strangle her.

The night she left

24th February 2019. Haseeba remembers the date like it is etched in her bones. “I shivered all night and I cried all night, and I was like, it is time to walk out.” She packed one small suitcase and a hand carry, left her beautiful house in London, and went to the police. She had marks on her neck. The officer urged her to press charges and have him arrested.

“I backed them. I said no, don’t do that,” she recalled. Even then, in that raw moment, fear and a tangled sense of loyalty held her back. That is the messy truth of abuse. Leaving does not feel clean or heroic. It feels terrifying. But she left anyway.

Rebuilding with life coaching, NLP, and hypnosis

After leaving, Haseeba moved in with her younger brother. He gave her the one thing everyone needs after trauma: time to grieve without pressure to move on. “He let me grieve,” she said. “He didn’t tell me, just move on.”

One morning, a friend introduced her to a life coach. She walked out of that hour-long session and felt hope for the first time in years. “I felt hope from the first session. There is so much in life in store for me,” she said. That spark led her to get certified as a life coach, then as a Master NLP practitioner, and finally in hypnosis.

She explains NLP, neuro-linguistic programming, simply: it is about understanding how we communicate, first with ourselves and then with others. “You need to know yourself first, and then you can actually communicate with someone else,” she says. She uses it to help women untangle the deep-rooted anxiety and self-doubt that abusive relationships plant in you.

Hypnosis, often misunderstood, is not about control. It is a way to gently access the unconscious mind, where 75 percent of our beliefs and behaviours live. “You relax the mind, and then you tap into what is blocking you,” Haseeba explains. She often ends her coaching sessions with a short hypnosis practice to help clients align their conscious goals with their unconscious beliefs. It helps them feel in control, often for the first time in years.

The stigma that keeps women silent

Haseeba quickly realised that having the tools was not enough. Women were not coming forward. Domestic violence against Pakistani women had risen by 45 percent, and that is only the reported cases. The real numbers are far higher. So she started speaking openly about her own story, hoping it would give others permission to do the same.

“Till I don’t talk about my story, maybe they cannot seek help,” she said. “If she can be vulnerable, so can we.” She began volunteering with the Pakistan Association Dubai, running economic empowerment programs for women, and eventually launched her own practice, Kintsugi.

We talk about the heavy silences in our culture: the log kya kahenge, what will people say, the way a woman’s identity shrinks to wife, mother, daughter. “Women are allowed to work by the Quran, by our religion, but we reduce them to their roles,” Haseeba said. Her work is about helping women rediscover their individuality, separate from those roles, so they can make choices rooted in who they actually are.

Why this conversation matters

I have spoken about domestic violence on this podcast before, but never with someone who not only survived it but turned that survival into a calling. Haseeba’s story is raw, but it is also full of hard-won hope. She reminds us that healing is not about forgetting. It is about letting the cracks become part of your design.

If you are feeling stuck, if you have lost sight of who you are beyond your marriage or your family, know that there is a way out. Haseeba is one of the people ready to walk beside you. Her story proves that the journey out of rock bottom is possible, and that the scars you carry can be the very thing that makes you beautiful.