The First Cage: Good Girl.
A Conversation Many Women Have Been Waiting to Have
For years, Dr. Yasmin Sohal noticed a pattern she could not ignore.
Women from different backgrounds, different ages, and different walks of life often carried the same invisible burdens. They struggled to say no. Felt guilty when choosing themselves. Apologized too much. Carried responsibilities that were never entirely theirs. Put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own and then wondered why they felt exhausted, resentful, or lost.
Many believed this was simply their personality.
Dr. Sohal was not so sure.
As a doctor and writer, she found herself asking a question that most people never think to ask:
What if these are not personality traits?
What if they are learned behaviours?
What if they are the result of a lifetime of conditioning disguised as goodness?
That question became the foundation of The First Cage: Good Girl, a book that challenges one of society’s most celebrated identities: the “good girl.”
The phrase sounds harmless. Even admirable.
After all, who wouldn’t want to be called good?
But according to Dr. Sohal, the problem begins when goodness becomes synonymous with obedience.
From an early age, many girls learn what earns approval. They are praised for being understanding. Praised for adjusting. Praised for sacrificing. Praised for being mature enough to stay quiet, patient enough to tolerate discomfort, and selfless enough to put others first.
The rewards are rarely material.
They come in the form of love.
Approval.
Acceptance.
Belonging.
Slowly, a powerful lesson takes root:
The easier you are for others to live with, the more valuable you become.
Years later, that same girl may become the woman who struggles to set boundaries, feels guilty for resting, fears disappointing others, and measures her worth by how much she can give away.
Society often calls these qualities virtues.
The First Cage asks whether they are also costs.
One of the book’s most powerful ideas is that many women mistake conditioning for character. Traits they describe as “just who I am” may actually be adaptations developed to secure approval and avoid rejection.
Many women take pride in always understanding.
Always adjusting.
Always forgiving.
Always carrying more than their share.
Society calls it goodness.
Dr. Sohal asks a more uncomfortable question:
What if it is neither goodness nor weakness?
What if it is training?
This perspective transforms experiences that countless women have struggled to explain. It shifts the conversation away from individual shortcomings and toward the systems of praise, expectation, and social rewards that quietly shape behaviour over decades.
Importantly, The First Cage is not a book about blame.
It does not accuse parents of failure or traditions of malice. Instead, it recognizes a difficult truth: most people pass down what they themselves inherited. The lessons taught to girls today are often the same lessons taught to mothers, grandmothers, and generations before them.
That is what makes these patterns so powerful.
They feel normal.
They feel natural.
They feel invisible.
And yet invisibility does not make them harmless.
At a time when conversations around mental health, burnout, identity, and self-worth are becoming increasingly important, Dr. Sohal’s work feels especially relevant. More women are beginning to question the expectations they have carried for years. More are asking whether being loved should require self-abandonment. More are wondering whether approval is worth the price they have paid for it.
Through The First Cage: Good Girl, Dr. Yasmin Sohal offers readers something many have been searching for without realizing it: a language for experiences they have felt but never fully understood.
The First Cage: Good Girl is available worldwide on Amazon in Kindle and paperback formats, and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited. For readers in India, the paperback edition is currently available on Pothi.com, with Amazon India availability expected within the next few weeks.
Ultimately, the book is built around a question that lingers long after the final page:
If the person you became was shaped by expectations, rewards, and conditioning, who might you have been without them?
Perhaps the first cage was never built from rules.
Perhaps it was built from praise.
And perhaps the first step out of it begins with a question many women have been waiting their entire lives to ask:
Who would I be if approval had never been the price of being loved?
Follow Dr. Yasmin Sohal on Instagram: @ayurwell_bloom
