We Need Change
Brainwashed: A True Story of Psychological Domestic Abuse And The PTSD Aftermath shares your story, scientific evidence on the impact of abuse, and the importance of breaking the cycles. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Issues such as Childhood Psychological Abuse and how that can affect someone’s later life and acceptance of domestic violence, and then PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are all currently such important issues yet so very poorly understood. It’s my hope that Brainwashed will help to change that situation.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
Initially, I published the book in 2014, but then almost immediately withdrew it from publication because I did not want to be publicly reminded of my early life. But living through the most bizarre string of distressing experiences in 2022, that I talk about in Chapter 27, I knew I had to re-structure and republish the book, which I did in 2023. And so the hardest part was having to re-live all those horrific life experiences once again, that I’d previously written about.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Interestingly, when I first published the book the most important ideas to get out were to do with childhood psychological abuse and psychological domestic violence and the reason why people, especially women, remain in abusive relationships. But after this past horrific year, which is still playing out, suddenly, the most important part was to let the world know MUCH more about PTSD. PTSD, is now one of the leading mental health issues in most countries around the world. BUT very few people realise that it is NOT just a MENTAL health issue, but can also result in physical brain damage, and that a trauma can be locked in your brain for life, waiting to escape at any time, as it did for me in 2022. So now the most important chapters are those on PTSD—Chapters 23 to 27.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about psychological abuse?
Sadly, even today in 2023, those people lucky enough to have avoided a mental health issue, or who don’t have the courage to admit to having a mental health issue, still have a very denigrating attitude to anyone who is a mental health sufferer. You can have a broken leg and everyone will support you and totally accept it as tough luck. But have any sort of “broken” brain and all too often you’ll be treated like a second-class citizen, or worse. This must change.
Author Links: Website
Psychological Domestic Abuse, experienced as a child, a teen, or an adult in an intimate relationship, can have life-long effects, including the making of disastrous decisions, and on to PTSD, unless it’s understood and the victim/survivor is helped to summon the courage to do what it takes to heal.
After thirty odd years of relentless searching, at the age of sixty-three, Kashonia finally discovered that her greatest enemy was her psychologically abusive childhood. Before that, she’d always thought she’d had a relatively good childhood. Why? Because she hadn’t been physically or sexually abused as a child.
But the subtle psychological abuse she received as a child through until she was twenty was what predisposed her to accept, as “normal”, a very psychologically, and sometimes physically, abusive marriage.
Yet, no matter who read about Kashonia’s event-filled life, the only thing they recognized were the handful of physically violent experiences. They completely dismissed the far more insidious on-going psychological abuse.
It was clear that the only way to help people understand society’s monstrous, hidden epidemic of psychological abuse was to overtly explain it as she told her story. And this is what Kashonia has inspirationally done in Brainwashed.
In Brainwashed, Kashonia’s wry sense of humor occasionally appears as she uses forty years of Behavioral Science, Neuroscience, and Neurolinguistics research to overtly explain her extraordinary life of psychological abuse, its devastating PTSD aftermath, and why people stay in abusive relationships.
Courageously, she shares the serendipitous source of her most significant transformation which gave her the strength to escape her abusive marriage. This was also the mostly unlikely source of her spiritual journey, which has kept her going through the really tough times ever since.
Kashonia’s story is true for more people than we realize. Sadly, all too often the victim/survivors of psychological abuse don’t even realize they’ve been abused.
So her story and her greatest enemy could well be your story and your greatest enemy too.
Today, Kashonia is a Moral Philosopher with a PhD in the Ethics of Conscious Change and author of the Multi-Award-Winning Conscious Change Series of books. It was her life, as documented in Brainwashed that led her to research and write the Conscious Change Series.
In 2023, with a growing concern about mental health and PTSD in non-combatants, Brainwashed is extremely timely for a number of reasons.Brainwashed will be of comfort to other victim/survivors of psychological abuse, in helping them understand at a deeper psychological level, why they do/did make the decisions that they did.
It will also give those very lucky people, who’ve not endured what we victim/survivors have experienced, a greater appreciation of the complexities of psychological abuse, where the scars are all on the inside.
Brainwashed also highlights the life-long psychological damage that negative childhood conditioning can have.
It’s a reminder to psychologists, that even if their client insists they’ve had a good childhood, it must still be explored.
And with the growing community concern about mental health and the area of PTSD, Brainwashed will shed a vital light on what that can be like, and how Kashonia was able to heal.
Order your copy of Brainwashed now—available in Kindle/e-book, paperback, and hardback formats and soon as an audiobook.
Original source: https://literarytitan.com/2023/05/30/we-need-change/
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