Q&A with Geoffrey R. Jonas, author of BEING BROKEN

A young woman dies alone in a hotel room, her fentanyl-poisoned cocaine still on the desk. She had been missing for nearly 2 weeks. Social Services had been trying to find a place for her to live with her 3-year-old son, whom she had left with her parents. Six months later her father fights for his life in intensive care, but succumbs to his illness because of a lifelong use of alcohol and tobacco. A month after his death her mother is assessed by doctors to be unable to care for herself because of her Alzheimer's and mental health issues brought on by benzodiazepine and alcohol addiction.

The son, brother, stepson is the only one left to pick up the pieces. He begins a journey of the self and finds out the truth of his family. After going over letters, notes, emails, videos, and text messages, he uncovers a disturbing picture of the abuse his sister suffered at the hands of their parents. He also begins to better understand his own struggles with mental health and substance addiction because of the trauma and abuse he also suffered from their parents.

Follow the son as he looks through his family history to discover the generational abuse that trickled down through the years. Learn about how parents who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder emotionally abuse and manipulate their children. See how the abuse and trauma becomes mental illness in the abused, and how they fall into vicious traps of addiction, eating disorders, self-harm, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Witness the transformational change of the son as he works on the recovery of his inner child and tries to become the man he was meant to be.

WHAT WAS THE INSPIRATION FOR THIS BOOK?

Simply put, the death of my sister. After her death, I began to research how such a thing could happen. I had already been studying Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and trauma for many years; however, this was the first time I started looking directly into my family. The writing began as essays, discussing the abuse and trauma and how it relates to SUD. Once I started connecting the dots between trauma and SUD, I wanted to incorporate real-life examples of our experiences to better communicate that relation.

 

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE TITLE FOR THIS BOOK?

The title has a double meaning. First, to represent the process of how one becomes broken through abuse and trauma. Second, to describe living with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disoder (CPTSD), as it feels to me. There’s a process to being broken by our parents, and there’s living with the consequences of the feeling of being broken.

 

DID YOU DO ANY RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK? IF SO, WHAT?

I did a lot of research for this book. Authors, studies and research, videos, courses: I did more than I could name here. I have studied trauma and SUD for almost 10 years now, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) for more than 3 years. While I do not have an alphabet of diplomas and degrees behind my name, I feel that I did my best to educate myself to the facts and evidence so that they would be well represented in the book.

 

PLEASE DESCRIBE YOUR WRITING JOURNEY FOR THIS BOOK. TELL US WHAT A DAY FOR YOU WAS LIKE.

As mentioned above, it really started with the essays. As a man of science and evidence, I needed to understand what happened. I had been writing essays about my own journey with SUD and it evolved into understanding trauma and child abuse.

The writing process for me is about both writing and editing at the same time. While many authors choose to write everything that comes to mind for extended periods and then going back and editing, my process is typically to write and edit at the same time. I will write a sentence or paragraph and then go back and edit it until it is perfect before moving on.

Writing this was difficult though. Writing about your own trauma, and that of my sister, could be very overwhelming. I would tackle a difficult topic, which may only be a couple of paragraphs, and I would have to stop for the rest of the day, or a couple, before I could get back to the keyboard.

HOW IS YOUR BOOK DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER BOOK IN THIS GENRE?

I believe that the inclusion of the science alongside the relative experiences sets my book apart. Similar to Oprah Winfrey and Bruce D. Perry’s book What Happened To You?, where they take Bruce’s research and apply it to real-life experiences of Oprah, I wanted to show the correlation of my, and my sister’s, experiences with the evidence of the relation of trauma and SUD.

 

WHAT CRITERIA DID YOU USE WHEN SELECTING THE COVER FOR YOUR BOOK?

I wanted to honour my sister’s love for creating collages with the angst she felt towards what was happening to her. I also wanted to have it reflect the chaos of her life.

 

WAS THERE A MESSAGE IN YOUR BOOK THAT YOU WERE TRYING TO CONVEY?

That we need to change the collective mind of how we approach SUD. We need to look at SUD as not a cause, not a disease, but as a symptom, a behavioural disorder that can be unlearned. A vast majority of people with SUD have suffered some kind of trauma in their lives and they are using street drugs as a form of medication to manage their untreated mental illness. Addiction is not about ‘partying’ or ‘having fun’, it is about trying not to feel bad, to feel normal. However, left untreated, or mistreated like my sister, the addiction spirals out of control and the result of my sister’s case was her death.

We have to change the public view of people with addiction to not see them as criminals and degenerates, but individuals that are suffering from horrific traumas and need our help, not condemnation.

 

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES YOU FACE AS A WRITER?

Perfectionism and Impostor Syndrome. My perfectionism is a result of the abuse where I was regularly criticized and judged if everything wasn’t perfect, or made to feel shame about mistakes. My Impostor Syndrome, also a result of the abuse, is when I am complimented or positively judged for my work and I can not accept it because I feel that I do not deserve it.

The consequence of these two factors is procrastination. I will avoid the work so that I do not feel the shame and low self-esteem that occurs when things are not as good as I want them to be, or the anxiety of a review that isn’t perfect.

 

DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR BOOK IS CONTROVERSIAL? IF SO, IN WHAT WAY?

I am challenging the status quo when it comes to my view of SUD and recovery, which can be quite controversial. For so long, the belief was that addiction is a disease of the brain as a result of the drugs changing the brain; however, while drugs can cause changes to the brain, those changes can be reverted, through neuroplasticity, by a cessation of the drugs. We can unlearn the adaptive behaviour of using drugs to treat our mental illness caused by trauma. The root must be pulled out, so to speak, and the desire or need to use drugs will lessen.

Challenging 12-step programs is another controversial topic. Some people believe in the 12-steps so blindly, due to its societal prevalence for so long, that it causes great cognitive dissonance. I have had people lash out or even threaten me because I talk negatively about the 12-steps. The steps, and the Big Book, are a 100-year-old theory that doesn’t hold up to today’s addiction science. Would you ask your doctor for a 100-year-old treatment for an illness when there are newer and better alternatives?

 

IS THERE A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE FOR THIS BOOK? IF SO, WHAT?

I wrote this book for people suffering from similar types of abuse, as well as SUD. Many people in abusive relationships, especially caregiver relationships, are not even aware that they are experiencing abuse. I wanted to portray that they are not alone with what they are going through and that there is hope for recovery.

As for SUD, I mentioned previously that challenging the status quo views on addiction may allow people to see that there are alternative treatment options out there and that it is not something that you have to live with forever. SUD can be overcome and we can live a life free of the cycle of substance use.

 

WHY SHOULD READERS GET THIS BOOK?

I think people who are interested in learning more about NPD, narcissistic parental abuse, and trauma and SUD would be interested in this book. People who feel that there are improvements that can be made in recovery treatment programs for SUD and CPTSD will find key, and alternative, options in this book.

I also believe that the information in my book is helpful in recognizing NPD abuse, the symptoms of CPTSD, and the science of addiction to allow people to protect themselves from the harms of these types of abuse and the resulting disorders that may result.

 

IF YOU COULD DESCRIBE YOUR BOOK IN THREE WORDS, WHAT WOULD THEY BE?

We can heal.

 

ARE YOU WORKING ON ANOTHER BOOK? IF SO, TELL US ABOUT IT.

I am not currently working on another book. This book was very difficult for me to write. I do have some ideas rattling around in my head, perhaps a follow up called “Getting Fixed”, but most likely I will be trying my hand at fiction. I am an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction and have many character backgrounds, stories, and ideas written throughout the years that may come together into a science fantasy series.

Thank you.