We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dr. Emily Bashah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dr. Emily, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
My parents were fortunate to escape with their lives. They were Jewish minorities in Iraq during the late 1960’s. This certainly had its own set of challenges. But by the 1970’s, the Iraqi public was highly influenced by the addictive Ideology of the Ba’ath Party, who persecuted Jews as the enemy of the state.
Everything was taken from Jews – their valuables, dignity, and position in society. They faced the horrors of a state controlled by the dogma of a victim ideology. A Party that convinced the Arabs that made up 90% of the population they were victimized by the 1% of the population who was Jewish. This empowered the Ba’ath government to take from Jews everything they built.
In the beginning they took their right to protest, their right to free speech. Then they took away their credit, then their property, businesses, and their ability to produce a living. Any yet, the government denied Jews passports to leave Iraq, and eventually their family members were harassed, publicly ostracized, abducted, jailed, tortured, and killed.
My father escaped through the Qandil Mountains into Iran. The Kurds in the middle of the night smuggled him through a mountainous area called the Zagros mountain range that is difficult to cross, and extremely rugged terrain. Both of my parents left behind their ancestral homeland empty handed. They left behind their family farms and inheritance, their property, and even the family members who had disappeared into Saddam’s torture chambers.
All they had left, was their free will and the determination to persevere. They had the ability to decide for themselves if, like their oppressors, they would gain a victim mindset and harbor resentment and fear. But they decided long ago they were not victims, they were survivors with a purpose.
As I raise my two-year-old daughter, I cannot help but think about how she inherits this multigenerational trauma. While there is loss, pain, grief, and trauma, there is also strength, power, values, honor, and integrity. There is strength in surviving trauma which becomes imbedded in identity. There is profound meaning and life purpose that becomes part of my family’s inherited legacy. In this is a sacred gift.
As a psychologist, and a 40-year-old woman, I have thought deeply about the plan in how I would raise my daughter. While I have read a lot on parenting advice, having a toddler is itself is filled with life lessons. More importantly, she has given me a greater degree of humility. I have a much greater respect for the challenges of being a parent and for my parents’ sacrifices and unconditional love of me.
Certainly, every child is different. And what we do with one child just may not work with another. Everything we do to raise a child ends up being part of a 30-year experiment. We won’t know for sure if our approach really worked until they are adults.
But there are a few things that I’m certain. One is the importance of how we frame ourselves as parents. The second is gratitude. And the third is the importance of giving children a chance to experience life through discovery, even at a young age, with as little interference as possible from the parent.
How we frame ourselves matters. Children mirror and model after us. If we see ourselves as a victim that can play out as a lack of confidence, or it can go the other way, and make one more violent, and less tolerant. We have free will. If ever there is an important time to change out of a victim mindset, it’s when you have children. Multi-generational trauma does not have to be a shameful secret, nor does it have to be negative. We play a role in choosing how we allow trauma to affect us. If we see ourselves as victims, this will have an effect on how our children view themselves.
Second, it is important we show gratitude around our children. Gratitude for those who came before us, with the stories we tell them. Gratitude for where we are, and who we are. Gratitude for them, our children. My parents were always grateful for emigrating to America and the freedoms, liberties and opportunities provided if you worked hard. I aspire to transmit this optimist perspective to my daughter as she is the grandchild of courageous survivors.
From gratitude comes joy, which is an important emotion for your children to mirror. If you are joyful, they will enjoy their time more with you. They will want to be with you. They will seek you out, not just when they are two, but throughout their lifetime, hopefully.
Most importantly, giving your child space for discovery of their world and themselves.
I have provided therapy to people who viewed their child as an extension of their own success. What school they went to, their grades, the sports they played, the clothes they wore were all a statement the parent took personal pride in. Simultaneously, their child would demand the right to be who they wanted to be. The parent might become not only disappointed, but embarrassed or ashamed of them. This dynamic creates all kinds of problems because it says to the child they are never enough or worthy of acceptance.
The big idea, is that we want our children to have a great sense of who they are, discover their own purpose, and meaning. To know that they are part of something so much greater than themselves. And with that comes great responsibility, duty of service, courage and honor.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
While the news media, politicians, both political parties and conspiracy theory groups are destabilizing America, we often lose sight of how we unwittingly contribute to the hysteria as individuals. In the process, we lose our ability to find optimism, opportunities and meaning. Fortunately, it is still possible to learn from history and to regain one’s agency, self-empowerment and life purpose.
In our book, Addictive Ideologies: Finding Meaning and Agency When Politics Fail You, Dr. Emily Bashah, a Clinical Psychologist, and Paul Johnson, entrepreneur and former mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, offer a word of caution. Their belief-that today’s world of runaway identity politics, nationalism and cancel culture is setting the stage for a loss of individual agency and liberty-keenly shows why we can’t take democracy and civility for granted.
Dr. Bashah tells the harrowing story of the persecution of Jews in Iraq by Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party through her family’s own personal experiences. Building on Dr. Bashah’s powerful historical context, Paul Johnson uses his own mayoral experiences to chart a path for the future that can avoid similar atrocities. This book draws upon an understanding of societal divisions and clinical and social psychology to show the real power we have to promote constructive change.
By merging insights from two widely disparate worldviews, Dr. Bashah and Paul Johnson show that genocide isn’t the result of just a few bad men, and tyranny isn’t only caused by one charismatic leader. Both require hundreds of thousands of people to ignore reality, and it’s our responsibility as Americans to stay vigilant so that we can protect our families and loved ones against the myriad dangers of addictive ideology.
Dr. Emily Bashah is an author and licensed psychologist with a private practice in Scottsdale, Arizona. An expert witness in criminal, immigration and civil courts, she has worked on high-profile cases covering issues of domestic terrorism and capital offenses, and first-degree murder.
Dr. Bashah was awarded the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Policy Fellowship and served within the American Psychological Association’s Public Interest Government Relations Office in Washington, D.C. A frequent expert guest in media, Dr. Bashah clinically specializes in mental illness, personal and collective trauma, addiction and grief and loss, as well as family and relationship dynamics.
Dr. Bashah’s and Paul Johnson’s collaboration in life and work marry their combined skills and backgrounds in clinical and forensic psychology, politics, and geopolitical issues. They address the problems of addictive ideologies to the self and to society while offering insight and wisdom for healing, growth, and transformation. They believe collaborating towards a worthy purpose is essential to unleashing the power of the human spirit.
Have you ever had to pivot?
While in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 2000, I woke up in sheets that were covered in sweat. I could see the rain outside. The inside of my body was freezing, but the outside of my body was pouring sweat. My skin was on fire.
I could not focus. The night before, I was having problems connecting words to thoughts, but now I was completely deliri- ous. The nervous system that connected my brain to my limbs was not operating correctly. I could not voluntarily move my legs or my arms. My joints cracked and ached in pain from any movement in my body.
This was the first time I ever remember feeling death in my body. I knew that I had caught something while in the tropical jungles of Pemba Island in the waters of the Indian Ocean. I knew that without help quickly, I was not going to survive.
When I left Egypt and the sands where I had begun the practice of my belly dancing, I left for other parts of Africa. I trekked through the jungles of Pemba and explored Lamu Island and Zanzibar. I safaried through the Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru and scuba-dived in the Indian Ocean.
Somewhere along this journey, I had run into mosquitoes that had carried the malaria virus.
For weeks, the delirium lingered. I was helpless. Without the help of friends, I would have died of dehydration or starva- tion. Even though I had left the rugged underdeveloped terrain and was now in Switzerland, all I can remember is gloom and darkness.
As I recovered, I made a life-changing decision. I was going to return to Vancouver, stay with my aunt Tracy and uncle Salman and focus on higher education. It was the beginning of my journey to become a psychologist.
Vancouver is a beautiful city. It has an urban population whose progressive ideas were formed by a society more focused on the collective than the individualistic United States. Vancouver has a commitment to higher education, and while it has several universities, it has an academic culture in almost any coffee shop.
People there love talking about ideas, science, politics and world affairs, albeit in a traditional Canadian style, where they are careful not to offend.
In my undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia, I focused on psychology and assisted with research on religious intolerance. When doing my master’s work in Australia at Flinders University, I wrote my thesis on the pathway of revenge justification and intergroup conflict. Later in my doctoral program in the US, I conducted my research on human rights abuses of undocumented Latinas, along with pioneering psychologists Dr. Louise Baca and Dr. Karen Suyemoto.
My parents’ journey had an incredible effect on my sense of justice. Generally, a person who is focused on justice will work in law enforcement, prosecution or defense. But justice for people like my parents rarely comes about from a courtroom or a jail cell, or involves perpetrators suffering a penalty.
The only justice for people like my parents is coming to peace with the multitude of losses and trauma, forging ahead, persevering despite the many obstacles, embracing life and focusing on building their future while not being paralyzed by the past.
The wounds made on my parents by Saddam Hussein and his torturers were so deep that unless you knew them intimately, you would not hear them speak of it. My parents viewed complaining about the lot they had been given in life as being ungrateful. And yet, from knowing them, I knew that their pain was so deep that it left scars. I was compelled by the thought of helping them and others like them cope with that trauma or such unspoken grief.
To truly understand my parents and the pain that they went through, I knew that it was not enough to simply hear the shortened versions of their infrequently told tales. In fact, I was compelled to try to comprehend what happened to them. I believe this drove what became a focus of my education, trying to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of religious intoler- ance, vengeance and human rights abuses. I sought knowledge from others who had found themselves in similar positions that my parents had experienced during the Ba’ath Party in Iraq. In Israel, I had the opportunity to work for a short time with Palestinian girls. Here, in this small rural town in Gaza, these young women had so much potential. Time had not yet built up the scars that would leave them angry. You could still hear the hope in their voices and see the promise and curiosity in their eyes.
This was very different from what I saw with the undocumented Latinas I worked with in Arizona. Not only did these women tell stories of the brutality of crossing the desert, they were also being taken advantage of by the coyotes (human traf- fickers). They also suffered from lack of water, unrelenting heat, pain, damage to their feet from the hot sand and blisters from the sun. They spoke about exploitation, extortion and being violently abused. They also witnessed the victimization of others, which included robbery, sexual slavery and rape.
They spoke about enduring human rights abuses by border patrol agents in the desert. They were humiliated and treated like animals, and some were run over with quads. Upon entering into custody, they found it to be no better than the suffering they experienced in crossing. So many of the migrants had consistent stories about abuse from within the detention centers.
Those stories included the panic that happened when border patrol agents set upon them with four-wheel drive vehicles, running people down. They described the agents cursing at them, using slurs, degrading their intellect and race and making an overall effort to dehumanize them.
My understanding of how a fascist government could engage innocent citizens in a quest to suppress people became enlightened. I began to understand that these forces that we hear about, from the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, Maoism in China and Stalinism in Russia were not born from the isolated characteristics of people in a foreign land, but of human characteristics that could afflict people anywhere. The treatment that these immigrants received was not exactly the same as that of oppressed groups under tyrannical governments; however, the origin of their mistreatment was the same: dehumaniza- tion. And I feel like it gave me a better understanding of what had happened to my parents.
During this time, I never gave up my love of belly dancing. I discovered an ability to find joy and light through my art that allowed me to stay connected to people I might not have otherwise. Practicing belly dancing, working on human rights abuses with immigrants, building friends in the Arab community and honing my linguistic and cultural understanding of the Arabic community all laid the path for beginning to understand the layers of subcultures that exist in any society. It eventually led me to the psychological work that I do in clinical and forensic settings through having a deeper appreciation of the variety of cultures and contextual factors in the Middle East. It also led me to develop expertise in the cultural formulations of individuals within the criminal justice system.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I left home at the age of 19 to study art at the Emily Carr Art Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia, only to drop out after my first year. Much to the stress of my parents, I donated all my belongings and bought a one-way ticket to the Middle East, determined to see where I had come from and to answer the question, “Who am I?” I backpacked solo throughout Israel, Sinai, Egypt and Jordan. My parents did not pay for these trips. I saved up money by waitressing, and when my savings depleted later on my travels, I worked as a divemaster in the Red Sea in Dahab, Sinai.I continued to belly dance there and, to the delight of the audience, I incorporated elements of fire dancing in my performances. While I actually improved in the art of fire dancing, I abandoned it after suffering some burns on my body that left scars. Dancing in the desert, by the fire and under the Milky Way galaxy, I found a way to express myself through art, connecting to my ancestors and funding my continued travels and studies. I lived among Bedouins in this Egyptian desert. We were on our way from Kharga and on a route that Herodias, “the father of history,” called a “road traversed in 40 days.” We were led by a family who was part of the Azazame Bedouin tribe that exists in the border towns between Israel and Egypt. These people are very dark-skinned, known for honesty and are very hospitable. The scarcity of grazing makes them nomadic. Right or wrong, they have been stereotyped as abductors of women.
The Bedouin we paid to navigate us through this desert left us with his eldest son to lead the group, a young Muslim man. Sitting around the fire, he wanted to know everything about America. He asked me many questions about the United States —how men and women acted, what we wore and the things we talked about.
On this night, however, we were all exhausted. All day, our Jeep continued to get stuck in dry quicksand. This would force all of us to get out and, for what seemed like hours, try to push the Jeep out of the sand. As a woman, I was required to wear a full head scarf and a black dress that covered my entire body. After pushing the Jeep, running to catch up to it and repeating this process every few miles over the blazing sand, we were completely worn out. At least, I was.
I lay on a hand-woven rug that night, watching the fire burn down to the red cinders. The sky was clear, with no ambient light from the ground. I could not only see the stars but the milky rings of our galaxy as well. I felt myself dozing off to sleep, listening to the crackling of the wood on the fire. As exhausted as I was, I was still amazed that I was here in this remote area of the Egyptian desert. With very little money, I was putting together a memorable journey and a lifetime of stories.
A short time after I dozed off, I felt a hand that started at the bottom of my black dress, sliding up my inner thigh. I was still asleep, but as the hand crawled up my legs, I opened my eyes and saw the young guide above me.
I started to scream. I scratched him, hit him, yelled and made as much noise as I could. The young guide was startled and ran away. I was shaken, confused about what to do and infuriated, but the exhaustion overcame me. All I could do in that moment was lay back down, cover my body with a thin veil and fall back asleep.
In the morning, I woke up with a renewed and vital rage. All the sexual harassment and objectification I had endured as a woman in the Arab world compounded upon itself and all I could think of was that I wanted to dismember our guide. I could not even think of the repercussions of injuring the only person who was able to get us out of the uninhabited desert or how the group would turn against me. I wanted to poke out his eye, pull out his hair and remove any chances of him experiencing sexual gratification again. I was going to war.
I screamed at the young guide and smacked him in the face. I shouted at him, calling him names—how dare he violate me and think he could get away with it. I told him that he would suffer and pay the price for what he did. I yelled that what he did was wrong and he should never again think he could do that to another woman. To my surprise, he smacked me back across my face, which only provoked me further. I lunged towards him, scratching his face. The other group members had to rip my claws from further injuring him. I am sure I looked like a wild animal, and in that moment, I was. The others in the camp hurried over and restrained us both, pulling us farther apart. While they were concerned about how upset I was, they were rightfully more concerned about me injuring our only way out of the vast and unmarked desert. There were no roads, maps or signs to follow. We were dependent on our guide, and he knew that. What became more confusing and hurtful was that after I explained what the guide had done, the group turned against me, victim-shaming and blaming me. They accused me of flirting with him. By this, they were referring to me talking to him, asking questions about his life experiences and sharing mine. They accused me of not being culturally sensitive to the gender roles and expectations and that I was ultimately respon- sible for his sexual assault of me. The notion that he had no ability to control his sexual impulses was my responsibility, not his.
I was not going to let it go. I learned that lecturing our guide on women’s rights, justice and gender equality would fall on deaf ears. Instead, I found the sweet spot that would emotion- ally torment and shame my guide. During the drive, in front of the others, I told him I was going to tell his father. This had provoked the emotional response I was looking for. He became terrified, panicked, weakened and remorseful. I found the consequence that would matter most for him: family dishonor and shame. I soon realized this was the most powerful tool for behavioral change that would hopefully prevent him from assaulting another woman.
He begged me not to tell his father. While in this state of mind, he even got into an accident, damaging the body of the Jeep. It was still operational, but now he was in a frenzy. The group was turning against him and upset about his service. By the time we returned to his town, he was in shambles. He begged me not to tell, and he cried like a small child, fearful of his father’s punishment.
As the father of the guide appeared and saw the damage from the accident his son had incurred, his father slapped him firmly across his face, shouting and cursing at him in front of our group and the village. We all cringed at his father’s outrage and physical abuse. I realized that his punishment would turn worse for him behind closed doors. The guide cowered to his father like an abused animal following every command and order from its owner. I did not have the heart to tell his father what happened. I took pity on him and just let it go.
What I came to realize was that, after all that had transpired, I felt confident that the young man would not assault another woman and believe he could get away with it. Between my reaction, the group’s disapproval of him after the accident, his father’s physical abuse, public shaming and family dishonor, I believe that even though the events of that day were not all related to the assault, they became intertwined in his mind. They certainly were in mine. I felt a sense that justice had been served. But I also wanted to uncover and understand this phenomenon further.
In the wake of the Me Too movement, so many women bravely shared their private and personal accounts of being sexually violated, exploited, abused and harmed. I felt the need to explore this more deeply in order to understand that what is the right resolution for some may not be acceptable for others. I know that I felt disappointed that the group did not support me and turned against me for their best interests. In my work as a psychologist, I know this is why many victims choose not to speak up or out against perpetrators. But this pattern is changing, with more protections afforded for survivors of assault, abuse and sexual harassment. None of these protections matter, however, if the abusers feel they are immune to consequences, if there is an unspoken and acceptable culture shielding the perpetrator and blaming the victim.
For the sake of preserving fairness, equality and restorative justice, the caution is that the pendulum swing should not overcompensate by swinging fully to the other side. There needs to be a balance, a middle path. I believe the solution is with changing cultural norms on sexual harassment, assault and abuse. For instance, if the situational safety permits, the ability for a person to raise their voice in the moment, draw attention from others, expose the abuser and the harm committed, and for the group of witnesses to join together in expressing disapproval for the harmful behavior, the greater the impact on changing social norms. The abusers learn that their behaviors will not go unpunished or shielded. These natural environmental consequences are powerful and restore the expectations and behavioral norms that society should be striving toward.
Over time, I have wondered if the young Islamic guide, who had no sexual experience, believed that what he was trying to do to me was something I would support. Or was his view that as a person, I didn’t matter, and it was okay to assault me? Either way, he was not accustomed to even having discussions with women like the ones he had with me around the fire, much less to seeing women as individuals. The group discussion at the fire and my conversation with him directly might have been the closest he had ever been to being with a woman who spoke directly. He might have seen this as a form of flirta- tion and foreplay. In his worldview, Western women were liber- ated sexually. To him, he might have viewed me as encouraging his advancement. On the other hand, he may have viewed my values as so corrupt that as an individual, I did not matter, and he could do what he wanted.
In the West, we look to our criminal justice system for rule of law and social order. It is supposed to be fair to both sides to try and find the truth. While there is political pressure to make the system more geared towards the victim, I am not sure that tipping the scales of justice is good for society at large. I have evaluated both victims and victimizers, and rarely does a legal determination provide healing in itself. The impacts of the existing legal system on the lives of both the accused and the accuser are that it is almost impossible for either to admit fault or take responsibility. On this issue, the system is not serving our society or the individuals well. Our ideal should be to establish healing, balance of power and promote transforma- tion—the opportunity for the accused, if they are guilty, to offer an authentic apology and acknowledge the harm that has been committed. From a psychological standpoint, this can be more powerful than one who does not admit guilt but is found guilty. We can admit to ourselves that the standards between men and women are changing in America, but part of our goal should be to facilitate the change in a way that does not leave behind a wake of hate. The system should help promote the changing standard but also provide an opportunity for reflec- tion, change, growth, insight, behavioral modification and transformation.
Our ideal for restorative justice versus retributive justice has to rise above our emotions. We will not find the ideal other than in our minds and our thoughts. But we should search for the ideal. Platonic idealism points out that the ideal that exists in our mind is more true than the shadows we see here on Earth. Justice has to play many roles. One role is retributive: a punishment to the individual as well as removing the threat from society. The other role could be of a more restorative nature: to restore dignity, civility and courage, and to fulfill the promise each life has to offer. This should especially be consid- ered as it relates to minors, where restoration could offer a means to shape, inform, teach, model and correct the offensive behavior.
There is no silver lining to sexual assault. But this incident piqued my interest to understand different cultures, customs and behaviors of people. I did not lead with becoming a psychologist right away, but when I look back, I still find this experience to be formative in my thinking. I have strived to understand how different cultures affect our psychology. It helped form my interest in how we create extremists, victims, the radical right or the radical left, jihadists or terrorists. It increased my interest in people who are oppressed, and how the winds of political movements create outcomes not always to our liking. The event forced me to think about the paradigm of this man, and it forced me to think about mine.
Years later, that event in the sands of Egypt helped me better understand Omar. I was careful about my approach, my behaviors and my conversation. I had to not only honor Omar’s culture but also to understand his limitations, his bias and his prejudices. The assault by the young Islamic man provided me insight into how others think, perceive and interpret informa- tion. I gained a better understanding of the process of dehumanization of others unlike us, of objectifying them so we can justify our actions against them. I was raised in a home environment where I was blessed. My parents were supportive, loving and encouraging. They provided me many opportunities for education, freedom and expression. They allowed me to make my own choices, although sometimes begrudgingly. I had only known the strife of life from listening to their stories, but as I took off on my journey across the world for many years, I discovered my own stories and my own struggles. For someone to find meaning, they cannot remain in a victim mindset. They must believe that in at least some ways, they have the choice for self-determination and choosing their own destiny.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.bashahpsychological.com
- Instagram: @Dr.EmilyBashah
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emily.bashah/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilybashahpsyd/
- Twitter: @EmilyBashah
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@optamerican
- Other: Book: Addictive Ideologies: Finding Meaning and Agency When Politics Fail You https://www.amazon.com/Addictive-Ideologies-Finding-Meaning-Politics/dp/195695547X Podcast: optamerican.com Facebook facebook.com/optamerican Instagram instagram.com/optamerican Twitter twitter.com/optamerican Spotify open.spotify.com/show/0mfMCiR0Jtqs8lr4JeuYwA Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-optimistic-american/id1615223090 Google Podcasts podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkLnBvZGJlYW4uY29tL29wdGFtZXJpY2FuL2ZlZWQueG1s