Overview

Description Words do more than communicate ideas-they shape bodies, identities, and lives. From Wound to Word explores a powerful but often overlooked truth: when language is spoken under authority, it becomes biologically embedded. A parent's judgment, a teacher's label, a doctor's prognosis, or a partner's verdict may be uttered once, yet its effects can echo across a lifetime-shaping emotional regulation, health, identity, and freedom. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, sociology, evolutionary theory, and clinical practice, this book examines how trusted voices-parents, teachers, medical professionals, clergy, fortune-tellers, digital influencers, intimate partners, and friends-become internal authorities. What begins as guidance and protection can, under certain conditions, harden into obedience, silence, and embodied distress. Integrating attachment theory, polyvagal theory, trauma research, salutogenesis, and the biopsychosocial model, From Wound to Word shows how language operates as a biological, psychological, and social force. It traces the pathways through which authority wounds are transmitted across relationships and institutions-and how those same pathways can be reclaimed for healing, coherence, and agency. Rather than framing recovery as rebellion against authority, this work presents healing as the maturation of authority: a return to authorship, integrity, and self-directed meaning. With clarity and depth, it offers a compelling framework for individuals, clinicians, educators, and institutions seeking to move from control to care, from fragmentation to coherence, and from inherited narratives to conscious creation. This book will resonate with readers interested in mental health, trauma, authority, social systems, and the quiet power of language to wound-or to heal.

Full Product Details

9780645213379

Table of Contents

Reviews

""A profound and unsettling examination of how language, when carried by authority, becomes biologically embedded. Drawing seamlessly on neuroscience, psychotherapy, and social theory, this book reveals how words shape identity, health, and freedom-and how reclaiming authorship is a genuine act of healing."" ""This book gives language back its weight. With clarity and compassion, it shows how seemingly ordinary words from parents, teachers, doctors, and partners can become lifelong inner laws-and how those laws can finally be questioned and rewritten. Essential reading for therapists and anyone working with trauma, anxiety, or shame."" ""Once you read this, you will never hear authority the same way again. This is a powerful, humane guide to understanding how words wound-and how awareness can return agency, dignity, and freedom. A rare book that is intellectually rigorous and deeply liberating.""

Author Information

Bandara Bandaranayake, PhD, is a psychotherapist, academic, and author with interdisciplinary training in psychology, education, and social theory. His work integrates neuroscience, attachment theory, salutogenesis, and clinical insight to explore how language, authority, and culture shape mental health and human agency.Drawing on decades of experience across academia, public service, and therapeutic practice, he writes at the intersection of science, meaning, and lived experience. His work focuses on restoring coherence, agency, and authorship in individuals and systems affected by authority-based harm.

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