Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

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And there are definitely many descriptions that might trigger you, if you have a history of abuse, neglect, assault or trauma. The stories of each patient are so insightful that one begins to see parts of themselves in Cathrine Gildiner's analysis'. It is interesting to note that in writing the book there is an "ah-ha

Good Morning, Monster Summary of Key Ideas and Review Good Morning, Monster Summary of Key Ideas and Review

Many thanks to Net Galley, St. Martin’s Press, and Ms. Catherine Gildiner for the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. Opinions are mine alone and are not biased in any way. If you are looking for a book that tells you in detail what a therapist thinks about her clients and how she tries to help solve their problems, and you also want to read the tragic but true stories of people who were abandoned, neglected, suffered different forms of abuse, this could be the book for you.

She also quotes works and theories from other psychologists, some known and others completely unknown to me. Dr. G. writes with sincerity, honesty and compassion about her patients; her respect for each of them clearly shines through in her words. If you're going to choose to read this book, realize that it has many things discussed in detail that could be triggering and traumatic. One of the cases in particular is pretty detailed with the sexual abuse of a child and it was heartbreaking and gut-wrenching for me and I'm not personally affected by it. These are heart-wrenching stories of survival; the depiction of lives rising up to be lived despite the insurmountable odds erected against them. Calling these people heroes is apt. However, there is a palpable distance to be found in the account of their struggles. I suspect this has something to do with the Freudian leanings of their therapist - a methodology that is not relational or connective. She was, per her theoretical stance, not on the journey with them but more an audience to it; which is fine in the treatment dynamic but leaves much empathy and understanding unavailable to be tapped in a literary venue. As a result, the telling became a bit prurient for me. Less five testimonials to courage than five sensationalized accounts of Alice down her rabbit hole.

Good Morning, Monster - Penguin Random House Canada Good Morning, Monster - Penguin Random House Canada

Heart-wrenching stories... [that] inspire awe for the ways people who suffered horrific abuse were able to find a measure of recovery." — Publisher's Weekly Have you ever started unwrapping a present, expecting one layer of wrapping paper, but found a mischievous relative added layer after layer for you to dig through to find the present? Even if you haven’t, imagine the surprise you might feel at encountering more layers than you’d expected! Gildiner is astute, active, pragmatic, and hopeful. She is also very funny. Her wit and her wisdom are gifts shared with these five people — and now with all of us readers." — David S. Goldbloom, co-author of How Can I Help?: A week in My Life as a Psychiatrist A llows one the privilege of seeing the therapist-patient relationship as an essentially human interaction." — JM Coetzee, Winner of the Nobel Prize for LiteratureFirst of all, Good Morning, Monster is heart-breaking, because the book tells the stories of real people and the horrors they had to endure over long periods of time. There are so many abysmal things these men and women went through that I found it hard to read on at times. The book made me cry more than once, and since the stories told are at times rather detailed, it is sometimes a long way in each story until you see the success, if you want to, you can call that the happy ending. Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of GOOD MORNING MONSTER by Catherine Gildiner in exchange for my honest review.*** The book’s subtitle - A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery - is the perfect content summary. I was actually surprised to find that the patients she profiled weren’t psychopaths given the “monster” in the primary title. Rather, they were just people trying to be functioning adults after horrible (HORRIBLE) childhoods. Case in point, a woman whose hateful mother greeted her each day with, “good morning, monster.” At times, I had to swallow my gorge (with immense difficulty) and struggle not to vomit during Alana's tale of survival and the near incomprehensible suffering she triumphed over.