I also keep remembering how insane her tangent was about the obgyn she met at Central Park who had just had a patient die.

These five people may at first have seemed vastly different, yet when the economic and cultural layers were peeled away, their unconscious needs were strikingly similar. Heartbreaking, surprising, inspiring, and profound, this is ultimately a book about the power of connection and the triumph of the human spirit. But sooner or later you might be able to see that there is a way of healing for you, and this is where I see a book like Good Morning, Monster can be extremely valuable.I fell prey to the marketing for Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life, and, for some twisted reason, I actually finished that awful book despite it being one of the most cringey reading experiences I've ever had the displeasure of going through. There is Peter, the son of immigrants, who was consigned nearly from birth to years spent alone in a room above the family restaurant; years that left him with developmental deficits harsh enough to deny him the intimacy he so required as an adult. 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. I found the author to be very candid in her successes and failures with these patients, sharing different strategies she implemented well and mistakes that caused setbacks.

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. The psychologist/ author Gildiner, chose 5 of her most horribly traumatized patients, and wrote about each of these " heroes". I respected how she recounts her own failings as a psychologist, how she missed certain signs in some of her patients that led to a regression in their therapy and forced her to take into account her mistakes and how she could do herself and her patient better. If you're looking for help with a personal book recommendation, consult our Weekly Recommendation Thread, Suggested Reading page, or ask in r/suggestmeabook. And there are definitely many descriptions that might trigger you, if you have a history of abuse, neglect, assault or trauma.Her first patient, Laura, came to Gildiner hoping for a one-session cure for stress at 26 years of age and, instead, ended up staying in therapy for several years.

Gild is incredibly insightful, and there are so many good reminders about therapy in this unputdownable book! Visi penki aprašyti atvejai – tai iš pažiūros sėkmingi žmonės, padarę šaunias karjeras, sukūrę šeimas, jokių materialių dalykų nestokojantys. Psychologist Catherine Gildiner profiles five patients with whom she worked during her career as a therapist.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. I have personally dealt with caregivers and siblings and their personalities warped by alcoholism, drugs, sexual addiction, and psychopathy. And in the midst of digging up the deep history behind Madeline’s poor mental health, Cathy faces personal struggles of her own. Danny’s trauma began when he and his sister were forcefully placed in a residential school—a practice instituted in the 1960s by the Canadian government and intended to force assimilation of Indigenous people into white society. Catherine Gildiner practised psychotherapy for twenty-five years (before retiring to concentrate on creative writing, which led to her three well-received memoirs and one novel), and in her latest nonfiction effort, Good Morning, Monster, Gildiner describes the therapeutic histories of five patients whose journeys to recovery she describes as “heroic”.