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

A therapist creates moving portraits of five of her most memorable patients, men and women she considers psychological heroes. Catherine Gildiner is a bestselling memoirist, a novelist, and a psychologist in private practice for twenty-five years. In Good Morning, Monster, she focuses on five patients who overcame enormous trauma--people she considers heroes. With a novelist's storytelling gift, Gildiner recounts the details of their struggles, their paths to recovery, and her own tale of growth as a therapist. The five cases include a successful but lonely musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her and her siblings in a rural cottage; an Indigenous man who'd endured great trauma at a residential school; a young woman whose abuse at the hands of her father led to a severe personality disorder; and a glamorous workaholic whose negligent mother had greeted her each morning with "Good morning, Monster." Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years. They seek Gildiner's help to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried. It will take courage to face those realities, and creativity and resourcefulness from their therapist. Each patient embodies self-reflection, stoicism, perseverance, and forgiveness as they work unflinchingly to face the truth. Gildiner's account of her journeys with them is moving, insightful, and sometimes humorous. It offers a behind-the-scenes look into the therapist's office and explains how the process can heal even the most unimaginable wounds.

This is an inspiring and humbling book – five stories of people who came through childhood neglect and abuse, repairing a damaged sense of self and bravely reconnecting to the world and other people. If I get upset about anything that happens to me, I just have to think of what they endured, and try to emulate their strength and courage.

Written by a therapist, this gives an interesting glimpse into the therapeutic process, including failures and setbacks along the way, and the path to recovery and renewal. While this can be extremely valuable for those going through similar issues, it also made me a little uncomfortable at times. There is a voyeuristic element in looking through the private window into someone's life, witnessing such horrible things. We are meant to empathize with them, but there is also a sense of distance that can be disturbing. How can we truly understand another person's suffering, how can we possibly treat it with enough reverence and respect? This includes the author's own abusive upbringing, which she reveals at the end in an oddly naive way, not seeming to fully realize how much it mirrors her own patients' inability to recognize what they have been subjected to. It made me wonder if she herself needed therapy more than she realized.

That said, this is a fascinating, compulsively readable book which gives a glimpse of true heroism, of the noble side of humanity that lurks in the darkest places. We need such images today. I am grateful to the subjects for making their stories available and to the author for sharing them with us.

There's something mesmerizing about reading a book where a therapist shares stories of patients she has treated, something that's almost like listening in on the secret lives of people. That's what Good Morning, Monster is, and the stories Gildiner shares are about five patients who move heroically toward emotional recovery, despite the gross abuses each suffered. It's a startling book, reminding us all, in the words of Plato, to be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

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This was so good! Devastating but inspiring and absolutely uplifting. I've always been fascinated by the wonders of therapy and psychology, and this satisfies all my interests in it and more. The stories were expertly told and I could see everything behind my eyes as I listened to the audiobook - suffice to say, I cried a few times. Highly recommend but please know this comes with trigger warnings!