Good Morning, Monster

A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

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Catherine Gildiner: Good Morning, Monster (2020, St. Martin's Press)

368 pages

English language

Published July 10, 2020 by St. Martin's Press.

ISBN:
978-1-250-27226-3
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4 stars (5 reviews)

4 editions

Review of 'Good Morning, Monster' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Fascinating and fantastic experience to listen to this audiobook.

This book is a collection of stories from the author's experience as a therapist. She calls them psychological heroes, but I like the term warriors. All of them come from different socio-economic strata but have gone through highly different upbringings—abusive parents, appalling residential schools, failed states/institutions, and negligent parents chasing their demons.

What stood out for me was the author's compassionate and kind gaze on the patients and their experiences. Also, her ability to interweave her views as a therapist while telling the stories was amazing. Many terms like transference, reframing, dissociative identity disorder, and separation anxiety were explained in the context of stories that make a newbie like me appreciate the craft of therapy a lot.

If you are interested in some sort of inner work—therapy or coaching or just curious about how parental overlords impact their kids in the …

The stories of "recoveries" from the perspective of the therapist

5 stars

An interesting behind the scenes narrative of the stories of 5 patients: not only the stories are well narrated but the therapist also shares her approach to it as well as the mistakes she made along the way.

Careful reading/listening: some elements are quite graphic and can be painfully triggering.

Review of 'Good Morning, Monster' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

have always been in awe of the resilience of humans, and this books basically compounds my awe. very difficult to read at times, and i skipped a story because it was too traumatic. the author is very candid in sharing where she failed, where she helped and also what was it about her patients that helped them overcome unsurmountable odds.

moral of the story: humans are fucking rockstars.

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