Good Morning, Monster

Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner is a deeply human exploration of psychological survival and healing, told through the intimate lens of long-term therapy. Rather than presenting abstract theories or diagnostic manuals, Gildiner invites readers into the therapy room, where pain unfolds slowly, trust is fragile, and progress is nonlinear. The book chronicles the therapeutic journeys of five patients—Laura, Peter, Danny, Alana, and Madeline—each shaped by profound childhood trauma and each struggling with its aftershocks in adulthood.

What emerges is not simply a collection of case studies, but a meditation on what it means to endure the unbearable and still build a life. Gildiner writes as both clinician and witness, showing how early wounds distort identity, relationships, and self-worth, while also revealing the astonishing ingenuity people use to stay alive emotionally. The book’s power lies in its refusal to sensationalize trauma. Instead, it lingers on the slow, painstaking work of understanding, naming, and eventually loosening the grip of the past.

Childhood as the Blueprint for the Adult Mind

One of the book’s central assertions is that early experiences do not fade quietly into memory; they embed themselves into the nervous system and shape how adults interpret the world. For the patients in Good Morning, Monster, childhood was not a place of safety but of threat, confusion, and betrayal. Abuse, neglect, and emotional abandonment did not merely hurt them at the time—it rewired how they understood love, danger, and their own value.

Gildiner illustrates how children adapt to unbearable environments by developing strategies that ensure survival. These adaptations are often ingenious, even heroic. Yet what protects a child can later imprison an adult. Emotional numbing, dissociation, hyper-independence, people-pleasing, and self-erasure all appear in different forms across the stories. Therapy, in this sense, is not about fixing what is broken, but about understanding why these strategies once made sense—and why they no longer serve.

The book repeatedly underscores that trauma inflicted by caregivers is especially damaging. When the people meant to protect instead harm, the child’s internal compass is distorted. Trust becomes dangerous. Love feels conditional or predatory. As adults, these individuals often blame themselves for struggles that are, in reality, logical consequences of early environments that offered no safe alternatives.

Laura: Intelligence as Armor

Laura’s story opens the book with urgency and emotional force. She arrives in therapy consumed by shame after a herpes diagnosis, convinced that this single fact has rendered her unlovable and monstrous. Yet as sessions unfold, it becomes clear that the diagnosis is merely the trigger—not the root—of her distress.

Laura grew up in a household marked by cruelty, neglect, and instability. Her mother was emotionally absent and punitive, while her father failed to protect her from harm. From an early age, Laura learned that vulnerability invited attack. In response, she cultivated sharp intelligence, self-reliance, and fierce control over her environment. These qualities allowed her to survive and to excel, but they also isolated her.

Gildiner carefully traces how Laura’s internal narrative—“I am defective”—originated long before her adult relationships. Therapy becomes a process of dismantling ...