Catherine Gildiner > Quotes

“Whatever role we are loved for in our family, we will continue to enact it, despite the toll it takes.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Anger is not a feeling; it’s a defence. When you can’t acknowledge your true feelings because they’re too excruciating, you defend against them with anger.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“powerlessness in a relationship is one of the main causes of stress or anxiety. Making psychological changes also provokes anxiety. It’s very hard to break a habit, especially when you’ve adapted yourself to a particular pattern that, however maladaptive, has kept you alive. The unconscious is powerful, and it will fight to the death to keep an old pattern in place.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Workaholism is another compulsion - you work because you feel anxious when you're not working. Some psychologists see it as an addiction, and certainly our modern culture has glorified it. It's not unusual to hear people say proudly that they do nothing but work. Substitute another addiction in that sentence - "I do nothing but drink," say - and it doesn't sound so virtuous.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“unconscious never cares for the facts.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Patients who were rarely praised as children, often distrust the positive things people say about them as adults. A child's concept of self is formed in childhood and it takes a long time with many affirmative examples to turn that self-concept around.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“People who don’t feel pain can’t feel joy.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“When you go from fearing your mother to feeling sorry for her, it usually means you’ve travelled a long way toward recovery.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Intimacy is when you’re familiar with your emotions, then share your feelings, your fears, your shame, your hopes and joys with another person.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Anger is a defense, not a feeling, ....analyze what feeling
the anger was covering.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning Monster

“If a person is continually stressed, the stress uses up the immune system and there’s nothing left to fight cancer. (Research has shown that children who suffer abuse are about 50 percent more likely to get cancer than other children.)”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Effective therapy is about lowering your defences so that you can deal with the issues that arise in your life.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“What puzzled me was why I seemed to be so troubled by all these irregularities and exceptions to major rules while others blithely marched ahead.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir

“The second revelation occurred when her unconscious released the idea, or the false belief, that her mother would love her only if she were totally perfect. Of course, that wasn’t true. Her mother was incapable of loving her, and being perfect wouldn’t alter that fact. That insight helped to free Madeline from trying so hard to please her mother.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Why have boundaries if everyone is going to drive through them, leaving nothing but rubble? No one’s going to do what I want. Why should they?” Laura had just perfectly defined powerlessness, and powerlessness in a relationship is one of the main causes of stress or anxiety.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“People who have PTSD are hyper-alert. Their immune system never rests—it’s seen so much danger that it’s scanning the environment constantly.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“The problem with a small town is that when you don't buy into the powers that be there are very few other choices. It's like a play where there is only a "virtuous" lead, a villain, and bit players. Better to be the villain because you're not duped into believing you're in more than a play, and at least your name goes on the program.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Too Close to the Falls: A Memoir

“One thing I know is that we all do things we’re ashamed of. Shame erupts when you violate some taboo. Anyone who says they haven’t suffered shame either hasn’t lived or else is lying.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“The ego—one’s sense of self—is an abstract concept; it’s hard to define it concretely. Picture it as a house built brick by brick. It protects you from the stresses of the outside world, providing a metaphorical home to shelter in—a safe place.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“psychological technique called reframing: taking a concept and relabelling it so as to alter its meaning.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“In therapy, when pathological defenses start to crumble, the patient lets in more material from their background that they've been defending against. Suddenly, memories emerge that were unavailable at the beginning of the therapy. When Laura had been intent on defending her father, she'd blocked many of her negative memories of him; but now, after two years of therapy, those painful memories began to flow like hot lava.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Remember, you’re bruised but not broken.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“The only thing I do know is that when your mother labels you negatively, you believe her—for who else forms your self-image?”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“True insights happen only when the therapist gets out of the way so that the patient is able to gain his or her own psychological knowledge.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“gave me a going-away present on behalf of Rochdale, a book by Paul Tillich called The Courage To Be. Bob wrote inside, Cathy, read this sometime in your life when you need “to be.” He was right. Later in my life when I was at a low that book pulled me through.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Coming Ashore

“When people share their feelings, they feel better, less stressed and less anxious. If you plan on having a life partner, it’s emotional intimacy that will be the glue that holds you together long after the physical intimacy fades.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“True narcissists, like Charlotte, never think they’re wrong. When they react by lashing out, they’re convinced that they’re simply defending themselves against some nefarious provocation from someone trying to harm them. When they feel threatened, they go into overdrive and retaliate quickly. Narcissism can be described as a trigger-happy defence.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Intimacy is a hard language to learn, especially if it’s been discouraged. But you’ve done it.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“Making psychological changes also provokes anxiety. It’s very hard to break a habit, especially when you’ve adapted yourself to a particular pattern that, however maladaptive, has kept you alive. The unconscious is powerful, and it will fight to the death to keep an old pattern in place.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery

“every time she felt angry she should remember that anger is a defence, not a feeling, and to analyze what feeling the anger was covering.”
― Catherine Gildiner, Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery