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

Whatever role we are loved for in our family, we will continue to enact it, despite the toll it takes.

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.

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.

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.

unconscious never cares for the facts.

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.

When you go from fearing your mother to feeling sorry for her, it usually means you’ve travelled a long way toward 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.

Anger is a defense, not a feeling, ....analyze what feeling the anger was covering.

Effective therapy is about lowering your defences so that you can deal with the issues that arise in your life.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

psychological technique called reframing: taking a concept and relabelling it so as to alter its meaning.

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.

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.

Remember, you’re bruised but not broken.

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.

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.

The only thing I do know is that when your mother labels you negatively, you believe her—for who else forms your self-image?

Children who are given adult responsibilities when they’re too young to handle them are forever after worried about properly fulfilling their responsibilities; they never seem to accept that they were too young to manage the task but instead internalize their failure to accomplish it.

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.

Danny used one of the most powerful defences known in psychology: depersonalization. He cut off all his feelings. It was the perfect armour. The only problem with his perfect weapon was that he could barely attach to anyone, or feel life’s pleasures. As he said at the beginning of our work together, “I don’t need joy.” He was right, in a way. Is it better to feel or to maintain your sanity? For many years, he chose the latter.

Intimacy is a hard language to learn, especially if it’s been discouraged. But you’ve done it.

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.

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.

Therapy is a lot like growing a tree. For the first few years there appears to be no major growth, but by the third year, after the roots have established themselves and can support the trunk, the tree shoots upward.