Catherine Gildiner, GOOD MORNING, MONSTER
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[0:53]The sponsor for this whole Labor Day book last week is firstbook.org.
[0:58]Obviously, the pandemic is crippling education for millions of students, especially those in low-income communities.
[1:04]The widening digital divide and extended quote unquote summer slide due to COVID is devastating.
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[1:20]further educational backsliding absolutely critical. First book breaks down the barriers to education
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[1:44]They need your support to ensure these children have what they need to learn during this
[1:48]critical time. Visit firstbook.org to help Katherine Gildner is the author of Good Morning Monster,
[1:55]a therapist shares five heroic stories of emotional recovery.
[1:58]Katherine was a clinical psychologist in private practice for 25 years. Her best-selling memoir,
[2:03]too close to the falls, was published to international acclaim. She currently lives in Toronto.
[2:08]Welcome, Dr. Gildner. Thank you so much for coming on momstone. Have time to read books.
[2:13]Thank you for inviting me. Good morning, monster. This book like captivated me,
[2:19]interests me, horrified me. Wow, I'm particularly interested in Laura and Madeline. I can't
[2:26]stop thinking about their stories and all the stuff they went through as kids. I have so many
[2:32]questions. Okay, first of all, can you just tell listeners what your book Good Morning Monster is
[2:37]really about and what inspired you to write this? Good Morning Monster is following five
[2:43]patients who've had a really traumatic life. And I guess I got sick of reading all these sad
[2:49]cases all the time about how people just bottomed out. And I thought, wow, I've had people who've
[2:54]lived through absolute hell and they've managed to cling and maintain their sanity. So I wanted
[3:00]to write about, I wanted to write about psychological heroes. You know, heroes are always these
[3:05]action figures, right? And I wanted to write about how these people, I mean, to be a hero,
[3:10]you have to fight against something that's much bigger than you. Otherwise, you're not a hero,
[3:15]right? So I mean, these people manage to do that and they manage to come out with their sanity.
[3:21]And I wanted to say, you know what, this is heroic. And I think it was when Alana said to me one day,
[3:26]oh, I'm such a screw up. And I wanted to say, because she said, I taught this guy computer science and
[3:31]now he's, you know, everyone knows him, but I'm the one that taught him. And I said, you know what?
[3:37]He had two parents who sent him to Harvard. He's been in, you know, all of these great,
[3:41]he had all these opportunities. And you said, if you lined up everybody who had been treated the
[3:46]way you've been treated, they'd be in back rooms of mental hospitals, right? I said, you are seeing
[3:52]people that have been treated the way you have. And you would see that you're a real hero.
[3:55]You know, I saw I wanted them to see because they were, you know, people to compare themselves to
[4:00]other people who've had advantages, normal parents. And they say, you know, what's wrong with me?
[4:05]So I wanted people to see, you know, you can, a lot can go wrong and you can still pull it out.
[4:11]Wow. So this is not your first book. In fact, you talk in this book about how you left your
[4:17]practice for a while, wrote, and then we're dragged back in by a very persuasive Duncan who like,
[4:24]just you couldn't take no for an answer. I know. I know. So tell me about this sort of intersection
[4:30]in your life between therapy and writing. And what made you stop therapy for a while, start writing
[4:37]and now like, meld the two like this. Right. Well, I mean, I joke that at age 50, I ran out of empathy.
[4:46]I just, I had just worked really, I just worked too hard. And then I said, okay, I also wrote a
[4:52]column for shadowing, which is kind of like, you know, red book or good housekeeping in the US. I
[4:58]wrote it in Canada. And so it's, you know, giving unwanted advice to people that haven't asked for it.
[5:02]So I wrote that for 15 years. And people said, you know, oh, you have a turn of phrase and you
[5:08]should do this or that or the other thing. And then I was at a dinner party once. And someone
[5:13]was said, Oh, I was 16 years old. And, you know, I was so terrified to go to camp and blah, blah,
[5:18]and I thought, wow, she's, I said, didn't your parents ever have you get a job? And they said,
[5:23]no, no, she said never. Because I, you know, they like me to take courses in the summer.
[5:28]And I said, well, I don't understand that because I worked full-time from the age of four. So then
[5:33]people said, oh my God, you should write that up. Right. So I wrote my first memoir. And I was shocked.
[5:39]It was on the bestseller list for 150 weeks or something. Then I wrote the second and the third.
[5:44]And then my life ended at 25 when I married. Right. So I didn't write anymore.
[5:49]Life is over when you have children in Mary. Right. As, you know, as the title of your blog says,
[5:53]yeah. And then I wrote a novel about my PhD because I was interested in the philosophy of science on
[5:59]Darwin's influence on Freud. And then it took me honestly 25 years. I think I was so burned out from
[6:06]being a therapist that after 25 years, I started thinking about all these people and they kept
[6:11]coming into my mind. And I was walking on the street one day with a friend. And there was a guy
[6:16]very sad man lying on a great trying to get warm homeless. And she said, look at him. He's able
[6:23]bodied. He's like 25 years old. Why can't I mean, why can't he walk in and ask somebody for a job?
[6:29]And I just thought you have no idea what this person has gone through. I mean, if they didn't have
[6:34]arms and legs, you feel sorry for them. Right. But you don't see what's gone on in somebody who's
[6:39]had a horribly difficult life. You don't see if you could see their brain and you could see all
[6:43]their memories. You'd say, oh, that poor thing. But, you know, people don't. So I thought, I thought,
[6:48]I am going to write that book. And yeah, people like Atlanta kept coming back to my mind. So I
[6:53]wanted to write it. But I needed a long break before I wrote. Yeah. How did you pick these patients? And
[6:59]I know you said there's sort of summer composites and you didn't use real names. But how did you
[7:04]come up with these five for a good morning monster? Well, it's really ridiculous because I
[7:09]quantitative person. So what I did was I said, I have to go over every patient that I've had.
[7:13]For first of all, I sat down and made a list of these five when I thought of writing the book.
[7:17]And then I went and went over every file, said, maybe I should do this. Maybe the demographic would
[7:23]be better if I did that. Maybe I went through all this stuff. And then I just did the first five
[7:27]that we're still in my heart. You know, I thought I went through all the marketing stuff and all that.
[7:32]And I thought, it doesn't matter. If I don't write about people that I really that are still in my
[7:36]psyche after 25 years, it's not going to work. So those were the five people that I came up with.
[7:41]I thought it was really interesting that you said that good therapy, there has to be some sort of
[7:46]connection. Like you can't not like your patient. You have to it doesn't have to be like
[7:50]is the wrong word. But you have to feel that sort of bond with them in some way to go through it.
[7:55]Tell me a little more about that. Well, when I want to say you have to like your patient,
[7:59]you have to bond in some way to that patient. Like I for a number of years in this, I worked in
[8:05]psychiatric hospital in forensic. Those are psychiatric problems, but also criminals. So even if they
[8:12]said, you know, I killed my mother, I couldn't take another second of my stepmother. I had to
[8:17]sort of empathize with that. And I had to say, oh, okay. But then I had to see it totally from
[8:22]his perspective. And sometimes I can't you can't see other people's perspective. You know,
[8:28]like there's certain things that like, for example, I don't see obsessive compulsives because I
[8:34]just don't relate. You know, like, well, because they obsessively talk about the same thing,
[8:37]right? So I mean, I in a lot of that, I try not to see people where there's something a little
[8:42]bit wrong with their brain, like with obsessive is they usually are born that way, right? So
[8:46]as though I try, I would much rather see like somebody who was perfectly okay and then just got
[8:52]off the path. And then I like to work together to to bring them back. But I mean, but there are
[8:57]people that you just don't click with. You know, oh, actually, I was saying this the other day,
[9:02]sorry, I cut the grass today. And I think I put napalm on it.
[9:08]Healing me. But you know, what my editor pointed out, which is silly because I'm not,
[9:12]I mean, I'm a psychologist and I should have seen this myself, is that every single one of those
[9:17]people, a woman in the book, were raised by their father. Yeah. And I was too. So I thought,
[9:24]oh, my gosh, you know, that is I didn't see that ever, right? And I thought, how could I not have
[9:30]seen that? Because it's true of all the women, like the other mothers are distant figures or
[9:36]troubled figures. And the father is the is the major parent. So I think unconsciously, I related to
[9:43]that. I feel like this book is also one of those truth is stranger than fiction examples. Because
[9:49]if you had made this up, it would have been too far fetched, you know, that these parents could
[9:54]leave, for instance, that if father could leave his three kids in a cabin, in the woods, you know,
[10:00]I would have a nine-year-old take care of them
[10:01]and then another father.
[10:03]And even that a couple could go off to Russia
[10:06]and leave their 11-year-old daughter alone in the house
[10:09]for a month.
[10:10]I mean, it's like, I don't know.
[10:12]Some of these things, I'm like, could this really happen?
[10:14]And yet it did.
[10:15]And you have to deal with the aftermath.
[10:17]And I thought one of another really interesting part
[10:19]of this story was that some of the things
[10:23]that seemed so obvious to us as like sort of not,
[10:25]I mean, not to call myself normal in any way,
[10:27]but let's just say like, I don't know.
[10:29]Well, as a regular reader of this could obviously
[10:33]see that huge holes in the parenting and the detriment
[10:37]done and yet other, the patients themselves saw it
[10:41]as just life, right?
[10:42]Like they didn't know any different.
[10:43]Absolutely.
[10:44]Like, look at Laura, the example when the father left her,
[10:47]she said, what is the problem?
[10:48]I was already eight years old.
[10:50]I couldn't have the left.
[10:52]And so I mean, I had to spend a lot of time explaining
[10:54]what an eight-year-old could do.
[10:55]I took her to see eight-year-olds.
[10:57]That was so great.
[10:58]I loved that.
[10:59]Yeah.
[10:59]So she saw all of them, but she's kind of funny in her own way
[11:02]amusing.
[11:03]I mean, so when we got in the car, I said, well,
[11:05]and she said, well, they were immature.
[11:08]So I mean, it took her a long time because the father was
[11:11]like, I need you to be an adult.
[11:13]And she said, OK, if you love me, and I'll be an adult,
[11:17]that was their deal, right?
[11:19]He never criticized her, but she had to be the adult.
[11:22]And I mean, her childhood wasn't that hard.
[11:25]But what was hard was when she was an adult,
[11:28]and she began looking for other for men to be with.
[11:31]She always picked people that she had to take care of,
[11:35]because she was bonded to that behavior.
[11:37]She misunderstood bonding for love.
[11:40]I feel like you're so good, obviously.
[11:42]It's seeing all these patterns that the patients themselves
[11:45]can't even see, even like Madeline in terms of how she
[11:48]staffed her company.
[11:51]That you can recreate, which is something
[11:53]I had never really thought about before,
[11:54]that you hear about people marrying spouses that have
[11:58]some of the characteristics of their parents
[12:00]that they're still wrestling with.
[12:01]But it hadn't occurred to me that people
[12:03]do this in the workplace, that you could have people work
[12:06]for you who have the same thing.
[12:07]Tell me a little about that.
[12:09]Well, that was something that Madeline and I
[12:11]worked on all the time, because she always made the point
[12:15]that she was in a very specialized field.
[12:19]So she said, well, he's the only person in the world
[12:22]that can do this.
[12:24]And I would say, that's ridiculous.
[12:26]He's rude all the time.
[12:28]If he would see me, he'd say, are you here again?
[12:30]I mean, this is a ridiculous behavior.
[12:33]She said, no, we all have to put up with it.
[12:35]But I said, no, you had to put up with your mother,
[12:37]because you didn't have a choice.
[12:38]But yes, he is the only Hungarian that can understand 14th century
[12:44]religious iconography.
[12:46]But I'm sure there are others.
[12:49]So I mean, she surrounded and she surrounded herself
[12:51]with incredibly difficult clients,
[12:55]like people that were in the mafia and other countries,
[12:58]et cetera.
[12:58]And they had, it was just awful.
[13:01]Because I mean, who has millions and millions of dollars?
[13:03]Some very good people and some people that are bad.
[13:06]So they would then not pay their bill.
[13:10]And I'd left all of that out, because I
[13:11]didn't want to be killed myself.
[13:15]But I mean, she recreated her family.
[13:18]And her family was, I mean, the insanity
[13:21]that happened with her mother, her biological mother,
[13:25]and then Kathy, who her father ends up with next.
[13:29]Oh, it's like unthinkable that her stepmother
[13:33]would essentially break all of the antiques
[13:35]and her childhood home, not let her back in.
[13:38]And that this sort of went on.
[13:40]And that the father would tolerate it.
[13:41]That just kept going on.
[13:43]And he's like, sorry.
[13:45]And that's when she had her huge collapse
[13:47]was after that antique thing.
[13:49]And then I think he felt so guilty that he actually
[13:51]followed me to coffee shop every day and said, please,
[13:54]be her therapist.
[13:55]I said, I'm retired.
[13:56]I'm finally, he's a successful businessman.
[13:59]He wore me down.
[14:01]So I finally said, OK, I will do it.
[14:04]But I mean, people think, oh, I wanted to include in Madeline,
[14:07]because people think people that have a lot of wealth
[14:10]are happy.
[14:12]And that money really makes you happy.
[14:13]I mean, it's so trite, right?
[14:15]But what they don't realize is that like, very often,
[14:18]like he was from a very independently wealthy family
[14:21]for goes back generations in Canada.
[14:23]And his name is a very common name, not in the newspapers
[14:26]and everything.
[14:27]And they were gold diggers after him, right?
[14:30]I mean, that's what, that's what, it's an old fashioned term,
[14:33]right?
[14:34]But before women, this is in the 30s, right?
[14:37]This is before women had a chance to be what they wanted to be.
[14:40]So your only chance in life was marry this wealthy guy.
[14:43]So her mother sent her to the Hamptons
[14:45]and said, don't come home unless you're engaged to him, right?
[14:50]And so I mean, he, I mean, you can say,
[14:53]why would you marry someone so awful?
[14:54]Well, she put on a really good act for about four or five months.
[14:58]And then she recognized that he wasn't the type
[15:00]to get it divorced.
[15:01]We don't divorce in our family, you know, that sort of thing.
[15:05]And also, I mean, the wealth covers a lot of pathology.
[15:09]You know, I mean, because I mean,
[15:10]the editor pointed this out to me.
[15:12]And that's when I included it in the book.
[15:14]If you had like Laura was abandoned in a tiny cabin, right?
[15:18]But Natalie was abandoned too.
[15:20]She was, her parents went to Russia.
[15:22]And then, you know, the alarms went off, you know,
[15:25]the alarm from the storm, the police came,
[15:28]and the police were terrified of the family
[15:30]because they lived in a huge estate.
[15:32]And they said, oh, well, okay,
[15:34]I guess she'll be okay.
[15:35]If they lived in a housing project,
[15:37]they would have immediately called CAS and gotten help for her.
[15:40]But, you know, they were insulated by this wealth.
[15:43]And then, you know, neurosis didn't appear as neurosis.
[15:47]So interesting.
[15:48]Oh, my gosh.
[15:49]And I couldn't believe that whole scene
[15:51]and that the neighbor had to get her housekeeper
[15:53]as daughter to come visit.
[15:54]And I mean, I mean, just, you know,
[15:57]that housekeeper's daughter is still with her.
[15:59]No way.
[16:00]Yeah.
[16:01]Yeah.
[16:02]She's, she's made several moves with her
[16:04]and still, you know, that is an interesting bond.
[16:07]It was also funny to me that you admitted several times
[16:10]mistakes that you felt like you had made in your treatment.
[16:13]And I guess you know that like therapists
[16:15]must make mistakes, but it had never really,
[16:18]I had never really thought through how,
[16:19]like how much that would stay with you
[16:20]or what you, what you would view as a mistake and why.
[16:24]And, anyway, tell me about some of that
[16:26]and like the regret of some of the ways
[16:28]you've handled things versus all the great things, you know.
[16:30]Right.
[16:31]Well, I, you know, when I wrote the book,
[16:33]I wanted to show how much I'd grown as a therapist
[16:36]and people, you know, when you first start out,
[16:38]you don't know anything, right?
[16:39]You know, everything in books
[16:41]and you can get straight A's and, you know,
[16:43]feel really confident.
[16:44]But my first patient was Laura who walked in and said,
[16:46]I'm not giving a history.
[16:48]Yeah.
[16:49]Forget it.
[16:50]Those are the village idiots.
[16:51]She said, I'm not giving a history.
[16:52]And I thought, oh my God.
[16:53]This is like little, you know, I mean,
[16:55]every single case I saw you'd say,
[16:57]I'm collecting a history, right?
[16:58]Even if they were psychotic and said they were the Virgin Mary,
[17:00]they gave a history, right?
[17:02]So I thought I'm the one that has to make this happen
[17:06]during the hour that it's happening.
[17:08]Like it's only 50% to academic.
[17:11]The rest of it is finding a way to deal with people's defenses.
[17:14]Yeah. So I thought the whole thing would be,
[17:17]I'm going to show how I learned with each case
[17:20]and then by the end, I'll be like, you know,
[17:22]a pretty good therapist, right?
[17:24]The opposite happened, the opposite happened, right?
[17:26]But my, I made majority of mistakes in my last case,
[17:29]which was the Madeline case, you know?
[17:32]And I just couldn't figure out what I had done wrong.
[17:36]And then, you know, I realized everybody has a transference.
[17:40]Everybody, you know, Duncan was very like my dad, you know,
[17:44]starts shirt best every day, you know, tie.
[17:48]And, you know, he ran a business as well.
[17:51]She was an only child.
[17:52]They never ate at home.
[17:53]We never ate at home.
[17:54]The father always said, you know,
[17:56]like sometimes the mother would be so bad
[17:58]that the both the father and the daughter
[18:00]would run into each other in the basement
[18:02]and they would eat Cheerios together, you know, right?
[18:07]So, so, but my mother wasn't bad at all,
[18:10]but I mean, I recognized all of these things
[18:12]that were similar, but I didn't,
[18:15]I didn't understand, and I never held him responsible.
[18:18]I mean, I'd say, well, he can't do it.
[18:20]I guess he just can't, you know,
[18:21]get his second wife to, you know, let her in.
[18:23]But I never really laid into him about that.
[18:27]And, you know, and he brought me into this chaotic scene
[18:31]of flying into New York with all of these, you know,
[18:35]distractions all around me where I was like, you know,
[18:38]so I mean, I shouldn't have allowed any of that, right?
[18:41]And so then when I went, I ran and examined it.
[18:43]I realized it was like, he was like my dad.
[18:46]And my dad had a brain tumor and lost his mind at 45,
[18:51]I think, or 50.
[18:52]And so he was my father before everything fell apart.
[18:57]And I was kind of, and I was protecting him, you know.
[19:00]Yeah, so anyway, one time somebody was looking at the paper
[19:02]and they looked at the picture of John Lennon and said,
[19:05]gee, that looks like your dad, you know,
[19:07]so it wasn't just me that thought that, right?
[19:10]But, you know, I should have,
[19:11]but I did finally go and get my own therapy and said,
[19:14]you know, like, what's going on here?
[19:15]And he said, it's so obvious.
[19:17]It's like, you know, psych 101, father attachment, you know,
[19:21]so you have to be really careful of making
[19:23]those kinds of mistakes for the Danny thing.
[19:26]The Danny is, I don't know if you know that
[19:29]and can you probably do, but, you know,
[19:31]in the US, everything is black, white, race problem, right?
[19:35]I mean, those are your, that's the big problem.
[19:37]In Canada, it's native white issues.
[19:40]So that's the news every night.
[19:41]That's, you know, because we have way more natives
[19:43]and there's been a huge amount of, you know,
[19:45]residential schools where everybody hasn't been parented.
[19:48]You know, so that is sort of Canada's national problem,
[19:51]Canada's national disgrace, et cetera.
[19:54]So I mean, with Danny, the hard part for me
[19:57]was actually learning everything.
[20:00]that I had to know about native culture, not that I learned everything, but that I had to
[20:04]then really hit the wall and not let my ego get the better of me and say, you know what,
[20:10]I can't cure him. I can take him to a certain spot and then he has to go to a healer,
[20:15]he has to go and deal with all of the stuff with natives. I had to say, you know, this is as far
[20:22]as I can take you. But I don't think I would have taken him anywhere if I hadn't had help
[20:28]from native psychiatrists at Harvard who really helped me. You know, like I'd say, well, why won't
[20:33]he talk, right? And he said he's getting to know you. And I thought, really, two months, and this
[20:41]guy has not said a thing, you know. And so then later, I joked about it like five years later when we
[20:47]were a lot closer. I said, yeah, like not talking for months. And he said, oh, he said that didn't
[20:52]bother me. He said, I was get he said, and just what the guy told me, he said, I was getting to know you,
[20:56]and I wasn't going to talk to somebody until I knew them. I said, but how did you know me without
[21:00]talking to me? And he said, that's just one way to know people. Wow. That's crazy. It's amazing
[21:08]the way you've been able to get at all these people and get them past their circumstances and get
[21:14]them out of their own heads and get them to see. I mean, it's really like magic. Like what do you
[21:19]think it is about the people who have become heroes in your practice? Like the people that have
[21:23]become heroes. And even sometimes in their own family is the other people like in the case of
[21:27]Laura with her younger brother and sister, whose lives did not follow her same trajectory.
[21:33]What is it that takes somebody able to sort of withstand her effects or circumstances,
[21:39]whereas somebody in the same family might not? Is there, I mean, there's probably not an answer to
[21:44]this, but no, but look at Laura. Look at Laura. Okay. I mean, her brother and sister really didn't do
[21:49]well. And they did what you would expect from a life like that, right? But remember her father,
[21:56]even though he was neglectful, he was always singing her praises. He was always saying that when she
[22:02]worked on the chip truck with him, but he always praised her. And he was like, Oh, I knew you'd
[22:07]take care of things. Or I knew, you know, you would do this. Hey, you're my number one man,
[22:12]he always said. So I mean, she was loved in a conditional way. Like if you do this for me, I'm going
[22:19]and she thought he was kind of exciting and that that's what a man was. And she thought,
[22:23]what is the big problem here? Why is everybody all upset about him? I mean, it wasn't as though
[22:27]he ever put her down. You know, I mean, he did once when he was in jail and she wore jeans that
[22:32]he didn't like. I said, wow, your father criticized you one time in your whole life. I mean, no wonder
[22:38]she was, you know, and he didn't like the other two kids because they didn't have guts. She was born
[22:42]with a type A personality. He needed that. He reinforced that for his own needs. And she got
[22:49]her ego was built. I mean, it looks like she was neglected. And she was, but neglect is just one
[22:54]thing. Well, the Danny, the next case, what about Danny? First five years were fine.
[23:00]Father was fine. Mother was fine. They lived in a happy home. They mean, they were
[23:04]hunters and gatherers and they lived out in the woods. But they, they were a functioning unit.
[23:09]You know, there was no alcoholism. They were, they were perfectly happy unit until he was taken
[23:14]put in residential school sexually abused. Parents lost their way of living. They said they,
[23:19]they couldn't live out in the woods anymore. They had to come in to a reserve. Then they,
[23:24]there was no job he could do because he was a hunter. So then he became an alcoholic. Everything fell
[23:28]apart. But the first five years, everything worked. You know, I mean, when you look at something
[23:33]like Madeline, Madeline really saw the father. She finally recognized in the end that he loved her.
[23:40]But he had some sort of weakness with psychopathic women. And he, he, that was his weakness.
[23:47]And he couldn't stand up to them. And it's shocking that he would have a second one after the
[23:51]hell of the first one. Right. So, but, and then sort of saying, okay, that's his weakness.
[23:57]Can I give can I forgive him? I mean, that was her, that was part of her issue. And with the
[24:02]mother, I said, it's not important to forgive your mother. Right. Important is to see that she was a
[24:07]very damaged person. You know, that she was so damaged. She couldn't love anyone. And, and she said,
[24:13]well, then why does she so mean to me? I could live with not being loved. Right. And she went to
[24:18]private school and she was on the tennis team and on the debating team. And she's gorgeous in
[24:22]everything. So you can say, what's, you know, she just couldn't be perfect enough. And I said,
[24:26]you know what it's like to be a mother and not be able to do the job. You're watching all these
[24:31]other mothers, which she called mother hands and overprotective when they were really just being
[24:36]mothers. And so naturally you become hostile to this child who has needs and you have no idea
[24:42]how to fulfill them. You had one quote. I don't know if I still, if I can find it or not. But you
[24:47]said something about how at one point you realize that you can stop being angry and upset with your
[24:52]mother and just feel sorry for your mother. And like that transition is such a key point in the
[24:58]therapy too. Yes, absolutely. Because your mother no longer has power over you. Right. I mean,
[25:04]when you, when you say, okay, she's just a sad case. You know, where it used to be like when,
[25:12]you know, she would do this stuff of going to Florida to visit her. The mother would forget to
[25:15]pick her up, you know, all that kind of stuff. And she just stopped doing it. You know, she just said,
[25:20]I don't have to do that anymore. Right. And then she started going out with a very nice person,
[25:25]a nice man who was kind and good. She married, you know, she married a very wealthy guy who
[25:30]she thought would be just, you know, like the dad. And you know, and he wasn't. Yeah. Right. He was
[25:35]much more, he, you know, she married her mother. Right. He turned out to be awful. So then when she,
[25:40]when after toward the end of the therapy, she would, she finally realized, oh, I can love this nice
[25:46]person. I didn't realize that I could love him. I thought I just could be friends with him.
[25:51]You know, well, the way that you told these stories was so great because each one was sort of
[25:56]unput downable in its own right. Right. The, the, the unexpected twists and turns that actually
[26:03]happened. And then the way you handled it, it was so interesting. Tell me a little more about the
[26:08]writing of it. Like the way that you crafted the stories was it just like, did you use all your notes?
[26:14]Or like, how did you make them into? Right. These greats, you know, stand alone stories.
[26:19]Right. Well, I, when I, I went back and looked at my notes, I thought they would be completely
[26:24]organized and I thought fantastic. I'll just put these notes in a book form and, you know,
[26:29]be perfect. I couldn't, I don't know what I had said anything. It was, you know, it said things
[26:35]like very upset, you know, stuff like, you know, I just thought this is not, these notes aren't
[26:39]helpful at all. Right. So then, but then once in a while, I would look at the notes and say,
[26:43]oh, my God, I forgot that the father killed the cat. Right. I forgot that. Right. You know, like,
[26:48]I repressed some of the awful stuff, but the conversations had to come back to me. And that's
[26:53]why you have to be kind of attached and bonded to those patients to remember those things.
[26:58]I mean, when you see somebody for five years, you can pretty well remember, you can pretty
[27:02]well predict what they would say in different situations. So you must have enough stories to
[27:07]feel like a hundred more books. Are you going to write any more books or what that's your plan?
[27:11]My plan now is I'm writing, I grew up in a house in Lewiston, New York,
[27:15]which is on the Niagara River connecting to Canada. And I grew up in the New York side. And so my
[27:20]family's home was involved in the underground railroad. So it, and then the house next door has
[27:26]seven basements that go down to the river where, so I'm writing from the sort of white abolitionist
[27:31]point of view. I hope that works in this time. You know, so I'm doing that now. But a lot of
[27:39]people want me to write a publisher wants me to write a book like Good Morning Monster,
[27:44]but with more cases and lighter. Okay. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[27:50]Right. Just don't worry about it. I have people all the time saying to me, what's a good topic?
[27:57]What's hot today? How can I, you know, I said, just you go into your heart and just write like for
[28:03]two hours a day at least, even if you have another job, just write for like two hours a day. I mean,
[28:08]because everybody starts writing when they have another job or, you know, they have to support
[28:11]themselves, usually, right? So you, you know, I wrote for two hours before I went into my office.
[28:17]So I said, just, you know, just write and don't worry about any of it. Don't reread it. Don't do
[28:22]anything. Just let stream of consciousness take you and then what, you know, then go back and
[28:27]you can read it. Don't stop yourself at the end of each sentence and do all that, because you're
[28:32]the most important stuff comes from your unconscious. Most of it pours out and then you're,
[28:36]because that's the only thing that we all have in common. We all have a collective unconscious
[28:40]somewhere, you know, so says young, so says Roy, you know, so that people, I mean, why would
[28:45]people relate to a memoir of my four-year-old delivery girl, you know, delivering stuff with Black
[28:50]delivery card driver who cares? Only because the thoughts I had are the same thoughts that they had
[28:55]when they were four. So just get all that out. Don't try to polish it and then later come back.
[29:00]I find a lot of people are like, you know, they write two pages and then for, you know,
[29:04]four weeks, they try to make it perfect. And then by then you've lost that you've lost all of
[29:09]your creative juices. That's a great advice. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Guilner. Thank you
[29:14]for coming on. Thank you for sharing your treatment stories with these incredible patients and for
[29:19]showing us what heroes really can look like. So thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Bye, Debbie.
[29:25]Bye. Thanks so much to firstbook.org for sponsoring this Labor Day book blast. Please consider
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[29:39]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[29:43]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, at ZB Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
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[30:00]The morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.