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

When she was seven, Alana and her sister were left in the care of her grandparents by Art who then disappeared for two years. Like Art, however, Art’s mother proved to be, in Gildiner’s estimation, an “evil psychopath.” In time, Alana reveals the extent of her grandmother’s abuse, stemming from the woman’s insistence that Alana was “dirty” (215). Her grandmother, a Jehovah’s Witness, subscribed to a belief system that emphasized “fire and brimstone” (217). Alana began to understand the church’s criticism of sexual behavior and recognized that Art had violated a taboo by forcing her to engage in sex. However, Alana, as a child, considered herself to be complicit in the abuse. Alana’s grandmother’s treatment of her reinforced this belief.

At age eight, Alana considers causing her own death by suicide. She sleeps outside in the cold and hypothermia begins to set in in her legs. However, she considers that, were she to die, she would be leaving her sister alone with no aid against abuse and decides to live. She crawls back to her grandparents’ home the next day. Gildiner explains that, in this first year of therapy, her strategy is to reframe Alanas’ actions as brave.

In the second year of therapy, Gildiner notices that Alana repeatedly downplays her extreme intelligence. Gildiner suspects this is done as a way to distance herself from Art, who also was of unusually high intelligence. Under Gildiner’s urging, however, Alana asks for and receives a salary raise at the law firm she works for. Gildiner notes, however, that she has only started to learn of the extent of the dark thoughts in Alana’s head.

Alana explains that she has difficulty functioning in her job because she often hears her father’s voice of criticism in her head, as if it is a taped recording she is listening to. She recounts the way he purposefully sabotaged her learning and homework as a child in a way to manipulate her into believing she was unintelligent. She asserts that he was not physically violent, but used other methods to torture her, such as killing their pet cat in front of Alana and Gretchen.

Alana described how she secured a scholarship to attend college where she studied poetry and other literature. However, when an instructor singled her out for her skilled poetry, Alana mistakenly believed he was trying to ridicule her as Art did, and left the university.

Alana explains that at times the “tapes” of Art’s ridicule can become so overwhelming that she enters into a kind of catatonic state. She has no memory or knowledge of what occurs during this time.

Gildiner wants to learn more of Alana’s mother, who moved to England after her relationship with Art ended. When Alana was nine, her mother was granted the legal right to visits with her daughters. The girls spent yearly weekly visits with her in England, but Alana and her mother could not forge an emotional connection. Because her mother was upset when she perceived that Art was abusing the girls, Alana lied to her mother to alleviate her mother’s guilt. In her sessions, Alana often sympathizes with her mother, acknowledging that she too had a difficult childhood, being shuffled from foster home to foster home. She shares with Gildiner the details of a dream she has in which she is surrounded by spiders and made to care for a baby. Gildiner points to the ways the dream reveals that Alana is angry at her mother, trying to convince Alana that such anger is “normal.”

Gildiner examines Alana’s experiences in school as a child, emphasizing that despite her poor performance and outward signs of abuse and neglect, no one ever investigated her home life. It was not until Alana was 14 that a neighbor recognized signs of sexual abuse and contacted authorities. Then, Gretchen was placed in a foster home and Alana a nearby group home. When Gretchen turned 18, they moved together to Toronto.

Gildiner notes that because her trauma prevented her emotional growth, this growth is now taking place for Alana in therapy and, according to Gildiner, often at a rapid pace. She asserts herself more and seeks out social connections at work, which she has never done before. One day Alana shares that she has had sex with another employee at work. Gildiner is shocked but recognizes that obtaining a sexuality is part of Alana’s growth. Soon after, Alana reveals that she wishes to leave her partner—a transgender woman whom Alana is devoted to but has never felt a sexual attraction to.

A few weeks later, Gildiner receives a phone call from Alana’s partner, Jane, who informs her that Alana has been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. Gildiner chastises herself for not recognizing the warning signs that Alana had been passing through the development stages too quickly and had grown overwhelmed by the change and freedom. At the hospital, Jane shares with Gildiner that Alana is prone to drinking until she is drunk whenever an emotional issue arises. Having been unaware of this, Gildiner wonders who the “true” Alana is and what other behaviors she has not been made aware of.

Alana spends nine days in the hospital. When she is released, she disappears for three days, and then shows up unexpectedly at Gildiner’s office. Gildiner is surprised to find Alana acting completely out of character—she is angry, rude, and vulgar. She is accusatory of Jane, insisting she must end the relationship, despite Jane’s unwillingness. Gildiner begins to wonder if Alana may have multiple personality disorder. She conducts research into the condition and finds that Alana meets many of the criteria but wants to proceed with caution. She reviews past notes on Alana as well as letters that Alana has written to her, finding evidence that Alana often compartmentalizes herself into various other persons.

Alana returns and Gildiner finds her to be her usual self. She reveals she has moved out of her home with Jane and taken an apartment nearby. She is sad for hurting Jane and stresses that she does not want to be cruel to her, but that she has grown away from Jane. When Gildiner asks her about her behavior at their previous session, Alana is confused, insisting she was not at Gildiner’s office the previous week. When Gildiner finds an article in Alana’s pocket that she had torn from a magazine in the waiting room, Alana is stunned. Then, she admits that it must have been “Cholé” who attended that session. She explains that she developed the personalities as a way to cope with Art’s abuse. She names two other personalities, but insists she is in control of all of them, speaking of them as computer programs that she can “run” when she chooses. However, through retracing her actions with Gildiner, she sees that it was Cholé who drank and was cruel to Jane, then attempted suicide. They both wonder, too, whether Cholé had emerged during the time after Alana had left college and insisted she was in a catatonic state which she cannot remember.

Gildiner is uncertain whether Alana has either multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder and must decide how to proceed. She notes that each of the personalities fulfills a role in helping Alana cope with her feelings toward Art. It might be possible to diminish them by strengthening Alana’s ego, helping her to assimilate the functions of each of the other personalities, or, she considers, perhaps the best approach might be to help Alana control the personalities, to prevent them from “going rogue” in the future as Cholé had done (262). Gildiner decides that, for now, Alana needs the personalities to defeat the “tapes” of Art in her head. Though Alana refuses to try antidepressants, she agrees to tell Gildiner if she contemplates suicide again.

Gildiner explains that several tools need to be developed in Alana before she can terminate therapy. The first is establishing boundaries with others. Alana has difficulty recognizing that doing this is not selfish or cruel. Gildiner engages her in role playing exercises to practice setting boundaries.

One area of difficulty for Alana is her family: Gretchen and her husband and their young children live close by, as does their mother and their mother’s partner, Peggy. Alana is bothered by their mother’s interference in Gretchen’s parenting and is able to effectively express this to her mother. She is surprised when her mother, although hurt, calls Alana later to talk.

Alana makes progress: She is able to maintain contact with Jane and connects with the gay community, developing new friendships. Yet, Gildiner still worries about her past suicide attempt and feels she should have recognized the warning signs Alana was sending beforehand.

Alana experiences an important moment after reading Gildiner’s memoir and learning about Gildiner’s childhood. A scene in it, Alana reports, caused her to remember a rare moment when Art was kind to her: He’d summoned her outside to witness the Northern Lights, then explained various cultural explanations for the lights. Alana, moved by this memory, decides to telephone Art. They talk about the Northern Lights memory and about video games, but Alana terminates the call when Art suggests they meet in person. She notes that the conversation was helpful to her because it caused her to recognize that Art need not have power over her anymore.

When Alana decides she is ready to terminate therapy, Gildiner agrees. She is no longer ruled by the Art “tapes” and Cholé has not appeared in over a year. Years later, Gildiner contacts Alana for an update. She learns that Alana has been competing in online video game tournaments, successfully defeating all other competitors except one. As all players participate using pseudonyms, it is only after the fact that Alana learns the player she could not defeat was Art. He abruptly stops participating and Alana learns that he has passed away. She says she now plays “Gild tapes” to guide herself as needed; these tapes remind her of Gildiner’s insistence that Alana is a hero. She goes on to explain that therapy not only taught her to establish boundaries, but to understand what is happening in her brain in a way that enabled her to regain control. She acknowledges, though, that she still feels she should have killed Art, which Gildiner does not comment upon.