Quotes from Catherine Gildiner

First was shock, second was apathy, and third was depersonalization and moral deformity. Frankl makes the point that only those who gave their life meaning did well. He points out that in every situation, there is always freedom of choice, even in extreme suffering.

The big fish ate the little and

The big fish ate the little and that was how it worked. To me that

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.

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.

anger is a defence, not a feeling, and to analyze what feeling the anger was covering.

Konrad Lorenz, a zoologist, pointed out—and this is part of what won him a Nobel Prize—that attachment can be understood within an evolutionary context in that the mother provides safety for the infant. Attachment is adaptive, enhancing the infant's chance of survival, and is therefore hard-wired into the brain. A baby needs to be held, loved, and cuddled by the mother.

Remember, you're bruised but not broken.

There are two types of personalities, Type A and Type B. Whereas Type B's are laid-back and non-competitive, Type A's are characterized by ambition, aggression, and a need for control. (This is a broad generalization and many people lie somewhere between A and B.) Type A's are champing at the bit, and that drive can translate to stress; indeed, these traits are often associated with stress-related ailments.

psychology is like archaeology. As you dig down to uncover each layer and carefully dust off the artifacts that emerge, you eventually find a whole buried world that seems stranger than fiction.

I know what the word stress means but I don't know exactly how it feels. I don't think I have it. I just keep on keeping on, surrounded by the village idiots.

the mother's narcissism is confirmed by how she seeks reassurance from the magic mirror on the wall early in the story, long before Snow White's beauty surpasses her own. There is no better tale for conveying how imperilled a teenage girl can feel with a narcissistic, competitive mother. And for Madeline, there were no friendly dwarves.

I can't believe I have to do this. I feel like I came to have a tooth pulled and by mistake my whole brain came with it.

I was in a forest with no path, but people wanted me to know the way.

The fear of being abandoned was a strong force in Madeline's life. She'd stayed with a bad husband for years because of it. She also feared that some of her lacklustre and disloyal employees would "abandon" her, so she overpaid them and put up with far too much. As I heard more about her childhood, I realized that her issues stemmed from years of neglect.

Freud said that our unconscious drives or instincts, such as sex and aggression, are blocked from our conscious mind, that civilization doesn't want us to see them. Therefore, those drives are protected by such defences as repression, denial, and sublimation.

I was forced to realize how culturally laden, to the point of inadequacy, psychotherapy was for Danny. I now know how the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung felt in 1925 after spending time with an Indigenous man: Jung was made aware, he said, of his "imprisonment in the cultural consciousness of the white man." Freud, along with all the other European founding fathers of psychotherapy, knew nearly nothing of Indigenous culture, and neither did I. But as my father used to say,

anger has a bad reputation. It's a negotiation device that helps us stand up for ourselves, to say, in effect, "Get off my turf; you're stomping on my sense of self. Stop crossing into my backyard." Then it's up to the other person to deal with your anger—to decide whether it's a legitimate problem that requires a change in his or her behaviour.

I explained that dreams have to present pictures, concrete images of emotional content. Just as mythology explains the human psyche through its images—its universal archetypes—dreams do the same thing on an individual level. They provide the dreamer with pictures of that individual's unconscious mind.

Second, I told her that 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.

I now like who I am, and I think all I went through was for a purpose. I think it was God's plan to make me the person I've become.

Just like you couldn't leave your mother. You were a child. She was all you had. You bonded to indifference and, at times, her cruelty. Your job was to endure it and to protect her from detection.

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.

I just keep on keeping on, surrounded by the village idiots.