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

Madeline is a well-known antiques dealer, and Gildiner meets her at her business. Gildiner describes the hustle and bustle of the building, noting that several employees express their relief at her arrival, insisting that they cannot hold things together much longer.

When they meet, Gildiner is struck by Madeline’s beauty and style and begins to take her family history. Madeline gives a few details, noting that her parents divorced and that she lived with her father as a teen, and then married in her twenties. The marriage ended nine years later. Madeline asks, however, if they can address an urgent matter right away, and Gildiner agrees. Madeline explains that she has anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder and that recently, her fear of flying has escalated so greatly that she fears it will impact her business and the employees who depend upon it. Madeline has a fear that a plane crash will kill her and her employees and copes with this fear by frequently canceling flights, for herself and her employees.

As she is explaining this to Gildiner, Duncan appears in Madeline’s office. Madeline yells at him to leave; the two argue, but Duncan leaves and Madeline returns to speaking with Gildiner as if nothing has happened.

Over time, Gildiner extracts Madeline’s history. Her mother, Charlotte, never wanted children but agreed to have one because Duncan wanted a child to leave his fortune to. Charlotte, who had a love of shopping and spending money, also had anorexia and shamed Madeline about food. Over time, Duncan perceives Madeline’s growing insecurity about eating and suggests it would be good for her to spend one day each week with his mother, Madeline’s grandmother. Although she is a formal and reserved woman, Madeline finds her grandmother kind and caring. Indeed, she takes Madeline with her on trips and teaches her about the antique business; Madeline’s memories of her are fond ones.

Duncan and Charlotte, despite their awful relationship, refuse to divorce for the sake of social perception. When asked to reveal something kind or good about her mother, the only thing Madeline can come up with is that her mother instilled a strong work ethic in her. Gildiner notes, but does not mention to Madeline, that workaholism can be another compulsion. Madeline confesses that Charlotte even went so far as to essentially extort her when Madeline caught Charlotte with another man. In spite, Charlotte fired their gardener—a man whose kindness had generated a special bond between him and Madeline. Madeline emphasizes that both she and Duncan lived in fear of Charlotte. She explains that his method of coping has always been to concede to Charlotte so as to avoid her wrath. Madeline notes that Karen, too, exhibits the same cruel and controlling behaviors as Charlotte.

Gildiner wants to address Madeline’s anxiety about flying, asking whether she has explored it with the OCD specialist she is seeing. Madeline reveals that part of her fear stems from believing she is unworthy of her success and deserves, instead, to die in a plane crash. Gildiner notes the way Madeline uses the word “monster” (303), which is the term her mother used to demean Madeline as a child. Madeline reveals that Charlotte also habitually pulled out her own hair and eyebrows—a disorder Gildiner explains is trichotillomania. Though Gildiner sees signs of the disorder in Madeline as well, Madeline denies this.

With time, Madeline reveals more hurt-filled memories of Charlotte. As a teenager, Madeline had a long-term relationship with a boyfriend who grew up near her. She loved and was close with his family. Eventually, Charlotte seduced Madeline’s boyfriend. Later, Madeline confronts her mother about it in front of Duncan. In retaliation, Charlotte has Madeline’s dog put to sleep, claiming he had cancer.

She speaks, too, of her ex-husband Joey. At first, Madeline enjoyed their relationship because Joey disliked Charlotte so much. However, with time, as Joey made increasingly more money, he cared less about Madeline or her satisfaction in the marriage. In the end, Joey proved to share many of Charlotte’s traits. Yet, Madeline remained married to him for some time, fearful he would abandon her. She connects this to an event that occurred when she was 11: She was left alone while her parents visited Russia with Madeline’s grandparents for six weeks. Alone and scared, one evening Madeline has dinner at a neighboring home and the neighbors determine that she is alone. They arrange to have the teenage daughter of the family housekeeper stay with Madeline for the remainder of the time. One night, however, a storm sets off the house’s security alarm and Madeline phones 911. Although police find it strange that she is alone, they do nothing. When her parents return, Duncan is furious to find Madeline alone, believing that Charlotte had arranged for her care.

Gildiner senses there may be other reasons why Madeline feels undeserving of her success and Madeline confesses to having a brief affair with an employee while married to Joey. She berates herself for this, accusing herself of being as bad as her mother. As Gildiner and Madeline talk through this, however, a light bulb goes off and Madeline finally recognizes the similarities between Charlotte and Joey. Her fear of abandonment was at work in both relationships.

Charlotte has recently asked Madeline to visit her in Florida, where she has been living with Jack, an older man for whom she left Duncan years earlier. Madeline is frustrated that, despite receiving nothing in return, she keeps trying to please her mother, while remaining, to some degree, afraid of her. When Gildiner presses her, Madeline admits that each time she hopes that “this time” she will have earned her mother’s love.

Gildiner explains—using behaviors observed of gorilla mothers in captivity as a model—that mothering is a learned skill, not an inherent one. Without a loving mother from whom to learn, Charlotte does not know how to mother—her unconscious, perhaps, understands that Madeline is reaching out to her, but it forces Charlotte to push her away, knowing Charlotte cannot supply what Madeline needs. Madeline begins to understand that Charlotte will never be capable of loving anyone, no matter how ‘perfect’ Madeline becomes. In understanding this, Madeline is relieved of the burden of believing she is to blame for her mother’s treatment.

As year four of Madeline’s therapy begins, the cancer she has battled comes to the focus. Gildiner had been made aware of Madeline’s health conditions when Duncan begged her to see Madeline but learns more of them now. Since the age of 21, Madeline has battled several separate and apparently unrelated cancers (breast cancer followed by thyroid cancer at age 28, endometrial cancer at 35, and now melanoma). Madeline notes that she has done some research on cancer and theorizes that her immune system is compromised from the years of abuse it had to endure. Gildiner supports this theory. Madeline admits that, although her thinking has improved, at times she still finds herself feeling the cancers are punishment for her “monster” qualities. When pressed by Gildiner, she insists she does not “logically” (334) believe herself to be a “monster,” but that it is an identity she has become familiar with.

She speaks briefly of Anton, an employee who has become a confidant and understands her struggles with Charlotte, having been raised by an abusive father. In the days that follow, Gildiner asks Madeline additional questions about Anton, noticing how often Madeline brings up his name. Madeline refuses to concede to Gildiner’s insistence that Anton cares for her. When Gildiner suggests that Madeline is fearful that Anton will be killed in a plane crash, Madeline has an outburst and leaves. Gildiner is immediately contacted by Madeline’s assistant who says Madeline is terminating the therapy.

Gildiner reflects on this, believing she wrongly attempted to rush Madeline’s therapy, overinterpreting in a way that Madeline was not ready for. Gildiner is certain that the fear of plane crash is a cover-up for Madeline’s actual fear of attachment. Each time she has risked loving another in the past—her mother, her father, Joey—she has been deeply hurt in return. Loving Anton is too risky. Gildiner emphasizes that the mistake she has made is in trying to strip away Madeline’s’ defenses (the refusal to fly) too quickly. As she reflects, Gildiner notes that the similarities between herself and Madeline are also the reason she was quick to overinterpret Madeline’s situation.

Gildiner, concerned about the mistakes she has made in Madeline’s case, turns to a mentor—Dr. Milch, a psychiatrist whose guidance and practices Gildiner has observed and respected. He points out the ways that Duncan repeatedly violated the boundaries that Gildiner set up, and that Gildiner allowed this to continue to happen. He helps Gildiner to understand the way she had counter-transferred her feelings about her own father to Duncan, who paralleled her father in so many ways. Dr. Gildiner realizes, too, that all of the three woman she chose to profile in the book were raised by their fathers—she was psychologically drawn to these women for a reason.

A little over a month later, Madeline requests to meet with Gildiner. At the session, Madeline admits—though in a gruff manner—that she did intentionally shut down when she could not handle what Gildiner was trying to point out to her. She has since made key changes. These include instituting operational changes that shift more responsibility onto her employees and off Madeline. Further, she has expressed her love for Anton to him and he has moved in with her. She has also allowed her employees to fly once again. When Gildiner tries to apologize, Madeline dismisses her, saying it is part of the “battle” she takes on daily (348).

Madeline’s changes allow for other changes to come. She begins to fly again; she and Anton maintain a healthy, long-term relationship; she takes Sundays off from work; and she improves her relationship with Duncan.