Trauma’s shadows can shape our identity with scars so deep they seem permanent — igniting cycles of shame, rage, and isolation. Psychologist Catherine Gildiner invites us behind the therapy room door, chronicling five patients who wrestle monstrous pasts — from abandonment to abuse — and the slow, painstaking, and non-linear paths to reclaim their lives. She offers a heartfelt invitation to hold shadows lightly, face monsters bravely, and find unexpected light in the darkest wounds. 

What you can get from reading it

Deep empathy for how childhood trauma echoes in adult struggles as well as insights into adaptive behaviors like denial, dissociation, and perfectionism as flawed but protective survival skills.​ Below are the five patients who overcame extraordinary trauma:

• Laura: abandoned by her alcoholic father and losing her mother early, Laura becomes parent to her siblings, lives under extreme neglect and emotional abandonment; she seeks therapy for stress and recurring herpes outbreaks, and gradually learns to reclaim her sense of self and build boundaries around her worth.  
• Peter: locked away in an attic by his mother as a young child and raised without emotional safety or sufficient care, Peter suffers from sexual dysfunction and detachment; through therapy he begins to reconnect with his emotional self, explore intimacy, and undo the protective numbness he developed in youth.  
• Danny: a Cree man taken from his family, placed in a residential school, forbidden to maintain his culture and abused both physically and sexually, Danny carries profound trauma; he enters therapy broken but slowly starts to heal identity and grief wounds, finding ways to voice pain and reclaim his heritage.  
• Alana: from the age of four she is subjected to repeated abuse by her father, then further abuse and mutilation from her grandmother, developing dissociative identity as a survival mechanism; her therapeutic work involves integrating fractured parts, facing shame head on, and building trust in herself.  
• Madeline: raised by a cruel, unstable mother who called her “monster,” Madeline becomes outwardly successful but is haunted by anxiety, panic attacks, and physical illness; in therapy she unravels her perfectionism and fear of rejection, learns to allow vulnerability, and gradually moves into self-compassion. 

About the author

Catherine Gildiner carries the dual lens of scholar and storyteller — an English Lit BA combined with a career as a psychologist who’s witnessed shadow realms few dare approach. She writes with a novelist’s eye for character and nuance, shaped by her own Midwestern roots and a career spanning Canada and the US where the personal and professional blur in classrooms and clinic rooms alike.