Emotional Orphans: Healing Our Throwaway Children - Couverture souple

Shepherd, Cate

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1478338873 ISBN 13 : 9781478338871

Editeur : CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

When social worker Cate Shepherd's first patient punches her in the face, she realizes she has a lot to learn about helping traumatized kids. So Cate duct tapes her heart to her sleeve and sets out on a mission to find captives of childhood pain and free them. When she begins, she does not know that the kids she loves will pee on her furniture, poop on her shoe, brandish a broken beer bottle in her face, and heave a huge potted plant at her head. Nor does she realize they will burrow into her heart, sometimes break it, and mold her into a therapist who is willing to follow them wherever they need to go to heal themselves. While still a psychology student, Cate begins her career and finds her bliss in an unexpected place: Juvenile Hall. Compelled by the suffering of teens she meets there, and intrigued by her uncanny ability to understand and help them, she pursues a career as a psychotherapist. She comes to understand that her own painful childhood fuels her passion for this work. At her first real therapist job after grad school, Cate meets Harry Young, M.D., a quirky psychoanalyst who takes a keen interest in her clinical training. Harry hangs out in her dingy little office and watches her daily antics while she re-parents a motley caseload of emotional orphans. Most of the kids have at least one parent still living. Somewhere. But the needs of their hearts remain unmet. The residential treatment of disturbed teens is soaked in violence, tragedy, comedy, and creativity. And characters. Like the art therapist who conducts funerals for boogers. Sometimes unconventional means are required to reach armored hearts. Like smuggling martial arts weapons onto the dorm to empower a downtrodden boy. Or sneaking out the back of the Christian group home to perform a fire ritual with a Wiccan family in a nearby canyon. And sometimes the hours are long. Like watching over a comatose girl in the ICU after a near-fatal suicide attempt. One day Harry looks up from his cup of coffee and, with his Sean Connery smirk says, "You're goofy enough to do this work." This is the sword on the shoulder that Cate has been waiting for. With Harry's support and wise counsel, she specializes in the treatment of severely emotionally disturbed adolescents for eighteen years. Cate takes on some of the most disturbed families in Los Angeles, and works inside some of the most dysfunctional systems. Eventually, one of these systems turns on her. Trauma blindsides Cate and rips open old wounds. After years of helping others heal, Cate struggles to get free from the shackles of her own pain. And when she is ready to give up, the unexpected unfolds.

Biographie de l'auteur :

Winner, San Diego Book Awards, 2012

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1478338873
• ISBN 13: 9781478338871
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 266