You Will Never Be Normal

by Catherine Klatzker

Overview

One afternoon, during a routine meditation, a strange tingling grips Catherine Klatzker, followed by an explosion of voices crowding out her thoughts. Soon these voices, or "parts," begin to emerge more distinctly in her mind, accompanied by persistent insomnia and bouts of mortifying incontinence.

Fearing for her sanity, Klatzker turns to a meditation teacher and psychotherapist. What follows is one woman's unflinching excavation of years of repressed sexual and emotional abuse, manifested many decades later as Traumatic Dissociative Identity Disorder. A daring and unafraid debut memoir, You Will Never Be Normal delivers an arresting examination of the emotional toil-and toll-required to be made whole again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945233081
Publisher:	Stillhouse Press
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Catherine Klatzker is a highly competent and professional critical care RN, yet she struggled unwittingly with dissociative identity disorder (DID) most of her life, while those closest to her knew nothing of her fragmented inner life or her secondary PTSD. You Will Never Be Normal, a memoir of her personal battle with DID, describes the sudden onset of symptoms when Klatzker was in her fifties, the emergence of five primary separate personalities, and tracks a disjointed healing where slower was faster.Klatzker does not simply explain DID, she makes DID credible and puts a human face to this often misunderstood mental condition.You Will Never Be Normal is a brave and moving portrayal of living day to day with DID, offering insight into this affliction; yet this true account also conveys the full terror of DID's psychic landscape, the trauma that created it, as well as the illuminating path to recovery. Catherine Klatzker is a writer and RN in Los Angeles, California, whose specialty for twenty-two years was pediatric intensive care. Her nonfiction has appeared in mental health anthologies as well as a range of other journals. This memoir is her debut book.

Editorial Reviews

"You Will Never Be Normal is a beautifully rendered account of personal integration and survival. Klatzker's personal detective work, vulnerability, and intelligence create a compelling story, skillfully told, that invites the reader into a struggle to map the after-effects of trauma and complex resilience."

- Sonya Huber, author of Pain Woman Takes Your Keys

"The trauma of sexual assault takes a sledgehammer to a child's psyche, and the shattering can reverberate throughout the life. Catherine Klatzker has written a brave, honest, lyrical, and painstaking account of her journey to acknowledge the betrayal of the child self and to reassemble fragments piece by piece into a whole self."

- Terry Wolverton, author of Embers

From the Publisher

2021-05-01
In this frank debut memoir, Klatzker excavates suppressed memories of an abusive childhood.

During a meditation session, Klatzker, a pediatric intensive care specialist, began to experience auditory hallucinations. She noticed a familiar tingling sensation, but she didn’t slip into her customary stillness. Instead, she heard voices pleading, “Please don’t hurt me!” The experience was followed by a bout of incontinence, and the author was left questioning her sanity. Battling chronic insomnia, Klatzker began to identify and refer to the voices as “parts” or, more specifically, parts of her childhood that had “split off” so that they felt separate from her. Seeking psychological help, the author began to confront years of childhood abuse. She describes having dual visions of her father—“Good Daddy,” a “loving and proud father,” and “Bad Daddy,” a “raging tornado of fury” who sexually abused her. The author grows to understand her “parts” and realizes that the dissociative disorder with which she was later diagnosed opened a pathway to her salvation. Klatzker elucidates complex psychological states using clear, descriptive prose: “I glided upstairs in my inner house and noted the changes....I used to creep around in the gloom, the walls felt cold and I could barely see my way. All the years of darkness, of not knowing where my voices came from.” The author courageously revisits moments of abuse that may prove too upsetting for some readers: “I’m having trouble breathing through his hand—it covers both my nose and my mouth, keeping me quiet.” Klatzker also succinctly pinpoints how an abuser shifts guilt to his victim: “He pretended he was good, as if he never did those things, making me think I was wrong, crazy, dirty, until the next time.” On occasion, the author’s descriptive style could be considered vague and digressive: “The bottoms of his loafers had those little metal things to extend the life of the soles and heels.” This doesn’t detract from a lucidly written memoir that documents the devastating psychological impact of childhood abuse while offering hope to fellow survivors.

Distressing yet powerfully illuminating writing.

Kirkus Reviews