Call Me Crazy: How to Heal from Gaslighting, Imposter Syndrome, Toxic Relationships, and Other Feeling Disorders

A paradigm-shifting book that introduces the concept of “Feeling Disorders”—a newly defined cluster of psychological diagnoses (from imposter syndrome to gaslighting to so-called toxic relationships)—explaining why they’re interrelated and how to finally get the support necessary to heal. 

You probably know someone who struggles with a “feeling disorder.” You may even have a feeling disorder yourself. Whether it is gaslighting, imposter syndrome, empty consent, or toxic relationships, an increasing number of people find lose touch with their feelings, and themselves. But despite the growing ubiquity of these phenomena, so far, the mental health establishment has had nothing to say. Instead, people—mostly women—are simply told they are hysterical, irrational, or have low self-esteem.

But are people who have these experiences really crazy or are they struggling with what award-winning psychoanalyst and Columbia University professor Dr. Gila Ashtor dubs feeling disorders: an umbrella term for a vast category of psychological phenomena that affect a person’s ability to experience, express, or process their feelings?
 

Just as the term “eating disorders” collects related food-disorders together in one umbrella term, “feeling disorders” groups feeling-related behavior under one integrated diagnosis. Think: 

• Gaslighting
• Imposter syndrome
• Empty consent
• “Toxic” relationships
• Feeling on autopilot

Because, like eating disorders, Feeling Disorders disproportionately affect women, Dr. Ashtor believes they have been swept under the rug and ignored for far too long. At last, with Dr. Ashtor’s groundbreaking book, therapists (and patients) have a unified theory and clarifying language to talk about their lives.
 
In the tradition of Bessel van der Kolk’s definitive work on trauma (The Body Keeps the Score) and Lindsay C. Gibson’s powerful writing on family dynamics (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents), Call Me Crazy is the first book to identify, legitimize, and heal patients who struggle with Feeling Disorders. Weaving together intimate case studies, psychoanalytic theory, and rich personal narrative, Dr. Ashtor offers a fascinating window into this battle between the heart and the mind—and offers tools for understanding and recovery.