About the Authors
About the Authors
Charles Coleman
Charles Coleman, PhD began his long and distinguished career in mental healthcare early-on with his experiences working with Vietnam Vets committed to—and confined in—one of the Army’s only dedicated military psychiatric hospitals in the early ‘70s, as so graphically memorialized in his critically-acclaimed American cult-classic novel, Sergeant Back Again, (HarperCollins, 1980)—“The Vietnam War Novel that Made PTSD Real!.”
From then on, he’s worked, taught, lived with, lectured and written about PTSD culminating in helping his friend and colleague,Andy Collins, PhD, to write about Andy’s own successes and failures in dealing with PTSD in this engaging, highly experimental, and wonderfully collaborative work you’re now about to read. The Gentling of Hanna Johansen: A Betrayal of Trust marks a watershed moment in portraying the devastating effects of social media, predatory influencers, and psychological trauma (PTSD+) on adolescents, particularly in the United States, which Charles and Andy define in the course of this novel as “the evolution of the uniquely American adolescent psychotype.”
Hanna Johansen
Hanna Johansen (fifteen-and-a-half when the story opens) is quick to point out in her “Afterwords” that her “participation” in co-authoring this novel was the last thing she ever wanted. You’ll see why once she appears about a quarter of the way through “The Gentling,” when the story suddenly becomes so personal, intimate and shocking that even she can’t write about all of it. But Hanna is clever in the ways in which she reveals her multiple personalities, whether in the lyrics of her songs, her immersion in deviant and risky behaviors, her warmth and love and humor, or her devotion to her friends, all of which are supported with thoughtful understanding by her psychiatrist, Alexa Muybridge.
Hanna’s a gifted, tell-almost-all writer you’ll come to cherish: “I know now that surviving a good night’s sleep is what The Gentling of Me is all about. About always leaving the bedroom door in your mind opened like Andy does. And now me.”
Alexa Muybridge
Alexa Muybridge, MD, stands by Hanna through thick and thin via their (verbatim) tele-psychiatry sessions which eventually “uncover” the One Hanna barely intact still buried under the many shattered pieces and parts of her “Old Self” before the betrayal. As early into her professional career as Alexa is, she’s developed a unique method of DBT-PTSD and WET therapies customized for teens and tweens suffering from anxiety and disruptive mood dysregulation disorders, PTSD, dissociative identity and major depressive disorders: which is to say that Hanna is extremely dis-ordered and suicidal.
Applying what Andy and Alexa come to call a “gentling approach” to dialectical behavioral and creative exposure therapies (via Hanna’s songs and journal), they cautiously lead her—and the reader—to the grave’s edge of the frightful exhumation of her betrayed Self and the inevitable, long-anticipated endgame: “asphyxiation by submersion,” the same method used by her alter ego to end her life.
But Hanna’s at-risk micro-journey—full of unexpected twists and turns—many even humorous—is in fact a mindful metaphor used by the authors to open a much wider window (via a subtle investigative-journalistic style) into the murky collective conscious of a society no longer competing with one another for “survival of the (physically) fittest,” but rather for the mental wherewithal to withstand “the sings and arrows of outrageous dysfunction.”
If only the strong are destined to survive, as some say, then our own innate Sense of Self, conditioned by resilience-reflexes, and the power of our convictions will keep us well enough and mentally prepared to withstand this assault and, hopefully, the next. That is a premise underlying this collaborative saga, a premise that is tested over and over again in the thoughts behind the actions of the main characters, which Andy defines for Hanna as “motive”—the “whys” behind the “what’s” of what we do or don’t do, regardless of whether our actions are premeditated or seemingly mindless… a process that Hanna comes to call “connecting the dots.” By reverse-engineering her thoughts-into-actions “dots,” Hanna comes to a remarkable self-discovery when she admits:
“Thinking about something and acting on it are two very different things. But that’s how I survive now…. It’s the only way I’ve found to keep my daredevil emotions in check, those emotions I’m better off writing into my songs rather than acting them out in real life. Some of my lyrics belong in my songs and not in my behavior. It’s a slippery slope for me: Do I live what I write or write what I live? Either way, it’s a dare of one kind of another. It’s tricky.” It’s a sentiment similar to what Hanna describes in her “Afterwords” about creative people, like Vincent van Gogh and Amy Winehouse… about the “voices that other people don’t have” and overstaying visits to “dark places” in the pursuit of creativity.
“Some of my lyrics belong in my songs and not in my behavior.”
But Hanna’s at-risk micro-journey—full of unexpected twists and turns—many even humorous—is in fact a mindful metaphor used by the authors to open a much wider window (via a subtle investigative-journalistic style) into the murky collective conscious of a society no longer competing with one another for “survival of the (physically) fittest,” but rather for the mental wherewithal to withstand “the sings and arrows of outrageous dysfunction.”
If only the strong are destined to survive, as some say, then our own innate Sense of Self, conditioned by resilience-reflexes, and the power of our convictions will keep us well enough and mentally prepared to withstand this assault and, hopefully, the next. That is a premise underlying this collaborative saga, a premise that is tested over and over again in the thoughts behind the actions of the main characters, which Andy defines for Hanna as “motive”—the “whys” behind the “what’s” of what we do or don’t do, regardless of whether our actions are premeditated or seemingly mindless… a process that Hanna comes to call “connecting the dots.” By reverse-engineering her thoughts-into-actions “dots,” Hanna comes to a remarkable self-discovery when she admits:
“Thinking about something and acting on it are two very different things. But that’s how I survive now…. It’s the only way I’ve found to keep my daredevil emotions in check, those emotions I’m better off writing into my songs rather than acting them out in real life. Some of my lyrics belong in my songs and not in my behavior. It’s a slippery slope for me: Do I live what I write or write what I live? Either way, it’s a dare of one kind of another. It’s tricky.” It’s a sentiment similar to what Hanna describes in her “Afterwords” about creative people, like Vincent van Gogh and Amy Winehouse… about the “voices that other people don’t have” and overstaying visits to “dark places” in the pursuit of creativity.
The Cornerstone of Rebuilding a Resilient Identity: TRUST
HANNA: “No one’s ever trusted me before.”
ANDY: “Maybe because you’ve never given them a reason to.”