Imposter syndrome. Gaslighting.

Toxic relationships. Empty consent.

“Crazy girlfriend.” Feeling on autopilot.

We know these phrases and understand what they feel like, but the world of psychology hasn’t taken them seriously—until now. In Call Me Crazy, psychoanalyst and Columbia University professor Dr Gila Ashtor offers the first major exploration of these hot-topic emotional issues: modern anxieties she calls “feeling disorders.” 

Much like eating disorders, these interconnected feeling disorders disproportionately affect women and stem from an often-hidden truth—that our emotions can, and do, lie to us. Blending neurobiology and original research with powerful storytelling, Dr. Ashtor explores six distinct feeling disorders: outlining their causes, exposing their toll, and helping you bridge the gap between how you feel and the life you want to live. 

Destined to do for our emotions what Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score did for trauma, Call Me Crazy provides the vital language we’ve been missing to finally make sense of our feelings and offers a smart, actionable roadmap to breaking free from toxic cycles.

Gila Ashtor, PhD, LP is a practicing psychoanalyst and Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychoanalysis at Columbia University where she also teaches MFA courses on sexuality, culture, and writing. An award-winning academic theorist, her primary areas of academic and clinical expertise include identity, trauma and sexuality. She is the author of two academic books—Homo Psyche, which won the Alan Bray Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Exigent Psychoanalysis—as well as an experimental memoir, Aural History.