Oh, books like that really upset me! You want to read them but don't. Try to remember that they are someone else's ideas, not "facts" about you and your background/mother. I remember reading about what happens to children whose parents die (my mother died when I was 3) and not wanting anything that I read had happened to others, not understanding yet that the description of things from other's viewpoints is not really about us personally.

I like that you are instinctively reading and stopping, reading and stopping. Your body/reactions/defenses are protecting you well. It's like a bad dream kind of; you are under the sway of it but then when you wake you realize it is just a "dream", the horror or images kind of recede as you work with them and realize you have a bit more control over them than you thought.