Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

You'll feel all the feels with this one. I loved everything about this book. I wish Lori was my therapist!

Couldn't put this one down. Nonfiction that reads like fiction, with stories of several of her clients/composites she weaves in throughout her own story, her relationship with her own therapist, and occasional low key education on therapeutic practice here and there. For jumping around as much as it did, it flowed really well, but it's definitely more of a memoir than I expected. That surprised me, because I saw it on so many recommended lists that tend toward the pop science self-help kind of stuff I tend to read, but I like memoirs so I was ok with that. This isn't what you want if you're looking for something practical.

I think it's the title... it sounds like maybe you, the reader, should talk to someone, and here's why therapy matters. In reality, she goes through a breakup and her friend says maybe she should talk to someone. Definitely memoir.

The “presenting problem” for the patient is a breakup. The man she was going to marry has suddenly announced that he does not see a future together, especially not one that includes the patient's 10 year old son. Patient is incredulous considering her son has always been a part of the relationship. Patient has a hard time focusing at work, has resorted to Google stalking her ex, and is eager to be validated in her opinion that said boyfriend is a world-class jerk.

Patient is also practicing psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb.

Finding herself sitting on “both sides” of the couch as a psychotherapist and patient she is given the opportunity to see how we can often sabotage our way to understanding and find ourselves locked into a path with no good options.

While dealing with her breakup she is also counselling a newlywed with cancer with little time left on the clock to an older retiree, divorced 3 times and estranged from her kids who is determined to end her life on her upcoming 70th birthday. There's the anxious 20 something that probably drinks too much and dates the wrong type of guys to the self-absorbed Hollywood asshole who is, in his own estimation, surrounded by idiots.

Gottlieb isn't trying to convince the masses that psychotherapy is the answer, she's not looking to make converts here. She's a natural storyteller and this is a lesson on hope, suffused with warmth and humour. How we all want so badly to be heard and to be liked by others but sometimes we need someone to help us reframe our story so that we can do the same for ourselves.

I really really loved this. Highly recommend

I haven't seen Wendell for two weeks—I'd assumed his being out of the office meant that he was on vacation, maybe even at the cabin from his childhood with his large extended family. I had imagined all of his siblings and nieces and nephews I'd discovered online and tried to picture Wendell with them, goofing around with his kids or kicking back with a beer by the lake.

I had to go back to read it again to make sure I'm not missing something. The answer is nope, I still stand by mind original opinion.

Look I get it, the idea is appealing. Psychologist weaves patient stories with ones about her own development. She also seems like she cares a lot about her patients. However, a lot of things she said make me feel like she talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. On the surface she preaches a lot of the good principles of counseling. She is a strange combo of someone who knows all the good principle yet is ignorant of them at the same time. Sometimes she seemed genuine. Other times all I could see insecurities fueling extreme behaviors.

In practice, her thought processes and behavior are rather dubious. And not because she can't have faults, she's only human after all but because she lacks of self-awareness at an alarming level for someone of her age and job specialty.

1. She's too proud of using the term ‘idiot compassion'. Firstly, it's an offensive, arrogant term. Secondly, it's not in good taste for professionals to get used to using this word. Most people didn't go to school to understand the ‘wise compassion' so don't be so cocky about it. There are several examples where her arrogance flares up but this one was really grating. Also insert here some humble bragging. Job in Hollywood as a TV writer right after college. Drops of said job and enrolls to become a doctor. Drops medical school to become a writer. Enrolls to become a therapist. Makes baby to raise alone. How many people can relate to uprooting your life and go chasing after your dreams on a whim without little fear of where the money is coming from? Did I mention she went both times to Ivy League schools?

2. Her relationship with her ex. There's no prescription on how to deal with a break-up but the way she wrote about doesn't paint a good picture. Presumably she's had some time to process it by the time she wrote this book yet it's clear she's still very much bitter about it and keeps trying to paint it as a bad guy while taking very little responsibility. In the beginning she keep's calling him a sociopath and throughout the book she keeps referring to him as “Boyfriend”. I kept waiting patiently for her to come around and give us more details about their relationship so it would be more obviously why she was so angry at him but she's stingy with the details. I can't remember exactly what she said but there was a point when she was talking about him when I realized it was never about him at all. Their relationship was all about her, that's why he doesn't even deserve even a fake name, he's just ‘boyfriend' and he existed to complete her. I found out she even wrote a book about settling for the ‘good enough' guy, which is very telling in itself. This is a part of her life she encountered great difficulties and she doesn't seem ready to accept she might have so deeply rooted issues over it. At some point she acknowledges, following her therapy with Wendell that she was in denial about her failing relationship with her ex yet she brushes of this so quickly. It was strange to this being wrapped up in a couple of paragraphs when she dedicated so space to it in the beginning.

3. Boundaries. Her boundaries are compromised and there's no acknowledgement about that. She cyber-stalks people, scouring for info. She googles obsessively her ex, her therapist and his family, her patients. Who knows how many other people she's done this to. It's not about being curious. It's about realizing that it can become a sickening habit that's not healthy to fuel. What she's doing is not benign. Also it's connected to her over-the-top need to connect to people. To know them even when it's not her right to know. There's no good reason to research Wendell's private life. Or her patients. She gets lost in train of thoughts that frankly scare me. She mentions picturing her therapist on vacation with his kids and their cousins. She pictures patients in their private moments. Her reaction to Wendell's office and look makeover was so out of proportion. She feels entitled to do this all in the name of connecting to people. No it's not connecting. It's overwriting boundaries that need to be there for a reason. You're not entitled to invade people's privacy because you feel like it.

There's a conversation she had with Wendell that made me worried that most of the accounts in the book might be fake. First, he tells her it's OK she stalked him on Google. Not even a slight hesitation. Then offers to dance with her. Really? What sane therapist blurs the lines like that? Doctor-patient rules exist for a reason. Patients you are currently treating are not your friends. Doctors are discouraged from treating their families and close friends. Why? Because it's dangerous and unethical.

There is either an obvious problem with how therapist's get their license in Hollywood or she made up that conversation. I missed it the first time but this time it jumped out reading it.

5. She is all but consumed about the possibly that people might not like her. She obsesses whether her therapist likes her, she even asks him, the same with her patients. And probably the reason why at her age she still doesn't have a stable relationships. So why would I, an average Joe, want to be treated by someone who has this huge issue with validation. Her need to be liked might interfere with a patients treatment so much that she might screw them up even more.

4. Her relationship with her patients. She researches them on Google, she crosses boundaries over and over in the ways she relates to them. She compares a patient's trauma of dying of cancer with her being dumped. Yeah, each person's suffering is valid and important but why would make someone's dying about you breaking up with someone you dated for two years. Tone-deaf dick move. There is some nuance in suffering. I wouldn't encourage people to feel like it's ok to lose their mind because they couldn't afford that Gucci bag. She also obsesses over the idea of being seen by her patients out of the office. She has these hard rules about what to say, what to buy in public just in case one of her patients might see her and drop her as their counselor. I'd think this level of paranoia needs to investigated.

4. Another thing that made me question again the validity of the memoir was her patient John. She describes John as a narcissist. She actually makes it his diagnosis. Later, we discover he is like that because he went through a trauma and becomes a better man over night. Which is it? Being a narcissist doesn't really fit into the all consuming guilt John felt. Either his story is made up or this therapist's assessment skills are bullshit.

No every book is for everyone. I personally couldn't get passed the reg flags in here. For me her professionalism is questionable because A. she needs to attend more therapy herself because she's still not in a good place in quite a few important aspects or B. this book was mostly made up and written just as a cash grab since she spent the advance for another book she didn't end up writing and therefore owing the publisher a lot of money. But if it gets people to feel less lonely and into therapy it's all good. Hopefully they'll get a doctor who's as caring as she is but way less of a mess, who respects healthy boundaries.

Original review.

Follow your envy - it shows you what you want.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. Peace. it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. it means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.Don't judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don't be afraid of the truth.Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.The opposite of depression isn't happiness, but vitality.In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgment: Am I good or bad?).

One of those books I'm glad I didn't discard and kept on reading. It started as a remake (one I deemed to be very lousy) of Love's Executioner by Yrvin Yalom, as in “let me put in a book the interesting cases of my career”. Needles to say, Yalom's experience is not comparable Lori Gottlieb's and I realised only later in the book that it wasn't her intention by far to copy him in any way. There are actually plenty of references to Yalom's work in the book.

After the first few chapters I decided to keep on reading just because I like psychology and I'm curious to see how the cases she's describing evolve, similar to the way I watched season 3 of In Treatment, I didn't particularly enjoy it, but I was curious and kept on going.

But then.. the magic happened. It wasn't her personal story or her own revelations, it had to do with those patients, their story, the doctor-patient relationship and the conclusions each drew. Some of these stories, albeit very remote from mine, managed to strike a chord with me and the ending of the book was simply splendid. I've enjoyed it thoroughly, but I'm not sure I would recommend that to anyone. At this point in my life I have someone very dear to me in exactly the predicament of the patients in the book was in and I find it very hard to decide whether to recommend the book or not.

4.5 stars. I liked this more than I thought I would, primarily for the ways it illustrated the mechanics of therapy, which was fascinating. Well-written and we'll-observed.

👍🏼Pick It: If you're a therapist, in therapy or refuse think you'd benefit.
👎🏼Skip It: If you're content with a life forever half-felt and never shared.

I have been to therapy off and on since I was a little girl. My uncle is a therapist. I'm familiar with the couches, the wall of first-session silence, the tissues that sop up the debris when it crumbles during your fifth.
I feel fortunate to find myself in a family that has always made space for treating the emotional self, no taboos attached. It's because of this proximity, I didn't expect to extract much novel insight.

What she offered me instead was the catalyst to consider my own recent refusal to get back on the couch.

I think part of therapy's stigma is derived from this image of a double-degreed lord or lady upon his or her throne, collecting your raw fears solely as ammunition to dish at the water cooler with their fellow Freudians.

“I've got ten on Patient #783 bolting before the session even starts.”
“Wanna hear about the train wreck I've got at 2?”

Gottlieb has done a service to the world of therapy by acknowledging this general misconception and sitting on the floor with readers instead.

How much did I like this book, you ask?
I Amazon Primed it to my porch the hour I finished my library copy. And every since I've been a missionary on a pamphlet route, shoving it into arms because I believe her account needs to be heard.

Read it.

Lori Gottlieb is a writer and a therapist. She combines both skills to create this gem of a book. Gottlieb shares the stories she encounters in her job as a therapist as well as the stories of her own life that she tells to her therapist, and, in the process, she shows how one can, with help, thoughtfully work through even the most devastating difficulties people face in life. More, Gottlieb talks through the process of therapy, the behind-the-scenes thinking therapists use with their patients, a thinking that can be valuable for any reader to use in his/her own life.

A memoir of mother going through a breakup and talking to a therapist about it? Yeah, like I'll enjoy that. But... it was a great story! It kept me entertained, drawn to the characters and wanting to learn more. Lori writes about her past and future through the lens of person in therapy, while also exploring different timelines with different patients. This allows the story to jump around - at one time talking about death, another addiction, another grief and another loss. I don't have much experience with therapy, but this look into that world was both informative and made me want to learn more about therapy in general.

A memoir of mother going through a breakup and talking to a therapist about it? Yeah, like I'll enjoy that. But... it was a great story! It kept me entertained, drawn to the characters and wanting to learn more. Lori writes about her past and future through the lens of person in therapy, while also exploring different timelines with different patients. This allows the story to jump around - at one time talking about death, another addiction, another grief and another loss. I don't have much experience with therapy, but this look into that world was both informative and made me want to learn more about therapy in general.

I heard the author interviewed on Fresh Air, and thought the book sounded interesting. It turned out to be super interesting.