Book Review: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
who needs help and support?
You visit a therapist.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her
Therapist and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb is now a New York Times bestseller but isn’t a
non-fiction book I would select on my own. But I read it this month, thanks to
my neighborhood book club. I’m glad I did.
Lori is a therapist who has an unexpected breakup with a
boyfriend she thought would soon be a life partner. Falling apart, she seeks a therapist recommendation “for a friend” from another therapist-friend.
When she meets Wendell the Therapist, she isn't sure what to think, and wonders why he would be so highly recommended. Some of his assessments annoy her, yet
she also knows the psychology Wendell uses is spot on. It’s the same advice she would use
for her patients. Continuing in her therapy sessions, there are a few surprises,
and she discovers that the breakup isn’t the real crisis she is dealing with.
In addition to her story, Lori also shares narratives of four
patients in her practice (all identities concealed, of course). John is a narcissistic
TV writer and producer. He comes to therapy because everybody else is an idiot.
John will probably get on your nerves when you meet him, but keep reading: Lori
helps John get to the heart of the matter, revealing an unexpected,
heartbreaking problem. Julie is a newlywed who has everything going for her,
except health. Cancer has returned and is now terminal. At 69 years young, Rita
is a retiree who continually punishes herself because of her past and wants to
end her life at 70. Finally, there is 20-something Charlotte, whose upbringing
causes her to constantly sabotage herself in everyday relationships.
As Lori works with these patients and goes to therapy for herself,
she shares the different paths to reconciliation and healing and what it takes
to get there. Even for herself.
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There is one word that begins most of this book’s published
reviews: funny. Reading through this book, I believe this is a misused
word. It can be described as warm, often witty, and completely honest. It reads
almost like a memoir. Yet, Lori shares the pages with other insightful characters, allowing
the reader to see how therapy works on both sides.
Lori describes various aspects of therapy and why she uses them with different patients. She writes that to do their job, “therapists try to see patients as they really are, which means noticing their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. Patients, of course, want to be helped, but they also want to be liked and admired. In other words, they want to hide their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles.” Therapy isn’t hard work just for the patient – but for the therapist too.
Therapists are there to be supportive, but the support is
for growth. A patient is asked to be both accountable and vulnerable. “Rather
than steering people straight to the heart of the problem, we nudge them to
arrive there on their own because the most powerful truths – the ones people
take the most seriously – are those they come to, little by little, on their
own.” The patient has to be willing to tolerate discomfort because some
discomfort is unavoidable for the process to be effective.
Not all the stories Lori shares end happily ever after. It
is a fine line of how personally involved a therapist should be with clients.
Lori describes the struggle of if and when it’s appropriate.
There are some great insights I bookmarked. One
such instance is when Lori is at a therapy appointment and constantly cries and
drones on about her ex-boyfriend. At one point, Wendell comes over quietly and kicks her
foot. Not hard, but it startled her. "Why do that?" she asks. “There’s a
difference between pain and suffering. You’re going to have to feel pain –
everyone feels pain at times – but you don’t have to suffer so much. You’re
not choosing the pain, but you’re choosing the suffering.” It was like
an “aha” moment for Lori. She understood that if she was clinging on to
suffering so tightly, she must have been getting something out of it. It must
have been serving some purpose for her. Something we all have done, indeed.
Another time was when Lori was an intern. She was commiserating
with other interns at a busy clinic about the hours required,
calculating how old they would be when they finally got licensed. It was
discouraging for Lori, one of the most senior interns in the group. An instructor
in her sixties overheard the conversation and said, “What does it matter what age you are when that happens? Either
way, you won’t get today back.” A reminder that we need to make the most
of each day.
Now a successful therapist for a few years, Lori muses: “If you’d
asked me when I started as a therapist what most people came in for, I would
have replied that they hoped to feel less anxious or depressed, to have less
problematic relationships. But no matter the circumstances, there seemed to be
this common element of loneliness, a craving for but a lack of a strong
sense of human connection. A want. They rarely expressed it that way,
but the more I learned about their lives, the more I could sense it, and I felt
it in many ways myself.”
Interestingly, the book she was supposed to have been
writing during this life crisis period was to be one on happiness. She finally
realizes, after therapy, that book was not for her to write. Eventually, this
book evolved. Yet, it may still be a book on happiness. Read the book and
decide for yourself.
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