Maybe You Should Talk To Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed - A Book Review
This was an excellent read and I feel like it came at the perfect time for me to read it. The author, Lori Gottlieb, is an excellent author, journalist, podcaster, and certified psychotherapist who starts the book by exploring her thought process on searching for her own therapist. Her website describes her as somebody who “blends her clinical experience with the latest research and cultural developments to help people live better lives”.
Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way.
- Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
Part of her struggle in finding a therapist was that you are not allowed to see somebody as a patient or as a therapist that you know on a personal level, and naturally, as a therapist in LA who networks often - this would pose a problem. She eventually finds somebody and this therapist, whom she affectionately names Wendell, sees her weekly about her most pressing issue - Boyfriend.
Okay, he’s more like ex-Boyfriend at that point in the story, but what lingers in her mind is “Why did Boyfriend decide to not be with me anymore?” And he gave her a reason actually, but it didn’t quite make sense to her. She was experiencing deep loss of somebody she loved. Thus, she decides to talk about how she’s feeling with Wendell, the new therapist. Over time, she comes around and does a lot of inner work to figure out some of the inner answers she had been searching for.
Of course, not everything is tidely answered and perfectly, forever-happily-packaged because she’s really taking from her real life, which admittedly was hard to remember at times. There were elements about the book where it felt like a really good fiction novel, only to suck me in and leaving me to realize that the patients she was describing were still very real people. (Presumably re-named for privacy sake, however.)
Elements of her book stuck with me, such as this quote when she was reflecting on how deal with themselves:
The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things—leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator—they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.
- Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
I think this book came at such a good time for me, because I actually recently started seeing a new therapist myself. As somebody who does a lot of work in my local community, I have also had a hard time finding therapists that don’t know me on a personal level (which would make them unable to work with me on a patient level). I have also experienced many of her emotions that she feels when working with people, because I love what I do, but it’s not always easy.
People often come when they need help, not when things are going well, you know?
So the book helped me realize my feelings were A) quite normal and B) helped me humanize my therapist a bit more. I would rate this book a solid 10/10 for the different way it helped me contemplate my life and the people in it.
