Maybe You Should Talk to Someone A Therapist, hertherapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Honestly I didnt expect to like this book so much. I started reading it thinking it was fiction, and only after a quarter through did I realise it was not. And I think the realisation of Lori's patients being very real and very like me did a number. It brought me through waves of being perplexed and then understanding why people in my life (me included) respond in certain waves. It brought me comfort as I learned theories and frameworks that affirmed my own reflections, and tears as I read how patients and their loved ones coped with their loss.

Loved this book.

I was slightly disappointed reading this book after all the good reviews. The book was very narrative with the author sharing her stories and views from a therapist and a patient. Felt a bit to "story like" for me. Nonetheless, there were emotional moments in this book.

Loved this book so much!! It took me through the whole range of human emotions - I laughed! I cried! Etc

Also an interesting narrative style of part memoir/autobiogrpahy, part telling of other people’s (slightly fictionalised, I think) stories.

I definitely feel at least 1% wiser having read this book. It slightly makes me want to be a therapist and to have Lori as my therapist hehe

This book made me think about artifice of our society, one that often affirms that we’re things needing to be fixed in order to be functioning members and to feel ashamed for our need to connect with others deeply. Therapy both helps and uphold these problems. It is interesting that Gottlieb in different moments both affirm and deny her patients' humanity, the moments where she allows herself to ‘escape’ the confines of her training and relate human to human and ones where she pathologises and objectifies them. I struggled to finish this book towards the end, at times it felt a bit like a vanity project written more for tv than real life, overly sentimental with a suspiciously perfect Hollywood ending. I also felt uncomfortable in the way that she used the stories and lives of her patients for this book. I'm not sure if this is an entirely ethical choice, even with the anonymity and makes her therapy work seem transactional instead of authentic.

Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our hard-earned expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person. p. 7 As a psychology nerd (and also a human being), this book was a delight. That isn't to say that it was fun necessarily, because a lot of it was emotional and challenging. But Gottlieb mixed nerdy psych principles with touching stories and powerful takeaways. However, as helpful as these wisdoms were (the most powerful for me being that there's meaning even in things that I might prescribe as pointless, if those things bring me joy), the biggest takeaway is definitely that every can and would benefit from therapy. Because, after all, we're all dealing with things and there's no threshold of suffering that makes it acceptable to go to therapy. Gottlieb's stories about her patients were really powerful. It was really special to see their individual growth as they progressed through therapy, and how, while their problems might not have been 'solved' (because many things in life can't be), they developed the tools to handle life's complications. I felt like I was developing relationships with them too - getting frustrated when they engaged in self-destructive habits, and cheering for them as they made positive changes or learned to accept what they couldn't change. Gottlieb's own experience with therapy was also insightful. It was comforting to peel back the curtain and see how an accomplished therapist also struggles with the experience of being human - how she was also irrational and angry and deflective at times. And how she, too, developed ways to cope with the help of her own therapist. Overall, this was a really memorable book, and I know that many of her wisdoms will absolutely stick with me as I struggle through my own life.