You’ve either already got Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb on your shelf or you know you will never read a ‘therapy’ book. Never ever.
Therapy books (is ‘therapy-porn’ a genre?) sit right alongside misery-memoirs for me – I love them both. And if you favour these kinds of books, I’m certain you’ll enjoy Gottlieb’s insightful case studies and her own experience in therapy. Her compassion and honesty, combined with solid writing makes this book a page-turner. Truly.
For those readers who give therapy books and the self-help shelf a wide berth, humour me and skim through the following gems from Gottlieb (you never know, one or two might resonate).
- Change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want to change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.
- We all have our deal-breakers… (but) If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don’t recognise that “the perfect is the enemy of the good,” you may deprive yourself of joy.
- There’s a difference between pain and suffering …everyone feels pain at times – but you don’t have to suffer so much. You’re not choosing pain, but you’re choosing the suffering.
- Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth.
- Follow your envy – it shows you what you want.
- Avoidance is almost always about fear.
- We may want others’ forgiveness, but that comes from a place of self-gratification; we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.
5/5 Riveting.
One of Lori’s clients eats Chinese chicken salad during his therapy session every week.
