A Therapist, Her Therapist, And Our Lives Revealed

I recently finished reading Maybe You Should Talk To Someone by Lori Gottlieb

POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.

With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them."

Face it, we could all use therapy. This memoir pulls back the curtain on the benefits of therapy, the stigmas, our hesitancy to open up about mental health, and also becomes a celebration of life.

The setup is that Lori, a therapist herself, experiences a life-shattering breakup and decides to start therapy mostly for selfish reasons--getting someone to agree that her ex-boyfriend is a jerk. Juxtaposed with that are the stories of Lori’s clients and their growth. While Lori experiences growth, she has an increased understanding of the other side of the sofa, and her own complex emotions.

It’s all a little sappy and a lot awesome. The stories of her clients are funny, heart-breaking, and touch on relatable topics. Some intimately and others in theory. She changes names, of course, but otherwise doesn’t hold back. I suspect consent forms had to be signed because we get to eavesdrop on many unfiltered, deeply personal conversations. 

Honesty and extreme vulnerability are what make this stand out. For those of us who have never experienced therapy, it’s a great way to understand how it works and how it helps. The book itself is therapy, however. Seeing Lori cry her eyes out on the therapist coach, once even anxious when her therapist is late for a session, is beyond beautiful. We all have baggage, and even mental health experts need support.

Lori only covers the stories of a few individuals, and herself, but their dilemmas are universal enough that reading this book is probably the equivalent of several therapy sessions. Or maybe it’s the gateway you need to actually sign up with an open mind. I’m giving it four stars for now because I do think it’s overlong in places, but I suspect the more I think about it, the more this will round up to a perfect five. Any book that can change my perspective on life, as this one does, deserves top praise.

Check out Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, and discover what happens when you allow yourself to be vulnerable.

Happy Reading :)