How Are You? Connection in a Virtual Age: A Therapist, a Pandemic, and Stories about Coping with Life

by Therese Rosenblatt

A therapist shares her patients' experiences--and her own--during the dramatic disruption of the Covid crisis.

By turns a memoir, a chronicle, and a provocative contemplation of life in a socially distanced and virtual world, How Are You? tells the story of a therapist plunged overnight into the unsettling reality of a pandemic and all-virtual therapy.

Therese Rosenblatt shares her privileged front-row seat into the hearts and minds of her patients, to report on what has gone on inside real peoples' heads from the dark, early days of the pandemic through its long, drawn-out progression. Dr. Rosenblatt then trains her attuned eyes and ears onto herself, sharing some of her experiences and challenges--and unexpected pleasures--as she navigates this new world together with her patients.

In addition to recounting how her patients are coping with loss, loneliness, and isolation, as well as overcrowding with relatives, spouses, and partners and challenges with substance use, she opens a window into her private thoughts as she conducts her sessions. All the while, she contemplates the specter of catastrophic illness and the move to an existence liberated from the physical space of the consulting room, yet missing its comforts and human sensibilities.

Whether addressing difficult marriages, ambivalence about pregnancy, or young adults trying to launch into the world while locked down with their parents, Dr. Rosenblatt offers insight gleaned from twenty-six years of practice--and explores in depth this historic event's psychological effects on us as individuals.

Genres: Nonfiction

180 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 20, 2021

Reviews

[Tanya Hansen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read numerous memoirs (not all related to the pandemic) and this one failed to give me what I was looking for in this type of book. I understand patient confidentiality, but I have read many other memoirs of therapists and psychiatrists where they have done a much better job of describe the situations their clients and patients have encountered and how it was resolved.

Too much of this book related to her choice of therapy. In ways it read more like an advertisement for her practice because it contained so much about how she does therapy and the roots of her type of therapy back to Frued and Plato.

I was expecting something that dealt less with the therapist and her preferred type of therapy and that was truly more about how people coped with the pandemic. She didn't hit well on what a great portion of her clients were really feeling, doing and struggling with in regards to the pandemic. Her revelations about clients and self were too surface level to offer any real insight into those who were in therapy during the pandemic for a variety of reasons. More often she talked about the original reasons that the clients came to her for therapy with little relation to how it was affected by the pandemic.

The pandemic changed everything and continues to change things even as we seem to be going from pandemic illness to endemic illness. People are still greatly impacted by what occurred and what continues to occur. This could have been a book that really helped people who do not have the ability to go to therapy right now for whatever reason and I see no true help for anyone in this book. And no therapy cannot be completed through a book, but we can often be helped by books in the way we deal with our life, that is what I wish this book would have offered.

If you aren't a fan of people who are very clear on their political stance, I would not suggest this book.

[Jared Guertin]

I didn't look too much into this book before I read it, I had assumed it would be more of a commentary on how as a psychotherapist to understand the digital age with many clients who, for example, have the majority of their friend groups online. Instead, it was more of a personal reflection on how the author's psychotherapy practice changed as a result of the pandemic. The book doesn't really feel relevant anymore, especially since it was written only a year into the pandemic. Many of the predictions on how the rest of the pandemic would play out ended up aging like milk, though to be fair, most predictions at that time did. It felt kind of silly to read all the tirades about how Donald Trump is The Devil and Joe Biden is the Savior of America, especially as the book was written only a month or so into the Biden presidency, he really had no chance to demonstrate whether or not he would be effective in this crisis. But overall, I did not rate this book since it was meant for a particular time which is no longer the time now, so it wouldn't be fair for me to do so outside the context for which it was written.

[Dionne Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic for any therapist who has work through the Pandemic. It is familiar and helpful to normalize many of our experiences in the helping relations field over the past 3 years. If you are not a therapist, I would recommend reading this to understand your therapist is a real way rather than how the media portrays us. Any negative critics of this book feel misplaced. I would presume those people are not therapists and cannot understand as fully as a person trained or knowledgeable about mental health and psychology, but you are entitled to your review as well. Happy reading.

[Carol]

Received as a GoodReads giveaway. I'm going to abstain from rating because I don't feel qualified to do so. I think I misunderstood the scope of the book. I'm not a therapist, and I was looking at it as a more general book written BY a therapist, but it's focused mainly ON therapy practices. I stopped reading about 20 percent through.

[Pascal Masuba · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a timely reminder to acknowledge the 360-degree global changes and transformation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and how by critically analyzing key learnings and equipping ourselves with the right mental tools, can we maintain our sanity. A must-read coping manual.