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

by Lori Gottlieb

People often mistake numbness for nothingness, but numbness isn’t the absence of feelings; it’s a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings.

how the past informs the present—how our histories affect the ways we think, feel, and behave and how at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past. If we don’t accept the notion that there’s no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck. Changing our relationship to the past is a staple of therapy. But we talk far less about how our relationship to the future informs the present too. Our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret.

life is the very definition of uncertainty.

Samantha was always looking for problems in her relationships, searching for issues that would inevitably provide her with a reason to leave. In not wanting her boyfriends to be the enigma that her father was, she’d unwittingly re-create a story of abandonment—only in this version, she was the one doing the abandoning. She had control, but ended up alone.

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don’t know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?

Happiness equals reality minus expectations.

PEACE. IT DOES NOT MEAN TO BE IN A PLACE WHERE THERE IS NO NOISE, TROUBLE, OR HARD WORK. IT MEANS TO BE IN THE MIDST OF THOSE THINGS AND STILL BE CALM IN YOUR HEART.

Follow your envy—it shows you what you want.

We marry our unfinished business.

If you’d asked me when I started as a therapist what most people came in for, I would have replied that they hoped to feel less anxious or depressed, to have less problematic relationships. But no matter the circumstances, there seemed to be this common element of loneliness, a craving for but a lack of a strong sense of human connection. A want. They rarely expressed it that way, but the more I learned about their lives, the more I could sense it, and I felt it in many ways myself.

“Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.”

The four ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness.

Man’s Search for Meaning.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Infant (hope)—trust versus mistrust Toddler (will)—autonomy versus shame Preschooler (purpose)—initiative versus guilt School-age child (competence)—industry versus inferiority Adolescent (fidelity)—identity versus role confusion Young adult (love)—intimacy versus isolation Middle-aged adult (care)—generativity versus stagnation Older adult (wisdom)—integrity versus despair

“flight to health”

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do I want advice (counseling) or self-understanding (therapy)?

“The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.”