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

by Lori Gottlieb

A supervisor once likened doing psychotherapy to undergoing physical therapy. It can be difficult and cause pain, and your condition can worsen before it improves, but if you go consistently and work hard when you’re there, you’ll get the kinks out and function so much better.

can die from lack of touch, and so can adults (adults who are touched regularly live longer).

was an unspoken irony to all of this. People wanted a speedy solution to their problems, but what if their moods had been driven down in the first place by the hurried pace of their lives?

people procrastinate or self-sabotage as a way to stave off change—even positive change—because they’re reluctant to give something up without knowing what they’ll get in its place.

can have compassion without forgiving.

Just because she sends you guilt doesn’t mean you have to accept delivery.”

get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can’t change what you’re denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones. “You

so my question about my mother has gone from “Why can’t she change?” to “Why can’t I?”

underneath the old mother-daughter frustration was not a wish for her to go away but a longing for her to stay forever? I

heart is just as fragile at seventy as it is at seventeen.

in life don’t really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you’ve been close to lives on somewhere inside you.