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

by Lori Gottlieb

Touch can lower blood pressure and stress levels, boost moods and immune systems.

It’s common for people with traumatic histories to expect disaster just around the corner. Instead of leaning into the goodness that comes their way, they become hypervigilant, always waiting for something to go wrong.

Every person you’ve been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate to yourself and others. Sometimes you have conversations with them in your head; sometimes they speak to you in your sleep.