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

by Lori Gottlieb

When people come to therapy, I’m listening to their narratives but also for their flexibility with them. Do they consider what they’re saying to be the only version of the story—the “accurate” version—or do they know that theirs is just one of many ways to tell it? Are they aware of what they’re choosing to leave in or out, of how their motivation in sharing this story affects how the listener hears it? I thought

That the presenting problem, the issue somebody comes in with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely.

People who come to therapy present snapshots of themselves, and from these snapshots, a therapist has to extrapolate.

Therapists have to be interpreters of these blurry snapshots, aware that patients need to be fuzzy to some extent, because those first snapshots help to gloss over painful feelings that might be invading their peaceful inner territory. In time, they find out that they aren’t at war after all, that the path to peace is to call a truce with themselves.

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip—to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The flight attendant comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” “Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around . . . and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills . . . and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts. But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy . . . and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say...

We think we make bucket lists to ward off regret, but really they help us to ward off death. After all, the longer our bucket lists are, the more time we imagine we have left to accomplish everything on them.

What makes therapy challenging is that it requires people to see themselves in ways they normally choose not to. A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, but it’s up to the patient to take a good look at that reflection, to stare back at it and say, “Oh, isn’t that interesting! Now what?” instead of turning away.

We are afraid of being hurt. We are afraid of being humiliated. We are afraid of failure and we are afraid of success. We are afraid of being alone and we are afraid of connection. We are afraid to listen to what our hearts are telling us. We are afraid of being unhappy and we are afraid of being too happy (in these dreams, inevitably, we’re punished for our joy). We are afraid of not having our parents’ approval and we are afraid of accepting ourselves for who we really are. We are afraid of bad health and good fortune. We are afraid of our envy and of having too much. We are afraid to have hope for things that we might not get. We are afraid of change and we are afraid of not changing. We are afraid of something happening to our kids, our jobs. We are afraid of not having control and afraid of our own power. We are afraid of how briefly we are alive and how long we will be dead. (We are afraid that after we die, we won’t have mattered.) We are afraid of being responsible for our own lives. Sometimes it takes a while to admit our fears, especially to ourselves.

I’ve noticed that dreams can be a precursor to self-confession—a kind of pre-confession. Something buried is brought closer to the surface, but not in its entirety. A patient dreams that she’s lying in bed hugging her roommate; initially she thinks it’s about their strong friendship but later she realizes she’s attracted to women. A man has a recurring dream that he’s been caught speeding on the freeway; a year into this dream, he begins to consider that his decades of cheating on his taxes—of positioning himself above the rules—might catch up with him.

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But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.

Uncertainty, I’m starting to realize, doesn’t mean the loss of hope—it means there’s possibility. I don’t know what will happen next—how potentially exciting! I’m going to have to figure out how to make the most of the life I have, illness or not, partner or not, the march of time notwithstanding.

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

Relationships 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. 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.