Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

by Lori Gottlieb

people tend to remember experiences based on how they end,

Displacement’s a bitch, isn’t it?

sublimation, when a person turns a potentially harmful impulse into something less harmful

Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature.

people shift from blaming their parents to taking full responsibility for their lives.

Whereas in their younger years, people often come to therapy to understand why their parents won’t act in ways they wish, later on, people come to figure out how to manage what is.

you might astonish yourself with how far you’ve come, only to slip back into your old roles.

As much as I claim to be dramatically different from my mother, there are times when I’m eerily similar.

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

“The more you welcome your vulnerability,” Wendell had said, “the less afraid you’ll feel.”

Because pain abates but doesn’t vanish.

even in the best possible relationship, you’re going to get hurt sometimes,

you sign up for intimacy, getting hurt is part of the deal.

It’s not ideal, opening yourself up like this, putting your shield down, but if you want the rewards of an intimate relationship, there’s no way around it.

Take a risk. Maybe our pasts don’t define us but inform us.

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

Falling in love never gets old.

a new love can’t help but make you feel hopeful and alive, like t...

Late-in-life love has the benefit of being especially forgiving, generous, sensitive — and urgent.

what makes self-sabotage so tricky is that it attempts to solve one problem (alleviate abandonment anxiety) by creating another (making her partner want to leave).

“Maybe happiness is sometimes,”

Couldn’t they see that a handful of Bs and that fucking C minus weren’t indicators of his aptitude but of the fact that he never had time to study, much less stay after class if the labs went long?

I was searching for meaning — from which fulfillment and, yes, occasionally happiness ensue.

we’ll talk to any other person over the course of our lives but that our words aren’t always kind or true or helpful — or even respectful.

The patient feels good — more resilient, more flexible, more able to navigate daily life.

therapy is also about forming deep attachments to people and then saying goodbye.

we grow in connection with others.