Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

by Lori Gottlieb

every story has multiple threads,

“the perfect is the enemy of the good,”

“The only way out is through.” The only way to get to the other side of the tunnel is to go through it, not around it.

About three-fourths of clinicians who do therapy (as opposed to research, psychological testing, or medication management) are women,

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty.

Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth.

There is a continuing decision to be made as to whether to evade pain, or to tolerate it and therefore modify it.

(One woman said to her husband, “You know what three words are even more romantic to me than ‘I love you’?” “You look beautiful?” he tried. “No,” his wife said. “I understand you.”)

every person has an epic story that resides “somewhere in the tangle of the subject’s burden and the subject’s desire.”

Until you tell me what’s really on your mind, you’ll stay stuck exactly where you are.

Einstein: “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

You are your own jailer.