Maybe you should talk to someone

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, A therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed is a guided tour through therapy. Lori Gottlieb invites us into her office to observe the gradual, often subtle, shifts clients make as they spend an hour a week on her couch. But she doesn't stop there. She also invites us to join her at her therapist's office where she shares her own process moving from "presenting problem" (boyfriend dumps her) to  becoming a wiser, more forgiving and empowered version of herself. 

This book is an easy read. Gottlieb's clear and engaging writing kept me turning the pages even as I neglected my to-do list and stayed up later than I knew I should. Like a master weaver she integrates her clients' stories with her own so that it becomes clear, chapter by chapter, that we are all united in our humanity. She makes it clear that by taking the time to sit with each other in the raw, and often painful place of authenticity, we also have the potential to reap great rewards in the form of greater intimacy, forgiveness and ultimately peace. 

Although the book travels through challenging territory, addressing themes of death, traumatic loss, abandonment and abuse, the overall message is hopeful and the book ends with a sense of satisfaction that everyone, thanks to therapy, is a little (sometimes a lot) better off than when they started. While this is not always the case in life or in therapy, and she surely intentionally chose case studies to present that would allow her to end on a positive note, I still finished the book with the overall sense that what we do in the therapy office, whether we are the therapist or the client, has the potential to be deeply transformational for everyone involved.

Here's an excerpt:
This- right here, right now, between you and me- isn't therapy, but a story about therapy: how we heal and where it leads us. Like in those National Geographic Channel shows that capture the embryonic development and birth of rare crocodiles, I want to capture the process in which humans, struggling to evolve, push against their shells until they quietly (but sometimes loudly) and slowly (but sometimes suddenly) crack open...

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