Naila Karim★ Scout · Lv 6
todayI saw myself in every chair. Wise, funny, and quietly devastating about being human.
Nonfiction
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
4.8· 1,738 ratings
Published 2019433 pagesEnglishWarm · Illuminating
The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.
Why read it
A therapist's life falls apart when her boyfriend abruptly ends their relationship, and she does the only thing she knows how to do: she finds a therapist of her own, and starts seeing the people on both sides of the couch clearly for the first time.
The big idea
Lori Gottlieb interweaves her own crisis and treatment with the stories of four of her patients, a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a newlywed with a terminal diagnosis, a lonely older woman threatening suicide, and a young addict. The result is a candid, moving look at how change actually happens in therapy, and how the person helping is as human and stuck as anyone in the chair across from her.
The story behind it
Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and journalist who writes the Atlantic's Dear Therapist column, published Maybe You Should Talk to Someone in 2019. It became a major New York Times bestseller, was translated into dozens of languages, and was optioned for a television series produced by Eva Longoria.
What you’ll take away
- 01
The therapist in therapy
The takeaway is disarming: the professional who guides others is just as lost, and healing begins when she admits it.
- 02
How change happens
Real transformation is shown as slow, resisted, and nonlinear, not a tidy breakthrough.
- 03
The stories we tell
Gottlieb shows how we narrate our own lives in ways that trap us, and how revising the story frees us.
- 04
Mortality and meaning
A young patient's terminal diagnosis forces urgent questions about how to live with the time anyone has.
From the book
The case of John, the abrasive television producer who calls everyone an idiot, and the grief slowly revealed beneath his contempt.
The case of Julie, the newlywed professor diagnosed with cancer, whose sessions confront how to live fully while dying.
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