Maybe You Should Talk to Someone
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world – where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose ofÂfice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives – a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a 20-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys – she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
Braving the Wilderness
Here are my biggest takeaways from “Braving the Wilderness” by Brene Brown
“As if feeling lonely means there is something wrong with us. We feel shame when we feel lonely. We feel shame even when our loneliness is caused by heartbreak or grief.”
I find this to be true in people. People view loneliness as if there is something wrong with them, as if they are going to be lonely forever.
“It’s not the quantity of your friends, it’s the quality of the few relationships that actually matter.”
I think friends can change your life and if you only have a few, but those few are meaningful, then you are rich. The more friends I have, the harder it is for me to find the time to foster those relationships and keep them enriched, especially those that move away or are far.
We fear, “Fear of vulnerability; fear of getting hurt; fear of pain.”
Who doesn’t fear getting hurt; or exposing themselves in a way people will judge them.
“If we find a way to feel hurt instead of spreading hurt, we can change.”
I think this is true because if we are true to our own feelings, and get through the times that are tough, we don’t need anyone else to experience what we are experiencing. It takes hard work to feel and to change, almost a skills to know how to navigate through the experience without taking others with us in an unintentional way.
“People are hard to hate close up. Once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with the pain. Death, loss, grief.”
The closer people are the easier it is to see things that you may like about them, that may be in their heart, that may be their true authentic self.
Why does the cute cupcake decorations matter? “They matter because joy matters. You can experience joy by practicing gratitude.”
And this is why, we mom!
This book is highly recommended for people who feel like they just don’t fit or need to know why it is okay to be vulnerable and afraid at the same time.