Maybe You Should Talk to Someone — Book review
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Maybe you should talk to someone by Lori Gottlieb is the first non-fiction book I have ever read and damn I loved it! Before I start talking about the book I would like to say that I have been intrigued with mental health and the process of therapy so that maybe one of the reasons why I found this book a little too interesting. However, I don’t think your level of interest around therapy or the lack of it should be a factor of picking up this book. I think the book answers one question — what is therapy like?
Lori describes her journey as a therapist and we see the transition of her patients throughout the book — all of them unique, each of them with a different set of questions and issues that are bothering them. We have John, a self-absorbed Hollywood producer who thinks the world is filled with “idiots”. We see him struggling with his marriage and his kids. John is shown to be stubborn at the beginning and we see how Lori gets to him day by day slowly bringing his walls down until he admits how broken he feels on the inside. The second patient Lori deals with is Rita, a 70-year old woman who was in an abusive marriage for most of her life and now wants to seek forgiveness from her children. Rita has self-deprecating thoughts and we see how Lori helps her see the world as a brighter place to be in, she helps Rita find the confidence to start her own business and the courage to own up to her mistakes. Lori also deals with Charlotte, a 21 year old with an alcohol addiction and a thing for the “wrong” guys. And lastly, we have Julie, a patient with cancer and Lori helps her how to deal with death and also how she wants to live the rest of her life. We see these patients come in every week and tell their stories and Lori’s mindset on how she deals with them every step along the way.
Apart from this we also see Lori struggling with her own issues — coming out of a long term relationship and when she isn’t able to deal with it she finds help from Wendell. Wendell’s ways are different from Lori’s and we see both of them discussing the efficiency of their methods. Lori often finds herself behaving as her patients do which is quite an interesting perspective.
What I really liked about the book was how throughout the book Lori has sprinkled snippets of psychology — such as theories about different defense mechanisms people build for themselves, stages of changes and brief glimpses of the contributions of Freud, Erikson, Rogers, Franklin, and others to the field of psychology. Lori tries to paint the image of the profound nature of human emotions. There were times in the book where I stopped and contemplated my own behavior around these theories. The book normalizes therapy for everyone.
Maybe you should talk to someone is a warm, funny and an engaging book to read and at the same time, so insightful. I think it is one of my favorite books I have read this year and I would definitely recommend you to read it too!
“But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself — to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”
