PDF Maybe You Should Talk to Someone A Therapist HER Therapist and Our Lives Revealed Lori Gottlieb 9781328662057 Books

Product details Hardcover 432 pages Publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 2, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1328662055

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone A Therapist HER Therapist and Our Lives Revealed Lori Gottlieb 9781328662057 Books Reviews

• I have so many books to read and it took me too long to get to this one. Big mistake. It’s WONDERFUL. One of the best books I’ve read in ages. I was hooked from the first page. The book is so eminently readable I could have devoured it quickly. Instead I chose to savor it. The author, Lori Gottlieb has a delightfully conversational style of writing, yet she gets to the point and doesn’t waste words. I found this book fascinating, from the perspective of someone who has had therapy in the past and sometimes considers trying it again. And even more, as a human who gets in situations and thinks about life and relationships. Like most of us. The chapters are bite-sized, both very real and very entertaining. I could relate to some of the predicaments and situations more than others, but I felt that I got some value from reading about all of them. The author alternates between her patients sessions and her own and both perspectives are invaluable. The advance praise for this book is well deserved indeed.
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is the wrong title for Lori Gottlieb’s fine memoir about her life and work as a therapist. I suggest instead, Love Wins. On the bottom of the book jacket we find A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, which I would continue to include on the cover of the book.
  
  Of course, the title of the book is less important than what's inside and this memoir that tells the story of Lori Gottleib and her patients holds our attention from beginning to end. One of Lori’s patients, Julie, is dying of cancer. Each week Julie comes for therapy to help her come to terms with her death. We follow Julie in therapy from her first diagnosis of cancer to her quiet death and few readers will not take a few moments to sit back and think about loved ones they have lost and then cry with Lori and Julie. When Lori talks with Julie about what matters most she says to Julie, “Love wins.” This is exactly what Julie’s dad had said to her when discussing how families overcome the many problems that come along and how they survive them. Her dad says to his daughters, “Because at the end of the day, love wins. Always remember that girls.”
  
  Love wins is at the center of everything Lori does. No, she’s not perfect and her memoir does not try to hide her own inadequacy as she faces the trials and tribulations of her own life. But Lori’s heart is in the right place and she knows that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.” With one of her difficult patients, John, the award winning screen writer who thinks that everyone is an idiot, Lori is patient and loving and love wins. Lori listens to John with her heart and sees in the depths of his being the love that is hidden there that only needs someone like Lori to recognize and then help John find his way home to the person he was meant to be. With John we laugh at his outrageous banter, which Lori captures perfectly, but then cry when the banter is replaced by the truth of John’s inability to cope with the death of his beloved young son Gabe in an auto accident.
  
  Now as I sit back for a moment and think about it, that’s what Lori’s book is about – laughter and tears, for that is what our life is – ups and downs, sickness and health, laughter and tears, and Lori has captured it all remarkably well. She is so skilled as a writer that we feel like she is talking to us and we can make conversation with her. I have written many reviews of English writer Anthony Trollope’s novels and I have said that Trollope, like Lori, draws us in to his world as he tells us about the predicaments his characters find themselves emeshed in, that “sweet flypaper of life” that Lori is caught in, but with help from her own therapist, Wendell, she extricates herself only to be caught again. But Lori has learned not to take herself too seriously. In her book we see her come to terms with her humanity. She knows that like her patients she often takes one step forward and two steps back. She says “all of us are trying our best to get out of our own way.”
  
  Lori’s memoir is meant to be read slowly and savored, sitting back from time to time as we examine our own lives and try to figure out how to get out of our own way. Lori tells us what we already know, that no easy answers exist for anyone. Long ago the Buddha gave us his First Noble Truth Suffering – life is full of suffering. But the Buddha, Jesus, and all the great teachers know what Lori has shown so well in her memoir, that in the end, love wins. If we hold on to that great truth we will have the strength to face the challenges that are a part of all our lives.
  
  I wish Lori were here at my desk so that I could thank her in person for her wonderful book, but this review will have to do instead.
• Beautifully written. Gottlieb is a wonderful storyteller. It's honest, heart-wrenching, laugh-out-loud funny, enlightening, and ultimately uplifting.
  
  Detailing the processes and methods of guiding her patients through their sometimes-awkward and oftentimes-stalled personal growth - while experiencing stumbling blocks and personal confusion in her own life - Gottleib's insightful book also helps the reader become aware of his or her own obstacles and strengths.
  
  The flow is artfully crafted; the writing style clear and conversational.
  
  It's one of the best books I've read in the past year. Healing.
  
  I've recommended it to my therapist; I'm confident she'll recommend it to others
• If you ever wanted a fuller understanding of how an excellent therapist thinks, advises and solves problems, this is the book for you. Lori Gottlieb, whom you may know from her previous books (Marry Him The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough is my favorite) has a down-to-earth style. No annoying jargon. Lots of great anecdotes and plain old common sense. This is a book to be savored, most likely read over a period of a few weeks.
• I had hoped that this book would be more about mental illness--depression, bipolar, etc., but it's awfully interesting nevertheless. In fact, I've been reading it for several days and can hardly put it down; some of her clients are amazing. It's both laugh out loud funny and heart wrenching, although not at exactly the same time. I can't say how typically the book represents therapy, having only done a couple of sessions of counseling/therapy myself (no insurance most of my life), and I'm fuzzy on the difference between therapy and counseling (they seem all too similar to me). Still, the book is fascinating, and the progress represented in the book for her clients is amazing.
• I read this book in three days and that's on!y because my eyes got sore and I had to work. I see a therapist and plan on talking about this book in a session. Very hard to put down and very honest. You'll laugh, you'll cry but you will never forget the stories. Even if you have never gone through therapy , you will get the most marvelous gift of Lorie's insights on how therapy works. Read it. It's so worth it