A Book for Anyone Navigating a Major Life Transition: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
There is a particular kind of disorientation that comes with having your life not go the way you planned. The future you had imagined, the one you had built your decisions around, suddenly no longer exists. What comes next is unclear. That experience is at the heart of separation, and it is also at the heart of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb.
Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author whose TED Talk was one of the Top 10 Most Watched of the Year. This memoir is unlike any other book about therapy because it shows the process from both sides: Gottlieb as the therapist working with her own patients, and Gottlieb as the patient, after a sudden and devastating breakup sends her world crashing down and lands her on the couch of her own therapist, a quiet and perceptive man named Wendell.
What makes the book so compelling, and so relevant to anyone going through separation, is what Gottlieb discovers in her own therapy. She arrives thinking she needs a few sessions of crisis management to get over a broken relationship. What she finds instead is that her real struggle is not about the breakup at all. It is about uncertainty, about the life she thought she was going to have, about the stories she had been telling herself for years without examining them. Wendell helps her see that the version of events she had been holding onto was not the only version available to her.
Fixed narratives are one of the most common obstacles we see in mediation. When someone arrives certain about what happened, what they deserve, and what is possible, there is very little room to reach an agreement that genuinely works. The clients who have done some honest self-examination tend to find the process significantly easier.
Gottlieb weaves her own story together with those of several of her patients, each of whom is navigating their own version of a life that has not gone to plan. The result is a book that is by turns funny, moving, and deeply insightful, one that leaves you with a much richer understanding of why human beings behave the way they do under pressure, and how much capacity for change we actually have when we are willing to look honestly at ourselves.
In mediation, the couples who tend to reach the best outcomes are not necessarily the ones with the simplest situations. They are the ones who have done some of the inner work: who have moved from a fixed position to a more open one, who can hear the other person without immediately defending themselves, and who know what they actually need rather than what they think they are owed. If you are at the point of starting to process your life changes, reading this book and talking to your own therapist will be extremely helpful. Once you’re ready to start making decisions, we can help you move forward. You can get started by scheduling your Initial Consultation.
About the Author
Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist, New York Times bestselling author, and national advice columnist. Her TED Talk was one of the Top 10 Most Watched of the Year and her work has been featured on Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR's Fresh Air, and in The New York Times. She is also the co-host of the Dear Therapists podcast.