February 12, 2020 • 32 mins
Lori Gottlieb is a practicing psychotherapist and a celebrated author. In her new book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she shares stories of transformation through therapy, including her own. We discussed blind spots—patterns in our lives that are invisible to us, but keep us stuck in unhappiness. That’s where a therapist, or someone with perspective and “wise compassion,” can help.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
What does it mean to be very intentional about your life?
To say, what am I going to do in a
very intentional way to make my life meaningful and not
waste my time? And I felt like I had wasted
a lot of time on people and things that I
didn't want to do. I didn't want to do that anymore.
But that wasn't what I came in saying. I came
in saying there was this devastating breakup. Welcome to the
(00:32):
road to somewhere. When we talk about all things exploration
and adventure and life change and transformation, um, we may
not know exactly where we're going, but we have faith
that the journey will be worthwhile. I am Lisa Oz
and I am Jill Herzig, and I think you know,
(00:53):
we are all about the joy of bumbling along and
you know, keeping forward momentum, even if we don't know
where we're going. But there are moments when that feels
really scary and just super hard. And at various points
in my life it has taken so much for me
to say, wait a second, I actually need help. I
(01:15):
need professional helping, new therapist to help me deal with this.
I feel like the older I get, the faster I
should be to recognize those moments, and yet the slower
I am to recognize it. And I don't know. I
just wonder. You know, our conversation today, we'll get into it.
But I guess, I guess I feel like my God,
(01:36):
how how can I not have learned this lesson that
when you're really flailing around, if the tiniest little shadow
of a thought says to you, I could really use
some therapy, then it's time. If it is at all
accessible to you, it is time to go get it.
It's probably past time to go get it. Well, our
guest today will actually be able to answer that question
for us, as she is a therapist, herself a psychotherapist,
(02:00):
and she is the author of Maybe You Should Talk
to Someone, which is a New York Times bestseller. We
are joined by Lori Gottlieb. Lori, thank you so much
for being with us today. Oh, thanks so much for
having me. So you are a therapist, and the premise
of your book and this life journey you went on
(02:20):
was that as a therapist, you actually needed therapy and
you needed to be nudged into getting that therapy. Can
you tell us what was going on and what happened
and how you started down that adventure of therapy. So
it seems a little bit ironic that, as a therapist
and someone who really wants to help take the stigma
(02:43):
off of people getting help and our emotional struggles, that
when I was going through something, which was that the
person that I thought I was going to marry suddenly
decided he said he didn't want to live with a
kid under his roof for the next ten years. And
that kid at the time was my eight year old.
And this came as quite a shock to me because
my eight year old had not been hiding in the
(03:05):
closet for the for the years that we've been dating.
And so I thought, you know, I will get through this,
and and I wasn't getting through it. I was, you know,
I was, I was really having a real difficult time
coping with this news. And um, so when I went
to get a therapist, I was worried that if I
(03:26):
told my colleagues that I needed to get a therapist,
that that they wouldn't refer people to me, or they
would think that it would harm me somehow. And so
I called somebody and asked for a referral, and I said,
I was asking for a friend, and later I confessed
that it was for me. But um, you know, now
I'm really embarrassed that I felt like I had to
do that. Although that reveals that the stigma touches even
(03:50):
the people who are involved in moving the stigma. That
that and maybe, I mean, do you think the stigma
is real? It couldn't have hurt you. How could it have?
I mean, right, you know, I think it rational or
I think that it's it's kind of an artifact of
of what people thought about therapy and mental health a
(04:12):
while ago. I think now we're much more hip to
the fact that mental health is so important and it's
as important as our physical health. And if something is
wrong with our bodies, you know, we don't say, oh,
I'll just I'll just let it go. You know, if
you're having chest pain, you're probably go to the cardiologist
before you're having a massive heart attack. But if you're
(04:34):
having some kind of something feels off emotionally or having
some kind of emotional pain, often we say, well, we
kind of minimize it, you know, it's not that bad,
or other people have it worse or kind of stiff
upper lip um. And then people come to me, you know,
to my therapy office when they're having the equivalent of
an emotional heart attack, and we don't have to wait
(04:54):
that long. M hm. You know. One of the things
in your book that really fascinated me was the limitations
of your friends support when you had this sudden breakup
and they just rushed in, particularly your female friends, to
defend you and prop you up, and a little bit
demonized the man you called boyfriend in your in your book,
(05:15):
and they call him the kid hater or something. You know.
I guess, I just I'm curious because particularly think among women,
there's a sense that my girlfriends will help me get
through this, but your girlfriend's actually they were so well
meaning and they showed their love for you, but it
wasn't helpful at all. That's right, that's right. So in
(05:36):
the book I talk about the difference between idiot compassion
and wise compassion, and idiot compassion is what we do
for our friends generally. We you know, oh that guy
was a jerk, and your friend will say, yeah, you're right,
you dodged a bullet, even though that might have happened,
you know, the last three times in your relationships or
I can't believe that other person got the promotion I wanted,
(05:56):
and then we say, yeah, that's so unfair, even though
we might know that there's something maybe you didn't really
put in the work, or there's something that you're doing
at the office. So I think what happens is that
that we kind of blindly support people and it's idiot
compassion because it doesn't help them to see what might
really be going on and what might actually help them.
It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in
(06:18):
every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. Now your
friends won't say that, um, but you know, what therapists
offer is wise compassion, which is we hold up a
mirror to someone and we say, I want you to
look at your reflection in a way that you normally
don't because you're going to see something that's very useful
to you. If what they're doing primarily, though, is holding
up a mirror, could you could you do that for yourself?
(06:41):
I mean, if we have listeners who are like struggling
with something, is it possible to be your own therapist?
We all have blind spots, and it's so much easier
to see other people than it is to see ourselves.
So sometimes we can be very self aware, and we
can say, you know, see a pattern here, I see
this thing. I see that I've been struggling in this
(07:03):
area for a while, or I can see the same
thing keeps happening over and over um. But often we
don't see that. We don't realize that the choices were
making or that the behaviors were engaging in are really
guaranteeing our own unhappiness. We think it's out there, we
think it's like another person. We think it's circumstantial, it's
like this circumstances causing this, or situational, or it's somebody else.
(07:25):
And you know that old old starter line. Hell is
other people. Well, sometimes hell is us, and we don't
realize that that sometimes we are the cause of our
own problems, or at least even if there are other
difficult situations or people out there, that we're responding to
them in a way that is making our lives more difficult.
I'm gonna worry this friendship thing for another second, because
(07:48):
I'm curious about whether this girlfriend code that we all
seem to live by unconditional support and conditional love. You know,
you're never in the wrong. I mean, should we be
more honest with each other, because let's face it, you
can absolutely love a friend and still see that see
them quite accurately. Can you not hold up that mirror?
(08:09):
Is that just not that's not part of it? No,
I mean I think we we should, but you have
to do it in a compassionate way. Um. And I
always say timing and dosage are important. So the timing.
If the person is calling you right at the moment
that that thing happened and they're really upset about it,
that might not be the moment to say, you know,
there's a thing that you do that might have contributed
(08:31):
to this problem. That might be the moment to just listen.
But then, you know, give it a few days and say,
you know, I've been thinking about our conversation from the
other day and and are you curious to hear what
I think? And I want you to know I'm saying
this from a place of love. Right, they might be
able to hear that more and dosage to you don't
want to say, like, you know, give them ten years
(08:51):
of history with them, of all the examples of when
this happened. Um, you might want to just say, you know,
in this circumstance, here's what I see, and then later
you can increase the dose agency and I saw in
these other circumstances too, and that will help them to
feel less shame, because I think the reason people don't
want to hear that and the people the reason people say, oh,
you're not being supportive of me, because what they're hearing
(09:12):
is a criticism. What they're hearing is you're saying something's
wrong with me, and we're not saying something's wrong with you.
We're saying I love you, and I see you struggle
in this way, and I think that you might be
doing something. But what they hear is something like, I
feel a lot of shame because you're pointing out something
about me that I'm not proud of. Why is it
easier to hear that from a therapist than from someone
(09:35):
we actually have a uh, you know, like a friend
or a spouse or a family member, someone that we
have that kind of relationshipship with. Why is Why is
the distance of a therapist make us more open to
what could be perceived a criticism. Two reasons? I think
The first is that we feel more exposed with our
friends and family. Um, they see us all the time. Um,
(09:58):
the stakes are higher we need them to love us. Um,
we want them to love us. So I think with
a therapist, yeah, you want your therapist to like you.
But at the end of the day, UM, you're not
as worried, um, because you don't have to have the
same outside history and ongoing relationship with that person that
you do with your family and friends. Great, when we
(10:20):
come back, I do want to delve deeper into that
relationship with a therapist. Before the break, we were speaking
with Lloyd Gottlieb about therapy and maybe why it's easier
to speak to a therapist than a friend, especially in
(10:42):
times where we need some advice, And UM, I just
want to like throw out my personal situation because we
talked about our relationship with a therapist. I's been a
therapy a couple of times. Never had it work. What
when I say work mean last for more than like
three sessions, Because is two things happen. Either I don't
(11:02):
respect the therapist and I feel like, I, you're not
that smart and I'm not going to get anything from you,
and then I leave like a brat. Or I really
like them and I respect them and I think they're
incredibly smart, but then I don't want them to see
all my ugly bits, and so it's never gonna work
because I won't expose myself to them because I want
(11:23):
them to think I'm really cool and be my friend
because I respect them. So how do you get beyond
how do I here we go like my own therapy session.
How how do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with
a therapist when we most need it. Well, first of all,
it's really natural to want your therapist to like you
and respect you. Um, And I think we all wonder,
(11:46):
you know, what is my therapist thinking, Um, what does
she think of me? Or what does he think of me?
You know, I think when people first come in there's
almost a performative aspect to it. And I did that too.
You can see in the book that when I go
to my therapist, uma, you like me? Yeah, eventually I
I did, um and And I think that's allowed a
(12:07):
lot of people to realize that you can talk about
the relationship between the two of you with your therapists,
that that's that's actually an important component of the therapy.
But when I first went to therapy, you know, especially
because I already was a therapist, I think that I
wanted to appear much more together than I was. And
I think we all do that to some degree. You know,
people have secrets, and not necessarily because they're lying, but
(12:29):
because they're going to kind of dole out the information
as they start to form a relationship with you, as
they trust you more, as they realize that, um, you
do like them, you do respect them. And a lot
of people kind of hide the truth of who they
are because they're worried that I'm going to feel differently
about them if they tell me all of these things
that they feel ashamed of or that they don't like
(12:51):
about themselves. Um, but actually that makes me like them more.
It draws me towards them, because if I can see you,
if you can really show me who you are, I'm
going to feel really connected to you. If you keep
deflecting or going off on tangent or trying to present
like a version of yourself that isn't authentic, it's going
to be really hard for me to get to know you.
(13:12):
And if I can't get to know you, it's going
to be really hard to like you. Yeah, I mean
it is. It is tough to let go of that
performative aspect. And I think one of the things in
your book that really resonated with me was this idea
that a therapist is able to hold in their head
as they as they interact with you a sense of
(13:33):
who you are in the present, but also a very
kind of hopeful vision of who you could be in
the future. Did I misread that or is that is that?
That's exactly right. Hope is a big part of therapy
because when people come in, they often don't have a
lot of hope, right. They came at a point, as
I said, they sometimes come when things have gotten really bad.
(13:53):
The people who come in preventatively are people who do
have hope right there there there because they want to
make sure that, um, they're taking care of their emotional health.
But for a lot of people, they come in because
they got to a point where they don't have a
lot of hope, or they don't they're kind of lost, right,
They've lost their their footing, they've lost their direction, whether
(14:13):
that's you know, in a relationship or as a parent,
or with their own parents, or you know, whatever it
might be. So I can see something that they can't
see in that moment. I can see a future that
they can't see, and it's my responsibility to hold that
hope for them until they can hold it for themselves.
So you mentioned in the book you talk about the
presenting problem. It's the it's an inciting incident that drives
(14:36):
you into the therapy chair in the first place. But
UM or a crisis anyway, how do you as a
therapist get beyond that issue? Like with you it was
a breakup, to peel away the layers and get to
what the real problem is, because the real problem is
never just the breakup or the job firing or like
(14:59):
the show, is all about transition and being on a
on a path where there's flux and change, and that's
never really the actual thing that you end up dealing
with in therapy. Yeah, most of the time, it's not.
Sometimes it is um. You know, someone might come in
and say, I had a miscarriage and I'm having a
really hard time. You know, they had a specific loss, right,
(15:20):
But a lot of the time people will come in
and they have a specific thing that happened in their
lives and you can see that. You know, in the book,
I follow very I follow four very different patients um
and then I'm the fifth patients. You have five very
different patients. UM that you're seeing go through this process
of transformation. You can see that what they come in
(15:41):
with ends up being the thing that got them into therapy,
but that there's this this underlying struggle or pattern that
has been ongoing for a while. And so I always
say that I like to listen for the music under
the lyrics. The lyrics are the content of what they
came in with. I came in because, UM, I'm having
this trouble with my wife. I came in because, UM,
(16:02):
you know, my adult children won't talk to me. I
came in because you know, whatever it is, UM that
one of the people comes she comes in because uh,
you know, she keeps hooking up with the wrong guy.
She's in her twenties and I can't find a guy
who wants what she wants. UM. That seems to be
the presenting problem. But then there's something else that's going
on that got them into this situation. So I'm I'm
(16:22):
listening for the music under those lyrics so I can
figure out what is our treatment really going to be about?
So what was the music under your If the lyrics
were I've suffered this devastating breakup, what was the music
underneath for you. Well, in my very first session, I'm
ranting about the breakup and um and by the way,
(16:44):
I present myself in a very unflattering light, because that's
what people are like right when they come. And I
really wanted to kind of let it rip and and
and make myself. You know, I say at the beginning
of the book that my greatest credentials and I'm a
card caring member of the human race, and I think
that's really important to show. So the lyrics were the
sudden breakup happened. I don't know where this came from.
(17:04):
It was out of left field. There were no clues
about this. You know clearly that guy was a sociopath,
because you know who would do this. But I say,
you know, and now I've wasted. I'm in my forties
and I've wasted all these years of my life dating him,
and and half my life is over. And my therapist
gloams onto that phrase. Half my life is over. And
as you see in the book, that's what our therapy
(17:25):
is about. Is what was really happening was there were clues.
I didn't want to see them, and because I was
so worried about where I was at midlife that I
was willing to overlook those clues and something bigger was
going on. There were a few secrets that I had
that I wasn't telling my therapist, and they don't tell
them until like midway through the book, um, which was,
you know, a few months into our therapy, where I
(17:48):
was really worried about where I was at at this
midpoint in my life and you know, in terms of
my health, in terms of my career, in terms of
my role as a parent, in terms of my role
in relationships. Um, what does it mean to know that,
you know, to be very intentional about your life, to say,
what am I going to do in a very intentional
(18:10):
way to make my life meaningful and not waste my time?
And I felt like I had wasted a lot of
time on people and things that I didn't want to
I didn't want to do that anymore. But that wasn't
what I came in saying. I came in saying there
was this devastating breakup. Hmmm. And there was an interesting
moment in the book where you talk about the difference
(18:31):
between pain and suffering. Could you unpack that a little
bit for us? Yeah, So, when I was going through
the breakup. One of the things that I was doing
was creating all of these stories in my mind about
whether or not my ex boyfriend was um was suffering
and the way that I was suffering, whether he felt
the pain that I was that I was feeling. Um.
(18:53):
You know, if he posted pictures of like, you know,
salads and restaurants, I would say, well, how can you
even eat? It was just like regressed, juvenile place that
I think we go to when we're feeling that kind
of loss. And they were not alone, right right, um
and so um and so. My therapist said, you know,
you're you're creating everybody feels sorry, everybody feels pain, but
(19:16):
you don't have to suffer so much. And the pain
that I was feeling was the loss, But the suffering
I was creating for myself by you know, following him
on social media, by making up these stories in my
head about what I meant to him or what I
didn't mean to him. You know, that was suffering that
I didn't need to do. When you go into therapy,
you're seeking a change, and I want to just if
(19:40):
you would mind walking us through how therapy helps us
navigate the different stages of change. So change is really
hard because with every change comes loss, even positive change.
So say you're going to get married, or you're going
to have a baby. These are positive changes. You're getting
a new job that you really love, positive change, But
(20:02):
there's also the uncertainty of what that means, and you
have to give up what you already have, even if
even if what you already have, by the way, was
unpleasant or downright miserable, Um, it was your miserable. It
was it was your home, it was home to you,
it was what was familiar, and then all of a
sudden you have to walk into this, you know, this
unknown territory. And I think humans don't do well with uncertainty.
(20:25):
So change is it's really hard to get people to change.
And I talked in the book about the stages of
change and how it's not like the Nike commercial, just
do it, you know, it's like some people think that
they've done that, that actually there was a lot of
unconscious preparation that happened that got them to that place
where they actually made the changes. And so I think
it's important to realize, like I think we get frustrated
(20:47):
with friends or family members when they don't make a
change that we know is really good for them and
they know is really good for them, and they're they're like, yeah, yeah,
I'm good to start exercising, or I'm gonna drink less
or I'm gonna, um, you know, pay attention to my
health or I'm going to be in healthier relationships or
whatever it is. And they know they need to do
that and they want to do that, but part of
(21:09):
them also is resistant to doing that because they know
that they're going to have to give up something that
feels really comfortable and familiar to that. When we come back,
I would love it if you would walk us through
those different stages of change. We're back and we're talking
(21:32):
with Laura got Leave, psychotherapist. Before the break, we had
touched on the stages of change, and this podcast is
about change. So Laurie, would you walk us through the
different stages. Sure. So, before someone makes a change, there's usually, uh,
they go through these stages and the first one is
pre contemplation. And pre contemplation is you don't even know
(21:52):
that you're thinking about making a change. It's somewhere deep
inside you, but you don't you're not consciously aware of
it yet. Um and then we go to contemplation, where
you know you're you're kind of aware that you want
to make a change or you should make a change,
but you know, you'll come up with a lot of
reasons why you can't, why it's impossible, why you're gonna
(22:13):
have to do it two years from now if ever um.
And then there's preparation where you've decided, you know what,
I am going to make this change, but you're not
ready to take action yet. So maybe you'll start, like,
you know, researching a therapist. Maybe you're like, I need
to go to therapy, or maybe you'll start saying, you know,
I'm gonna look at maybe joining a gym. And then
there's action, where you actually take action and you do
(22:35):
the thing that you need to do. And just because
you've taken the action doesn't mean you're going to maintain that.
So then there's maintenance, which means that how do you
maintain this change that you've made. So a lot of
people are really gung ho when they first make a change,
but then how do you keep that change going and
the people this is the hardest part I think it is.
(22:55):
It is because it took a lot of work to
get to action and then maintaining it is and you
really have to make changes in your lifestyle right and
and changes in your outlook. And it has to be
really intrinsically motivated, really motivated, not by someone wanting you
to do something, but you have to have really good
reasons for yourself about why this has made your life better.
And usually you have those, but sometimes it's still hard
(23:18):
and you might slip. And what happens is when people slip,
they think all is lost, so just forget it. But
when you slip, just know that people slip and you
can just go right back to it. You don't have
to go into that place of I failed, I'm a loser,
I can't do this. That's what people often do. And
instead you can say, you know, it's normal, natural to slip,
and I'm just going to go back now to where
(23:38):
I was along those you know, sort of stations of
the cross of change. Where is there any place where
a therapist can be especially helpful or is it really
just at any point along the way. I think at
any point along the line. Usually what gets people into
a therapist office is that maybe they're in the uh,
you know, they're they're in one of those very early stages,
(24:00):
and so we help them along the way. They're in
pre contemplation, or they're in contemplation, or you know, they're
they're somewhere um the pre contemplation they might be. They
don't realize they need to make a change, but they're
coming in because they think someone else in their life
needs to make a change, and that gets them into
therapy and we help them with the changes that they
need to make. You you knew all this stuff as
a therapist and still needed to go into therapy yourself
(24:27):
to apply it to your life. How has being a
patient changed the way you practiced as a therapist. It's
changed it so much. When you're when you're getting your
hours for licensure, part of that is you go to therapy,
and it's really different when you're going to therapy as
an intern and you don't really feel like a therapist yet,
(24:49):
so you very much feel like the patients in that room.
It's a different thing when you have a practice and
you've been doing it for a while and then you
go into therapy. Um, you know, it's kind of hard
to take off your therapist hat. You know, maybe why
the therapist is asking you a certain question and you
want to answer it in a way where you come
off well as opposed to the real answer. Um. But
(25:12):
very quickly you can see I do take off my
therapist hat and I just a person in the room. Um.
But one of the things that it helped me with
was the therapist that I went to brought so much
of his personality and his humanity into the room. And
I think that we have these they are all these
cliches of therapists that you know, they're either kind of
the person who doesn't say much, kind of like the
brick wall who says a ha a lot and just listens, um.
(25:36):
And then the other cliche is like, you know, the
train wreck, the hot mess, the person who's you know,
just can't keep it together in their own life. And
neither of those is true. Even though I'm going through
something pretty big in my life at the time, UM,
I'm not. I'm not a hot mess, you know, I'm
I'm going through I'm having a normal reaction to the
kind of thing that I'm going through, and I'm very
(25:58):
much you know, I'm very confident and capable at work,
and I'm very competent and capable as a parent. But
I'm really struggling emotionally and that those all of those
things can be true at the same time. But what
my therapist did was he just was very much himself
in the room. It wasn't like those cliches that you
think of when you think of what therapists are like.
And he taught me to be to be very much
(26:19):
myself and to bring myself into the room. And I
don't mean crossing boundaries. I don't mean disclosing things about
my personal life. I just mean being much more human
in the room. And that has I think really shaped
the way that I practice. Hmm, yeah, I mean I
have to say that one of the things I love
about about this is that you have, with this book,
(26:41):
exposed so much about not just what goes on in
therapy as a therapist. There is a lot of learning there.
I mean, there's there's so much method to it, but
also that therapists themselves can be just as neurotic as
you say, you're a card carrying human. It's really kind
of inspiring. I think one of the themes that was
up over and over again in this podcast, in these
(27:02):
conversations is that you just have to let your humanity
show and no one will fault you for that, and
in fact, you will, you will draw to yourself and
be able to give you know, so much more. Um,
It's just I don't know, There's there's no question, I guess.
I'm just I'm just grateful for the self exposure that
(27:24):
you were willing to risk with this, this book and
other books you've written. I mean, you you really You've
really put yourself out there, you know. I really feel
like that people can see themselves more clearly through other
people's stories, and I think it normalizes their struggles. And
I think that if people get anything from reading these
stories in the book is that we're all more the
(27:46):
same than we are different. That even though the five
people meeting one of them who are all going to
therapy in the book are really different on the surface,
I think underneath it all, we all struggle with the
same kinds of you versaal questions, um about you know,
what it means to live the kind of life that
we want to live and and relate both to ourselves
(28:09):
and to other people in the way that we want
to do that. And so I felt that I couldn't
really write this book if I didn't include myself because, um,
you know, we're all we're all struggling with very similar things.
And I think that that when we can see ourselves
more clearly through other people's experiences, um, we make changes too.
And I felt that it was more powerful to include
(28:30):
myself and that do you find that today more people
than ever actually need therapy? Maybe because we don't have
the time two connect in a way that we would
share the vulnerabilities about ourselves in real life. And because
(28:51):
of the digital world we live in, where we're projecting,
projecting an image of who we are, we're we maybe
aren't as in touch with our core. Do you think
that that bereft up than ever? There's a modern world
present unique problems for humans. I think in some ways
(29:14):
it does. And I'm not anti technology, but you know
a colleague of mine calls the Internet the most effective
short term non prescription painkiller out there. And I think
that that's because you know, we soothe ourselves by you know,
always being you know, looking at things through our screens,
and we lose human connection that way. And you know,
(29:37):
even patients will say to me like, well, can't I
just skype? And you know, someone somebody called Skype it's
like doing therapy with a condom on. It's like there's
somebody very different about the energy of sitting in a
room with another person for fifteen minutes straight with nothing
pinging or ringing or you know, distracting you there there's
no you know, like I think even when we are
(30:00):
get together with our friends, and we rarely do in
the same way now because everybody is so busy and
so even just to you know, it's like you'll see
someone that'll be like see in three months, right, and
you might text with them in between a lot, but
are you actually sitting down with them and having up.
When my kids were really little, my husband was traveling
a ton, and parenting was a huge challenge to us,
(30:22):
and then eventually getting along was a huge challenge. So
we wound up in couples therapy and it was instantly
helpful just to sit down in a room with the
commitment that we were just going to talk to one
another for fifty minutes. It was like, of course, we
had a lot more to work on, and we you know,
(30:44):
it took us a kind of a year to get
out of the woods, I think, but the just the
happiness of having made that progress was like a shot
in the arm for us, right, people actually look forward
to having that time. And I see a lot of
couples from I practice, and they'll say that at night
they're like co computing, you know, like if somebody's on
(31:05):
the screen, somebody's on another screen. You know, it's like
they might be in the same room, but they're not connecting.
And I think that no matter what people come in with,
there's almost this underlying theme of loneliness, even if they
have a partner and family and friends or whatever. You know,
they're surrounded by people, but we're not connecting in the
(31:25):
same way. And I you know, the title of the
book is maybe you should talk to someone. And I
didn't necessarily mean maybe you should talk to a therapist.
I meant maybe you should talk to someone in your life.
Maybe we need to talk to each other more because
we will feel better when we do. I think that
is such good advice and definitely the theme for today
(31:45):
connection talk to other people. Laura, thank you so much
for talking with us, Thanks so much for the conversation,
and everybody, thank you for joining us. You can get
Laura's book Maybe you should talk to someone. You can
also connect with her on Twitter at Lori Gottlieb one
and that's Lori l O r I. The Road to
(32:07):
Somewhere is recorded in New York City. Make sure to share, subscribe, rate,
and review us. We would love to hear from you.
Where are you on your journey? Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter at pod to Somewhere and email us at
road to Somewhere at i heeartmedia dot com. Special thanks
to Alicia Haywood, are incredible producer. Thanks everyone for joining
(32:31):
us on the Road to Somewhere. We're available on the
I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
What does it mean to be very intentional about your life?
To say, what am I going to do in a
very intentional way to make my life meaningful and not
waste my time? And I felt like I had wasted
a lot of time on people and things that I
didn't want to do. I didn't want to do that anymore.
But that wasn't what I came in saying. I came
in saying there was this devastating breakup. Welcome to the
(00:32):
road to somewhere. When we talk about all things exploration
and adventure and life change and transformation, um, we may
not know exactly where we're going, but we have faith
that the journey will be worthwhile. I am Lisa Oz
and I am Jill Herzig, and I think you know,
(00:53):
we are all about the joy of bumbling along and
you know, keeping forward momentum, even if we don't know
where we're going. But there are moments when that feels
really scary and just super hard. And at various points
in my life it has taken so much for me
to say, wait a second, I actually need help. I
(01:15):
need professional helping, new therapist to help me deal with this.
I feel like the older I get, the faster I
should be to recognize those moments, and yet the slower
I am to recognize it. And I don't know. I
just wonder. You know, our conversation today, we'll get into it.
But I guess, I guess I feel like my God,
(01:36):
how how can I not have learned this lesson that
when you're really flailing around, if the tiniest little shadow
of a thought says to you, I could really use
some therapy, then it's time. If it is at all
accessible to you, it is time to go get it.
It's probably past time to go get it. Well, our
guest today will actually be able to answer that question
for us, as she is a therapist, herself a psychotherapist,
(02:00):
and she is the author of Maybe You Should Talk
to Someone, which is a New York Times bestseller. We
are joined by Lori Gottlieb. Lori, thank you so much
for being with us today. Oh, thanks so much for
having me. So you are a therapist, and the premise
of your book and this life journey you went on
(02:20):
was that as a therapist, you actually needed therapy and
you needed to be nudged into getting that therapy. Can
you tell us what was going on and what happened
and how you started down that adventure of therapy. So
it seems a little bit ironic that, as a therapist
and someone who really wants to help take the stigma
(02:43):
off of people getting help and our emotional struggles, that
when I was going through something, which was that the
person that I thought I was going to marry suddenly
decided he said he didn't want to live with a
kid under his roof for the next ten years. And
that kid at the time was my eight year old.
And this came as quite a shock to me because
my eight year old had not been hiding in the
(03:05):
closet for the for the years that we've been dating.
And so I thought, you know, I will get through this,
and and I wasn't getting through it. I was, you know,
I was, I was really having a real difficult time
coping with this news. And um, so when I went
to get a therapist, I was worried that if I
(03:26):
told my colleagues that I needed to get a therapist,
that that they wouldn't refer people to me, or they
would think that it would harm me somehow. And so
I called somebody and asked for a referral, and I said,
I was asking for a friend, and later I confessed
that it was for me. But um, you know, now
I'm really embarrassed that I felt like I had to
do that. Although that reveals that the stigma touches even
(03:50):
the people who are involved in moving the stigma. That
that and maybe, I mean, do you think the stigma
is real? It couldn't have hurt you. How could it have?
I mean, right, you know, I think it rational or
I think that it's it's kind of an artifact of
of what people thought about therapy and mental health a
(04:12):
while ago. I think now we're much more hip to
the fact that mental health is so important and it's
as important as our physical health. And if something is
wrong with our bodies, you know, we don't say, oh,
I'll just I'll just let it go. You know, if
you're having chest pain, you're probably go to the cardiologist
before you're having a massive heart attack. But if you're
(04:34):
having some kind of something feels off emotionally or having
some kind of emotional pain, often we say, well, we
kind of minimize it, you know, it's not that bad,
or other people have it worse or kind of stiff
upper lip um. And then people come to me, you know,
to my therapy office when they're having the equivalent of
an emotional heart attack, and we don't have to wait
(04:54):
that long. M hm. You know. One of the things
in your book that really fascinated me was the limitations
of your friends support when you had this sudden breakup
and they just rushed in, particularly your female friends, to
defend you and prop you up, and a little bit
demonized the man you called boyfriend in your in your book,
(05:15):
and they call him the kid hater or something. You know.
I guess, I just I'm curious because particularly think among women,
there's a sense that my girlfriends will help me get
through this, but your girlfriend's actually they were so well
meaning and they showed their love for you, but it
wasn't helpful at all. That's right, that's right. So in
(05:36):
the book I talk about the difference between idiot compassion
and wise compassion, and idiot compassion is what we do
for our friends generally. We you know, oh that guy
was a jerk, and your friend will say, yeah, you're right,
you dodged a bullet, even though that might have happened,
you know, the last three times in your relationships or
I can't believe that other person got the promotion I wanted,
(05:56):
and then we say, yeah, that's so unfair, even though
we might know that there's something maybe you didn't really
put in the work, or there's something that you're doing
at the office. So I think what happens is that
that we kind of blindly support people and it's idiot
compassion because it doesn't help them to see what might
really be going on and what might actually help them.
It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in
(06:18):
every bar you're going to, maybe it's you. Now your
friends won't say that, um, but you know, what therapists
offer is wise compassion, which is we hold up a
mirror to someone and we say, I want you to
look at your reflection in a way that you normally
don't because you're going to see something that's very useful
to you. If what they're doing primarily, though, is holding
up a mirror, could you could you do that for yourself?
(06:41):
I mean, if we have listeners who are like struggling
with something, is it possible to be your own therapist?
We all have blind spots, and it's so much easier
to see other people than it is to see ourselves.
So sometimes we can be very self aware, and we
can say, you know, see a pattern here, I see
this thing. I see that I've been struggling in this
(07:03):
area for a while, or I can see the same
thing keeps happening over and over um. But often we
don't see that. We don't realize that the choices were
making or that the behaviors were engaging in are really
guaranteeing our own unhappiness. We think it's out there, we
think it's like another person. We think it's circumstantial, it's
like this circumstances causing this, or situational, or it's somebody else.
(07:25):
And you know that old old starter line. Hell is
other people. Well, sometimes hell is us, and we don't
realize that that sometimes we are the cause of our
own problems, or at least even if there are other
difficult situations or people out there, that we're responding to
them in a way that is making our lives more difficult.
I'm gonna worry this friendship thing for another second, because
(07:48):
I'm curious about whether this girlfriend code that we all
seem to live by unconditional support and conditional love. You know,
you're never in the wrong. I mean, should we be
more honest with each other, because let's face it, you
can absolutely love a friend and still see that see
them quite accurately. Can you not hold up that mirror?
(08:09):
Is that just not that's not part of it? No,
I mean I think we we should, but you have
to do it in a compassionate way. Um. And I
always say timing and dosage are important. So the timing.
If the person is calling you right at the moment
that that thing happened and they're really upset about it,
that might not be the moment to say, you know,
there's a thing that you do that might have contributed
(08:31):
to this problem. That might be the moment to just listen.
But then, you know, give it a few days and say,
you know, I've been thinking about our conversation from the
other day and and are you curious to hear what
I think? And I want you to know I'm saying
this from a place of love. Right, they might be
able to hear that more and dosage to you don't
want to say, like, you know, give them ten years
(08:51):
of history with them, of all the examples of when
this happened. Um, you might want to just say, you know,
in this circumstance, here's what I see, and then later
you can increase the dose agency and I saw in
these other circumstances too, and that will help them to
feel less shame, because I think the reason people don't
want to hear that and the people the reason people say, oh,
you're not being supportive of me, because what they're hearing
(09:12):
is a criticism. What they're hearing is you're saying something's
wrong with me, and we're not saying something's wrong with you.
We're saying I love you, and I see you struggle
in this way, and I think that you might be
doing something. But what they hear is something like, I
feel a lot of shame because you're pointing out something
about me that I'm not proud of. Why is it
easier to hear that from a therapist than from someone
(09:35):
we actually have a uh, you know, like a friend
or a spouse or a family member, someone that we
have that kind of relationshipship with. Why is Why is
the distance of a therapist make us more open to
what could be perceived a criticism. Two reasons? I think
The first is that we feel more exposed with our
friends and family. Um, they see us all the time. Um,
(09:58):
the stakes are higher we need them to love us. Um,
we want them to love us. So I think with
a therapist, yeah, you want your therapist to like you.
But at the end of the day, UM, you're not
as worried, um, because you don't have to have the
same outside history and ongoing relationship with that person that
you do with your family and friends. Great, when we
(10:20):
come back, I do want to delve deeper into that
relationship with a therapist. Before the break, we were speaking
with Lloyd Gottlieb about therapy and maybe why it's easier
to speak to a therapist than a friend, especially in
(10:42):
times where we need some advice, And UM, I just
want to like throw out my personal situation because we
talked about our relationship with a therapist. I's been a
therapy a couple of times. Never had it work. What
when I say work mean last for more than like
three sessions, Because is two things happen. Either I don't
(11:02):
respect the therapist and I feel like, I, you're not
that smart and I'm not going to get anything from you,
and then I leave like a brat. Or I really
like them and I respect them and I think they're
incredibly smart, but then I don't want them to see
all my ugly bits, and so it's never gonna work
because I won't expose myself to them because I want
(11:23):
them to think I'm really cool and be my friend
because I respect them. So how do you get beyond
how do I here we go like my own therapy session.
How how do we allow ourselves to be vulnerable with
a therapist when we most need it. Well, first of all,
it's really natural to want your therapist to like you
and respect you. Um, And I think we all wonder,
(11:46):
you know, what is my therapist thinking, Um, what does
she think of me? Or what does he think of me?
You know, I think when people first come in there's
almost a performative aspect to it. And I did that too.
You can see in the book that when I go
to my therapist, uma, you like me? Yeah, eventually I
I did, um and And I think that's allowed a
(12:07):
lot of people to realize that you can talk about
the relationship between the two of you with your therapists,
that that's that's actually an important component of the therapy.
But when I first went to therapy, you know, especially
because I already was a therapist, I think that I
wanted to appear much more together than I was. And
I think we all do that to some degree. You know,
people have secrets, and not necessarily because they're lying, but
(12:29):
because they're going to kind of dole out the information
as they start to form a relationship with you, as
they trust you more, as they realize that, um, you
do like them, you do respect them. And a lot
of people kind of hide the truth of who they
are because they're worried that I'm going to feel differently
about them if they tell me all of these things
that they feel ashamed of or that they don't like
(12:51):
about themselves. Um, but actually that makes me like them more.
It draws me towards them, because if I can see you,
if you can really show me who you are, I'm
going to feel really connected to you. If you keep
deflecting or going off on tangent or trying to present
like a version of yourself that isn't authentic, it's going
to be really hard for me to get to know you.
(13:12):
And if I can't get to know you, it's going
to be really hard to like you. Yeah, I mean
it is. It is tough to let go of that
performative aspect. And I think one of the things in
your book that really resonated with me was this idea
that a therapist is able to hold in their head
as they as they interact with you a sense of
(13:33):
who you are in the present, but also a very
kind of hopeful vision of who you could be in
the future. Did I misread that or is that is that?
That's exactly right. Hope is a big part of therapy
because when people come in, they often don't have a
lot of hope, right. They came at a point, as
I said, they sometimes come when things have gotten really bad.
(13:53):
The people who come in preventatively are people who do
have hope right there there there because they want to
make sure that, um, they're taking care of their emotional health.
But for a lot of people, they come in because
they got to a point where they don't have a
lot of hope, or they don't they're kind of lost, right,
They've lost their their footing, they've lost their direction, whether
(14:13):
that's you know, in a relationship or as a parent,
or with their own parents, or you know, whatever it
might be. So I can see something that they can't
see in that moment. I can see a future that
they can't see, and it's my responsibility to hold that
hope for them until they can hold it for themselves.
So you mentioned in the book you talk about the
presenting problem. It's the it's an inciting incident that drives
(14:36):
you into the therapy chair in the first place. But
UM or a crisis anyway, how do you as a
therapist get beyond that issue? Like with you it was
a breakup, to peel away the layers and get to
what the real problem is, because the real problem is
never just the breakup or the job firing or like
(14:59):
the show, is all about transition and being on a
on a path where there's flux and change, and that's
never really the actual thing that you end up dealing
with in therapy. Yeah, most of the time, it's not.
Sometimes it is um. You know, someone might come in
and say, I had a miscarriage and I'm having a
really hard time. You know, they had a specific loss, right,
(15:20):
But a lot of the time people will come in
and they have a specific thing that happened in their
lives and you can see that. You know, in the book,
I follow very I follow four very different patients um
and then I'm the fifth patients. You have five very
different patients. UM that you're seeing go through this process
of transformation. You can see that what they come in
(15:41):
with ends up being the thing that got them into therapy,
but that there's this this underlying struggle or pattern that
has been ongoing for a while. And so I always
say that I like to listen for the music under
the lyrics. The lyrics are the content of what they
came in with. I came in because, UM, I'm having
this trouble with my wife. I came in because, UM,
(16:02):
you know, my adult children won't talk to me. I
came in because you know, whatever it is, UM that
one of the people comes she comes in because uh,
you know, she keeps hooking up with the wrong guy.
She's in her twenties and I can't find a guy
who wants what she wants. UM. That seems to be
the presenting problem. But then there's something else that's going
on that got them into this situation. So I'm I'm
(16:22):
listening for the music under those lyrics so I can
figure out what is our treatment really going to be about?
So what was the music under your If the lyrics
were I've suffered this devastating breakup, what was the music
underneath for you. Well, in my very first session, I'm
ranting about the breakup and um and by the way,
(16:44):
I present myself in a very unflattering light, because that's
what people are like right when they come. And I
really wanted to kind of let it rip and and
and make myself. You know, I say at the beginning
of the book that my greatest credentials and I'm a
card caring member of the human race, and I think
that's really important to show. So the lyrics were the
sudden breakup happened. I don't know where this came from.
(17:04):
It was out of left field. There were no clues
about this. You know clearly that guy was a sociopath,
because you know who would do this. But I say,
you know, and now I've wasted. I'm in my forties
and I've wasted all these years of my life dating him,
and and half my life is over. And my therapist
gloams onto that phrase. Half my life is over. And
as you see in the book, that's what our therapy
(17:25):
is about. Is what was really happening was there were clues.
I didn't want to see them, and because I was
so worried about where I was at midlife that I
was willing to overlook those clues and something bigger was
going on. There were a few secrets that I had
that I wasn't telling my therapist, and they don't tell
them until like midway through the book, um, which was,
you know, a few months into our therapy, where I
(17:48):
was really worried about where I was at at this
midpoint in my life and you know, in terms of
my health, in terms of my career, in terms of
my role as a parent, in terms of my role
in relationships. Um, what does it mean to know that,
you know, to be very intentional about your life, to say,
what am I going to do in a very intentional
(18:10):
way to make my life meaningful and not waste my time?
And I felt like I had wasted a lot of
time on people and things that I didn't want to
I didn't want to do that anymore. But that wasn't
what I came in saying. I came in saying there
was this devastating breakup. Hmmm. And there was an interesting
moment in the book where you talk about the difference
(18:31):
between pain and suffering. Could you unpack that a little
bit for us? Yeah, So, when I was going through
the breakup. One of the things that I was doing
was creating all of these stories in my mind about
whether or not my ex boyfriend was um was suffering
and the way that I was suffering, whether he felt
the pain that I was that I was feeling. Um.
(18:53):
You know, if he posted pictures of like, you know,
salads and restaurants, I would say, well, how can you
even eat? It was just like regressed, juvenile place that
I think we go to when we're feeling that kind
of loss. And they were not alone, right right, um
and so um and so. My therapist said, you know,
you're you're creating everybody feels sorry, everybody feels pain, but
(19:16):
you don't have to suffer so much. And the pain
that I was feeling was the loss, But the suffering
I was creating for myself by you know, following him
on social media, by making up these stories in my
head about what I meant to him or what I
didn't mean to him. You know, that was suffering that
I didn't need to do. When you go into therapy,
you're seeking a change, and I want to just if
(19:40):
you would mind walking us through how therapy helps us
navigate the different stages of change. So change is really
hard because with every change comes loss, even positive change.
So say you're going to get married, or you're going
to have a baby. These are positive changes. You're getting
a new job that you really love, positive change, But
(20:02):
there's also the uncertainty of what that means, and you
have to give up what you already have, even if
even if what you already have, by the way, was
unpleasant or downright miserable, Um, it was your miserable. It
was it was your home, it was home to you,
it was what was familiar, and then all of a
sudden you have to walk into this, you know, this
unknown territory. And I think humans don't do well with uncertainty.
(20:25):
So change is it's really hard to get people to change.
And I talked in the book about the stages of
change and how it's not like the Nike commercial, just
do it, you know, it's like some people think that
they've done that, that actually there was a lot of
unconscious preparation that happened that got them to that place
where they actually made the changes. And so I think
it's important to realize, like I think we get frustrated
(20:47):
with friends or family members when they don't make a
change that we know is really good for them and
they know is really good for them, and they're they're like, yeah, yeah,
I'm good to start exercising, or I'm gonna drink less
or I'm gonna, um, you know, pay attention to my
health or I'm going to be in healthier relationships or
whatever it is. And they know they need to do
that and they want to do that, but part of
(21:09):
them also is resistant to doing that because they know
that they're going to have to give up something that
feels really comfortable and familiar to that. When we come back,
I would love it if you would walk us through
those different stages of change. We're back and we're talking
(21:32):
with Laura got Leave, psychotherapist. Before the break, we had
touched on the stages of change, and this podcast is
about change. So Laurie, would you walk us through the
different stages. Sure. So, before someone makes a change, there's usually, uh,
they go through these stages and the first one is
pre contemplation. And pre contemplation is you don't even know
(21:52):
that you're thinking about making a change. It's somewhere deep
inside you, but you don't you're not consciously aware of
it yet. Um and then we go to contemplation, where
you know you're you're kind of aware that you want
to make a change or you should make a change,
but you know, you'll come up with a lot of
reasons why you can't, why it's impossible, why you're gonna
(22:13):
have to do it two years from now if ever um.
And then there's preparation where you've decided, you know what,
I am going to make this change, but you're not
ready to take action yet. So maybe you'll start, like,
you know, researching a therapist. Maybe you're like, I need
to go to therapy, or maybe you'll start saying, you know,
I'm gonna look at maybe joining a gym. And then
there's action, where you actually take action and you do
(22:35):
the thing that you need to do. And just because
you've taken the action doesn't mean you're going to maintain that.
So then there's maintenance, which means that how do you
maintain this change that you've made. So a lot of
people are really gung ho when they first make a change,
but then how do you keep that change going and
the people this is the hardest part I think it is.
(22:55):
It is because it took a lot of work to
get to action and then maintaining it is and you
really have to make changes in your lifestyle right and
and changes in your outlook. And it has to be
really intrinsically motivated, really motivated, not by someone wanting you
to do something, but you have to have really good
reasons for yourself about why this has made your life better.
And usually you have those, but sometimes it's still hard
(23:18):
and you might slip. And what happens is when people slip,
they think all is lost, so just forget it. But
when you slip, just know that people slip and you
can just go right back to it. You don't have
to go into that place of I failed, I'm a loser,
I can't do this. That's what people often do. And
instead you can say, you know, it's normal, natural to slip,
and I'm just going to go back now to where
(23:38):
I was along those you know, sort of stations of
the cross of change. Where is there any place where
a therapist can be especially helpful or is it really
just at any point along the way. I think at
any point along the line. Usually what gets people into
a therapist office is that maybe they're in the uh,
you know, they're they're in one of those very early stages,
(24:00):
and so we help them along the way. They're in
pre contemplation, or they're in contemplation, or you know, they're
they're somewhere um the pre contemplation they might be. They
don't realize they need to make a change, but they're
coming in because they think someone else in their life
needs to make a change, and that gets them into
therapy and we help them with the changes that they
need to make. You you knew all this stuff as
a therapist and still needed to go into therapy yourself
(24:27):
to apply it to your life. How has being a
patient changed the way you practiced as a therapist. It's
changed it so much. When you're when you're getting your
hours for licensure, part of that is you go to therapy,
and it's really different when you're going to therapy as
an intern and you don't really feel like a therapist yet,
(24:49):
so you very much feel like the patients in that room.
It's a different thing when you have a practice and
you've been doing it for a while and then you
go into therapy. Um, you know, it's kind of hard
to take off your therapist hat. You know, maybe why
the therapist is asking you a certain question and you
want to answer it in a way where you come
off well as opposed to the real answer. Um. But
(25:12):
very quickly you can see I do take off my
therapist hat and I just a person in the room. Um.
But one of the things that it helped me with
was the therapist that I went to brought so much
of his personality and his humanity into the room. And
I think that we have these they are all these
cliches of therapists that you know, they're either kind of
the person who doesn't say much, kind of like the
brick wall who says a ha a lot and just listens, um.
(25:36):
And then the other cliche is like, you know, the
train wreck, the hot mess, the person who's you know,
just can't keep it together in their own life. And
neither of those is true. Even though I'm going through
something pretty big in my life at the time, UM,
I'm not. I'm not a hot mess, you know, I'm
I'm going through I'm having a normal reaction to the
kind of thing that I'm going through, and I'm very
(25:58):
much you know, I'm very confident and capable at work,
and I'm very competent and capable as a parent. But
I'm really struggling emotionally and that those all of those
things can be true at the same time. But what
my therapist did was he just was very much himself
in the room. It wasn't like those cliches that you
think of when you think of what therapists are like.
And he taught me to be to be very much
(26:19):
myself and to bring myself into the room. And I
don't mean crossing boundaries. I don't mean disclosing things about
my personal life. I just mean being much more human
in the room. And that has I think really shaped
the way that I practice. Hmm, yeah, I mean I
have to say that one of the things I love
about about this is that you have, with this book,
(26:41):
exposed so much about not just what goes on in
therapy as a therapist. There is a lot of learning there.
I mean, there's there's so much method to it, but
also that therapists themselves can be just as neurotic as
you say, you're a card carrying human. It's really kind
of inspiring. I think one of the themes that was
up over and over again in this podcast, in these
(27:02):
conversations is that you just have to let your humanity
show and no one will fault you for that, and
in fact, you will, you will draw to yourself and
be able to give you know, so much more. Um,
It's just I don't know, There's there's no question, I guess.
I'm just I'm just grateful for the self exposure that
(27:24):
you were willing to risk with this, this book and
other books you've written. I mean, you you really You've
really put yourself out there, you know. I really feel
like that people can see themselves more clearly through other
people's stories, and I think it normalizes their struggles. And
I think that if people get anything from reading these
stories in the book is that we're all more the
(27:46):
same than we are different. That even though the five
people meeting one of them who are all going to
therapy in the book are really different on the surface,
I think underneath it all, we all struggle with the
same kinds of you versaal questions, um about you know,
what it means to live the kind of life that
we want to live and and relate both to ourselves
(28:09):
and to other people in the way that we want
to do that. And so I felt that I couldn't
really write this book if I didn't include myself because, um,
you know, we're all we're all struggling with very similar things.
And I think that that when we can see ourselves
more clearly through other people's experiences, um, we make changes too.
And I felt that it was more powerful to include
(28:30):
myself and that do you find that today more people
than ever actually need therapy? Maybe because we don't have
the time two connect in a way that we would
share the vulnerabilities about ourselves in real life. And because
(28:51):
of the digital world we live in, where we're projecting,
projecting an image of who we are, we're we maybe
aren't as in touch with our core. Do you think
that that bereft up than ever? There's a modern world
present unique problems for humans. I think in some ways
(29:14):
it does. And I'm not anti technology, but you know
a colleague of mine calls the Internet the most effective
short term non prescription painkiller out there. And I think
that that's because you know, we soothe ourselves by you know,
always being you know, looking at things through our screens,
and we lose human connection that way. And you know,
(29:37):
even patients will say to me like, well, can't I
just skype? And you know, someone somebody called Skype it's
like doing therapy with a condom on. It's like there's
somebody very different about the energy of sitting in a
room with another person for fifteen minutes straight with nothing
pinging or ringing or you know, distracting you there there's
no you know, like I think even when we are
(30:00):
get together with our friends, and we rarely do in
the same way now because everybody is so busy and
so even just to you know, it's like you'll see
someone that'll be like see in three months, right, and
you might text with them in between a lot, but
are you actually sitting down with them and having up.
When my kids were really little, my husband was traveling
a ton, and parenting was a huge challenge to us,
(30:22):
and then eventually getting along was a huge challenge. So
we wound up in couples therapy and it was instantly
helpful just to sit down in a room with the
commitment that we were just going to talk to one
another for fifty minutes. It was like, of course, we
had a lot more to work on, and we you know,
(30:44):
it took us a kind of a year to get
out of the woods, I think, but the just the
happiness of having made that progress was like a shot
in the arm for us, right, people actually look forward
to having that time. And I see a lot of
couples from I practice, and they'll say that at night
they're like co computing, you know, like if somebody's on
(31:05):
the screen, somebody's on another screen. You know, it's like
they might be in the same room, but they're not connecting.
And I think that no matter what people come in with,
there's almost this underlying theme of loneliness, even if they
have a partner and family and friends or whatever. You know,
they're surrounded by people, but we're not connecting in the
(31:25):
same way. And I you know, the title of the
book is maybe you should talk to someone. And I
didn't necessarily mean maybe you should talk to a therapist.
I meant maybe you should talk to someone in your life.
Maybe we need to talk to each other more because
we will feel better when we do. I think that
is such good advice and definitely the theme for today
(31:45):
connection talk to other people. Laura, thank you so much
for talking with us, Thanks so much for the conversation,
and everybody, thank you for joining us. You can get
Laura's book Maybe you should talk to someone. You can
also connect with her on Twitter at Lori Gottlieb one
and that's Lori l O r I. The Road to
(32:07):
Somewhere is recorded in New York City. Make sure to share, subscribe, rate,
and review us. We would love to hear from you.
Where are you on your journey? Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram,
and Twitter at pod to Somewhere and email us at
road to Somewhere at i heeartmedia dot com. Special thanks
to Alicia Haywood, are incredible producer. Thanks everyone for joining
(32:31):
us on the Road to Somewhere. We're available on the
I Heart Radio app, on Apple Podcast, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Road to Somewhere News
Hosts And Creators
Lisa Oz
Jill Herzig
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