Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to a rewind of the
Public Library Podcast with Lori Gottlieb from April twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
People know when they come to me that I was
a writer before I was a therapist, and they've seen
me write about my patients before, and so I think
that they know that I handle it respectfully and that
I'm also very very careful with their confidentiality. That I
change their names and I hide specific details so that
they are protected. But I also think that they understand
(00:30):
the greater purpose of why I want to put the
stories out there.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast. Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian award winning poet, future bestselling author and
host of one of the most listened to radio shows
in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hello, book lovers, Welcome to another episode of the Public
Library Podcast. Today, my guest is Lori Gottlieb. She is
the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So tell me what is your book about.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
My book takes people behind the scenes of the therapy world.
I'm a psychotherapist, and I show what it's like when
I'm a therapist getting my patients through their struggles, and
then I go to therapy and I take people into
the therapy room with my own therapist.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Why did you decide to write this book.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I decided to write it because I felt like what
I see every day is so real, and I think
people feel alone in their struggles, and I wanted them
to see what real life is like. I wanted them
to see how people grow and change. I think it's
a very hopeful book, and I wanted to see the
real process of how to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now, you didn't always work in psychotherapy. Tell us a
little bit about your background. You started as a Hollywood
assistant out of college, and then you meandered through some
other choices before becoming a psychotherapist.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Why this drastic career change too.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, at the time, I either seem very versatile or
very confused, and you know, but now I think it
all makes sense. When I started off in Hollywood, I
started as an assistant, and then I moved up to
be a film executive and then a network TV executive.
And when I got to NBC, one of the shows
that had just gone on the air was Er and
I loved working with these human dramas, but they were fictional,
(02:19):
and I would spend a lot of time in the
real er with our consultant, and I got really interested
in these real human dramas, and I ended up going
to medical school, and at medical school, I started writing,
and I left medical school to become a journalist and
I did that for about ten years before going back
to school to become a therapist. And they all, to me,
(02:42):
are related, because they all are about story and the
human condition.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, I was very surprised when I thought about it,
that correlation. In addition to being a therapist, I'm a writer.
It's not just what I do, but who I am.
That statement really hit me very hard because I can
definitely identify. You talked about the difficulty in birthing this book,
which was originally supposed to be about happiness.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Right, and the book made me miserable.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Ironically, I called it the stupid, miserable happiness Book. I
was supposed to write a book about happiness, but I
felt like I was just starting off in my career
as a therapist at the time, and I felt like
it was just sort of scratching the surface of what
I wanted to say. And I don't really think that
we're in search of happiness. I think that we're in
search of meaning that gives us happiness.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I like that too.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now, how did writing about your experience with therapy make
you a better therapist?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I think it makes you examine yourself in ways that
you don't normally have to. So, you know, I was
writing about my work with my patients, which I'm much
more comfortable with, but writing about myself and my own
therapy is a really you put yourself in a really
vulnerable place.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Absolutely, I was thinking about it. So who to be
able to share this? Because you use journals?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Correct?
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Yeah? I used journals and I used memory.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, I because I journal, And I cannot imagine making
what's in my journals kind of like public to the world,
because one, it's hard to read my handwriting anyway, but
some of the stuff that I write down there is
just like if you find it and read it, oh well,
that's your fault. Now, how did writing about your experience
with therapy make you a better writer?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I think that you have to open yourself up to
things and not be so careful about your audience. So
if something made me cringe when I was writing it,
I made sure to include it, as opposed to in
the past I might have not included it. But I
think that the whole point was to show that we're
more the same than we are different. And if I
tried to make myself like the pretty version of myself
(04:38):
in the book, I wouldn't be doing what I was
hoping to do with the book.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Wow, that's profound considering we're in the social media age
where that's what we do is we show the pretty
version of ourselves or I like to say, our representative.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
This is the kind of anti Twitter, anti Facebook, anti
Instagram version of things.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
But I think it's also really beautiful and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
I mean, I think people do heroic things in the
therapy your own so I think people think, oh, you
listen to problems all day.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
No, I don't listen to problems all day.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I watch people grow and change in ways that I
think are really you know, I keep using the word heroic,
but I think they really are.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Well. I think too that what you just said in
terms of like social media, it helps this book will
help you create balance in that world as well. As
I read, I kept wondering you talked about the stories.
How you manage so many other people's stories, John and Gabe,
Julian Matt, all of the people that you talked about
in there, regardless of having a supportive group of colleagues
(05:33):
and therapists of your own.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Does it ever get to be too much?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
It doesn't get to be too much.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I think we balance our lives with what we're doing
at work. So I think we're very careful about self
care and about balance in our lives. We have to be,
or we'd get overwhelmed.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Okay, and replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one.
I thought that was such a gem. Explain to us
what you mean by this, though.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I mean that a lot of times when people are
depressed or anxious, they're doing a lot of things that
are keeping them from getting better. So, for example, you
know the depressed person who says I just can't get
out of bed, and I said, we'll take one step.
That's starting a virtuous cycle. It's doing something a little
bit different. All you have to take is one step
and then maybe you can take another. But you don't
(06:18):
have to look all five feet that you have to
get to the kitchen or the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And another phrase that I love. There was fireflies love
the darkness too.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I actually had to stop and put the book down
and think about that, because darkness always has this negative connotation.
But when you think about fireflies or stars or the moon,
it is beautiful. It actually made me feel a gooey inside.
Darkness does have purpose. Perhaps if we see the butterflies,
we can see some stillness within ourselves.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What were you conveying in these beautiful sentiments?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think people are so afraid of the you know,
the more painful emotions, the kind of deeper emotions. And
I'm saying that people don't have to be so scared
that in darkness you can find some beauty that will
lead you to the light. So we need to look
at what's not working in order to find what's working.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Okay, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Why do you think that there is still such a
stigma around the idea of brain or emotional maladies and
seeking help for them.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I think people think that they're alone, that you know,
other people aren't dealing with these things when we all
struggle in very similar ways. And I think too that
people think that kind of hashtag first world problems, like yeah,
I've been sad for two months. But you know, I
have a roof over my head, and you know, and
they can't pinpoint what makes them sad, so they think, well,
(07:35):
I don't know why I'm sad, so you know, I
don't really there's no reason for me to be sad.
So I'm just going to stiff upper lip and move on.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I've also read somewhere not too long ago, a
study about loneliness and how that's becoming really more of
a condition than it is. Just Okay, I'm alone and
I don't and I feel lonely. Can people who maybe
experience or suffer from that get some take something from
your book about it?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That's such a great point, because no matter what people
come in for in therapy, what I'm finding is a
cultural loneliness that people are so disconnected. They don't sit
in a room with another person in real life. You know,
they're moving from thing to thing on the they're carrying
their phones around. And I think that it's really important
that when people come to therapy they're in a room
for fifty minutes with someone face to face, no screens,
(08:25):
no distractions, no interruptions front. A colleague of mine called
the Internet the most effective short term non prescription painkiller
out there, and I think that's why we're lonely, because
we're spending all hard time on the internet and we're
not interacting with each other.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Today, everybody moves at the speed of want. I thought, wow,
that's crazy. That made me stop and really think we're
such an add water and stir microwave for forty seconds.
Fix it so I can have my time back. And
then you talked about, well, what are you doing with
your time when you get it back? You wrote about
early in your career as a therapist having to compete
with a pill or text therapy. How does that correlate
(09:02):
in this age we're talking about where you're connected all
the time but not connected at all.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I think that people don't get enough face to face time,
and I think that people can't even be alone with themselves,
meaning the second the therapy session is over, they whip
out their phone. You know who called in that fifty minutes?
Who texted? People don't call anymore, so it's texted. You know,
they're in an elevator. Noticed in an elevator, everybody has
their phones out because they can't even be alone in
their own thoughts.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, why don't we take a break, because I would
love it if you would do a reading from Maybe
You Should Talk to Someone.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Okay, go ahead, turn the page. We'll be right back
with more of the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Hi, this is Fabuni Gutari, author of the Object of
Your Affections, and you're listening to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We are back on the Public Library with Lori Gottlieb.
She's the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
But now it's time for us to hear a bit
of it. Tell us what you're going to read.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I'm going to read a little portion about what therapy
is and isn't. Okay, okay. Therapy is hard work, and
not just for the therapist. That's because the responsibility for
change lies squarely with the patient. If you expect an
hour of sympathetic head nodding, you've come to the wrong place.
Therapists will be supportive, but our support is for your growth,
not for your low opinion of your partner. Our role
(10:23):
is to understand your perspective, but not necessarily to endorse it.
In therapy, you'll be asked to be both accountable and vulnerable,
rather than steering people straight to the heart of the problem.
We nudge them to arrive there on their own, because
the most powerful truths, the ones people take the most seriously,
are those they come to little by little on their own.
(10:43):
Implicit in the therapeutic contract is the patient's willingness to
tolerate discomfort because some discomfort is unavoidable for the process
to be effective. Or as my colleague said, I don't
do you go girl therapy?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you for the reading. What was it like asking
the people behind the stories in your book if you
could write about them?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I think that people know when they come to me
that I was a writer before I was a therapist,
and they've seen me write about my patients before, and
so I think that they know that I handle it
respectfully and that I'm also very very careful with their confidentiality,
that I you know, I change their names and I
hide specific details so that they are protected. But I
(11:25):
also think that they understand the greater purpose of why
I want to put the stories out there.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Okay, did boyfriend agree to participate in the book?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Boyfriend? I did not.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I did not ask permission of boyfriend. But I think,
you know, it's funny because I think that he comes
off in the end very sympathetically in the sense that
he starts off where I am, which is that I
think he's a jerk. And then and then we see
that my therapist does not agree with me right, and
that infuriates me. But I think what we come to
(11:56):
see is that what therapy does, it does it helps
you to see your own role in a situation, and
it helps you to see things that you didn't see
before so that you don't repeat that again in the future.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Well, I learned a lot about how therapy works. I
learned a few things about about myself that I didn't
want to know.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But what did you learn about yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I learned about all the ways in which the ways
that I had been avoiding things in my relationship were
really We're really I was doing exactly the same thing
that my boyfriend was doing. We both really wanted to
be together, but knew that we had these fundamental differences
and couldn't, and neither of us wanted to talk about that.
You know, we just kept wanting to pretend that it
(12:35):
was going to work out, even though we knew it wouldn't.
And I learned that, you know, I never thought I
was avoidant. I never thought that I did things like that,
but now I know, and I think it's really helped me.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yes, I can't remember those specific instance was something in
Charlotte's story, and I'm like, I do that.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yeah, I think a lot of people will relate that.
You know, I picked for the patients that I followed.
They're all very different in terms of gender and age
and what their problems are and what their histories are.
And I think that readers will see a piece of
themselves in each of these patients, even if they look
very different on the surface from these patients.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes, I definitely felt that way. Now.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We both love stories, but we channel that love in
entirely different ways. What made you connect the dots between
stories of therapy and the stories that we tell in
fiction or on the screen.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I think the story that a person comes in with
is very much a story through their own lens, Okay,
And so when I hear a story when someone comes
into therapy, I'm listening not just to the story, but
to their flexibility with the story. It's kind of like
I'm listening for the music under the lyrics, right. Yeah,
And because I know that the other characters in the story.
The other people in the story would tell a very
different version of that same story, and I need the
(13:45):
person that I'm talking to to understand that their perspective
isn't the only one.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I had a manager once who would if there was
a conflict between employees. You know, you go in and
you're like, I'm complaining about employee A, blah blah blah
blah blah, and he says, okay, and he'd call employee
A and make us sit down and tell the story
together in front of him. And it was so eye
opening because it was two different stories. And then we
found our resolve, and it forced us to talk to
(14:10):
each other about what caused the riff in the first.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
Place, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And I think that that takes away a lot of
the blame, right, because so many times people come to
therapy and they want to change somebody else.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
You know, it's like, yeah, help me to change.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
My partner, help me to change my child, help me
to change my parents. And I think, really, you have
a lot of control over what you do, So let's
talk about how you can change no matter what your
external circumstances are. How can you make some changes.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
If the Queen had balls, she'd be a king.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
If it's such a tricky word, one that I struggle
with personally, what can my what if and if tribe
learn from your book?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I think sometimes we wait for the perfect situation, and
if the queen has balls, she'd be the king. Is
an expression kind of saying. A lot of people will say,
you know, I'm stuck in this dead end job and
I got this great other opportunity, but it's across the bridge.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
It's like, well, you.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Know, across the bridge, or don't take the job and
be happy with the job that you have. But if
you're not going to you might not find the exact
perfect situation in life. But you have to find a
situation that is good enough.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, yes, So we're gonna take one more break, and
I've got a few more questions.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
If you've got time to hang out, sure, Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
The Public Library Podcast a place to check out books.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
My name is Jill Santa Polo, author of More Than Words,
and you're listening to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We are back on the Public Library Podcast with Lord Gottlieb,
author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Thank you
so much for coming in and talking to us about
your book today. I really did enjoy it. It was interesting.
When I first started college, I started out as a
psychology major. I wanted to I was fascinated with the
human mind. My mother had schizophrenia, so I had a
(15:53):
completely different perspective on I guess the psychology of the mind.
And then I wanted to research sleep. And then I
took statistics and it was too hard.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
Statistics is terrible, I remember it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So one of the things that I that your book
did for me is it brought me back to something
that I was naturally curious and interested in.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So thank you for that.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Oh, thank you for having me. I love talking about
this with you.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
If you could choose one word to describe your book,
what would you choose? I read on the back of
your book all the people who gave their words.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Brave and heroic. But what's your word?
Speaker 5 (16:29):
I would say? Hopeful?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Hopeful.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I like that, and I agreed to You only gave
me one word, so that's the one I picked.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
What are you reading these days? Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I read, probably like you read. We were just talking
about how much we love books. I have books the
way other women have shoes. You should see the piles
of books in my room.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I have both.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
I was just, yeah, you have both?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, yeah, what am I reading right now? I was
rereading The Tennis Partner by Abraham Borghazy, which is like
this beautiful story of friendship about a doctor and an
intern and one of them, the intern, has a drug addiction,
and it's a really, really moving story.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
So that's what I've been reading lately.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Okay. How do you release other than reading and writing?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I think seeing nature, going outside, even just seeing like green,
you know, grass trees, taking a few breaths outside, walking
away from the computer, even just taking five minutes away,
is you know, it kind of resets you.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Has your book been optioned for a film?
Speaker 5 (17:33):
It's been optioned for television by Eva Longoria.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh awesome.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Does it make it easier to get your books optioned
with a Hollywood background?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
No, I was in Hollywood so long ago, okay, but
it does make me understand the process better.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Okay. Do you already have a next book in the works?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Not yet, just working on getting this one out into
the world today.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I know a lot of people, you know, they're onto
the next one, so it's not uncommon, but I can't imagine, like, yeah,
just finish this one.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
What are you doing now another one?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Not yet?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Well, I also, you know, I write, I have my practice,
and I write the weekly Dear Therapist column for The Atlantic, Right,
so I'm always you know, I have these two other jobs.
So so when I finish a book, I'm very excited
to get it out in the world before I think
about what I'm going to do next.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
We talked about social media kind of being a place
we needed balance. But are are you on social media
if people want to find you or contact you or
give your feedback on your book.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Lorigottlieb one.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Okay. Now do you also have a website?
Speaker 5 (18:32):
I do. It's my name.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It's Lori Gottlieb l O RI g O T T
l i eb dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
And are you still taking patience?
Speaker 5 (18:41):
I am, but I'm not taking them until the summer.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, Laurie, thank you so much. This has been wonderful
and I love this book and I hope a lot
of people read it because I think it's so helpful.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
It helped me, and I thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, that's why I wrote it, And thank you for
the conversation, another show.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
In the books.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Join us for the next episode of the Public Library Podcast,
a place to check out books,
Hello, book lovers, and welcome to a rewind of the
Public Library Podcast with Lori Gottlieb from April twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
People know when they come to me that I was
a writer before I was a therapist, and they've seen
me write about my patients before, and so I think
that they know that I handle it respectfully and that
I'm also very very careful with their confidentiality. That I
change their names and I hide specific details so that
they are protected. But I also think that they understand
(00:30):
the greater purpose of why I want to put the
stories out there.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
Welcome to the Public Library Podcast. Sorry, here's your host
and podcast librarian award winning poet, future bestselling author and
host of one of the most listened to radio shows
in America, Helen Little.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hello, book lovers, Welcome to another episode of the Public
Library Podcast. Today, my guest is Lori Gottlieb. She is
the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Welcome
to the show.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Thank you. It's so nice to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
So tell me what is your book about.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
My book takes people behind the scenes of the therapy world.
I'm a psychotherapist, and I show what it's like when
I'm a therapist getting my patients through their struggles, and
then I go to therapy and I take people into
the therapy room with my own therapist.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Why did you decide to write this book.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I decided to write it because I felt like what
I see every day is so real, and I think
people feel alone in their struggles, and I wanted them
to see what real life is like. I wanted them
to see how people grow and change. I think it's
a very hopeful book, and I wanted to see the
real process of how to do that.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Now, you didn't always work in psychotherapy. Tell us a
little bit about your background. You started as a Hollywood
assistant out of college, and then you meandered through some
other choices before becoming a psychotherapist.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Why this drastic career change too.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, at the time, I either seem very versatile or
very confused, and you know, but now I think it
all makes sense. When I started off in Hollywood, I
started as an assistant, and then I moved up to
be a film executive and then a network TV executive.
And when I got to NBC, one of the shows
that had just gone on the air was Er and
I loved working with these human dramas, but they were fictional,
(02:19):
and I would spend a lot of time in the
real er with our consultant, and I got really interested
in these real human dramas, and I ended up going
to medical school, and at medical school, I started writing,
and I left medical school to become a journalist and
I did that for about ten years before going back
to school to become a therapist. And they all, to me,
(02:42):
are related, because they all are about story and the
human condition.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, I was very surprised when I thought about it,
that correlation. In addition to being a therapist, I'm a writer.
It's not just what I do, but who I am.
That statement really hit me very hard because I can
definitely identify. You talked about the difficulty in birthing this book,
which was originally supposed to be about happiness.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
Right, and the book made me miserable.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Ironically, I called it the stupid, miserable happiness Book. I
was supposed to write a book about happiness, but I
felt like I was just starting off in my career
as a therapist at the time, and I felt like
it was just sort of scratching the surface of what
I wanted to say. And I don't really think that
we're in search of happiness. I think that we're in
search of meaning that gives us happiness.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I like that too.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now, how did writing about your experience with therapy make
you a better therapist?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I think it makes you examine yourself in ways that
you don't normally have to. So, you know, I was
writing about my work with my patients, which I'm much
more comfortable with, but writing about myself and my own
therapy is a really you put yourself in a really
vulnerable place.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Absolutely, I was thinking about it. So who to be
able to share this? Because you use journals?
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Correct?
Speaker 5 (03:55):
Yeah? I used journals and I used memory.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Yeah, I because I journal, And I cannot imagine making
what's in my journals kind of like public to the world,
because one, it's hard to read my handwriting anyway, but
some of the stuff that I write down there is
just like if you find it and read it, oh well,
that's your fault. Now, how did writing about your experience
with therapy make you a better writer?
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I think that you have to open yourself up to
things and not be so careful about your audience. So
if something made me cringe when I was writing it,
I made sure to include it, as opposed to in
the past I might have not included it. But I
think that the whole point was to show that we're
more the same than we are different. And if I
tried to make myself like the pretty version of myself
(04:38):
in the book, I wouldn't be doing what I was
hoping to do with the book.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Wow, that's profound considering we're in the social media age
where that's what we do is we show the pretty
version of ourselves or I like to say, our representative.
Speaker 5 (04:50):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
This is the kind of anti Twitter, anti Facebook, anti
Instagram version of things.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
But I think it's also really beautiful and hopeful.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
I mean, I think people do heroic things in the
therapy your own so I think people think, oh, you
listen to problems all day.
Speaker 5 (05:03):
No, I don't listen to problems all day.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
I watch people grow and change in ways that I
think are really you know, I keep using the word heroic,
but I think they really are.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Well. I think too that what you just said in
terms of like social media, it helps this book will
help you create balance in that world as well. As
I read, I kept wondering you talked about the stories.
How you manage so many other people's stories, John and Gabe,
Julian Matt, all of the people that you talked about
in there, regardless of having a supportive group of colleagues
(05:33):
and therapists of your own.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Does it ever get to be too much?
Speaker 5 (05:38):
It doesn't get to be too much.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
I think we balance our lives with what we're doing
at work. So I think we're very careful about self
care and about balance in our lives. We have to be,
or we'd get overwhelmed.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Okay, and replace a vicious cycle with a virtuous one.
I thought that was such a gem. Explain to us
what you mean by this, though.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
I mean that a lot of times when people are
depressed or anxious, they're doing a lot of things that
are keeping them from getting better. So, for example, you
know the depressed person who says I just can't get
out of bed, and I said, we'll take one step.
That's starting a virtuous cycle. It's doing something a little
bit different. All you have to take is one step
and then maybe you can take another. But you don't
(06:18):
have to look all five feet that you have to
get to the kitchen or the bathroom.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
And another phrase that I love. There was fireflies love
the darkness too.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I actually had to stop and put the book down
and think about that, because darkness always has this negative connotation.
But when you think about fireflies or stars or the moon,
it is beautiful. It actually made me feel a gooey inside.
Darkness does have purpose. Perhaps if we see the butterflies,
we can see some stillness within ourselves.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
What were you conveying in these beautiful sentiments?
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I think people are so afraid of the you know,
the more painful emotions, the kind of deeper emotions. And
I'm saying that people don't have to be so scared
that in darkness you can find some beauty that will
lead you to the light. So we need to look
at what's not working in order to find what's working.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
Okay, what do you think?
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Why do you think that there is still such a
stigma around the idea of brain or emotional maladies and
seeking help for them.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
I think people think that they're alone, that you know,
other people aren't dealing with these things when we all
struggle in very similar ways. And I think too that
people think that kind of hashtag first world problems, like yeah,
I've been sad for two months. But you know, I
have a roof over my head, and you know, and
they can't pinpoint what makes them sad, so they think, well,
(07:35):
I don't know why I'm sad, so you know, I
don't really there's no reason for me to be sad.
So I'm just going to stiff upper lip and move on.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And I've also read somewhere not too long ago, a
study about loneliness and how that's becoming really more of
a condition than it is. Just Okay, I'm alone and
I don't and I feel lonely. Can people who maybe
experience or suffer from that get some take something from
your book about it?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
That's such a great point, because no matter what people
come in for in therapy, what I'm finding is a
cultural loneliness that people are so disconnected. They don't sit
in a room with another person in real life. You know,
they're moving from thing to thing on the they're carrying
their phones around. And I think that it's really important
that when people come to therapy they're in a room
for fifty minutes with someone face to face, no screens,
(08:25):
no distractions, no interruptions front. A colleague of mine called
the Internet the most effective short term non prescription painkiller
out there, and I think that's why we're lonely, because
we're spending all hard time on the internet and we're
not interacting with each other.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Today, everybody moves at the speed of want. I thought, wow,
that's crazy. That made me stop and really think we're
such an add water and stir microwave for forty seconds.
Fix it so I can have my time back. And
then you talked about, well, what are you doing with
your time when you get it back? You wrote about
early in your career as a therapist having to compete
with a pill or text therapy. How does that correlate
(09:02):
in this age we're talking about where you're connected all
the time but not connected at all.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
I think that people don't get enough face to face time,
and I think that people can't even be alone with themselves,
meaning the second the therapy session is over, they whip
out their phone. You know who called in that fifty minutes?
Who texted? People don't call anymore, so it's texted. You know,
they're in an elevator. Noticed in an elevator, everybody has
their phones out because they can't even be alone in
their own thoughts.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, why don't we take a break, because I would
love it if you would do a reading from Maybe
You Should Talk to Someone.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
Okay, go ahead, turn the page. We'll be right back
with more of the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 5 (09:43):
Hi, this is Fabuni Gutari, author of the Object of
Your Affections, and you're listening to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We are back on the Public Library with Lori Gottlieb.
She's the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
But now it's time for us to hear a bit
of it. Tell us what you're going to read.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I'm going to read a little portion about what therapy
is and isn't. Okay, okay. Therapy is hard work, and
not just for the therapist. That's because the responsibility for
change lies squarely with the patient. If you expect an
hour of sympathetic head nodding, you've come to the wrong place.
Therapists will be supportive, but our support is for your growth,
not for your low opinion of your partner. Our role
(10:23):
is to understand your perspective, but not necessarily to endorse it.
In therapy, you'll be asked to be both accountable and vulnerable,
rather than steering people straight to the heart of the problem.
We nudge them to arrive there on their own, because
the most powerful truths, the ones people take the most seriously,
are those they come to little by little on their own.
(10:43):
Implicit in the therapeutic contract is the patient's willingness to
tolerate discomfort because some discomfort is unavoidable for the process
to be effective. Or as my colleague said, I don't
do you go girl therapy?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Thank you for the reading. What was it like asking
the people behind the stories in your book if you
could write about them?
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
I think that people know when they come to me
that I was a writer before I was a therapist,
and they've seen me write about my patients before, and
so I think that they know that I handle it
respectfully and that I'm also very very careful with their confidentiality,
that I you know, I change their names and I
hide specific details so that they are protected. But I
(11:25):
also think that they understand the greater purpose of why
I want to put the stories out there.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Okay, did boyfriend agree to participate in the book?
Speaker 5 (11:32):
Boyfriend? I did not.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
I did not ask permission of boyfriend. But I think,
you know, it's funny because I think that he comes
off in the end very sympathetically in the sense that
he starts off where I am, which is that I
think he's a jerk. And then and then we see
that my therapist does not agree with me right, and
that infuriates me. But I think what we come to
(11:56):
see is that what therapy does, it does it helps
you to see your own role in a situation, and
it helps you to see things that you didn't see
before so that you don't repeat that again in the future.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Well, I learned a lot about how therapy works. I
learned a few things about about myself that I didn't
want to know.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But what did you learn about yourself?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
I learned about all the ways in which the ways
that I had been avoiding things in my relationship were
really We're really I was doing exactly the same thing
that my boyfriend was doing. We both really wanted to
be together, but knew that we had these fundamental differences
and couldn't, and neither of us wanted to talk about that.
You know, we just kept wanting to pretend that it
(12:35):
was going to work out, even though we knew it wouldn't.
And I learned that, you know, I never thought I
was avoidant. I never thought that I did things like that,
but now I know, and I think it's really helped me.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yes, I can't remember those specific instance was something in
Charlotte's story, and I'm like, I do that.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
Yeah, I think a lot of people will relate that.
You know, I picked for the patients that I followed.
They're all very different in terms of gender and age
and what their problems are and what their histories are.
And I think that readers will see a piece of
themselves in each of these patients, even if they look
very different on the surface from these patients.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yes, I definitely felt that way. Now.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
We both love stories, but we channel that love in
entirely different ways. What made you connect the dots between
stories of therapy and the stories that we tell in
fiction or on the screen.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
I think the story that a person comes in with
is very much a story through their own lens, Okay,
And so when I hear a story when someone comes
into therapy, I'm listening not just to the story, but
to their flexibility with the story. It's kind of like
I'm listening for the music under the lyrics, right. Yeah,
And because I know that the other characters in the story.
The other people in the story would tell a very
different version of that same story, and I need the
(13:45):
person that I'm talking to to understand that their perspective
isn't the only one.
Speaker 1 (13:49):
I had a manager once who would if there was
a conflict between employees. You know, you go in and
you're like, I'm complaining about employee A, blah blah blah
blah blah, and he says, okay, and he'd call employee
A and make us sit down and tell the story
together in front of him. And it was so eye
opening because it was two different stories. And then we
found our resolve, and it forced us to talk to
(14:10):
each other about what caused the riff in the first.
Speaker 5 (14:13):
Place, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And I think that that takes away a lot of
the blame, right, because so many times people come to
therapy and they want to change somebody else.
Speaker 5 (14:22):
You know, it's like, yeah, help me to change.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
My partner, help me to change my child, help me
to change my parents. And I think, really, you have
a lot of control over what you do, So let's
talk about how you can change no matter what your
external circumstances are. How can you make some changes.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
If the Queen had balls, she'd be a king.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
If it's such a tricky word, one that I struggle
with personally, what can my what if and if tribe
learn from your book?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
I think sometimes we wait for the perfect situation, and
if the queen has balls, she'd be the king. Is
an expression kind of saying. A lot of people will say,
you know, I'm stuck in this dead end job and
I got this great other opportunity, but it's across the bridge.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
It's like, well, you.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Know, across the bridge, or don't take the job and
be happy with the job that you have. But if
you're not going to you might not find the exact
perfect situation in life. But you have to find a
situation that is good enough.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yes, yes, So we're gonna take one more break, and
I've got a few more questions.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
If you've got time to hang out, sure, Okay.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
The Public Library Podcast a place to check out books.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Hi.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
My name is Jill Santa Polo, author of More Than Words,
and you're listening to the Public Library Podcast.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We are back on the Public Library Podcast with Lord Gottlieb,
author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Thank you
so much for coming in and talking to us about
your book today. I really did enjoy it. It was interesting.
When I first started college, I started out as a
psychology major. I wanted to I was fascinated with the
human mind. My mother had schizophrenia, so I had a
(15:53):
completely different perspective on I guess the psychology of the mind.
And then I wanted to research sleep. And then I
took statistics and it was too hard.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
Statistics is terrible, I remember it.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
So one of the things that I that your book
did for me is it brought me back to something
that I was naturally curious and interested in.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So thank you for that.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
Oh, thank you for having me. I love talking about
this with you.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
If you could choose one word to describe your book,
what would you choose? I read on the back of
your book all the people who gave their words.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Brave and heroic. But what's your word?
Speaker 5 (16:29):
I would say? Hopeful?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Hopeful.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
I like that, and I agreed to You only gave
me one word, so that's the one I picked.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
What are you reading these days? Oh?
Speaker 3 (16:39):
I read, probably like you read. We were just talking
about how much we love books. I have books the
way other women have shoes. You should see the piles
of books in my room.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I have both.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
I was just, yeah, you have both?
Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, yeah, what am I reading right now? I was
rereading The Tennis Partner by Abraham Borghazy, which is like
this beautiful story of friendship about a doctor and an
intern and one of them, the intern, has a drug addiction,
and it's a really, really moving story.
Speaker 5 (17:09):
So that's what I've been reading lately.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Okay. How do you release other than reading and writing?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
I think seeing nature, going outside, even just seeing like green,
you know, grass trees, taking a few breaths outside, walking
away from the computer, even just taking five minutes away,
is you know, it kind of resets you.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Has your book been optioned for a film?
Speaker 5 (17:33):
It's been optioned for television by Eva Longoria.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Oh awesome.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Does it make it easier to get your books optioned
with a Hollywood background?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
No, I was in Hollywood so long ago, okay, but
it does make me understand the process better.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Okay. Do you already have a next book in the works?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Not yet, just working on getting this one out into
the world today.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I know a lot of people, you know, they're onto
the next one, so it's not uncommon, but I can't imagine, like, yeah,
just finish this one.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
What are you doing now another one?
Speaker 1 (18:02):
No?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Not yet?
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Well, I also, you know, I write, I have my practice,
and I write the weekly Dear Therapist column for The Atlantic, Right,
so I'm always you know, I have these two other jobs.
So so when I finish a book, I'm very excited
to get it out in the world before I think
about what I'm going to do next.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Oh that's good.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
We talked about social media kind of being a place
we needed balance. But are are you on social media
if people want to find you or contact you or
give your feedback on your book.
Speaker 5 (18:27):
Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Lorigottlieb one.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Okay. Now do you also have a website?
Speaker 5 (18:32):
I do. It's my name.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
It's Lori Gottlieb l O RI g O T T
l i eb dot com.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
And are you still taking patience?
Speaker 5 (18:41):
I am, but I'm not taking them until the summer.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Well, Laurie, thank you so much. This has been wonderful
and I love this book and I hope a lot
of people read it because I think it's so helpful.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
It helped me, and I thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Well, that's why I wrote it, And thank you for
the conversation, another show.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
In the books.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Join us for the next episode of the Public Library Podcast,
a place to check out books,
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