Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

I've sat with patients who describe their grief as "monstrous" and "unbearable"; one patient, quoting something she heard, said it made her feel "alternately numb and in excruciating pain.

Behind my questions lies the assumption that Wendell is a more competent human being than I am. Sometimes I wonder, Who am I to make the important decisions in my own life? Am I really qualified for this?

no memory, no desire.

If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don't recognize that "the perfect is the enemy of the good,

Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill

They imagined that they were rushing now in order to savor their lives later, but so often, later never came.

Ongeacht hoe openhartig we als samenleving zijn over zaken die we vroeger angstvallig verzwegen, het stigma op onze emotionele problemen en zielenroerselen blijft immens. ... Maar waarvoor zijn wij dan zo bang? Het is niet alsof we een kijkje nemen in die duistere krochten, het licht aandoen en een stel kakkerlakken aantreffen. Vuurvliegjes houden ook van de duisternis. Er is schoonheid op die plekken.

maybe part of being a good dad is allowing yourself the full range of human emotions, of really living, even if living fully can sometimes be harder than not.

Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something pretty similar to what everyone else in this patient's life feels.

Einstein: "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

FAILURE IS PART OF BEING HUMAN.

reaction formation, unacceptable feelings or impulses are expressed as their opposite,

Stage 1: Pre-contemplation Stage 2: Contemplation Stage 3: Preparation Stage 4: Action Stage 5: Maintenance

but maybe part of being a good dad is allowing yourself the full range of human emotions, of really living, even if living fully can sometimes be harder than not.

After all, two hundred years ago, the philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe succinctly summarized this sentiment: "Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.

know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from developing, or ensure that I'll always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don't perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. A patient may become less reactive or critical, more open and able to let people in. In other words, therapy is about understanding the self that you are.

procrastinate or self-sabotage as a way to stave off change — even positive change — because they're reluctant to give something up without knowing what they'll get in its place.

head-over-heels

People don't have to tell you their stories with words because they always act them out for you.

Insight is the booby prize of therapy" is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don't change when you're out in the world, the insight—and the therapy—is worthless. Insight allows you to ask yourself, Is this something that's being done to me or am I doing it to myself? The answer gives you choices, but it's up to you to make them.

As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same. To help John, I'm going to have to figure out what his loss would be,

Everyone wages this internal battle to some degree: Child or adult? Safety or freedom? But no matter where people fall on those continuums, every decision they make is based on two things: fear and love. Therapy strives to teach you how to tell the two apart.

she added, I'd still have to answer to insurance companies with their time-consuming mounds of paperwork, which would take me away from patient care. Has it really come to this? I thought. Writing as a way to support a living as a doctor? Didn't it used to be the other way around?

Of course, anger serves another function—it pushes people away and keeps them from getting close enough to see you. I wonder if John needs people to be angry at him so that they won't see his sadness.