Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

In each situation, there's a calculation to make, a subjective litmus test we use to assess the value of the disclosure: Is this information helpful for the patient to have?

her first conversation with Matt, one that lasted until dawn and still hasn't ended.

The people who are watching us--the people who really see us--don't care about the false self, about the show we're putting on.

Freedom involves responsibility, and there's a part of most of us that finds responsibility frightening.

In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgment: Am I good or bad?).

There's a popular saying, a paraphrase of a Robert Frost poem: "The only way out is through.

Are people really supposed to be done grieving after two months? Can't grief last six months or a year or, in some form or another, an entire lifetime?

This bereavement exclusion no longer exists, partly because of the timeline: Are people really supposed to be done grieving after two months? Can't grief last six months or a year or, in some form or another, an entire lifetime?

identifying his in-the-moment feelings, because feelings lead to behaviors. Once we know what we're feeling, we can make choices about where we want to go with them.

There is a continuing decision to be made as to whether to evade pain, or to tolerate it and therefore modify

I particularly liked this quote from Frankl's book: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

It's not that she's hiding her feelings; it's that she can't access them. There's a words for this kind of emotional blindness: alexithymia. She doesn't know what she's feeling of doesn't have the words to express it.

privacy (spaces in people's psyches that everyone needs in healthy relationships) and secrecy (which stems from shame and tends to be corrosive). Carl Jung called secrets

If we don't accept the notion that there's no redo, much as we try to get our parents or siblings or partners to fix what happened years ago, our pasts will keep us stuck.

mistaking feeling less for feeling better.

Wouldn't it be nice to be one of those people who doesn't overthink anything, who just goes with the flow—who lives the unexamined life?

Não podemos ter mudança sem perda, motivo pelo qual é tão frequente as pessoas dizerem que querem mudar, mas mesmo assim continuarem exatamente iguais.

losses tend to be multilayered. There's the actual loss (in my case, of Boyfriend), and the underlying loss (what it represents).

we imprison ourselves with a narrative of self-punishment. If we have a choice between believing one of two things, both of which we have evidence for—I'm unlovable, I'm lovable—often we choose the one that makes us feel bad.

thought about how regret can go one of two ways: it can either shackle you to the past or serve as an engine for change.

But Matt's at a life stage when everyone else is moving forward; the thirties are a decade of building the foundation of the future. He's out of sync with his peers, and in his own way, in his own grief, he probably feels completely alone.

The four ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness

Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way. A lot

once heard creativity described as being the ability to grasp the essence of one thing and the essence of some very different thing and smash them together to create some entirely new thing. That's what therapists do too.