Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

Displacement's a bitch, isn't it? We all use defense mechanisms to deal with anxiety, frustration, or unacceptable impulses, but what's fascinating about them is that we aren't aware of them in the moment.

Take a risk. Maybe our pasts don't define us but inform us.

One foot, then the other. Don't look at all five feet at once. Just take a step. And when you've taken that step, take one more. Eventually you'll make it to the shower. And you'll make it to tomorrow and next year too. One step.

You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seen like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

Typically, a patient might have a difficult session about a childhood trauma, then come in the next week and announce that therapy is no longer needed.

Before diagnosing people with depression, make sure they're not surrounded by assholes"),

But what are we so afraid of? It's not as if we're going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too. There's beauty in those places. But we have to look in there to see it.

the goal is to integrate the loss into your life and create an ongoing connection with the person who died while also finding a way to continue living.

Your misery doesn't change their situation. You can't lessen their misery by carrying it for them inside you.

The only way out is through." The only way to get to the other side of the tunnel is to go through it, not around it. But I can't even picture the entrance right now.

Our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past.

Half my life is over, I would say, seemingly out of nowhere, in our very first session—and Wendell would jump right on this. He was picking up where my internship supervisor had left off years earlier. You won't get today back. And the days were flying by.

complaining about the way a relative would try to make me feel guilty, my father quipped, "Just because she sends you guilt doesn't mean you have to accept delivery.

In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him

Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it's one damn thing after another.

His self-involvement, defensiveness, demeaning treatment of others, need to dominate the conversation, and sense of entitlement—basically, his being an asshole—all fall under the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.

rules are bent with thoughtful intention, it broadens the definition of what effective treatment can be.

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.

And when that happens, the only control you have is how you deal with that stick—your way, not the way others say you should.

So what I say is this: You can have compassion without forgiving. There are many ways to move on, and pretending to feel a certain way isn't one of them.

I regularly made an effort to remember one of the most important lessons from my training: There's no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn't be ranked, because pain is not a contest. Spouses often forget this, upping the ante on their suffering—I had the kids all day. My job is more demanding than yours. I'm lonelier than you are. Whose pain wins—or loses?

Unfortunately, sometimes people leave just as their symptoms lift, not realizing (or perhaps knowing all too well) that the work is just beginning and that staying will require them to work even harder.

Until you tell me what's really on your mind, you'll stay stuck exactly where you are.

You want to mute the pain? You'll also mute the joy.