Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

If the queen had balls, she'd be the king." If you go through life picking and choosing, if you don't recognize that "the perfect is the enemy of the good," you may deprive yourself of joy. At first patients are taken aback by my bluntness,

When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret. By Google-stalking Boyfriend, I've been watching his future unfold while I stay frozen in the past. But if I live in the present, I'll have to accept the loss of my future.

Changing our relationship to the past is a staple of therapy. But we talk far less about how our relationship to the future informs the present too. Our notion of the future can be just as powerful a roadblock to change as our notion of the past. In

Why do parents do this? Often, they envy their children's childhoods--the opportunities they have; the financial or emotional stability that the parents provide; the fact that their children have their whole lives ahead of them, a stretch of time that's now in the parents' pasts. They strive to give their children all the things they themselves didn't have, but they sometimes end up, without even realizing it, resenting the kids for their good fortune.

The grief psychologist William Worden takes into account these questions by replacing stages with tasks of mourning. In his fourth task, 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.

Most things worth doing are difficult,

Which all boils down to: Happiness equals reality minus expectations.

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda

often different parts of ourselves want different things, and if we silence the parts we find unacceptable, they'll find other ways to be heard.

You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

There's an unspoken irony to all of this. People wanted a speedy solution to their problems, but what id their moods had been driven down in the first place by the hurried pace of their lives? They imagined they were rushing now in order to save their lives later, but so often, later never came.

Maybe our pasts don't define us but inform us.

In the fifth century BC, however, Hippocrates noted that aromas didn't seem to be working for this malady, which he had named hysteria, from the Greek word for "uterus.

I remember reading a divorced woman's experience of getting to know a new lover after her decades-long marriage ended: "I will never lock eyes in the delivery room with David," she wrote. "I've never met his mother.

Did I tell you that she created a shared Google calendar to make sure I won't forget things that are 'important'"—with his free hand, John does an air quote as he says the word important—"so now I'm even more stressed because my calendar is filled with Margo's things and I've already got a packed schedule!

Your feelings don't have to mesh with what you think they should be," he explained. "They'll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues." How many times had I said something similar to my own patients? But here I feel as if I'm hearing this for the first time. Don't judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don't be afraid of the truth.

If the queen had balls, she'd be the king.

Therapy elicits odd reactions because, in a way, it's like pornography. Both involve a kind of nudity.

Almost is always the hardest, isn't it?" she said one afternoon. "Almost getting something. Almost having a baby. Almost getting a clean scan. Almost not having cancer anymore." I thought about how many people avoid trying for things they really want in life because it's more painful to get close to the goal but not achieve it than not to have taken the chance in the first place.

We feel completely stuck, trapped in our emotional cells, but there's a way out—as long as we're willing to see it.

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent.

Perhaps men apologize preemptively, by holding their tears back.

I remember saying that there was a difference between examining and dwelling, and if we're cut off from our feelings, just skating on the surface, we don't get peace or joy—we get deadness.