Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

I want some sign of the scar tissue left behind. I want to know, in the end, that I mattered.

He wasn't doing anything fancy; he just seemed wholly at home in his skin.

far better that [a patient make progress but] forget what we talked about than the opposite possibility (a more popular choice for patients)—to remember precisely what was talked about but to remain unchanged.

The Noonday Demon: "The opposite of depression isn't happiness, but vitality.

and after the beep I leave a concise message with exactly the information a therapist wants—name, one-liner about why I'm calling, and return phone number. I'm doing well until, thinking it might get me in to see him sooner, I add that I'm also a therapist, but my voice cracks as I say the word therapist. Mortified, I cover with a cough and quickly hang up.

Who looks inside, awakes.

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.

think of something else Wendell once said: "The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change." It was a paraphrase of something he'd read that had resonated with him both personally and as a therapist, he told me, because it was a theme that informed nearly every person's struggles

You know what I love about Rosie?" he says. "She's the only one who doesn't ask things of me. The only one who isn't, in one way or another, disappointed with me—or at least, she wasn't before she bit me! Who wouldn't love that?" He laughs loudly, like we're at a bar and he's just tossed out a breezy one-liner.

There's a difference between pain and suffering,

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.

She can't concentrate because trying not to cry is taking all of her focus. She looked up the symptoms of depression and ticked off all the boxes.

you're going to get hurt sometimes, and no matter how much you love somebody, you will at times hurt that person, not because you want to, but because you're human

I think of a Flannery O'Connor quote: "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it." What

I think about how it's not knowing that torments all of us. At a certain point, we all have to come to terms with the unknown and the unknowable. Sometimes we'll never know why.

You take a risk, you fall down, and you get back up and do it all over again.

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It's one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It's another to stop being so restrictive.

Even in the best possible relationship, you're going to get hurt sometimes, and no matter how much you love somebody, you will at times hurt that person, not because you want to, but because you're human.

Study after study shows that the most important factor in the success of your treatment is your relationship with the therapist, your experience of "feeling felt.

you can't mute one emotion without muting the others.

such as depression and anxiety, personality

PEACE. IT DOES NOT MEAN TO BE IN A PLACE WHERE THERE IS NO NOISE, TROUBLE, OR HARD WORK. IT MEANS TO BE IN THE MIDST OF THOSE THINGS AND STILL BE CALM IN

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch. —James Baldwin

But feelings are actually more like weather systems—they blow in and they blow out. Just because you feel sad this minute or this hour or this day doesn't mean you'll feel that way in ten minutes or this afternoon or next week.