Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

Certainly we all have our deal-breakers. But when patients repeatedly engage in this kind of analysis, sometimes I'll say, "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.

But if I live in the present, I'll have to accept the loss of my future. Can I sit through the pain, or do I want to suffer?

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don't know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we're creating it in our minds every day. 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.

ultracrepidarianism, which means "the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge or competence." It's a reminder to myself that as a therapist, I can come to understand people and help them sort out what they want to do, but I can't make their life choices for them.

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.

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.

For many people, going into the depths of their thoughts and feelings is like going into a dark alley—they don't want to go there alone.

but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

You won't get today back.

Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our hard-earned expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person. Which is to say, we still come to work each day as ourselves—with our own sets of vulnerabilities, our own longings and insecurities, and our own histories. Of all my credentials as a therapist, my most significant is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race.

therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are so that you aren't trapped by them, so you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life.

I know that often people create faulty narratives to make themselves feel better in the moment even though it makes them feel worse over time—and that sometimes, they need somebody else to read between the lines.

John said that when he was struggling with the pressure of his marriage and his career, he used to think that there'd be a point when he'd be happy again, and then when Gabe died, he thought he'd never be happy again. Now, he says, he's come to feel it's not either/or, yes or no, always or never. "Maybe happiness is sometimes,

The First Confession Allow me to get defensive for a minute. You see, when I told Wendell that everything was just fine until the breakup, I was telling the absolute truth. Or, rather, the truth as I knew it. Which is to say, the truth as I wanted to see it.

I'm reminded," he begins, "of a famous cartoon. It's of a prisoner, shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out—but to his right and left, it's open, no bars.

The more you welcome your vulnerability, the less afraid you'll feel.

Relationships in life don't really end, even if you never see the person again. Every person you've been close to lives on somewhere inside you. Your past lovers, your parents, your friends, people both alive and dead (symbolically or literally)—all of them evoke memories, conscious or not. Often they inform how you relate

when we feel fragile, we're like raw eggs—we crack open and splatter if dropped. But when we develop more resilience, we're like hard-boiled eggs—we might get dinged up if dropped, but we won't crack completely and spill all over the place.

His expression is sad instead of angry now. Anger is the go-to feeling for most people because it's outward-directed—angrily blaming others can feel deliciously sanctimonious.

Mike, my colleague, had said a while back that when we feel fragile, we're like raw eggs- we crack open and splatter if dropped. But when we develop more resilience, we're like hard-boiled eggs- we might get dinged up if dropped, but we won't crack completely and spill all over the place.

I point out to her that pain can be protective; staying in a depressed place can be a form of avoidance. Safe inside her shell of pain, she doesn't have to face anything, nor does she have to emerge into the world, where she might get hurt again.

That's right—sometimes hell is us. Sometimes we are the cause of our difficulties. And if we can step out of our own way, something astonishing happens.

the upside of being a therapist's child is that nothing gets shoved under the rug; the downside is that you'll be totally screwed up anyway).