Quotes from Lori Gottlieb

Uncertainty, I'm starting to realize, doesn't mean the loss of hope—it means there's possibility.

we are asking forgiveness of others to avoid the harder work of forgiving ourselves.

you can't mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You'll also mute the joy.

In reality, there are many people we could be happy with. It's just that your soul develops in different ways with different people.

I think about how there's nothing in the world like laughing with my dad. I think about how knowledgeable he is on almost any topic and how fully he loves me and how kind he is—not just to me, but to everyone. The first thing people say about my father isn't how smart or funny he is, though he is both. The first thing they say is "He's so sweet." I

The eminent Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung said this: "People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." But he also said this: "Who looks inside, awakes.

There's a biblical saying that translates roughly as 'First you will do, then you will understand.' 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. The transfer of words into action, the freedom of it, made me want to carry the action outside the therapy room and into my life.

Therapists delve into a mind rather than a brain, and we can see from the subtlest gesture or expression if we've hit a nerve. But unlike neurosurgeons, we gravitate toward the sensitive area, pressing delicately on it, even if it makes the patient feel uncomfortable.

Follow your envy — it shows you what you want.

But now the kiss has presented another crisis for Rita—possibility. And that may feel even more intolerable to her than her pain.

He knows what all therapists know: That the presenting problem, the issue somebody comes in with, is often just one aspect of a larger problem, if not a red herring entirely. He knows that most people are brilliant at finding ways to filter out the things they don't want to look at, at using distractions or defenses to keep threatening feelings at bay.

There's nothing like illness to take away a sense of control

Marriage isn't a constant passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane nonprofit business.

Fun fact: the countries with the most therapists per capita are, in descending order, Argentina, Austria, Australia, France, Canada, Switzerland, Iceland, and the United States.)

We can't have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the

Forgiveness is a tricky thing, in the way that apologies can be. Are you apologizing because it makes you feel better or because it will make the other person feel better? Are you sorry for what you've done or are you simply trying to placate the other person who believes you should be sorry for the thing you feel completely justified in having done? Who is the apology for?

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.

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.

Freud argued that "the physician should be impenetrable to the patient, and like a mirror, reflect nothing but what is shown to him.

particularly liked this line 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.

Kids and freedom are mutually exclusive.

liked internal medicine and pediatrics, but the physicians I followed warned me that those practices were becoming far less personal—to stay afloat, they had to cram in thirty patients each day. If they were starting out now, a few even said, they might consider another field.

Before successful therapy, it's the same damn thing over and over.

A felicidade equivale à realidade menos as expectativas.