INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Now being developed as a television series with Eva Longoria and ABC! “Rarely have I read a book that challenged me to see myself in an entirely new light, and was at the same time laugh-out-loud funny and utterly absorbing.”–Katie Couric “This is a daring, delightful, and transformative book.”–Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post and Founder … book.”–Arianna Huffington, Founder, Huffington Post and Founder & CEO, Thrive Global
“Wise, warm, smart, and funny. You must read this book.”–Susan Cain, New York Times best-selling author of Quiet
From a New York Times best-selling author, psychotherapist, and national advice columnist, a hilarious, thought-provoking, and surprising new book that takes us behind the scenes of a therapist’s world–where her patients are looking for answers (and so is she).
One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose ofÂfice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.
As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients’ lives — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty-something who can’t stop hooking up with the wrong guys — she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell.
With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revÂolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply perÂsonal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealÂing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them.
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Engaging without being self-indulgent. And yet, hilariously self-indulgent. Really well written.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb is the story of a therapist, her therapist and the answers we all look for in our lives are revealed. Ms. Gottlieb, a psychotherapist and national advice columnist, takes the readers into therapy sessions as she helps her patients find the reasons why when she realizes she needs those answers herself. After a devastating break-up, Gottlieb finds herself in the office of Wendell, a quirky but well-seasoned therapist, dressed in a cardigan and khakis; he seems to be the stereotypical therapist; she soon learns that he is anything but typical. Gottlieb opens the therapy doors and invites the readers into her world as a clinician and a patient, examining the truths and lies we tell ourselves and others as we walk the tightrope called Life. Battling questions of love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage and finally finding hope and change. What lessons can we learn from Ms. Gottlieb’s patients and her own experience in therapy?
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone was highly recommended to me as a witty and honest look into the human experience. As Ms. Gottlieb presents her journey with patients and the road that leads her into therapy herself; it was easy to see people we have encountered in ourselves as well as our own questions and struggles. I enjoyed Ms. Gottlieb’s candor and openness when discussing the mental health of her patients and herself. There is a stigma around our emotional struggles. She makes the observation that we can easily talk about physical health, our sex lives (“or the lack thereof”), but we actively and purposefully avoid talking about mental health. Throughout each patient’s story, we learn the universality of what it means to be human as well as the power to transform our lives lies within each of us. I recommend Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is available in hardcover, paperback, eBook and audiobook
I learnt loads from this book – not just about what therapists are thinking, but also about the journeys we go on, how people frame their lives and American TV shows. (What was the TV show that guy was working on??!!) A very warm, relatable and readable book with a likeable, sympathetic narrator who reveals all. I thought Maybe you should talk to someone was beautifully shaped, in that it had some lovely arcs and journeys within the lovely main arc and journey. I’ve read stories about therapists clients before I think, but none where the therapist is in therapy too, and/or is so enmeshed with her clients stories. Recommended.
Lots of heartfelt and warm stories in this book. Also lots of authenticity. Many of it is nicely wrapped into a bow by the end of the book which is nice and what we all expect and love about fiction…but this is not. Could this be really real? Still enjoyed moments of this book.
This book made think a lot, and I couldn’t put it down, life is beautiful but it’s also hard, and sometimes we need therapy.
In this book you’ll read about loss, love, family and self discovery.
Great read!!!
Anyone who has never been to a therapist gets a little taste of the experience. Also, the book gives a different side of therapy, the therapist interacting with her therapist. Good read!!
Lori Gottlieb, a therapist, takes you on her journey through therapy. It’s a light, funny read. The bottom line is we all need a little help sometime!
I LOVED this book. I kept forgetting it was her real life because it was that entertaining. I highly recommend this book to everyone even if you are not interested in therapy because it is that good.
Half way through and cannot put it down! Enjoying it so, so much. Honest, raw and real.
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb is an honest and open novel. This book is insightful, well written and a relatable book that is easy to understand and enjoyable to read. By looking at what it’s like to be “on both sides of the couch” the author unfolds pearls of wisdom and explains therapeutic rhetoric in easy to understand language. A great book that most people should read. 5/5 stars
It was a nice diversion and offered some opportunities for self-reflection.
In this fascinating and uplifting memoir, a therapist compares her clients’ healing journeys with her own work with another therapist. I enjoyed her dual perspective as both therapist and client and found all of the stories compelling. This is both an enjoyable read and a great way to learn about the therapeutic process.
I really loved this book and highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys memoirs, is curious about how therapy works, or just appreciates an interesting and well-written story filled with hope. It does require some patience, as Ms. Gottlieb takes her time sharing the truth of her story, but I loved that slow reveal.
Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for providing me with a free review copy through NetGalley that I volunteered to review.
As soon as I started this book, I got drawn into Gottlieb’s world of therapy! It felt like being in the therapy sessions with her, her therapist, and her patients in every episode. Being a patient herself makes her humble in the professional setting. Also, it enables her to feel and see things from the patient’s point of view. Being professional therapist made her feel awkward to be a patient and how she sees her therapist in the unique way, but all in all, every experience that she has been through made her grow professionally and personally. Answers are not always found right after the questions were asked, but through meaningful discoursing, she can find the way that make sense in her own life. This book ensures me being heard is satisfying experience and knowing someone, who is willing to help explore the answer, is encouraging in life.
Loved this book and the audio was fantastic! Highly recommend.
Very helpful book in seeing the benefits of therapy and learning to grow from it.
Funny, poignant and at times heart-wrenching. I loved this book!
It is the best book by a therapist about therapy that I’ve ever read. And a page turner.
Insightful, compassionate, and engagingly written, this is a memoir of a woman who is both in therapy for herself and providing therapy to her patients in Los Angeles. For me, the book recalled the years I spent in therapy in New York, when I was in graduate school in my early thirties, with so much to learn about my own misbegotten assumptions and poor communication and coping skills. Much of this material felt familiar–the role of the therapist, the process of corrective experiences that cause us to question our assumptions, discovering the space after an “event” and before a “response” in which choices are made, and identifying the ways we sublimate, repress and misdirect our feelings. But despite having seen much of this up close for myself, I enjoyed spending two days (it’s a quick read, with short, economically written chapters) in this woman’s mind.
A memoir that honestly reveals the reflections of author Lori Gottlieb, a gifted psychotherapist, but explains how therapists think and how effective therapy works.
I just did not enjoy what I read, so I quit wasting my time