Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,3

should they bother to change themselves? Even if they decide to do things differently, won’t the rest of the world still be the same?

It’s a reasonable argument. But that’s not how life generally works.

Remember Sartre’s famous line “Hell is other people”? It’s true—the world is filled with difficult people (or, as John would have it, “idiots”). I’ll bet you could name five truly difficult people off the top of your head right now—some you assiduously avoid, others you would assiduously avoid if they didn’t share your last name. But sometimes—more often than we tend to realize—those difficult people are us.

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.

A therapist will hold up a mirror to patients, but patients will also hold up a mirror to their therapists. Therapy is far from one-sided; it happens in a parallel process. Every day, our patients are opening up questions that we have to think about for ourselves. If they can see themselves more clearly through our reflections, we can see ourselves more clearly through theirs. This happens to therapists when we’re providing therapy, and it happens to our own therapists too. We are mirrors reflecting mirrors reflecting mirrors, showing one another what we can’t yet see.

Which brings me back to John. Today, I’m not thinking about any of this. As far as I’m concerned, it’s been a difficult day with a difficult patient, and to make matters worse, I’m seeing John right after a young newlywed who’s dying of cancer—which is never an ideal time to see anyone, but especially not when you haven’t gotten much sleep, and your marriage plans have just been canceled, and you know that your pain is trivial compared to that of a terminally ill woman, and you also sense (but aren’t yet aware) that it’s not trivial at all because something cataclysmic is happening inside you.

Meanwhile, about a mile away, in a quaint brick building on a narrow one-way street, a therapist named Wendell is in his office seeing patients too. One after another, they’re sitting on his sofa, adjacent to a lovely garden courtyard, talking about the same kinds of things that my patients have been talking to me about on an upper floor of a tall glass office building. Wendell’s patients have seen him for weeks or months or perhaps even years, but I have yet to meet him. In fact, I haven’t even heard of him. But that’s about to change.

I am about to become Wendell’s newest patient.

2

If the Queen Had Balls

Chart note, Lori:

Patient in her mid-forties presents for treatment in the aftermath of an unexpected breakup. Reports that she seeks “just a few sessions to get through this.”

It all starts with a presenting problem.

By definition, the presenting problem is the issue that sends a person into therapy. It might be a panic attack, a job loss, a death, a birth, a relational difficulty, an inability to make a big life decision, or a bout of depression. Sometimes the presenting problem is less specific—a feeling of “stuckness” or the vague but nagging notion that something just isn’t quite right.

Whatever the problem, it generally “presents” because the person has reached an inflection point in life. Do I turn left or right? Do I try to preserve the status quo or move into uncharted territory? (Be forewarned: therapy will always take you into uncharted territory, even if you choose to preserve the status quo.)

But people don’t care about inflection points when they come for their first therapy session. Mostly, they just want relief. They want to tell you their stories, beginning with their presenting problem.

So let me fill you in on the Boyfriend Incident.

The first thing I want to say about Boyfriend is that he’s an extraordinarily decent human being. He’s kind and generous, funny and smart, and when he’s not making you laugh, he’ll drive to the drugstore at two a.m. to get you that antibiotic you just can’t wait until morning for. If he happens to be at Costco, he’ll text to ask if you need anything, and when you reply that you just need some laundry detergent, he’ll bring home your favorite meatballs and twenty jugs of maple syrup for the waffles he makes you from scratch. He’ll carry those twenty jugs from the garage to your kitchen, pack nineteen of them neatly into the tall cabinet you can’t reach, and place one on the counter, accessible