Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,8

I also know how helpless it feels to watch a friend suffer and do nothing to fix it. Sitting-with-you-in-your-pain is one of the rare experiences that people get in the protected space of a therapy room, but it’s very hard to give or get outside of it—even for Jen, who is a therapist.

When we’re off the phone, I think about her “in a few weeks” comment. Could I really go on a date in just a few weeks? I imagine being out with a well-meaning guy who’s doing his best to make first-date conversation; without knowing it, he’ll make a reference to something that reminds me of Boyfriend (pretty much everything will remind me of Boyfriend, I’m convinced), and I won’t be able to hold back tears. Crying on a first date is decidedly a turnoff. A therapist crying on a first date is both a turnoff and alarming. Besides, I have the bandwidth to focus only on the immediate present.

Right now it’s all about one foot, then the other.

That’s one thing I tell patients who are in the midst of crippling depression, the kind that makes them think, There’s the bathroom. It’s about five feet away. I see it, but I can’t get there. One foot, then the other. Don’t look at all five feet at once. Just take a step. And when you’ve taken that step, take one more. Eventually you’ll make it to the shower. And you’ll make it to tomorrow and next year too. One step. They may not be able to imagine their depression lifting anytime soon, but they don’t need to. Doing something prompts you to do something else, replacing a vicious cycle with a virtuous one. Most big transformations come about from the hundreds of tiny, almost imperceptible, steps we take along the way.

A lot can happen in the space of a step.

Somehow I manage to wake my son, prepare breakfast, pack his lunch, make conversation, drop him at school, and drive to work, all without shedding a tear. I can do this, I think as I ride the elevator up to my office. One foot, then the other. One fifty-minute session at a time.

I enter my suite, say hello to colleagues in the hallway, unlock the door to my office, and go through my routine: I put away my belongings, turn off the phone ringers, unlock the files, and fluff the pillows on the couch. Then, uncharacteristically, I take a seat on it myself. I look at my empty therapist chair and consider the view from this side of the room. It’s oddly comforting. I stay there until the tiny green light by the door flicks on, letting me know that my first patient is here.

I’m ready, I think. One foot, then the other. I’m going to be fine.

Except that I’m not.

4

The Smart One or the Hot One

I’ve always been drawn to stories—not just what happens, but how the story is told. When people come to therapy, I’m listening to their narratives but also for their flexibility with them. Do they consider what they’re saying to be the only version of the story—the “accurate” version—or do they know that theirs is just one of many ways to tell it? Are they aware of what they’re choosing to leave in or out, of how their motivation in sharing this story affects how the listener hears it?

I thought a lot about those questions in my twenties—not in relation to therapy patients, but in relation to movie and TV characters. That’s why, as soon as I graduated from college, I got a job in the entertainment business, or what everyone called, simply, “Hollywood.”

This job was at a large talent agency, and I worked as the assistant to a junior film agent who, like many people in Hollywood, wasn’t much older than me. Brad represented screenwriters and directors, and he was so boyish-looking, with his smooth cheeks and mop of floppy hair he’d constantly swat from his eyes, that his fancy suits and expensive shoes always seemed too mature for him, like he was wearing his father’s clothing.

Technically, my first day on the job was a trial. I’d been told by Gloria in human resources (I never learned her last name; everyone called her “Gloria-in-human-resources”) that Brad had narrowed down his assistant candidates to two finalists, and each of us would work for a day as a test run. On the afternoon of mine, returning from the Xerox room, I overheard my prospective boss and another