Maybe You Should Talk to Someon - Lori Gottlieb Page 0,81

approaching “emotional sobriety”—the ability to regulate one’s feelings without self-medicating, whether that medication comes in the form of substances, defenses, affairs, or the internet.

Kudos to Wendell, I thought. I could see Angela L.’s emotional evolution through the progression of her Yelp reviews.

But just as I was admiring Wendell’s skill, I came across another irate one-star review from Angela L. It was for a shuttle service, a downgrade from an earlier four-star review she’d given the company. Angela L. seemed livid that the bus played loud Muzak and the driver couldn’t turn it off. How could they “attack” riders like this? Three paragraphs later, punctuated by multiple ALL CAPS and exclamation marks, Angela L. ended the review with I’ve used this company for months, but no more. Our relationship is over!!!

Her dramatic breakup with the shuttle service after all those more balanced reviews might have been expected. Like many people, she’d probably backslid, regretted it, realized she’d hit bottom, and decided that moderation wasn’t enough; she had to quit Yelp entirely. And so far she had—that had been Angela L.’s final review, posted six months ago.

But I wasn’t ready to quit my Google-stalking. Half an hour later, my cursor hovered over the interview with Wendell’s mother. The therapist I knew seemed both grounded and unconventional, tough and gentle, confident and awkward. Who had raised him? I felt like I’d found the mother lode—so to speak.

Of course, I clicked.

The Q&A, which turned out to be a ten-page family history, appeared on the blog of a local organization that was documenting the lives of notable families who had lived in that Midwestern town for half a century.

Both of Wendell’s parents, I learned, had grown up poor. His maternal grandmother died in childbirth, so his mom went to live with her father’s sister in a small apartment, and their family became hers. Wendell’s father, meanwhile, had become a self-made man, the first in his family to go to college. It was at this large state university that he met Wendell’s mother, the first woman in her family to get a college degree. After they married, he started a business, she gave birth to a brood of five, and by the time Wendell was a teenager, the family had become spectacularly wealthy—one of the reasons for the interview I was reading. Apparently, Wendell’s parents gave away much of their wealth to charitable causes.

By the time I got to the names of Wendell’s siblings and their spouses and children, I had become as unhinged as Angela L. I researched Wendell’s entire family—what they did for a living, what cities they were in, how old their kids were, who was divorced. None of this was easy to find; my mission involved extensive cross-referencing and hours of time.

Admittedly, I knew a few things about Wendell from comments he’d strategically dropped into our sessions. Once, after I said, “But it’s not fair!” about the Boyfriend situation, Wendell looked at me and replied, kindly, “You sound like my ten-year-old. What makes you think life is supposed to be fair?”

I took in his point, but I also thought, Oh, he has a kid around my son’s age. When he tossed me these morsels, they felt like unexpected gifts.

But that night on the internet, there was always another lead, another link. He’d met his wife through a mutual friend; his family lived in a Spanish-style house that, according to Zillow, had doubled in value since they’d bought it; recently, when he’d needed to reschedule our appointment, it was because he was presenting at a conference.

By the time I finally shut down my laptop, the night was over and I felt guilty, empty, and exhausted.

The internet can be both a salve and an addiction, a way to block out pain (the salve) while simultaneously creating it (the addiction). When the cyber-drug wears off, you feel worse, not better. Patients think they want to know about their therapists, but often, once they find out, they wish they hadn’t, because this knowledge has the potential to contaminate the relationship, leaving patients to edit, consciously or not, what they say in their sessions.

I knew that what I’d done had been destructive. And I also knew that I wouldn’t tell Wendell about it. I understood why, when a patient inadvertently reveals knowing more about me than I’ve shared and I ask about it, there’s a slight hesitation while the person decides whether to be honest or lie. It’s hard to confess to stalking your therapist. I was