160 Quotes by Lori Gottlieb

Insight is the booby prize of therapy“ is my favorite maxim of the trade, meaning that you can have all the insight in the world, but if you don’t change when you’re out in the world, the insight and the therapy is worthless. Insight allows you to ask yourself, “Is this something that’s being done to me or am I doing it to myself?“. The answer gives you choices, but it’s up to you to make them.

To be sure, these comments are meant to comfort, but they’re also a way of protecting the speakers from the uncomfortable feelings that somebody else’s bad situation stirs up. Platitudes like these make a terrible circumstance more palatable for the person saying the words but leave the person experiencing the adversity feeling angry and alone.

She can’t concentrate because trying not to cry is taking all of her focus. She looked up the symptoms of depression and ticked off all the boxes.

As a therapist, I know a lot about pain, about the ways in which pain is tied to loss. But I also know something less commonly understood: that change and loss travel together. We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.

Before successful therapy, it’s the same damn thing over and over. After successful therapy, it’s one damn thing after another.

But many people come to therapy seeking closure. Help me not to feel. What they eventually discover is that you can’t mute one emotion without muting the others. You want to mute the pain? You’ll also mute the joy.

People want to be understood and to understand, but for most of us, our biggest problem is that we don’t know what our problem is. We keep stepping in the same puddle. Why do I do the very thing that will guarantee my own unhappiness over and over again?

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. By Google-stalking Boyfriend, I’ve been watching his future unfold while I stay frozen in the past. But if I live in the present, I’ll have to accept the loss of my future.

If you stay in therapy,” I say softly, “you might have to let go of the hope for a better childhood – but that’s only so that you can create a better adulthood.