160 Quotes by Lori Gottlieb

But what are we so afraid of? It’s not as if we’re going to peer in those darker corners, flip on the light, and find a bunch of cockroaches. Fireflies love the dark too. There’s beauty in those places. But we have to look in there to see it.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. 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.

Nor, as happened to me, do you want to run into a former patient in the bra section of a department store as the salesperson announces loudly, “Good news, ma’am! I was able to find the Miracle Bra in the thirty-four A.

You take a risk, you fall down, and you get back up and do it all over again.

I regularly made an effort to remember one of the most important lessons from my training: There’s no hierarchy of pain. Suffering shouldn’t be ranked, because pain is not a contest. Spouses often forget this, upping the ante on their suffering – I had the kids all day. My job is more demanding than yours. I’m lonelier than you are. Whose pain wins – or loses?

Your misery doesn’t change their situation. You can’t lessen their misery by carrying it for them inside you.

The second people felt alone, I noticed, usually in the space between things – leaving a therapy session, at a red light, standing in a checkout line, riding the elevator – they picked up devices and ran away from that feeling. In a state of perpetual distraction, they seemed to be losing the ability to be with others and losing their ability to be with themselves.

Even in the best possible relationship, you’re going to get hurt sometimes, and no matter how much you love somebody, you will at times hurt that person, not because you want to, but because you’re human. You will inevitably hurt your partner, your parents, your children, your closest friend – and they will hurt you – because if you sign up for intimacy, getting hurt is part of the deal.

The only way to get to the other side of the tunnel is to go through it, not around it.