160 Quotes by Lori Gottlieb

And when that happens, the only control you have is how you deal with that stick – your way, not the way others say you should.

Uncertainty, I’m starting to realize, doesn’t mean the loss of hope – it means there’s possibility. I don’t know what will happen next – how potentially exciting!

Therapy elicits odd reactions because, in a way, it’s like pornography. Both involve a kind of nudity.

It’s impossible to get to know people deeply and not come to like them.

Typically, a patient might have a difficult session about a childhood trauma, then come in the next week and announce that therapy is no longer needed.

So much of what I’m doing to help him relies on our in-the-room interaction. Say what you will about the wonders of technology, but screen-to-screen is, as a colleague once said, “like doing therapy with a condom on.

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. But if we spend the present trying to fix the past or control the future, we remain stuck in place, in perpetual regret.

Almost is always the hardest, isn’t it?” she said one afternoon. “Almost getting something. Almost having a baby. Almost getting a clean scan. Almost not having cancer anymore.” I thought about how many people avoid trying for things they really want in life because it’s more painful to get close to the goal but not achieve it than not to have taken the chance in the first place.

I once told Wendell that I’m a terrible decision maker, that often what I think I want doesn’t turn out the way I’d imagined. But there were two notable exceptions, and both proved to be the best decisions of my life. In each case, I was nearly forty. One was my decision to have a baby. The other was my decision to become a therapist.