160 Quotes by Lori Gottlieb

He wasn’t doing anything fancy; he just seemed wholly at home in his skin.

Half my life is over, I would say, seemingly out of nowhere, in our very first session – and Wendell would jump right on this. He was picking up where my internship supervisor had left off years earlier. You won’t get today back. And the days were flying by.

You know what I love about Rosie?” he says. “She’s the only one who doesn’t ask things of me. The only one who isn’t, in one way or another, disappointed with me – or at least, she wasn’t before she bit me! Who wouldn’t love that?” He laughs loudly, like we’re at a bar and he’s just tossed out a breezy one-liner.

Your feelings don’t have to mesh with what you think they should be,” he explained. “They’ll be there regardless, so you might as well welcome them because they hold important clues.” How many times had I said something similar to my own patients? But here I feel as if I’m hearing this for the first time. Don’t judge your feelings; notice them. Use them as your map. Don’t be afraid of the truth.

A supervisor once likened doing psychotherapy to undergoing physical therapy. It can be difficult and cause pain, and your condition can worsen before it improves, but if you go consistently and work hard when you’re there, you’ll get the kinks out and function so much better.

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and experience something before its meaning becomes apparent. It’s one thing to talk about leaving behind a restrictive mindset. It’s another to stop being so restrictive.

During an initial burst of pain, people tend to lash out either at others or at themselves, to turn the anger outward or inward.

John lowers himself onto the couch, kicks off his shoes, then stretches out, lies down, and adjusts his head on the pillows. Usually he sits cross-legged on the sofa, so this is a first. I notice, too, that there’s no food today. “Okay, you win,” he begins with a sigh. “Win what?” I ask. “The pleasure of my company,” he deadpans. I raise my eyebrows.

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.