March can be a dreary month for many, not quite springtime, with winter dragging its heels on its way out the door. If you are finding this month to be a challenging one and maybe you have been considering therapy but just aren’t sure what it’s all about, this is a lovely read.
Unlike most of my other suggestions which are more educational, Lori Gottlieb’s book is an exploration in the deeper more emotional and connection driven aspects of what therapy is all about. She writes from a unique lens as both a therapist reflecting on the impactful work she has done with her clients and as a client herself reflecting on her own therapeutic work. I have so many dog-eared pages scattered throughout this book because of her beautiful use of language to capture such deep, messy and complex themes so eloquently.
One overarching theme is the importance of human connection and her observations on how uncomfortable we have become in our culture with moments of being alone. I have heard multiple adolescent clients in my practice express anxiety over having to walk from one class to another or out to their car on their own and the fear of how this will be perceived by others. “I will look lonely or like I have no friends,” and despite the fact that neither are true, the fear of this external perception is massive. Not to mention the inability to tolerate small moments of aloneness without reaching for our various devices to connect- though only indirectly.
She touches on another common and controversial theme, self-sabotage, “If I screw up my life, I can engineer my own death rather than have it happen to me. If I hide in fear instead of facing what’s wrong with my body, I can create a living death- but one where I call the shots.” This is something that comes up a lot in my work with clients with eating disorders but it can show up in a range of ways. To see these outwardly frustrating patterns of behavior as an attempt at mastery over death offers us a chance at compassion and exploration of the fear that drives us into these dark spaces of avoidance, often at great cost. She notes that the main themes of therapy can all fall under four categories, “death, isolation, freedom and meaninglessness.” This is the foundation for Existential Psychotherapy, something I enjoy engaging in with clients very much.
Lori’s book explores each of these themes through her clients as well as in her own work in a way that is deeply relatable and illuminates the connectedness beneath the seeming separation of our individual issues. Sometimes her characters seem very unlikable until these deeper truths come to light and their underlying humanity floods the reader with compassion not only for them, but for the parts of ourselves that we see reflected in them.