Don’t miss this revealing chat.
Mental health is a topic that’s long been on Katie’s mind — and it’s risen to the forefront of the cultural conversation in recent years. (Especially during the pandemic, which mentally and emotionally taxed even the strongest among us.) Knowing how powerful and helpful therapy can be, Katie went straight to an insightful expert to learn more about how therapy can be an incredibe tool for self-discovery.
That expert? New York Times bestselling author Lori Gottlieb, whose 2019 book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone brought many closer to understanding their own blockades when it comes to therapy. Don’t miss Katie’s enthralling conversation with Gottlieb, who sat down to chat about when it’s time to seek therapy — and how to find the therapist who’ll help you discover what’s been lurking in your own subconscious.
To watch their conversation, head right here, or watch below:
And for more on what inspired Gottlieb to write her book, and her thoughts on how therapy can be valuable for anyone, read on.
Katie Couric: What inspires a therapist to write a book about her experiences with her own therapist?
Lori Gottlieb: There are two main themes in the book: One is that we grow in connection with others, and the other is that we’re more the same than we are different. And so along with my patients’ lives, I wanted to show the other side of a therapist’s life, the human side. Each of the patients I write about look very different on the outside, but there are aspects of each of them that I identify with, and so I felt it would be disingenuous to present myself as the expert up on high who doesn’t struggle with the same universal questions about what it means to love and be loved, what we do with the past so we don’t feel trapped by it, how we grow and change even though change can be so hard.
And then there’s the fact that we all have blind spots, ways of shooting ourselves in the foot without even realizing it. As a therapist, I hold up a mirror to people and say, “Let’s look at your reflection. Let’s look at how you might be getting in your own way.” I can see other people’s blind spots clearly because I have the vantage point of being outside their lives. But it’s very hard to see our own, and I wanted to show my humanity in this way, too. I always say that my most significant credential as a therapist is that I’m a card-carrying member of the human race. Without this humanity, I’d be useless to my patients.
Do you think therapy is still a taboo subject for a lot of people?
I think there’s still stigma attached to therapy because we don’t place value on our emotional health the way most of us do with our physical health. If you notice that something’s feeling “off” with your body, you’ll probably go get that checked out by your doctor before you have, say, a heart attack. But if something feels “off” emotionally, people tend to ignore that. They try to pretend the feelings aren’t there, but feelings don’t go away just because they’re inconvenient. In fact, the more you try to suppress them, the bigger they get, and what might happen is that you’ll wait until you have the equivalent of an emotional heart attack before you call a therapist. And then it’s harder to treat than it would have been if you’d gone to talk to a therapist earlier on. But stigma prevents many people from calling. I think this has to change, and we can do that by talking more openly about therapy, in the way we talk freely about going to our internist or chiropractor.
A lot of people go to therapy because of a traumatic life event…but that’s just the trigger. Do people usually discover there’s something much deeper they haven’t dealt with?
Often the issue that someone comes in with is a sign of a struggle or pattern that got the person into that circumstance in the first place. It generally has to do with how people relate to themselves or to others. A person might carry around a faulty narrative such as “I’m unlovable” or “nothing ever works out for me” or “I’m not the problem, my partner/parent/child is the problem.” And so we work on these stories, and in doing so, I’m listening for the music under the lyrics. What’s going on with this person underneath the presenting issue that has led to the current situation — and how can I help them change that?
How do you feel about all the technology that’s making therapy more accessible for people? Now you can text a therapist and get advice. Is that a good thing for people who may not be able to afford traditional therapy?
One of my colleagues said of Skype therapy, “It’s like doing therapy with a condom on.” Therapy is one of the few places nowadays where you can sit face-to-face with another person for 50 minutes straight with no distractions–nothing pinging or beeping, no screens hanging over your heads in a restaurant — and just be present. You can hear each other breathe. There’s an energy between two people who share the same physical space that doesn’t exist when mediated by technology, even technology like Skype where you can see the other person. And therapists don’t really give the kind of advice you might get on text. But therapy also isn’t accessible to everyone, and the more ways people have of reaching out and getting help, the better. In my weekly “Dear Therapist” column for The Atlantic, I provide a way of looking at the letter writer’s problem from a different perspective that I hope can be useful to that person. So while it’s not the way things might go in the therapy room, it’s still beneficial perhaps in the way that these other modes of reaching out to a therapist can be.
