Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Maybe You Should Talk To Someone Plot Summary

Introduction

The waiting room was quiet except for the soft hum of a noise machine. I sat nervously, clutching a tissue in my hand, wondering if this was a mistake. What would I even say? How could I explain the overwhelming sense of loss that had consumed me since the breakup? The feeling that half my life was over, that I'd wasted precious time on the wrong person? As a therapist myself, I knew the process—but being on this side of the couch felt entirely different. When the door opened and my soon-to-be therapist appeared, I had no idea this moment would transform not just my personal journey, but my entire understanding of human connection and healing. Therapy is often misunderstood as simply talking about problems. But it's actually about examining the stories we tell ourselves—stories that may have protected us once but now keep us trapped. Through intimate therapeutic relationships, we discover how our past experiences shape our present reactions, how our fears manifest as defenses, and how we can find freedom by facing what we've been avoiding. This exploration reveals that beneath our different struggles lies a universal human quest: to feel seen, to make meaning of our suffering, and to find authentic connection with ourselves and others despite the inevitable pain that comes with being alive.

Chapter 1: The Therapist Becomes the Patient: Finding Wendell

The night my boyfriend ended our relationship, I felt my world collapse. We had been planning our future together—marriage, a shared home, growing old side by side. Then suddenly, with a few unexpected words over dinner, everything changed. "I've decided that I can't live with a kid under my roof for the next ten years," he said. His statement seemed to come from nowhere, leaving me blindsided and broken. As a therapist, I spend my days helping others navigate their emotional pain, yet here I was, unable to make sense of my own. Finding a therapist when you are one yourself presents unique challenges. I couldn't see someone in my professional circle, someone who knew my colleagues or might refer patients to me. After careful consideration, I called a distant professional contact who recommended a psychologist named Wendell. Walking into his office for the first session, I was struck by the unusual arrangement—two long sofas forming an L-shape, with no therapist chair in sight. I sat far away from where he eventually settled, creating physical distance that mirrored my emotional guardedness. Within minutes, I was sobbing uncontrollably, making my case for why my ex-boyfriend must be blamed for everything. I was certain that Wendell would validate my perspective. Instead, he simply watched me with compassionate eyes that seemed to say: In this room, I'm going to see you, and you'll try to hide, but I'll still see you, and it's going to be okay when I do. This quiet acceptance was both terrifying and exactly what I needed. As our sessions continued, I obsessively recounted every detail of the breakup, while Wendell tried gently to redirect me. "I wonder if you're grieving something bigger than the loss of your boyfriend," he suggested one day. I wanted to dismiss this idea immediately. What could possibly be "bigger" than this sudden, painful loss? Yet something in his words resonated in a way I wasn't ready to acknowledge. One day, after I'd spent another session fixated on my ex, Wendell did something unexpected—he lightly kicked my foot. "There's a difference between pain and suffering," he explained. "You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering." He suggested that my obsessive Google-stalking and rumination were ways I was extending my suffering, and that perhaps this served some purpose for me. His words challenged me to consider what I might be avoiding by keeping my focus so narrowly on the relationship's end. The therapeutic relationship is a unique mirror, reflecting not just what we present, but what we hide. Through Wendell's patient presence, I began to see that my fixation on the breakup was keeping me from examining deeper questions about my life's direction, my fears about aging, and my relationship with mortality itself. The presenting problem had opened the door to the real work that needed to be done—the work of understanding who I truly was beneath the professional identity I'd constructed so carefully.

Chapter 2: Behind the Defenses: John's Story of Loss

John arrived at my office with the same energy he brought to everything—impatient, demanding, and utterly convinced of his own superiority. A successful television writer with a reputation for being difficult, he insisted on paying in cash and referred to our sessions as meetings with his "emotional hooker." His presenting problem was insomnia, but beneath his caustic exterior lay something far more complex. During our sessions, he'd order Chinese chicken salads for both of us, complain about the "idiots" he worked with, and deflect any attempt I made to explore his feelings with razor-sharp wit. "Jesus Christ," he'd say whenever I asked about his emotions, "I'm not here for a heart-to-heart. I just need to sleep." But sleep was merely a symptom of what was really keeping John awake at night. His marriage was struggling, his wife Margo was seeing her own therapist (whom John referred to as "the idiot therapist"), and his relationship with his daughters was strained by his constant phone interruptions and emotional unavailability. During one session, John slipped and mentioned someone named "Gabe" when talking about his family. When I asked who Gabe was, his face went through a series of expressions I'd never seen before—vulnerability, grief, rage—before he quietly said, "Gabe is my son," and walked out. It would be weeks before he returned to reveal the tragic truth: his six-year-old son had died in a car accident years earlier, a trauma he had never processed and never discussed with anyone, including his therapist. After Gabe's death, John had shut down emotionally. He couldn't bear to talk about his son, even as Margo desperately needed to share her grief. "I will not be a basket case and ruin their childhoods," John insisted, referring to his surviving daughters. "What happened isn't their fault." He believed that keeping his pain locked away was protecting his family, but his emotional absence was actually widening the gap between them. One breakthrough came when John described a dream in which sixteen-year-old Gabe was taking his driving test. In the dream, John felt both pride in his grown son and regret about not spending enough time with him. When the examiner returned without Gabe, announcing there had been an accident caused by "a man on his cell phone," John realized with horror that the man was himself. He woke up screaming his son's last word: "Daddyyyyyyy!" What John's story reveals is how we often use defenses like anger, sarcasm, and emotional detachment not just as personality traits but as survival mechanisms against unbearable pain. These defenses may help us function in the short term, but eventually they become the very prison bars that keep us trapped. True healing begins when we find the courage to break open rather than break down—to embrace vulnerability as strength rather than weakness, and to acknowledge that protecting ourselves from pain often means cutting ourselves off from love as well.

Chapter 3: Facing Mortality: Julie's Search for Meaning

Julie was dying. At thirty-five, with metastatic cancer that had spread throughout her body, she came to therapy not to be cured of her illness but to learn how to live with the knowledge that her time was limited. Unlike most patients who seek therapy to improve their future, Julie was grappling with the absence of one. "I'm not afraid of being dead," she told me. "I'm afraid of not being alive." In our sessions, Julie struggled with the unfairness of her situation. She'd done everything "right"—exercised, ate well, never smoked—yet here she was, facing death while others who abused their bodies lived long lives. She was angry at the platitudes people offered: "Everything happens for a reason" or "God never gives you more than you can handle." These well-meaning comments only highlighted how alone she felt in her experience. As her illness progressed, Julie began to strip her life down to its essentials. She quit her prestigious academic job but kept working part-time at Trader Joe's, where the simple human interactions brought her joy. She focused on spending quality time with her husband Matt, her sister, and her young nephew. She even planned her own funeral, joking that she was being a "Deathzilla" with all her specific requests. What surprised Julie most about dying was how vivid her world had become. Everything she used to take for granted produced a sense of revelation—the sweetness of a strawberry, the smell of flowers, the sound of her nephew's laughter. "When people delude themselves into believing they have all the time in the world," she observed, "they get lazy." Her impending death had made her more acutely present. In one of our final sessions, Julie shared something profound: "I've been time-traveling to the past to relive parts of my life that I've enjoyed. But even if I were healthy, I'd never want to travel to the future. The future is hope. But where's the hope if you already know what happens? What are you living for then?" Julie's journey illuminates how confronting mortality can bring clarity about what truly matters. In the face of uncertainty—whether it's a terminal diagnosis, a relationship ending, or simply the unknown future—we have a choice: we can resist reality and suffer, or we can accept our limitations and find meaning within them. Viktor Frankl, who survived Nazi concentration camps, wrote that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." Julie chose to embrace the life she had rather than mourn the one she wouldn't get, finding moments of joy even as her body failed her.

Chapter 4: Breaking Patterns: Charlotte's Path to Sobriety

Charlotte was twenty-six when she first arrived at my office, dramatically unpacking her belongings—phone, water bottle, snacks, lip balm—and arranging them on the arms of what she called her "therapy throne." Beautiful and charismatic, she initially came to discuss her complicated relationship with a man she called "the Dude," who kept her in an endless cycle of approach and retreat. But beneath this presenting problem lay deeper issues: her difficult relationship with her emotionally unavailable father, her struggles with alcohol, and her fear of genuine intimacy. In our early sessions, Charlotte was in what psychologists call the "pre-contemplation stage" of change. She presented herself as a social drinker and became defensive when I suggested her drinking might be problematic. "People my age go out and drink!" she insisted. It wasn't until she had a car accident and received a DUI that she moved into the "contemplation stage," acknowledging her drinking was an issue but still reluctant to address it. Charlotte's journey through recovery wasn't linear. She would make progress, then retreat when facing uncomfortable emotions. During one session, she announced she wanted to take a break from therapy. "I feel like I'm doing well," she claimed. "I'm still sober, work is going fine, I'm not fighting as much with my mom, and I'm not seeing the Dude." But the timing seemed suspicious—was she avoiding something deeper? "If you stay in therapy," I said softly, "you might have to let go of the hope for a better childhood—but that's only so that you can create a better adulthood." Charlotte looked down for a long time, then admitted she'd slept with her neighbor despite her commitment to only date men looking for serious relationships. "I figured if I left therapy, I could just keep sleeping with him," she confessed. As Charlotte maintained her sobriety, she began to recognize patterns in her relationships. She realized that her inability to say "no" stemmed from approval-seeking, while her inability to say "yes" to genuine intimacy came from lack of trust in herself. "I keep trying to get them to change," she said, referring not just to the Dude but to her father who repeatedly disappointed her. I explained that every relationship is a dance—the Dude does his steps (approach/retreat), and Charlotte does hers (approach/get hurt). But once Charlotte changed her steps, one of two things would happen: either the Dude would change his steps, or he'd walk off the dance floor entirely. Charlotte's story illustrates how we often focus on changing others rather than ourselves, and how we repeatedly choose relationships that recreate our earliest wounds in hopes of finally healing them. Real change requires not just recognizing these patterns but having the courage to dance differently, even when the steps feel foreign and frightening. It means accepting that while we can change ourselves, we cannot change others who aren't ready or willing. The most powerful transformation happens when we stop trying to control others and instead take responsibility for our own choices.

Chapter 5: It's Never Too Late: Rita's Journey to Connection

Rita was sixty-nine years old when she first came to see me, declaring that if her life didn't improve by her seventieth birthday, she planned to "end it." Thrice-divorced and estranged from her four adult children, Rita described her life as a tragedy with the final line already written. Her days were spent in isolation—exercising at the Y, painting alone in her apartment, watching "junk" on TV, and falling asleep. The only human touch she received was during her monthly pedicures, which she scheduled not because anyone would see her toenails but because she craved the physical contact from Connie, the nail technician. Despite her depression, Rita maintained her striking appearance—tall and slim with large green eyes, high cheekbones, and thick naturally red hair barely flecked with gray. She attended exercise class daily, "just to have a reason to get out of bed." Her physician described her as "one of the healthiest people her age I've seen." The contrast between her physical vitality and emotional deadness was stark. As Andrew Solomon wrote, "The opposite of depression isn't happiness, but vitality." Everything changed when Rita tripped in her apartment building's hallway and was caught by Kyle, the father from the family across the hall—the family Rita secretly watched through her peephole, especially when the mother came home calling out, "Hello, family!" Kyle and his wife Anna discovered Rita's artistic talent and soon she was teaching their daughters, ages five and seven, to paint. One day, when Anna called out her usual greeting and the girls responded from Rita's apartment, little Alice turned to Rita and asked why she hadn't answered. "I'm not family," Rita said matter-of-factly, to which Alice replied, "Yes, you are. You're our California grandma!" Despite these positive developments, Rita remained trapped in what psychologist Erik Erikson termed "despair"—the opposite of the "integrity" that ideally characterizes our later years. She couldn't enjoy her expanding life because she was consumed by regret over her past mistakes, particularly her failure to protect her children from their alcoholic father. When I asked what sentence she thought she deserved for these decades-old crimes, Rita replied without hesitation: "Life in prison." I pointed out that she had indeed sentenced herself to life imprisonment, but that her misery didn't help her children. "There's only one person in this entire world who benefits from you not being able to enjoy anything good in your life," I told her. "Who?" she asked. "You," I replied. Rita's story reveals how our deepest wounds often come not from what happens to us, but from what we do to others—and how the path to healing requires not just seeking forgiveness from those we've hurt, but finding a way to forgive ourselves. Sometimes we cling to our pain because it feels safer than joy, more familiar than connection. We fear that if we allow ourselves happiness, we're somehow betraying those we've wronged or tempting fate to take it all away. But true healing comes when we recognize that our suffering serves no one—not ourselves, not those we've hurt. It comes when we find the courage to step out of our self-imposed prisons and embrace the possibility that even after profound mistakes, we deserve connection, purpose, and yes, even joy.

Chapter 6: The Prison of Our Minds: Finding Freedom in Uncertainty

"I think I'm beyond help," Rita declared in our first session. At sixty-nine, she presented herself as a cautionary tale: thrice-divorced, estranged from her four children, retired from a job she disliked, and utterly alone. She had given herself one year to make her life better—if nothing improved by her seventieth birthday, she planned to end it. Her days followed a listless routine: early rising (menopause had ruined her sleep), exercise class at the Y, breakfast while watching television, painting or napping, lunch with the newspaper, more painting or napping, a frozen dinner, sitting on her building's stoop to watch passersby, then "junk" TV until sleep. Many days, she spoke to no one. Working with Rita forced me to confront my own assumptions about age and possibility. I wondered: Is it ever too late for redemption? Can regret serve as an engine for change rather than shackles to the past? These questions echoed my own struggles in therapy with Wendell, where I was learning that many of our limitations are self-imposed. Like the prisoner in Wendell's cartoon metaphor, shaking the bars of a cell that's open on both sides, we often remain trapped by our perceptions rather than our circumstances. Meanwhile, I was struggling with my own professional crisis. I had a book contract for a work on happiness but couldn't bring myself to write it. The irony wasn't lost on me—a happiness expert too miserable to complete her book. Each day I'd sit down to write and end up doing anything else—checking social media, sending emails, or obsessing over my ex. The deadline loomed, the advance had been spent, and my anxiety mounted. When I finally confessed this situation to Wendell, he responded by singing an impromptu blues song: "Half my life is over, oh yeah. Half my life has passed me by..." His performance was both ridiculous and profound, highlighting the existential questions underlying my procrastination. I also had a secret health concern that I kept from everyone, even my boyfriend. For two years, I'd been on what I called the "Medical Mystery Tour"—a carousel of specialists, tests, and contradictory diagnoses. My symptoms were real and debilitating: fatigue, mysterious rashes, swollen joints, tremors. But despite abnormal lab results and concerning scans, no doctor could definitively name what was happening to me. One neurologist even suggested it was all in my head—a modern-day version of "female hysteria" or what's known as conversion disorder. The prison of our minds is perhaps the most confining space we inhabit. We construct narratives about who we are and what's possible, then mistake these stories for immutable truth. We tune our radios to static-ridden stations—the everyone's-life-is-better-than-mine station, the I-can't-trust-people station, the nothing-works-out-for-me station—instead of simply moving the dial. As Wendell reminded me, "There is a way out—as long as we're willing to see it." This insight applies whether we're twenty-nine or sixty-nine. The bars that seem to confine us are often projections of our fears rather than reflections of reality.

Chapter 7: Healing Through Relationship: The Therapeutic Alliance

In the therapy room, two people sit together in an unusual kind of relationship. One speaks, one listens. One reveals, one observes. Yet beneath this apparent asymmetry lies a profound connection—what therapists call the "therapeutic alliance." This relationship becomes the vehicle for healing, not because therapists have special powers or wisdom, but because they create a space where people can be fully seen and accepted, even in their most vulnerable moments. My consultation group meets every Friday at four, a fixture in our professional lives. In Maxine's comfortable office with skirted chairs and soft cream colors, we discuss challenging cases and seek feedback from colleagues. During one session, I brought up a patient named Becca, whom I couldn't seem to help despite a year of trying. She complained about being excluded by coworkers and abandoned by boyfriends but rejected every attempt to explore her role in these patterns. When I suggested that her tears might be telling us something important, she'd snap, "That's why I'm coming to you—if I knew what was going on, I wouldn't need to be here." After hearing my frustration, Maxine asked simply, "Why do you keep seeing her?" The question caught me off guard. I worried about leaving Becca emotionally stranded, but my colleagues saw through this rationalization. "You don't need to prove your competence to Becca," Andrea pointed out. They were right—I was staying in a therapeutic relationship that wasn't working, much like patients who remain in unhealthy personal relationships hoping to prove their worth. Sometimes the most compassionate act is knowing when to let go. The power of connection extends beyond the therapy room. When my patient Julie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, her best friend Dara became an unexpected source of wisdom. Having navigated her own devastating situation with her son's autism, Dara understood how to find joy in an unexpected life path. She had learned to stop obsessing about what she did or didn't know about chemicals during pregnancy that might have harmed her baby. She found ways to connect with her son for who he was rather than focusing on who he wasn't. She got care for herself so she could care for him. Even John, my prickly patient who insisted everyone around him was an "idiot," revealed his capacity for connection through his relationship with his dog Rosie. Despite his protests, the tenderness in his eyes when he showed me her photo spoke volumes about his ability to love. During one session, when I asked if he ever felt peaceful, he initially denied it. But as he was leaving, he smiled—not his usual condescending smirk but something genuine—and admitted that perhaps he did find peace in our sessions together. These stories illustrate a fundamental truth: we heal through relationship. Not by fixing everything or removing all pain, but by creating connections where we can be authentic without fear of judgment or abandonment. The therapeutic relationship becomes a template for other relationships, teaching us that we can be seen in our entirety—with all our contradictions, fears, and failures—and still be accepted. This experience of "feeling felt" allows us to extend the same compassion to ourselves and others.

Summary

Throughout this journey into the therapy room, we've witnessed the profound truth that healing begins when we allow ourselves to be truly seen. From John's carefully guarded grief over his son's death to Charlotte's struggle with addiction, from Julie's courageous confrontation with mortality to Rita's self-imposed prison of regret—each story reveals how transformation becomes possible when we stop hiding behind our defenses and start exploring the stories we tell ourselves. The therapeutic relationship offers a unique mirror that reflects not just who we are, but who we might become if we find the courage to face our deepest fears and most painful truths. What these stories ultimately teach us is that while we cannot control the uncertainties of life—illness, loss, betrayal, or disappointment—we always retain what Viktor Frankl called "the last of human freedoms": the ability to choose our response to whatever happens. Between stimulus and response lies a space, and in that space resides our power to grow beyond our suffering. Whether we're grappling with grief like John, facing mortality like Julie, breaking destructive patterns like Charlotte, or seeking redemption like Rita, the path forward begins with the simple yet profound act of showing up authentically—first for ourselves, then for others. In doing so, we discover that our wounds, when acknowledged and understood, don't just heal; they become the very openings through which connection, meaning, and even joy can finally enter our lives.

About Author

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Lori Gottlieb

LORI GOTTLIEB is a psychotherapist and New York Times bestselling author of MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE, which has sold nearly two million copies and is currently being adapted as a television series. In addition to her clinical practice, she is co-host of the popular “DEAR THERAPISTS" PODCAST, which features real sessions with real people and offers actionable advice, and writes The Atlantic’s “Dear Therapist” advice column. She is a sought-after expert in media such as The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, CNN, and NPR and her TED Talk was one of the Top 10 Most Watched of the Year. She is the creator of the Maybe You Should Talk To Someone Workbook: A Toolkit for Editing Your Story and Changing Your Life and the Maybe You Should Talk To Someone Journal: 52 Weekly Sessions to Transform Your Life. Learn more at LoriGottlieb.com or by following her on Instagram @lorigottlieb_author and Twitter @LoriGottlieb1.

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