PDF Summary:Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a memoir by psychotherapist and author Lori Gottlieb. She discusses a difficult time in her life following a sudden breakup with her long-term boyfriend. The incident upset her so badly that it drove her to seek therapy herself.

This book is the story of Lori’s time in therapy, interwoven with stories about Lori’s own patients. Though each of their situations is different, their shared struggles and how they overcome them reflect common experiences that all people share—in fact, Lori says that the reason therapists can be effective is precisely because they have those same struggles. As Lori and her patients work together toward health and understanding, they reflect on their pasts—how they got to be where they are now—and the futures they’d like to have.

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As Julie’s disease progresses, doctors have to remove more and more of her organs to buy her more time. She compares it to a twisted game of Would You Rather, a children’s game where the player is presented with two unappealing situations and forced to choose between them. Julie recalls that, as a child, she had broken the rules by choosing neither. In fact, “I choose neither” had been her yearbook quote in high school. Unfortunately, this time “neither” isn’t an option—she has to choose between her body parts and her life.

During one of her last sessions, Julie talks about the plans she’s made for her funeral. She likes the idea of celebrating her life, but while many people in her cancer support groups say that they don’t want people to be sad at their funerals, Julie rejects that idea. Instead, she wants people to remember and mourn her so she knows that she mattered. During that same session, she talks about all the things she misses—that cancer has taken from her—and all the things she’ll miss when she’s dead. She starts cursing and asks Lori to scream obscenities as a sort of final catharsis. Though it’s extremely unorthodox, Lori joins her.

Julie passes away shortly after that, peacefully in her home. Lori goes to her funeral, which is attended by hundreds of people from all different parts of Julie’s life. Even though she’d died very young, Julie had a remarkable impact on the people around her. One of the last things Julie had asked was whether Lori would remember her; even years later, while writing Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she still does.

Rita’s Loneliness

Rita is a woman in her 60s who is several times divorced, estranged from her children, and in despair because she thinks it’s too late to turn her life around. During their first session together, she tells Lori that if her life doesn’t improve within a year, she’s planning to end it. Her problems echo Lori’s fears of mortality and loneliness.

Rita’s first husband was an abusive alcoholic, and her greatest regret is failing to protect their kids from him. Similarly, the children have never forgiven her for the way they were raised. She lives alone in a small apartment, where she spends her days painting, napping, and watching TV. She is intensely jealous of the happy family across the hall.

Lori initially encourages Rita to try reaching out and connecting with people, romantically and otherwise. Rita tries using Tinder for a while, but she is disgusted by the aging bodies of the men in her age group. Lori continues trying to get her to reach out to people, though even Lori isn’t sure what kind of new life Rita will be able to make for herself at this point. This issue parallels Lori’s uncertainty about her own advancing age and whether she’ll be able to find another romantic partner at this point in her life.

Rita eventually confesses that there had been a man named Myron in her life, and she’d been very fond of him. He’d even created a website for her to show off her art. However, their relationship had been purely platonic. Right as Rita was considering bringing up romance with Myron, he’d gotten together with another woman he met online. Rita immediately cut off all contact with him, and that incident was what drove her to seek out therapy.

Over time, Rita becomes friends with the family across the hall. Their children are enthralled by her artwork, and with the parents’ help, Rita adds an online store to her website to sell her creations.

At around the same time, Myron’s relationship with the other woman ends because he realizes that he doesn’t enjoy spending time with her the way he did with Rita. He tries to reestablish contact, but Rita storms off.

Aside from Myron, Rita seems to be getting everything she wanted: She now has companionship, and she’s creating art for people who appreciate it—and her. However, she’s showing signs of cherophobia: fear of joy. She explains that she’s always waiting for something to go wrong, like it always has in the past. She’s psychologically unable to let herself be happy.

The next major step Rita takes is writing a letter to Myron talking about her past in detail, and explaining why she reacted the way she did. She’s sure that once Myron knows who she “really” is—in other words, who Rita thinks she is—he’ll be disgusted and abandon her. Lori asks Rita whether the letter is really for Myron, or if it’s what she wants to say to her children. The answer is that it’s both.

Similar to how John is able to reconnect with people after opening up about his son Gabe, Rita’s cathartic reading of the letter drops some of her defenses and lets her make meaningful connections again. Myron doesn’t abandon her, and they end up together.

Rita also eventually makes contact with most of her children again. By giving up the need for forgiveness and trying to create new relationships with her children instead of fixing the old ones, she’s been able to reconnect with all but the youngest—he’s still too angry to let her back into his life, and Rita must accept that that might never change.

However, far from the depressed, suicidal woman she’d been at the beginning of the book, Rita manages to create a happy and fulfilling life for herself, even though she’s already pushing 70. Though she will always have some pain and some regrets, she has learned to accept her life for what it is and to appreciate and enjoy the good things without smothering them in despair.

Charlotte’s Relationship Troubles

Charlotte is a young woman with a drinking problem and a history of getting into bad relationships. She finds herself attracted to emotionally unavailable people and always ends up getting hurt. Charlotte’s connections to Lori’s issues are perhaps the least obvious of all her patients; however, her relationship struggles and her inability to get emotionally invested in healthy people and habits echo Lori’s painful breakup and search for meaningful work.

These problems are evident throughout the book as Charlotte has an on-again, off-again fling with another patient she sits with in the waiting room. The Dude, as she calls him, strings her along for months. He repeatedly breaks up with, then gets back together with, another woman, leaving Charlotte to get hurt over and over.

Charlotte also has a habit of asking Lori for advice about every little problem she has, from what she should do about an upcoming presentation to whether she should call a doctor about an injured toe. Lori believes this habit, and Charlotte’s relationship problems, are the result of having had an unsettled home life. Her parents were often absent, and when they were around, they frequently drank and fought with each other.

This had two major effects on Charlotte’s psyche: First, she had to act like an adult long before she was ready, and Lori thinks she’s trying to compensate for that by acting like a helpless child now; second, she subconsciously associates love with anxiety and uncertainty. That’s why she’s always attracted to people who end up hurting her, and when she meets a man with the qualities she claims to want—emotional stability and reliability—she doesn’t feel a “spark.”

However, perhaps the strangest thing about Charlotte is that she seems to think her real addiction isn’t to alcohol or emotionally distant men, but to therapy. Lori comes to realize that it’s because therapy is a perfect setting for someone like Charlotte, who both craves and fears human connection. She’s able to open up freely while in therapy, but at the end of her hour she always gets to leave.

After months of treatment, Charlotte makes two significant steps: She asks Lori to recommend an outpatient alcohol abuse treatment program, and she asks to move her appointment time so she won’t be sitting with The Dude. By the end of the book, though there’s still more work for Charlotte and Lori to do, she is sober and seemingly ready for healthier relationships.

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

The most important thing Lori learns during her time with her own therapist, Wendell, is how to accept uncertainty. She doesn’t know what her disease is, she doesn’t know how long she’ll live, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever find someone to spend her life with—and that’s okay. Not knowing doesn’t mean she has to despair; it means she can hope and savor every moment she has, however many moments that may be.

Eventually she decides to break her book contract, and she accepts that she’ll have to spend a long time paying back the advance. Shortly after, she starts writing another book about her recent experiences; she’s not contracted to write this one but feels compelled to do so because it’s a meaningful and important topic to her. That book will eventually become Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

In the final scene of the book, Lori leaves Wendell’s office after their last session together. She notices that the nearest crosswalk signal has changed so she can cross. However, instead of rushing to catch it, she notices that it’s a beautiful day out and takes a minute to just enjoy the sun. This shows that she’s finally living fully in the moment and enjoying life for what it is, instead of constantly dreading the future.