Lori Gottlieb, MAYBE YOU SHOULD TALK TO SOMEONE
[0:04]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
[0:07]I'm excited to bring you my episode today with Laurie Gottlieb, who's the author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
[0:13]It's a memoir she wrote about her therapist, the patients in her therapy practice, and more.
[0:19]I actually saw Laurie speak at the LA Times book festival, along with a couple other authors
[0:25]like Mary Laura Felpott and Cathy Geiswite, and just had to have her on the podcast.
[0:30]So I hope you enjoyed her book, made the bestseller list for nonfiction, the week it came out,
[0:35]and is just fantastic. I also wanted to let you know again that I have an Amazon influencer
[0:41]store, so you can buy Laurie's book through my store, which is on zibi Owens.com, and the
[0:46]links are also on my Instagram feeds at zibi Owens, and at moms don't have time to read books,
[0:51]which hopefully you're following both of those now. And again, sign up for my newsletter at
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[2:00]and that I'm recommending are now in my own playlist. If you go to librofm slash playlist,
[2:05]you can find it, which is so great. I'm excited to be interviewing Lori Gottlieb today.
[2:10]Lori is the author of the Instant New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,
[2:14]a therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed, which is currently being adapted into a TV
[2:19]series with Eva Longoria. She is a psychotherapist, a nationally recognized journalist,
[2:24]and the weekly Deere Therapist columnist for The Atlantic. Lori started her career in the TV and
[2:29]film industry, went back to medical school, and then began her writing career before becoming a
[2:33]therapist. She has written hundreds of cover stories, features, profiles, and more. But the New York
[2:37]Times, the LA Times, The Washington Post, Time, L.O., The Oprah Magazine, Parents, Glamour,
[2:43]and many other publications. She's a frequent guest in the media, including on The Today Show,
[2:48]Good Morning America, the CBS Early Show, CNN, and NPR's Fresh Air, a graduate of Stanford
[2:53]University. She also attended Stanford Medical School and received a graduate degree in clinical
[2:58]psychology from Pepperdine University. She lives in Los Angeles. Welcome, Lori. Thanks so much
[3:03]for coming on Momstone. Have time to read books. Well, thank you so much for having me.
[3:08]So can you please tell listeners what Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Is About and What
[3:12]Inspired You to Write It? Yeah. So I wasn't originally supposed to be writing this book.
[3:18]I was supposed to be writing a book about happiness, and ironically the happiness book was
[3:25]making me miserable and depressed. And it's not because there aren't great books about happiness
[3:32]out there. There are. I was starting off as a therapist, and I felt like the kind of book that
[3:40]I wanted to be writing was about what was going on in the therapy realm, what was going on in
[3:44]people's lives. And you know, happiness as a byproduct of living a certain kind of life is a great
[3:52]thing, but I didn't want to write a book about happiness as an end goal. And so every day I would
[3:58]try to sit down and write this book, and I couldn't get myself to do it because it just felt
[4:02]really inauthentic and given what I was doing in this therapy room. And so eventually I
[4:09]canceled that book contract. And I didn't think I would write another book or I had no idea what
[4:14]I would write. And then one day I just started writing about what was going on in my own therapy,
[4:20]and what was going on with me as a clinician. And I decided to just bring people behind the scenes
[4:28]into the therapy realm. And that is what became Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. So we follow
[4:33]the stories of four very different patients as they're going through various struggles in their
[4:39]lives. And then I'm going through not people in my own life. And I become the fifth patient and we
[4:44]see me go through my own therapy. It's so good. It's like your own memoir is like weaved in with all
[4:51]these great stories and all this sort of psychological insight for readers for their own lives.
[4:57]It was like it's like the perfect combination. Anyway, I loved it. Well, great. Yeah,
[5:02]that's what I was trying to do. I was really trying to help people to see something about themselves
[5:07]through other people's stories. I think it's so much easier to see something,
[5:12]to see our blind spots when they're reflected in what somebody else is doing. So so far,
[5:18]I think the readers have said, you know, I saw myself in every single one of these patients,
[5:22]even though I'm very different from them on the surface. And I thought it was great how you
[5:28]talked in this book about that happiness book and how you were having such a hard time with
[5:33]it. You like didn't even want to tell your therapist about it. And even the book before that,
[5:37]the one about the article about kids and how to get it there. Exactly. You know, how you passed
[5:43]on that book deal and like hated yourself for it. So it's like so self-deprecating in a way,
[5:48]but also relatable in great anyway. Well, when you turned in your first draft, so I didn't know
[5:55]when I was writing this book that I was going to include all of that information, right? Because
[6:00]with my story, I could pick and choose what I wanted to reveal. And so in the first draft,
[6:06]I just revealed it all because first of all, I thought, well, this is the book that's not commercial
[6:11]at all that no one's going to read. But it's the book I feel like I have to write. So I can just
[6:15]be free to write whatever I want because three people are going to read it. And of course,
[6:19]what happened? But I think that I really felt like I had to walk the walk that I had to show
[6:26]all of the pieces of me that maybe I would choose not to reveal because that's what my patients
[6:31]were doing. And I couldn't hold them to a certain standard and not meet that standard myself.
[6:36]So interesting. And you also talk about how you got to this stage of your career through
[6:42]sort of a series of shifts or pivots as people are saying now all the time. So you started off
[6:48]when you were at NBC as a development executive before friends in ER were first launching.
[6:54]And then you decided you didn't want to do that. You end up in medical school after
[6:58]shadowing an ER doctor who you found fascinating for ER. Then you have a child become a psychotherapist.
[7:05]So you basically, and now you're like this amazing writer on top of it and best-selling author.
[7:10]How do you think you had the emotional toughness and sort of sense of self to keep listening to what
[7:17]you really believed in through all these little transitions in life? Because I feel like some people
[7:21]just ignore those flashing lights to tell them that they are not not happy with what you're doing
[7:25]and and you listen to all of them. I did. And it's funny because in retrospect,
[7:30]they sound like very disparate careers. But in retrospect, they all have to do with
[7:34]story and the human condition. And I think that it's not that I was switching from one very different
[7:43]to one completely unrelated thing. Even though it looked that way at that time, I used to
[7:47]I used to always joke that I was either very versatile or very confused. And the reality is I'm not
[7:51]that versatile. So I was really working in the same thing which was story in the human condition.
[7:58]So when I was working at NBC, when we were telling those stories on ER, they were these very,
[8:03]very rich, emotionally laden, interesting stories. But they were fiction. And when I went into a
[8:10]real ER with our consultants on the show who was in ER physician, all of a sudden it was like,
[8:16]wow, this is the meaning of life right here. This is life and death, real life and death.
[8:22]People's lives are changing in a in a millisecond because you don't end up in an ER if something
[8:27]wasn't a surprise. And that was the world that I felt like I wanted to immerse myself in. And so
[8:32]I ended up going to medical school. And when I was in medical school, a lot of the
[8:37]a lot of my professors were talking about managed care, this new thing at the time. And how it
[8:42]was going to be really hard for me to do this thing that I wanted to do, which was really immerse
[8:48]myself in my patients' stories and lives and guide them throughout their lives. The system was
[8:55]not going to be set up for that kind of work in the same way. And it would be harder. And I really
[9:00]grappled with that. And at the same time, I had been freelance writing to kind of support myself
[9:06]through this career change. And I ended up deciding to leave to become a journalist where I could
[9:14]really immerse myself in people's stories and real life stories. And then when I had a baby,
[9:20]I think like a lot of new moms, I felt very isolated during the day. I felt like I needed
[9:27]other adults to do. And I needed like a professional identity back somehow. And so,
[9:34]you know, like the UPS guy would come. I was always ordering diapers and myriad baby supplies.
[9:39]And I would say things like, how about those diapers and how do you have kids? And he would
[9:45]literally be afraid to, you know, he's like, hope that I wasn't home. And he would like back
[9:49]away to his ground truck. And I can see the fear in his eyes. And you know, like when someone
[9:54]was trying to avoid you. And so I called it the Dean at Stanford where I had been in medical
[10:00]And I said, maybe I should come back and do psychiatry.
[10:03]And she said, you know, you're going to go through all this
[10:05]training.
[10:05]You have a newborn.
[10:06]You're going to then go through residency with a toddler.
[10:10]And the work you want to do is not prescribing medication.
[10:16]The work you want to do is the deeper work.
[10:18]And you can do that with a graduate degree in clinical
[10:20]psychology.
[10:22]And it was the best advice that I had ever gotten.
[10:26]It was one of those aha moments where everything just
[10:29]kind of like the last piece of the puzzle is now placed in it.
[10:32]And you're like, oh, that's the solution.
[10:35]And I did that.
[10:37]And I feel like I went from telling people stories as a journalist
[10:41]to helping people change their stories as a therapist.
[10:45]Because I feel like a lot of what I do in the therapy room
[10:47]is help people to rewrite these faulty narratives,
[10:50]rewrite these stories that they've been carrying around
[10:53]for so long that are holding them back.
[10:55]I think I was similarly stalking of my UPS guy
[10:59]as when my twins were really little because my son ended up
[11:02]dressing up as the UPS man for Halloween.
[11:07]I'm like, I think I'm ordering online too many times.
[11:11]And yeah.
[11:13]Well, speaking of helping your patients change their stories,
[11:17]one of your patients who is battling cancer at the outset
[11:20]gets upset when a friend of hers gives her advice,
[11:23]which is this story about Holland.
[11:25]It's going to Holland versus going to Italy.
[11:27]And I thought that was so relevant.
[11:29]I was hoping you could tell listeners the story.
[11:32]And then I wanted to know what your trip to Italy and life
[11:35]would have been.
[11:36]And are you there?
[11:37]Are you in Holland?
[11:38]Oh, I love this story.
[11:39]It's not my story, I should say.
[11:41]It's Elizabeth Pearl Kingsley's story.
[11:43]And she let me include it in the book.
[11:46]And she wrote it because she has a child who
[11:50]has Down syndrome.
[11:51]And she was writing about the experience
[11:55]of what it's like when no matter what it is, whether it's
[11:58]having a child with a disability or having something not
[12:02]work out the way that we expected it to work out
[12:06]and how we kind of make that shift.
[12:08]And she says that she likens it to you get on a plane
[12:14]and you're heading to Italy.
[12:17]You're so excited.
[12:18]You're going to have this beautiful vacation in Italy.
[12:21]And you think about all the food you're
[12:23]going to eat and all the sites you're going to see.
[12:25]And everything that you're going to do in Italy
[12:28]and waiting for this and waiting for this.
[12:31]And then the plane lands.
[12:33]And they say, excuse me, flight change of plan.
[12:36]We actually landed in Holland.
[12:39]We're not in Italy.
[12:40]And Holland was not where you expected to be.
[12:44]That wasn't the plan and your bum.
[12:46]You know, I've been planning to go to Italy.
[12:49]And I had this whole vision in my head of what Italy was
[12:53]supposed to be like and what that experience would be like
[12:55]for me.
[12:56]And I don't want to be in Holland.
[12:58]This wasn't what I signed up for.
[12:59]I did not buy a ticket to Holland.
[13:01]But you're there.
[13:02]You're in Holland.
[13:02]And she talks about how first people are really
[13:06]discombobulated by the change in itinerary.
[13:10]But that you start to notice that Holland isn't this awful
[13:14]place, that there are Rembrandt and tulips.
[13:16]And you know, they're like beautiful things in Holland, too.
[13:20]It's just different from Italy.
[13:22]And so in the book, there's a woman who goes on her honeymoon
[13:26]and she comes back.
[13:27]And they had wanted to get pregnant right away.
[13:29]And she feels something in her breast.
[13:31]And the thing that she felt that she thought was a sign of
[13:33]pregnancy is actually a sign of cancer.
[13:35]It ends up being a very, they say it's a very
[13:37]treatable form of cancer.
[13:39]She gets through that just fine.
[13:40]And then six months later, she gets her sign off
[13:42]scans so that she can get pregnant.
[13:44]And it turns out that on the scan they find out that she has
[13:49]this very rare aggressive form of cancer
[13:51]unrelated to the first they think.
[13:52]And it's untreatable.
[13:54]And she is going to die.
[13:57]And they don't know whether it's like a year or three years
[14:00]or 10 years at the most.
[14:02]But wow, what a change in plans, right?
[14:04]And so a friend sends that to her.
[14:06]And she's like, screw you.
[14:08]You know, like this is not helpful to me.
[14:11]This is not, this is not the same thing.
[14:14]But what she starts to realize is you don't have a choice
[14:17]that whatever your reality is, you have to find a way to
[14:21]see the things that are, you know, to find joy in your situation
[14:27]despite the fact that it's not what you signed up for.
[14:30]And she does, she does that.
[14:32]And she's no saint.
[14:33]She's not like, you know, I think we sent a kind of idealized
[14:37]cancer patients like that person so brave.
[14:39]And she's a saint.
[14:40]And she hated that.
[14:41]She's like, I am not brave.
[14:43]I'm scared of needles.
[14:44]Like, you know, like what choice do I have here?
[14:48]But she really did things in her life.
[14:51]She took risks all of a sudden that she would never have taken
[14:54]otherwise.
[14:55]She has this very deep relationship with her husband
[14:58]that they probably wouldn't have gone to these places.
[15:00]Would she have created all that to not have cancer sure?
[15:04]But all of these other things happen that never would have.
[15:07]And so I think welcome to Holland helped her to approach the time
[15:10]that she had left in a very different way.
[15:12]And do you feel in your life there's a situation in which you
[15:16]wanted to go to Italy but ended up in Holland?
[15:19]Oh yeah, absolutely.
[15:20]I would say the most obvious one is, you know,
[15:23]I had my son on my own.
[15:25]And I never imagined doing that.
[15:27]I always imagined that I would have children with a partner.
[15:32]And when I was in my late 30s and I had gotten out of a
[15:36]relationship thinking about, well, if I meet someone
[15:39]would take X number of years before we knew.
[15:42]But even if I met someone tomorrow.
[15:44]And so I decided I'm going to have a baby because I don't want
[15:47]to.
[15:47]I'd seen so many people wait too long to have children
[15:50]and I didn't want to do that.
[15:52]And so which was a great decision.
[15:55]But at the same time, it was Holland.
[15:57]It was an Italy in the sense that I wanted to do it with a partner.
[16:00]And I didn't have a baby with a partner.
[16:02]I had a baby on my own.
[16:04]So I would say that would be my Holland.
[16:07]And you can see the great joy in that.
[16:10]That it was the best thing that could have happened was for me
[16:12]to have my son.
[16:14]But at the same time, it looked different.
[16:17]I loved how you talked in the book about how you arrived at
[16:20]that decision and the process you went through,
[16:22]including sort of prepositioning some guy you had met
[16:24]at a networking conference at Earth Cafe.
[16:26]That was amazing.
[16:28]Yeah, it was my sperm donor date.
[16:30]And yeah, we went to that process of thinking that maybe he
[16:37]would donate sperm and he was on board.
[16:39]And then he was an on board.
[16:40]And then I ended up getting the sperm
[16:43]that I wanted through the sperm bank.
[16:44]You're a little George Clooney.
[16:46]Yes, they said he looked like a young George Clooney.
[16:49]And that was their selling point.
[16:51]So one of the patients who wrote a lot about is John,
[16:54]who you find kind of annoying.
[16:56]And he's calling everybody an idiot all the time.
[16:59]And even like orders food into your session,
[17:01]which I could not believe he did.
[17:02]I mean, I guess I could once I got to know him
[17:04]a little in the book.
[17:05]But as you said, when you were talking about him,
[17:07]you said this as a saint.
[17:08]And he was talking about how his wife was depressed.
[17:11]And he was actually upset by that, annoyed by that himself.
[17:14]And you said, as the saying goes, before diagnosing people
[17:16]with depression, make sure they're not surrounded by assholes.
[17:20]So I just was hoping you could talk to me a little bit more
[17:24]about maybe narcissistic personality disorder
[17:26]for anyone who's dealt with an asshole in their life.
[17:28]And maybe what you should do if you happen
[17:31]to be in a relationship with somebody like that,
[17:33]or how do you know if it's the people around you
[17:35]causing you to feel sad or just depressed in general
[17:40]or if it's something inside yourself?
[17:42]Yeah, I should say, first of all, that one of the things
[17:45]that I felt was really important to do in the book
[17:47]was that I portrayed people the way that they presented
[17:52]themselves to me and same with me presenting myself
[17:55]to my own therapist.
[17:56]So at the beginning of the book,
[17:59]the way that you feel about these people
[18:01]changes drastically by the end of the book, meaning,
[18:04]and as did, it mirrors my evolution with these people too,
[18:10]that at the beginning, John was extremely unlikeable.
[18:13]He was really abrasive.
[18:15]He was insulting to me.
[18:17]He certainly had narcissists to trade.
[18:19]But as I got to know him, I always
[18:22]know that someone's behavior is their way of coping
[18:27]with something unmanageable to them,
[18:29]something painful to them.
[18:31]And in John's case, I'm not going to spoil it,
[18:33]but there was something incredibly traumatic
[18:37]that he reveals later that explains some of why
[18:41]he protects himself by keeping everybody at a distance
[18:45]with his behavior, hard to get close to him
[18:48]because of the way he presents himself.
[18:51]And that's by design for him.
[18:54]And so when we first meet him, he and his wife
[18:57]are they've had this sort of mutual tragedy in their lives
[19:01]and they don't talk about it.
[19:03]And he is very upset that she can't get past it
[19:07]and is very depressed.
[19:09]And he's kind of like, we're not going to do this to our kids.
[19:12]We're not going to be this couple who can't get past this tragedy.
[19:16]And so he kind of has the host of upper lip
[19:19]attitude about it.
[19:21]And I think that she, I imagine, I never met her,
[19:25]but I imagine that she felt very alone.
[19:28]And that can be really depressing.
[19:32]And he went through life kind of thinking
[19:36]that he was as a protection against his motherhood
[19:39]died when he was six.
[19:40]And he kind of thought it was his fault
[19:41]because of the circumstances of how it happened.
[19:44]And he protected himself by kind of he had
[19:47]been his mother's favorite.
[19:48]And she always said he was so special.
[19:51]And he went through life thinking, I'm so special.
[19:53]That was his way of going through the world.
[19:56]And so on top of not being able to kind of meet his wife.
[20:00]where she was with talking about her depression,
[20:03]he went through life thinking like,
[20:04]well, everybody else is an idiot
[20:06]and they're the cause of my problems
[20:08]and why can't they just do things this way?
[20:11]I think that for people who are with someone like that,
[20:14]it's really important that they really need
[20:17]to be in couples therapy.
[20:18]And they, I mean, there's a very nice place
[20:23]that they get to, which is really gratifying.
[20:25]But I think sometimes going back to that quote from the book
[20:28]that there are times when people will come in
[20:30]and they'll tell me something like,
[20:32]oh, the problem is my boss or my mother
[20:34]or my partner or my child or whomever.
[20:36]And often they're not looking at their own role
[20:38]in the situation, often they can't see
[20:40]that they're contributing to the situation
[20:42]either in the way they respond to it
[20:44]or in the fact that they're still engaged in it.
[20:46]But other times, if you really are surrounded by asshole,
[20:49]it's not gonna be really depressing.
[20:51]And sometimes like, it's like remove yourself
[20:53]from the situation.
[20:54]Why are you, why are you surrounding yourself
[20:56]with these people?
[20:57]Good, good point.
[21:01]Can we go back to your son for a minute?
[21:03]In one scene, so you have a big breakup with boyfriend
[21:07]at the beginning of the book, which, you know,
[21:09]propels you to seek out your own therapist
[21:11]and you have to tell your son that boyfriend
[21:13]is not gonna be around any longer
[21:14]and he had become quite attached to him.
[21:16]Then you say, and you're dealing with it
[21:18]in this wonderful way and, you know,
[21:20]as a therapist and also a mom,
[21:21]and you say the upside of being a therapist child
[21:23]is that nothing gets shoved under the rug.
[21:25]The downside is you'll be totally screwed up.
[21:27]Anyway, so I wanted to know what you feel about airing
[21:32]everything out with your, like having your kids
[21:35]be open with their feelings and really sort of
[21:38]getting into everything with them, like how much it helps
[21:40]or like what basically what as a parent
[21:43]do you think is the most effective
[21:44]in helping out your kids have sort of great mental health?
[21:48]Yeah, so in terms of airing everything out,
[21:51]I, you know, I think it's letting your kids
[21:53]have their feelings, but that doesn't mean
[21:55]I shared my feelings with him.
[21:58]So just for context, at the beginning of the book,
[22:01]my boyfriend and I were planning to get married
[22:03]and he tells me that he has decided
[22:07]that he doesn't wanna live with a kid under his roof
[22:09]for the next 10 years.
[22:10]And at the time, my son was eight.
[22:12]So, you know, and he had not been hiding in the closet
[22:16]the entire time that we were dating.
[22:17]And I, my version of this story,
[22:20]and I very purposefully say my version of the story
[22:24]I wasn't seeing a lot of things until I went to therapy.
[22:26]But my version of the story was, well, you know,
[22:29]clearly he's a sociopath because like who date someone
[22:32]for all this time, just a day before says,
[22:34]oh, I just checked with my HR to make sure
[22:36]that when we get married, you know,
[22:37]I can get your son on my insurance policy
[22:40]and, you know, all this stuff, you know,
[22:43]that have been going on for a long time.
[22:44]You know, who does that?
[22:46]Who does that if they don't wanna be,
[22:47]if they didn't wanna parent after his kids
[22:49]were about to go to college.
[22:50]You know, if they don't wanna continue to be a parent,
[22:53]who gets involved with someone who,
[22:55]when we first met, you know, has a six-year-old.
[22:57]I think that, you know, when he did that,
[22:59]I didn't tell my son, oh, look, he broke up with me
[23:03]because I didn't even say he broke up with me, you know.
[23:06]I didn't say he broke up with me because,
[23:09]you know, he doesn't wanna kid around.
[23:10]I mean, I said, you know, we broke up.
[23:14]And, you know, and there's a scene in the book
[23:16]where I explain it and he has a lot of questions.
[23:19]And, you know, I tell the truth,
[23:20]but I don't add details that are not going to be helpful
[23:24]for him to hear at that time.
[23:27]And so, you know, I think that it's really important
[23:31]that I didn't try to kind of cheer him up.
[23:33]You know, he was sad, he was grieving in his own way,
[23:37]but I wasn't like, hey, let's go to Disneyland.
[23:39]You know, hey, let's go see that movie.
[23:42]You know, it was like, you know, our instinct is parents
[23:45]is that we want to, it's hard for us to see our children in pain.
[23:50]And we want to take away their pain,
[23:52]but they need experience feeling their feelings
[23:55]and knowing that they will get through them.
[23:57]So he was going to have to be sad about this.
[24:00]And he was also going to know that I was available to him
[24:05]if he wanted supporter to talk about it.
[24:08]And it wasn't one discrete conversation.
[24:10]It's not like when you talk about things,
[24:12]well, we had that conversation, that's over.
[24:15]You know, it's a process and, you know,
[24:18]feelings are like the weather.
[24:19]They're like weather systems.
[24:20]They blow in, they blow out.
[24:22]You're going to feel, you know, there's going to be a storm
[24:24]and then the sun's going to come out
[24:26]and then it's going to be cloudy
[24:27]and then it's going to be, you know, mild
[24:30]and then it's going to be cold.
[24:31]And so they're just weather systems.
[24:33]And so it's okay that, you know, he's feeling sad
[24:36]and then he's with his friends and he's happy.
[24:38]And then that's what it's like.
[24:40]And then there are other times where, you know,
[24:41]we're going to have many more conversations about it
[24:44]because those feelings are going to blow back in.
[24:46]So I think that's what's important.
[24:48]I think so many times, especially nowadays,
[24:50]we're so afraid of for kids to experience
[24:54]any kind of discomfort that we try to make it more comfortable
[24:57]for them and we're not really doing them
[24:59]a service by doing that.
[25:01]Totally.
[25:02]I have to keep that in mind with my kids.
[25:05]It's like, I feel like I'm always trying to make everything
[25:08]better, but, you know, obviously that's impossible.
[25:12]Well, I think too that they know how to make things better
[25:15]in a lot of ways if they have support.
[25:17]So, you know, like a kid will come home from school
[25:19]and say, like, this happened at lunch today, you know,
[25:22]and the parents instinct often is to say,
[25:27]well, why don't you tell her this, you know,
[25:30]or why don't you do this next time?
[25:32]Or, you know, as opposed to just like letting the kid
[25:35]keep talking, like, oh, yeah, that must have been hard.
[25:39]Or, you know, just, and then they'll say,
[25:41]yeah, and then they'll go on and then she did this.
[25:44]And then what do you think was happening?
[25:46]You know, just asking them questions,
[25:48]and then they come up with their own solutions
[25:50]that not only are probably better solutions
[25:53]than you would come up with,
[25:54]because they know these people better,
[25:56]and they know what they're doing.
[25:57]Like, you have to trust them.
[25:59]But also, it's a better solution
[26:01]because they came up with it and it gives them agency
[26:04]that even if what they try doesn't work out so well,
[26:07]they know that they can try something else.
[26:09]And when it does work out well,
[26:10]they know they have the confidence to know
[26:13]that they are able to come up with a solution.
[26:17]And that's so important for the many, many, many things
[26:20]that they will encounter throughout not only their schooling
[26:23]years, but also just in life when they graduate.
[26:26]Well, I have so many more questions,
[26:27]but I do want to make sure to get to the process
[26:30]of how you write, because I am really curious as to
[26:32]how long it took you to write this book
[26:34]and where you were, like, do you write at home?
[26:37]Do you write in your therapy office?
[26:38]Like, I want you to paint a little picture from me
[26:40]of where you get all of this done
[26:43]and how you fit it in with the rest of the things in your life.
[26:46]Well, I'm sitting in that place right now.
[26:48]Yeah, it's not a pretty picture if people only knew.
[26:55]So I only do therapy in my therapy office
[26:57]because when I write, I really want to be,
[27:01]I don't like, you know, I love having,
[27:04]I would love about being in my therapy office
[27:05]is I work in a suite of therapists.
[27:07]And in between sessions, you can go in the kitchen,
[27:09]you can talk to people, you see people in the hallways.
[27:12]You know, it's social in that way.
[27:14]And I need that, I love that.
[27:16]But when I'm writing, I need just complete privacy.
[27:21]So, yeah, I could close my door at the office,
[27:24]but I'm hearing voices when people leave their sessions,
[27:26]you know, just like there are too many distractions.
[27:29]And so I write at home and, you know,
[27:33]I take my writing days and that's what I do.
[27:35]So today I have to write my TED talk, actually.
[27:39]And I'm a person who leaves the writing things
[27:43]generally for the last minute.
[27:44]So I'll put the TED talk as long as I have been.
[27:48]And so, you know, I'm at home and that's where I write.
[27:51]And my process is that I usually need a little warm-up,
[27:55]you know, like I need to do something else first.
[28:00]So I'm not like I can just wake up and sit down and write.
[28:05]Like I need to just kind of get loose and up a little bit.
[28:09]And so, you know, whether that's like
[28:11]replying to some emails or hanging out with my kid,
[28:15]depending on whether it's summer or not, you know,
[28:18]whatever it is, I'm taking care of like other things
[28:22]that I need to care of bills or, you know,
[28:23]this is not like fun stuff.
[28:25]But just I'm doing something else.
[28:27]And then all that is off my plate.
[28:30]I don't have to think about all the other things
[28:32]that I need to do that day.
[28:33]And then I can sit down and I can write.
[28:35]And you have, this is now going to be a TV show.
[28:38]Maybe you should talk to someone on TV at-
[28:41]Yeah, it's being developed for television
[28:44]by Eva Longoria's company at 20th Century Fox.
[28:48]So exciting.
[28:49]Yeah.
[28:51]And I saw by the way on your website
[28:52]that now you actually offer yourself as an expert
[28:55]to other people, other TV shows and movies.
[28:58]And so now that you're doing your own,
[29:00]it's like the perfect thing.
[29:01]You're like, you're like this total expert
[29:03]for yourself and your own show.
[29:05]Oh, I've always done that actually.
[29:08]You know, like as I've consulted for shows before,
[29:12]you know, I think a lot of times they're looking for,
[29:14]well, what is the, you know,
[29:15]can you tell me more about, for example, grief?
[29:18]Or can you tell me more about team depression?
[29:21]Or can you know, like whatever's going on
[29:22]in a certain show?
[29:24]And they really went the way that we had a consultant on ER
[29:27]who was a emergency room physician, right?
[29:30]That the shows really want them to be accurate.
[29:34]And they want to, they want to do a good job
[29:36]of portraying whatever they're portraying.
[29:38]So often they'll get experts to come in and say,
[29:40]you know, tell me more about this
[29:42]or what would this be like
[29:42]or how would someone react in this situation?
[29:45]So one last thing, you're like probably
[29:48]the most prolific journalist.
[29:50]I've ever like come across.
[29:52]You've been articles everywhere.
[29:54]And I was just wondering how you do that.
[29:57]Do you just have a zillion ideas?
[30:00]all the time, are you just always jotting down notes
[30:02]for articles you wanna write,
[30:04]or tell me just a little two second thing
[30:07]about that part of your life.
[30:09]Usually, there's something that I see going on in the culture
[30:12]that seems really obvious.
[30:13]Like, you know, some examples of how to land your kid
[30:17]in therapy, the thing about sex and marriage.
[30:21]You know, like in any egalitarian marriage,
[30:24]when I see something going on in the culture
[30:26]that everyone's talking about,
[30:27]no one has really thought about in a certain way.
[30:31]That's what I love to write.
[30:32]I love to say, oh, this thing is going on.
[30:34]Everyone's talking about it,
[30:35]but nobody's really looking at it from this angle.
[30:38]And so I wanna create the lens through
[30:41]which to look at this in a different way.
[30:43]And I think in my dear therapist column
[30:45]that I write every week, which is different
[30:47]from the features that I write,
[30:49]you know, I think that's what I help people to do too,
[30:51]is to say, hey, here's, you've got this problem,
[30:54]you're looking at it this way.
[30:56]I want you to look at it through this other lens.
[30:58]And I think that will help you.
[30:59]And are you working on any other books now?
[31:01]No, I'm still on, I'm still as book is so new
[31:05]and I'm still on book tour for a while with this book.
[31:08]And last question, do you have any advice
[31:10]to aspiring authors out there?
[31:12]One of the things that people often say to me is,
[31:15]you know, how did you know you had a story?
[31:19]How did you know that, you know, your story
[31:21]was gonna be something that people would resonate.
[31:23]So strongly with people.
[31:25]And I always say to people,
[31:27]you're, everybody has a story.
[31:29]But everybody has a story
[31:31]and that your story is inherently interesting.
[31:34]And I think that's such an important thing
[31:37]for writers to think about,
[31:39]because so often they try to say, you know,
[31:41]they try to like make something up, you know,
[31:44]which is sometimes, you know, that's great.
[31:45]I mean, if you're writing fiction, obviously,
[31:46]that's what you're doing.
[31:47]But I also think that it's based on something
[31:49]that you, even if you're writing fiction,
[31:50]it's based on something in your experience,
[31:52]even if the characters look very different
[31:54]from your experience, that there's some emotional truth
[31:58]to the characters that you're writing,
[32:00]or else you won't write a good novel.
[32:01]And so I think that there's something interesting
[32:03]in all of our lives and all of our stories.
[32:05]And the job of the writer is to tell it in a way
[32:10]that is real and raw and vulnerable.
[32:13]And like in terms of pacing and structure
[32:17]kind of makes sense to the reader
[32:19]so they can see why that story, you know,
[32:22]kind of see it as a mirror for themselves.
[32:24]One of the things I always say to writers too
[32:26]is don't tell the play by play of that scene.
[32:28]So often people say, like, here's the truth of my scene
[32:31]and I'm like, oh my God, we, you know,
[32:33]it's kind of like with the therapy room,
[32:35]like you got the highlight reel, you know,
[32:38]like, you know, in my book, you know,
[32:40]you didn't get the full 50 minutes every time
[32:42]that I was writing about a therapy session.
[32:44]You got the highlight reel.
[32:46]Here's what, here were the important beats
[32:48]in the story and you're getting them.
[32:50]You're getting them as they really happen.
[32:53]You're getting the authentic version of it,
[32:55]but I'm not giving you every single line that was spoken.
[32:58]Right, that makes sense.
[33:00]Well, awesome.
[33:01]Thank you so much, Lori, for coming on Mumps
[33:03]and I have time to read books
[33:04]and also for your fantastic book.
[33:06]Well, thank you so much.
[33:07]It was such a fun conversation.
[33:09]And by the way, my therapist, like, loved it.
[33:11]I just wanted to say that.
[33:12]I'm so glad.
[33:15]I've been hearing that a lot.
[33:17]All right, well, thanks so much.
[33:19]Have a great day.
[33:20]Take care.
[33:21]Okay, okay, bye.
[33:22]Thanks for listening to my episode
[33:23]with Lori Gottlieb, the author of Maybe You Should Talk
[33:26]to Someone.
[33:27]Hope you have a great day.
[33:28]Bye.
[33:29]Thanks again to my sponsor, Libro FM audio books.
[33:32]Thanks for listening to Mumps.
[33:33]Don't have time to read books.
[33:34]You can follow me on Instagram at Mumps.
[33:37]Don't have time to read books.
[33:38]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[33:41]for the Sound Editing.
[33:42]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[33:44]for providing this fantastic intro
[33:46]of now trim music.
[33:47]Thanks for listening.
[33:48]You could always email me at Zibi at Zibiowans.com.