“Maybe you should talk to someone.”
How many times have we heard those words, whether uttered jokingly or spoken with complete sincerity? Personally, I’ve said them lots of times to friends, family, and co-workers.
Yeah, I’m that person.
Which is why I was immediately intrigued by the title of this book. As a strong advocate of mental health awareness, I subscribe to the theory that everyone should see a therapist — and, that those protesting the most loudly against therapy are usually the ones who’d benefit from it the most. (Denial is not just a river in Egypt, people). Life is hard, no one is perfect, and there’s nothing wrong with asking for a little bit of help along the way.
Thankfully, mental health is less stigmatized these days, and books like Maybe You Should Talk to Someone help with clearing the air about what therapy is really like and how it can help you.
In her memoir Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, psychotherapist Gottlieb discusses (in general terms – no confidentiality breach here!) the various patient cases she handles during a particularly poignant time in her life: recovering from a significant and seemingly out-of-the-blue breakup. While Gottlieb leads therapy sessions with her patients, she starts seeing a therapist of her own to cope with the upheaval in her life. In the process, she discovers that, even as a mental health professional, she hasn’t got it all figured out (because, um, no one does) and that everyone needs a little help now and then.
Fair warning: this book is not for the therapy virgins among us. If you’re contemplating your first time, just go ahead and take the plunge without reading this book. It’s also probably not a great read if you’re still a relative newbie to therapy.
Why? Because this book will scare the buhjeezus outta you.
Don’t let all those images of lying on a couch with your feet up fool you — therapy is HARD. “Working through your issues” involves tapping into deep-seated fears, insecurities, and memories, some of which have been suppressed for years, or even decades. Taking down those protective mental and emotional walls usually means you’re going to get a little worse before you get better.
If you’ve been seeing a therapist for a little while now *raises hand*, you get it. You’ll get this book. Reading Maybe You Should Talk To Someone is like slurping chicken soup for the therapy-goer’s soul. I think anyone who regularly attends therapy sessions (and has seen positive results) will find much of this book reassuringly familiar.
This memoir reinforces what we patients know to be true – looking at yourself in the proverbial mirror is a really difficult thing to do, but it’s well worth it to reach the end goal: better insight about yourself and how you affect others, and better relationships with others. This often, quite happily, leads to a better self and a better life.
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone also rams home the much-needed reminder that therapists are people, too. You find out that their minds wander during sessions, just as ours do at our daily jobs; that they have favorite patients and challenging patients; that many therapists see therapists of their own; and that they struggle with love, loss, and personal problems the same way their patients do.
Gottlieb’s personal story simultaneously humanizes and glorifies mental health professionals for what they really are: people who have their own shit to deal with, just like us, but somehow manage to push aside their own problems in order to help someone else with theirs for 8-10 hours each day. It’s certainly no small feat, and you come away from Maybe You Should Talk to Someone with a newfound or, in my case, deeper respect for those in the mental health field.
With all the good things I’ve had to say about this book, it may surprise you that it ended up being a DNF for me. As one might expect with a memoir, the narrative gets very emotional. I got about 300 pages through, and I wanted to keep going, but the emotional toll – particularly, the case study of patient Julie – got to be too much for me. I had to put this book aside for my own mental health. #KnowYourLimits
So, should you read Maybe You Should Talk to Someone? Well…if you enjoyed freshman Psych in college, I think you’d enjoy this book. If you ever took Abnormal Psych *again, raises hand* your odds for liking it go up a notch. However, if you couldn’t wait to have psych classes behind you, this may not be the memoir for you.
Side note: keep in mind that psychiatry does require a doctorate, so Gottlieb went to medical school. She delves into her dissection adventures in entertaining, albeit highly descriptive detail. I never thought I’d find a book that could gross me out more than Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, but, congrats, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone — you win this dubious award.
Have you read any books addressing mental health, either fiction or nonfiction? I’d love to hear your responses below!
