Book SummaryMaybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a memoir by Lori Gottlieb, an author and therapist, about a particularly difficult time in her life—a time when she sought out therapy herself—and common struggles that people have. Lori’s own story is interwoven with the stories of some of her patients, all of which relate to Lori’s issues in some way.

Lori’s Breakup and Breakdown

The story begins with Lori getting dumped by her boyfriend. The problem, according to him, is that Lori has a young son and he doesn’t want to live with a kid in the house anymore—his own children are older and will be leaving for college soon.

Lori completely breaks down. She had planned to spend the rest of her life with this person, and now she’s grieving not only the relationship, but also the life she thought she’d have. Lori is in her 40s and wonders whether she’ll ever be able to find another romantic partner.

At first Lori tries to tough it out, but after a couple of weeks, she realizes that she’s not recovering. She’s suffering from anxiety and forgetfulness, and she’s obsessing over her ex, even going so far as to stalk him on Google and social media. She finally seeks out a therapist for, she thinks, a few weeks of crisis management in order to get back on her feet.

Lori ends up seeing an eccentric therapist named Wendell Bronson. At first she tries to cast her ex in as bad a light as possible, hoping Wendell will confirm that he’s a bad person and Lori was deeply wronged. Instead, over many sessions, Wendell coaxes out the deeper issues Lori is facing: the fear of death and the search for meaning in her life.

Lori eventually reveals that she has more problems than just the breakup. She’s also suffering from a mysterious illness that causes painful rashes, muscle tremors and weakness, and a variety of other symptoms. No doctor so far has been able to diagnose her—one test suggests that it may be an autoimmune condition called Sjogren syndrome, but the results aren’t conclusive.

On top of that, she’s accepted a contract to write a book about happiness, but she hasn’t been able to write it. She’s already taken a significant advance on the book, which she’ll have to pay back if she breaks the contract, and her agent has warned her that if she doesn’t write this book, she might never be contracted to write another. Lori feels trapped, but Wendell says she reminds him of a cartoon character he once saw: a man behind bars, rattling them, apparently trying to escape, but never noticing that there are no walls around him. He means that Lori is the one trapping herself.

It turns out that all of these problems are related. Lori’s advancing age and her strange condition are making her think about death. She doesn’t know if her disease is fatal and, if so, how long it will take to kill her. As a result, she can’t commit to spending what time she has on a book that isn’t meaningful to her.

John the Jerk

John is one of Lori’s patients. He’s a bigshot in the TV industry who suffers from anger issues and thinks everyone he meets—including his wife—is stupid. The only things he seems genuinely fond of are his two daughters and the family dog. His issues echo Lori’s sense of loss and her fear of letting others hurt her.

John first comes to Lori because he’s having trouble sleeping. He’s abrasive and rude, and he openly breaks Lori’s rules about therapy: He uses his cell phone during sessions and orders food to eat while they’re talking. He’s emotionally distant, insulting and blaming everyone except himself for his problems. Lori eventually realizes that this is a defense mechanism: If everything is someone else’s fault, then John doesn’t have to do the hard work of looking inward and changing himself.

It takes months of work, but eventually Lori learns that John used to also have a young son named Gabe. Gabe was killed in a car accident that John alternately blamed himself and his wife for, though it turned out the driver who hit them was drunk. Since then, John has tried to repress his feelings and keep working to support himself and his family. While he’s been highly successful professionally, it’s taken a heavy toll on his emotional state and his family life.

By the end of therapy, John has begun to open up with Lori and with his family. He used to forbid any mention of Gabe at home, but now he and his wife have had some cathartic conversations about their son. They’ve also started attending couples therapy.

There’s still more work for John and Lori to do, but he’s made huge improvements and seems to be on the right track to recover. His major revelation is that he doesn’t always have to be one thing or another: He doesn’t always have to be the good guy or the bad guy, and he doesn’t always have to be happy or grieving. Everything comes and goes, including happiness, and the important thing is to accept whatever each moment brings.

Julie the Cancer Patient

Julie is a young woman who learned she had cancer shortly after getting married. While at first the treatment seemed to be working and her disease went into remission, it soon came back. This time, doctors gave her one to five years to live. She’s depressed because she feels like her life is ending right as it was about to truly start. Her problems echo Lori’s fears of mortality and living a meaningless life.

At first, Julie is angry at the unfairness of her situation. Through her sessions with Lori, she eventually makes peace with the fact that nobody knows how his or her life will turn out or even how long it will be. She comes to appreciate what she still has: a loving husband, many close friends, her strength, and a sound mind—for however long they last—and even Lori, her therapist.

With Lori’s encouragement, Julie creates a bucket list for herself; not just a list of things she’d like to do “someday,” but a short, achievable plan for the rest of her life. With death looming over her, Julie—who...

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Summary Part 1: Lori’s Midlife Crisis

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is a memoir by Lori Gottlieb, a therapist and author. She tells the story of a bad breakup and the midlife crisis it led to.

After her breakup, Lori finds herself spiraling into depression and despair. She eventually seeks therapy herself, where she realizes that her issues are much deeper than the end of a relationship.

Though she thinks she’s just there for some crisis management to deal with the breakup, Lori eventually realizes that she’s facing several of the fundamental fears that all humans share: mortality, loneliness, freedom, and futility. At the root of it all is uncertainty—Lori’s plan for the rest of her life has fallen apart. She doesn’t know what will happen next, and that terrifies her.

Lori’s struggles are mirrored by those of some of her patients, whose stories and issues are interwoven with her own. In dealing with her patients, Lori gets insight into her own life. She brings many of these insights to her therapist, and together they are able to work through Lori’s problems and help her to accept uncertainty in life.

By the end, Lori is able to shift her perspective—instead of regarding uncertainty with dread, now she...

Shortform Exercise: Explore Holland

Can you think of a time, recent or not, when your life didn’t go the way you’d planned or hoped?

How did you respond to that situation?

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Summary Part 2: Lori’s Patients and Problems

Part 2 of the book reveals more of Lori’s backstory, and why the breakup sent her spiraling the way it did. Lori’s deeper, hidden issues are paralleled by the issues of several patients she treats, which allows her to write in greater detail and from other perspectives about common problems people face.

This part begins with Lori at a weekly get-together with her colleagues. They’re discussing a particularly troublesome patient of Lori’s, a young woman named Becca who suffers from abandonment issues.

Their sessions invariably run in circles, with Becca completely unwilling to open up to Lori. Though they’ve been meeting for months, Becca has made no noticeable progress. However, when Lori asks Becca why she keeps coming back if she’s not seeing the results she wants, Becca accuses Lori of abandoning her just like everyone else.

Finally, Lori’s colleagues convince her to stop seeing Becca. Lori can’t help someone like Becca, who’s unwilling to examine herself.

Lori says that the most difficult kind of patients are the ones, like Becca, who keep coming but never change. Ironically, when she discusses these events with Wendell, he implies that **she is exactly the same...

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Summary Part 3: Hitting Rock Bottom

In this part of the book, Lori’s patients each deal with a crisis of some kind. The crises are necessary for their eventual recovery (or, in Julie’s case, making peace with her mortality). Meanwhile, Lori makes some significant breakthroughs in her own treatment and finds a way to move forward.

Rita’s Emergency

Rita calls Lori for an emergency session, where she admits that there actually is a man in her life—or there was, until recently. A man named Myron had recently moved into her apartment complex, and the two had become close friends. However, the relationship had been completely platonic.

Right when Rita had been considering talking to Myron about romance, he had met someone else on Tinder. Rita stopped talking to him after that, and that was when she began therapy with Lori.

Myron’s Tinder relationship didn’t work out because he realized that he loved Rita and didn’t feel the same way about this new woman. He tried to rekindle his friendship with Rita, and he kissed her. Rita slapped him and ran away, then called Lori for this emergency session. Lori believes that Rita is afraid, or otherwise unable, to let herself hope she could be happy again.

In another...

Shortform Exercise: Think About Change

Think about a change you’d like to make in your own life. Consider the five stages of change from the previous section.

What is the change you’d like to make?

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Summary Part 4: Healing and Moving Forward

The fourth and final part of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone brings the stories of Lori’s patients, and Lori’s own treatment, to a close. In this section Julie, Rita, and John all find what they’re looking for in their own ways. Lori, too, gains a better understanding of herself and what caused her to break down the way she did. While the work of healing is ongoing, they’ve all made great progress and have bright futures. The obvious exception is Julie; in her case, the progress and the future belong to her husband and other loved ones.

Charlotte is not heavily involved in this part, except to note that she’s also made significant progress and has begun using the tools she’s learned in treatment to see her through rough spots in her life. Aside from a single one-night relapse, she’s also stayed completely sober. She has another near-crisis where she considers leaving therapy, but she opts to stay in treatment with Lori. While there’s not much detail about her, it’s implied that her treatment is going well and that she’s going to be okay.

Julie Finds Peace

Julie is staying in therapy until she dies, but a lot of that therapy is now spent sitting in comfortable...

Shortform Exercise: Visualize the Future

Everyone has things they wish they could change about themselves or their lives. Some people spend their whole lives thinking about those changes, or trying to make them—and sometimes, like Rita, they don’t even realize the progress they’ve made.

What’s something about yourself that you wish you could change?