Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb: Key Ideas, Research and Critiques

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is Lori Gottlieb's memoir about sitting in both chairs. She works as a therapist in the United States, and after a broken engagement she starts seeing a therapist of her own. The book moves between her sessions and those of four of her clients.

This guide is commentary, not a stand-in for the book, which you can borrow from a library or find at a bookstore. We do not retell the clients' storylines or how they end.

Is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone a True Story?

Partly. It is a memoir, so Gottlieb presents her own story as real, but the client stories are disguised. Slate's review reports that her author's note describes the patient portraits as anonymized and occasionally drawn from more than one patient.

In a 2020 author Q&A with 26, a UK not-for-profit organization, Gottlieb said the patients the characters were based on had read the book. She also said she wrote from knowing their voices well rather than from her chart notes, which she used to check facts. So the clients are based on real people with identifying details changed to protect their privacy, and none of the portraits is a case record. The book calls Gottlieb's own therapist Wendell; the sources we checked do not say whether that name was changed.

If you are looking for what happens to a particular client, such as John, we leave that to the book.

Is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone a Self-Help Book or a Memoir?

It is a memoir, not a self-help program. Stanford magazine's review describes it as alternating between Gottlieb treating patients and being a patient herself. A companion workbook and journal are also listed on her website.

Is Lori Gottlieb a Real Therapist? What Are Her Credentials?

Yes. Her website lists her as a marriage and family therapist, a US professional title, with her licence number, and says she did graduate studies in clinical psychology at Pepperdine University. It also says she wrote The Atlantic's "Dear Therapist" advice column for six years and now writes the "Ask the Therapist" column for The New York Times.

What Are the Main Themes of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone?

The book is about what therapy is like from the inside, the relationship at its core, and how people live with loss and change. In our own words:

• →Therapists are people too. The book shows that therapists have hard times of their own, and that asking for help is not a failure. In a 2019 Gottman Institute interview, Gottlieb said she hoped the book would demystify therapy and help people feel less isolated in their struggles.
• →Therapy is exploration, not a quick fix. Slate's review reads therapy in the book as a way of understanding why you are the way you are, not a cure.
• →No one has to qualify for help. In a 2019 Bustle interview, she argued that you do not have to justify your feelings or rank your pain against anyone else's, and that feelings you push down are still there.
• →Insight is not the same as change. In the Gottman Institute interview, she said understanding your patterns does little unless you use it to change what you do. Finding it hard to act on what you understand is not a personal failing.
• →The stories we tell ourselves. In her 2019 TED talk, Gottlieb described how incomplete or misleading stories about our lives can keep us stuck, and suggested revising them as an editor would. Editing a story in this sense does not mean doubting or downplaying what someone did to you.
• →Feelings run both ways in the room. The author openly shows frustration with some clients and fondness for others. Stanford magazine notes that the book explores transference and countertransference: the feelings clients and therapists can stir up in each other.

What Is the Difference Between Pain and Suffering in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone?

In the book, Gottlieb's therapist separates the two: pain comes to everyone and is not chosen, while suffering, in his framing, involves choices about how a person responds to that pain. For a related idea, see our guide to Man's Search for Meaning. If your faith shapes how you understand pain and suffering, that can be part of the conversation in therapy; see spiritually integrated therapy.

This is the book's framing, not a clinical rule. It does not mean grief, depression or a trauma response is a choice, or that someone still hurting has responded wrongly. Read generously, it points to parts of a hard experience that may shift with time and support, while accepting that some pain has to be felt. If the idea lands as blame, that is worth talking through rather than carrying alone.

The framing also does not ask anyone to accept harm that another person is causing. If someone is hurting you, your safety comes first: call 911 if you are in immediate danger, or call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7) if you are in crisis.

What Does Research Say About the Relationship With a Therapist?

The book's focus on the relationship has research behind it, with limits. A 2018 meta-analysis pooled two hundred ninety-five independent studies with more than thirty thousand patients (Flückiger et al., 2018, Psychotherapy). It found a consistent, moderate association between the therapeutic alliance, meaning the working relationship between client and therapist, and how therapy turned out. The association held across treatment approaches and patient characteristics, and in the countries studied, though two hundred eight of the samples came from North America. It was of similar size in the twenty-three studies of internet-based therapy.

Two cautions. First, the studies measured the relationship during therapy rather than randomly assigning people to stronger or weaker ones, so they cannot prove that the relationship causes improvement. The authors call the alliance a likely contributor but describe the question of cause as controversial, and a summary by Drug and Alcohol Findings reaches a similar view.

Second, that summary reports a weaker association in substance-use treatment than for anxiety or depression. That describes how closely the relationship tracked outcomes in those studies, not whether support for substance use is worth seeking (see addictions recovery). None of this promises a good fit with any particular therapist.

What Are the Criticisms of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone?

The sharpest criticism we found came from a practising counsellor, not from mainstream reviewers: it concerns how clients are portrayed, and whether a therapist's private reactions to them belong in a book. The mainstream reviews we checked were positive overall: Kirkus Reviews included it in its year-end book list for 2019, and the New Statesman praised it for challenging the idea of the therapist as a detached, unfeeling observer.

How clients are portrayed

A US counsellor writing on her practice blog argued that Gottlieb writes about some clients in a way that judges them and talks down to them. She suggested this could feed the fear the book hopes to ease, that your therapist is secretly judging you, and argued that negative reactions to clients belong in clinical supervision or consultation, not in a book. She accepted that therapists who write publicly have to disguise details, and noted that the author comes to recognize her own attitude by the end of the book, but argued that this comes too late for readers. This is one practitioner's view.

Reservations in a mainstream review

Slate's review, warm overall, found some of the book's explanations of therapy a little obvious, and found it odd that Gottlieb seems to imply a person can be too put-together to benefit from therapy, though the reviewer welcomed how the book works through that idea.

US practice, Canadian rules

The book reflects US private practice, and professional titles in Canada vary by province. In Ontario, for example, the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) states that only its registrants may use the title Registered Psychotherapist, and that those in the qualifying class must write Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). Our article on Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario explains those titles.

Is There a Maybe You Should Talk to Someone TV Show or Netflix Series?

Not one we can confirm. In October 2018, Deadline reported that ABC had made a script commitment to a drama based on the memoir, and her book page says it is being developed as a television series. We found no sign that it was produced or released, on Netflix or elsewhere.

Does Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Have Triggers? Is It Appropriate for Teens?

Yes, it can be heavy reading. The book deals with death, grief, terminal illness, ageing and the end of relationships. The description on the author's website mentions a client who is considering ending her life, and reviews mention alcoholism and a client whose abusive husband beat their children. If you are having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7), or call 911 if you are in immediate danger.

We found no publisher age guidance; given those themes, a parent or caregiver may want to read it first.

Consider reading it slowly, or with a therapist's support, if:

• →You have recently lost someone, and the book's losses feel too close. Our page on grief therapy describes that support.
• →You are facing a serious diagnosis, or caring for someone who is.
• →Drinking or other substance use is part of what you are working through.
• →You have lived with abuse in your family, now or in the past. Our page on trauma therapy describes that support. If you are in immediate danger, call 911, or call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7) if you are in crisis.
• →Reading about other people's therapy leaves you more worried about being judged, or about what a therapist might do with what you share. How a therapist protects your privacy is a fair question to ask in a free consultation.
• →The book is standing in for care you need now. A book cannot notice when you are getting worse.

Is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Worth Reading?

It can be, if you want to see what therapy involves before trying it, or you have put off reaching out because you are not sure your problem counts. Publishers Weekly suggested it could ease the worries of readers hesitant to start therapy.

Keep its limits in mind: the client stories are disguised, its titles and norms are American, and a memoir is not a guide to choosing a therapist or a treatment. Reading it is not therapy, and it does not replace an assessment by a qualified professional.

How Do the Ideas in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Relate to Therapy at TEO?

If you are wondering what talking to someone would involve, our page on what to expect in online therapy walks through the consultation and first session, including the limits on what a therapist can keep private. TEO Counselling is an online practice for clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO, works in English or Arabic, and Rola Shbib, Registered Social Worker, RSW (Ontario) #866715, works in English; both see clients in all six provinces, and Rola Shbib's areas include grief and addictions. Alison Shaji, MA, RCC #22608 (BCACC), sees clients in British Columbia only, in English, Hindi or Malayalam.

Individual sessions are $150 per 60 minutes; see fees. No referral is needed. The first step is a free 15-minute consultation by video or a scheduled phone call, booked online, which is also a chance to notice how the fit feels. Book a free consultation, or text (519) 760-5211 with a question first. This text line is not a crisis service.