Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

 By Lori Gottlieb

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt     2019

415 pages     Memoir

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is an eminently readable look at the life of a psychologist. Lori Gottlieb is a journalist as well as a psychologist. Consequently, she has very skillfully integrated her own story with narratives about her relationship with her therapist as well as her relationships with several of her patients. The book is part memoir, part non-fiction psychology lesson, and part instruction on how to conduct therapy.

She begins with the story of the breakup with her boyfriend, who remains nameless. He has decided that he doesn’t want to parent another child, and Lori has a pre-adolescent son. They were on the verge of being married when he springs this decision on her. She asks what caused him to wait so long to broach the topic. He says “it never felt like the right time to bring it up.” She goes on to say, “When my therapist friends hear this part of the story, they immediately diagnose him as ‘avoidant.’ When my non-therapist friends hear it, they immediately diagnose him as ‘an asshole’.” Her shock and grief are so complete that she realizes that she needs to have some psychological therapy.

Gottlieb has an ingratiating writing style that leads us through her therapy with Wendall, thinking that he can help her through this crisis in her life. She soon learns that she is in therapy for more than just crisis management, but there is much more that she wants to learn through her sessions with Wendall. Some of the skills she witnesses while with Wendall can be carried over with her own patients. She finds herself growing both personally and professionally through her therapy. A quote from the journalist Alex Tizon becomes very appropriate as she grows. He believed that every person has an epic story that resides “somewhere in the tangle of the subject’s burden and the subject’s desire.”

To that end, Gottlieb tells the stories of several of her patients. She says that she has woven several cases together to tell the stories of a television executive, a woman turning 70 and fearing for the future, and a young woman facing death from cancer. Each of these stories is fascinating and revealing. I found myself reflecting on my own life situation as I read about their life situations, their therapy, and their futures. Each of these characters is eminently relatable and likeable. On the subject of likability, the reviewer in Slate has this to say.

“It is this exact question of likability that fascinatingly presents itself throughout the book, a meditation on the fact that we all consider ourselves to be the protagonists of our own stories, despite our flaws, a fact that must be abundantly apparent to our therapists. Early on, Gottlieb, struggling to remain patient with the television executive, reminds herself that “there’s something likeable in everyone,” a very therapist thing to say. But as we delve further into the process, she starts to unpack this idea of likability in greater depth, particularly in how it relates to herself—to her own self-perception as a patient and a person in the world. In doing so, Gottlieb simultaneously argues that likability matters much less than any of us think—“In therapy we aim for self-compassion (Am I human?) versus self-esteem (a judgement: Am I good or bad?)”—and acknowledges that we still all want to be liked just the same. Even Gottlieb asks her therapist, sheepishly, if he likes her. This smaller stuff may be clinically irrelevant, but it still matters.”

I was fascinated with Maybe You Should Talk to Someone on several levels. The book was extraordinarily interesting, and I found myself devouring chapter after chapter. My relationship with Gottlieb and her patients surprised me, and when the young patient dies, I cried, remembering my own grief experiences. In our book group discussion last evening, our friendships deepened as we each related our own stories, our own concerns, and our own therapy sessions. We ended the evening even more convinced that our friendships were deep and sincere, and the book group would remain the high point of our month—every month.

Lori Gottlieb’s website. On the website is a terrific Ted Talk about changing your life.

 

The Girl in the Red Boots: Making Peace with My Mother

 By Judith Ruskay Rabinor PhD

She Writes Press     2021

271 pages     Memoir

Can a mother be both loving and selfish? Caring and thoughtless? Deceitful and devoted? These are the questions that fuel psychologist Dr. Judy Rabinor’s quest to understand her ambivalence toward her mother. Her book, The Girl in the Red Boots, was published yesterday. I have been pondering how and why it landed so heavily on my heart and mind.

Each child in a family has a different relationship with his/her mother. Rabinor asserts that the type of relationship you establish with your mother in early childhood lasts throughout your life—particularly if it is a mother-daughter relationship. Rabinor is an expert in eating disorders and many of the stories in the book deal with young women who were her patients as they explored their relationships with food. She discovered that many of those relationships to food were governed by the young women’s  relationships with their mothers. While dealing with them, she was able to explore her complicated relationship with her own mother and relates how she finally came to a resolution after many years of struggle.

She says in the prologue: “Stories are great teachers; they have to power to heal. The tales from my office and my life may help you untangle your stuck places and develop compassion for yourself and, possibly, for your mother.” She begins each section with a story suggestion to guide readers in their thinking as they read that chapter. She guides the readers to look inward as they grow in the understanding of their own relationships and their own family histories. Her narrative is a powerful memoir as well as a self-help guide.

Rabinor remarks that one of her mother’s best quotes was “You’ll be fine! Everything will work out—you’ll see.” Oops! I remember several times I said the same thing to my daughter. She goes on to say that what she yearned for was her mother’s genuine empathic presence. My own mother was very busy and most likely I had moments when I wished for more of my mother’s presence. On the other hand, my mother had a career at a time when most mothers were stay-at-home, and I was very proud of that. If I were to have this discussion with my sisters, I know that each of their stories would be different. Judith Rabinor is just my age, so perhaps the book resonated so well with me because some of our life experiences were similar, although I don’t have as many negative feelings about my mother as Rabinor had about her mother.

In one passage that reverberated with me,  she asked women at a convention to introduce themselves by saying a very revealing sentence or two. Here is an example. “I’m Julie, daughter of Ruth. I was welcomed to the world of womanhood by Ruth, queen of secrets.” After much thought, I created my introduction: “I am Miriam, daughter of Evelyn. I was welcomed to the world of womanhood by Evelyn, whose goal in life was to please her husband.” Much discussion could follow.

I found The Girl in the Red Boots to be a very challenging and revealing book, and I would recommend it to people as they seek to define or redefine their lives. The Kirkus reviewer called it “a contemplative, cleareyed study of family dynamics.”

Judith Rabinor’s website.

 

 

Bedlam's Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope

by Mark Rubinstein MD

Thunder Lake Press     2016

  275 pages     Nonfiction

Dr. Mark Rubinstein is a physician and psychiatrist, but in his heart, he is a storyteller. He has published several novels and medical nonfiction works over the years in addition to practicing psychiatry. Bedlam's Door, his newest book, is a series of reminiscences about patients he encountered through his years as a psychiatric resident and then in his private practice. 

Each chapter of Bedlam's Door is a case study, from a Hungarian man who thinks that he is the King of the Puerto Ricans, to a suicidal woman suffering from post traumatic shock following the death of her husband.  Each story is unique, heartbreaking, and eloquently told. Rubinstein says: "It's really quite ironic. I fell in love with psychiatry because each patient—through sharing human commonalities—has a uniquely personal story."  Following each case study, Rubinstein outlines the diagnosis and the pathology, or the reason for the treatment. Often he offers a postscript to the story about how the patient fared following treatment. The after words are extremely valuable to help the reader understand the case.

My favorite story concerns a  man named "Mr. Smith" who was brought to the hospital by the police. He had been hanging around a famous New York hotel, saying that he had plenty of money and that he wanted to rent a suite at the hotel. He was dressed in expensive, although worn out, clothing and was carrying a large briefcase and said that he had a lot of money inside. He looked around the hospital and decided that instead of the fancy hotel, he wanted to rent a room in the hospital. Dr. Rubinstein played along with the charade all the while trying to assess Mr. Smith's mental stability. But it was not until Mr. Smith opened the briefcase to show the money—thousands of dollars of Monopoly money—that Dr. Rubinstein concluded that Mr. Smith really did need a room in the hospital.

Patricia, the suicidal woman suffering from post traumatic stress following her husband's death, had been under treatment for several weeks when  Dr. Rubinstein visited her and found her much calmer and more in control of her life. He mentioned that what she had needed was a chance to begin healing. Her response spoke volumes. "Thank you for not letting me make a permanent decision in a temporary frame of mind."

The tag line of Bedlam's Door is True Tales of Madness and Hope. Rubinstein illustrates graphically how there is almost always hope—hope that comes with intense counseling and balanced medicine. This is the great value of the book; while the stories are fascinating, the upbeat tone and implicit sense of hope pervades everything.

I have been trying to think about who benefits most from reading Bedlam's Door. Certainly it would be valuable for medical students deciding whether to pursue careers in psychiatry, but it would also be valuable for families facing psychiatric treatment for loved ones. Dr. Rubinstein's message of hope will resonate in many settings.

Linda Fairstein, a well known novelist, recommends Bedlam's Door. “Bedlam’s Door is a riveting read about madness and mental illness. Mark Rubinstein—award-winning novelist, physician, and psychiatrist—is the perfect guide for this journey through the mysteries of the mind, from despair to hope, and he does it in brilliant form. If you enjoy psychology, crime fiction, a good story, and forensics, this is a must-read book.”

Here is Mark Rubinstein's website.

The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study

by Howard S. Friedman, PhD
and Leslie R. Martin, PhD
New York, Hudson Street Press, 2011
248 pages       Non-Fiction

I am approaching the 50th anniversary of my high school graduation. OMG, how did I get to be this old? Although I probably won’t go to my reunion, I look forward to getting the booklet that will come with all the information about my remaining classmates. I went to a middle class high school in a middle class city. My classmates were mostly just like me; educated parents in professional careers. Over the years, we have received notices about classmates who have died, first in the Viet Nam War, a couple by suicide, one in a mountain climbing accident, and one who died in childbirth. Now the death notices we are receiving are about heart attacks and cancer. How many of those 320 that I graduated with are still alive? What are they doing? How is the quality of their lives?

So it was with anticipation that I began reading the book The Longevity Project by Howard S. Friedman and Leslie R. Martin. I had been reading about this project and this book, and although I would probably not have picked it up without the prompting of the publisher, I had already had some exposure to the concept.

Longitudinal studies very seldom have the chance to extend much beyond their funding. This was not the case with the study begun in 1921 by the Stanford University Psychologist Lewis Terman. Terman began studying a group of 1500 bright school children in San Francisco when they were in elementary school. He asked teachers to recommend their brightest students, and over the years, he met with them many times documenting their arrival at adulthood, their careers, their marriages, their successes and failures. He was “interested in the sources of intellectual leadership and wondered if he could identify early glimmers of high potential.”

He continued visiting this same group of children until they were approaching middle age and until his death in the 1950s. Because of the meticulous nature of his study, his results have been tapped again and again by researchers. Friedman, Martin and their graduate students began their study of longevity in 1990, and utilized the people studied by Terman, including those they were able to interview (in their early 90s) and those they were only able to study in their death certificates and the comments made about them by Terman and his colleagues as they were growing up.

The Wall Street Journal reviewer summarizes the results thus: “The respondents to the study who fared best in the longevity sweepstakes tended to have a fairly high level of physical activity, a habit of giving back to the community, a thriving and long-running career, and a healthy marriage and family life. They summoned resilience against reverses and challenges—including divorce, loss of a spouse, career upsets and war trauma. By contrast, those with the darkest dispositions—catastrophizers, who viewed every stumble as a calamity—were most likely to die sooner.”

The book is designed in such a way that the reader can superimpose her own reality on the narrative. It is not a book of statistics, thank God. Nor is it a book that lets you calculate your exact length of life, because it doesn’t attempt to take into account diseases, natural disaster, accidents, or fate. It is more about personality traits that affect lifespan. There are some quizzes that help guide you into decisions about how you fit in the vast scheme of things—how purposeful or sociable you are—as examples.

Here are the things that I was particularly interested in learning from The Longevity Project:

• Children who lose a parent do not necessarily live a shorter life, but girls are particularly affected if they lose a father before they are 20.
• Children of divorce don’t live as long as children whose parents stay together.
• If men are happy with their marriage they will live longer, but a happy marriage does not affect the lifespan of a woman.
• Working hard at your career (some would say overworking) doesn’t affect your lifespan.
• Activity is important, but it can be activity like gardening, or sailing, or walking, and doesn’t have to be training for marathons.
• Conscientiousness is the best predictor of a long life (which probably means that my sister will live forever).

Well, I could go on and on. This is a fascinating study and readers will get clues about their own lives, and the lives of their spouses and children. I learned that when I take a walk every day, do yoga every week, cook healthy meals, love my husband, connect with my friends, keep working, make quilts, and keep my mind active by reading and blogging, I am doing the best I can to live as long as I am able—“God willing and the creek don’t rise!”

Here is the Wall Street Journal review: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703529004576160601149946420.html

The Longevity Project’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Longevity-Project/151456004873773

An interview with Friedman in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/03/the-longevity-project-decades-of-data-reveal-paths-to-long-life/72290/

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal

By Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
New York, Penguin, 1996, 2006

Week 44    Spiritual

Isn’t it amazing how sometimes things fall into your lap with absolute perfect timing. Such is the case with the book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, which was lent to me by a friend. As you know, I have been spending a great deal of time with my mother and preparing for her death. Well, she died on Thursday, Oct. 21, and because I was reading this book, it became a great comfort to me. Additionally, I have recently been hired to prepare reviews of books and journal articles in the mental health field for a new website, and this book will be my first review, because I am convinced that every mental health professional needs to have a deep understanding of the concepts Remen presents. On this topic, Remen says, “According to the Buddhist understanding of auspicious coincidence, all circumstances can be brought to the spiritual path. Everything that happens in our lives, whether positive or negative, can serve to awaken us to the nature of the world. But occasionally, events cluster in particular ways that give us a glimpse of the deeper structures of reality, and suggest that time and linear causality may not be the ultimate way in which the world is ordered.”

The reader has to know a bit about Rachel Remen in order to understand Kitchen Table Wisdom fully. She is a doctor but also a patient. She has suffered from Crone’s disease all her adult life. Thus, she has great empathy for people facing disease and death. As a young physician, she realized that she had not been equipped to help patients on any level other than the physical, and she felt a great loss. When she tried to relate to her patients on a more humane level, she was criticized. Thinking there must be a better way, she began to develop a psychological approach for people with life-threatening illnesses and for the physicians who treat them. Thus she became one of the earliest pioneers in the mind/body health field.

Kitchen Table Wisdom is a compendium of her wisdom about life, illness, family, death, and all the other components of the mind/body connection. The book is constructed as a series of short chapters, on a variety of topics, with each section on a basic topic of the mind-body connection. The chapters are basically stories that Remen has collected in her lifetime of dealing with people. She believes in the concept of story, and that in order to understand someone and help someone, you must know their story. So, she tells her story, the stories of her patients, and the stories of the doctors that she trains to be compassionate healers. Each short chapter is self-contained. One reviewer commented that it is great bedtime reading, because the reader goes to sleep filled with words of comfort and healing.

The edition of the book I read is the tenth anniversary edition, and its wisdom is so enduring that I imagine there will be a twentieth anniversary edition. I can highly recommend this book to anyone who is dealing with what life is presenting us—and I guess that would be everyone. Here are a couple of interesting concepts:

Remen quibbles with the concept that “life is fragile.” She says that life is impermanent, but not fragile. “Accidents and natural disasters often cause people to feel that life is fragile. In my experience, life can change abruptly and end without warning, but life is not fragile.” “That tenacity toward life endures in all of us, undiminished, until the moment of our death.”

Another thought: “Perfectionism is the belief that life is broken.” She talks a lot about doctors and their basic belief that life is broken and it is their job to fix it. It reminded me of the visit my husband Lee’s oncologist paid to us on the day before Lee died. He had tried and tried to “fix” Lee; it had not happened. He put his arm around me and broke down in sobs, and I comforted him. He left his practice shortly after that and became a medical missionary, having realized that he was the one that needed healing.

Well, I could go on and on. This is a beautiful book, spiritual on many levels. When the reader finishes the book, they are blessed in so many ways and know that for all its impermanence, life is a marvelous journey until it is over. As one reviewer wrote, “Kitchen Table Wisdom shows us that a good story is like a compass of life’s journey, and reminds us of the power and joy of being fully human.”

Review on a mental health website:
http://www.support4change.com/general/books/review/Remen-kitchen-table.wisdom.html

Review in Journal of Psychiatry:
http://www.rachelremen.com/bookforum.html

Interview with Rachel Remen:
www.shareguide.com/Remen.html

Rachel Remen’s website: http://www.rachelremen.com/