Spoiler alert: this article discusses the plot of a book.
Lori Gottlieb has managed to move emotions and break boundaries. She urges her readers to stop avoiding what they fear, to stop letting their troubles control them, and to stop keeping themselves in chains. Most importantly, she urges them to stop waiting on someone to save them. As a psychotherapist and a writer, Gottlieb writes a memoir from her experiences with her own clients, as well as her own battles that make her realize that maybe it is time she talks to someone.
Plot Summary
Gottlieb begins the book with her very own story and her trigger – her soon-to-be husband breaks off their relationship because he decides that he does not want to live with children. At 40, Gottlieb is kicked to the curb with this news and feels deceived because she had been building hopes and dreams, whereas her ex had been “waiting for the right moment” to break it off with her. At different chapters in her book, she introduces the lives of her clients and the various trials and tribulations that they are facing. One of her clients gets married then discovers that she has terminal cancer and does not know how to deal with this news. Another client has marriage problems and is unable to build a connection with his wife and those around him – he avoids building connections because he is just comfortable this way. Her third client, a 69-year-old woman, has depression, is divorced, and is distressed about past bad choices she made in her life. In short, she did not live the life she wanted to live. Hence, she decided that she will end her life if, within a year, things did not get better. Her fourth client keeps going for the wrong type of guys.
Mental Health Revelations
One main prominent theme that Gottlieb showcased that she, too, fell into was that of helplessness. We see no way out of the situations we face and often get stuck, like the girl who got cancer when she had just gotten married, or the depressed client who regrets her full life because not one decision she made was right. More so, it is even like Gottlieb herself, who, as is revealed later in the book, “is fighting death”. She finds her life passing by and gets stuck feeling hopeless regarding her situation. There is so much she wants to do, but she has not done it yet. She is “racing” against time in her 40s.
These are all inhibiting mindsets which are giving so much power to the external world, to the point where the individual feels so overwhelmed that they cannot fight back. In fact, they give up. They call it quits and hope to God that, one day, someone will save them from this internal turmoil, from these dysfunctional beliefs, and from their very own reality that they never imagined going through.
Gottlieb challenges this restricting mindset and hits the audience with the cold heart truth: no one is doing to save you. You need to do the saving all on your own. Otherwise, you will stay a prisoner. What is worse is that you have made yourself a prisoner by bowing down to these rigid and helpless feelings and beliefs that only look forward in one way. What you are really doing is zooming in on the little things and calling the situation you are in a mission impossible, when you have not really been looking around.
Gottlieb gives a brilliant metaphor. She talks of an individual behind prison bars, screaming and begging for someone to let them out. What they fail to notice is that, on either side of the prison bars, there is a way out. You just have to notice it.You have to be willing to let yourself see the alternative options that you have. You have to allow yourself to understand that this mindset that you have is only leaving you dysfunctional in your life, and you have a chance to change that.Gottlieb has done something incredible: she has given us the power, the agency, and the push that is necessary to stand on our own two feet to actually do something to change these restrictive ways of thinking, which have only served to limit our capabilities.
Of course, saving yourself is no walk in the park. Getting yourself out of the very prison you placed yourself in takes months, and even years of conditioning, because, chances are, it took years and years to learn certain cognitions that have kept you in that prison. These cognitions have kept you functioning towards a goal you have that only requires you to go straight – not left and not right. Once the direction changes, you often lose control and spiral into that restrictive thinking. Gottlieb is telling us to break the cycle – and break the cycle we should.