#therapy – kindread spirits

Traumatized by her past and the repression imposed by her family, Christie cannot see how she will ever be able to form attachments or achieve the relationships or family she desires. While she may be exceedingly successful academically, she finds herself lonely and failing at making healthy connections with others. As a last resort, she seeks help from a therapist, Dr. Rosen, who, after speaking with her during a few sessions, recommends group. Christie, terrified of being vulnerable and thinking of this as nothing short of torture, reluctantly agrees. It is no linear process, as she very painfully discovers, but she also discovers an opening in herself she never thought she’d experience.

This memoir by Christie Tate is a brutally honest account of how excruciating, painstaking, and yet potentially gratifying and successful group therapy can be. While Dr. Rosen’s open policy may be a bit unconventional, it does serve to create community within and among his various groups. This community can be harsh, judgemental, and invasive, but it also can be the support and encouragement one might need to move forward, take chances, and actually change for the better. The community Christie finds becomes a sort of family for her, with each assuming the roles family members do: support, condone, refute, argue, criticize, infuriate, and trigger all the emotions she’s been holding on tightly to that have been ripping at her insides for her whole life. But she learns that even if she expresses herself, she will not lose the love she fears losing.

I think this book is inspiring for anyone considering therapy, fearful of it, or otherwise in need. It is also possibly useful for those on the other side: therapists who seek to help their clients with groups. I think we learn how deeply these participants come to care for each other, nurture each other, and challenge each other to be their best selves – but it does take a skilled therapist to know how to guide, encourage, and challenge as well.

It also is important to understand that while someone might seem so confident and successful in one aspect of their life, they may also be suffering in another. We cannot assume anything about anyone, as appearances are just that: superficial and perhaps not even real. Christie was a superstar as a lawyer, but battled difficult relationships, rejection, and frustration in her personal life. She wasn’t happy, in spite of her academic, professional, and even financial success.

While this was sometimes hard to read, I believe it is an excellent book. We root for Christie on her challenging journey and celebrate her success. And we also learn what it’s like to work so hard to achieve a goal.

For anyone who is in therapy, has contemplated therapy, knows someone in therapy, or should be in therapy – and yes, that’s everyone! — this is a great book!

Lori Gottlieb, a therapist who has come to being so by way of having been a screenwriter, a medical student and a journalist, gives a thoughtful account of her experience of going through a sudden, devastating breakup which rocks her world. Feeling like she’s been blindsided, she seeks out the comfort of a therapist, Wendell (not his real name) whom she expects will join her in her rage against “Boyfriend” who has deserted her after seeming to be committed to their relationship for the past 2 years. What she receives instead surprises her and gives her space to peer inside and in fact, find genuine growth and much deeper comfort and understanding than she’d imagined.

A number of people recommended this book to me and I began it reluctantly. Because of what I do everyday, I thought it might not be the escape that I love books to be. To my surprise, though, it was exactly that. Gottlieb is a gifted storyteller and weaves her own story with those of some of her clients. As she begins to unveil her own journey, she also draws parallels with those of a few of her clients and we come to know and appreciate each of them as they too peel off the layers of their own defenses. We learn some of the terms of the trade, and how therapy works, in a sense — how she gives and takes, as a therapist who is in therapy, and how even if she is a therapist, it is hard to see your own defenses at play. And she does all of this with kindness and humor.

This is an extremely engaging read – a true story that reads like a novel. Be ready to laugh and to cry and to seriously think about going into therapy if you aren’t in therapy already!