Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

What: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb

About: If you like listening, then you will like this book. In this autobiography, Lori Gottlieb discusses her meandering path from premed to therapy, but mostly she shares core principles of therapy through the stories of her past patients. In the process, we discover she’s just as much a patient of therapy as she is a practitioner.

Why: I didn’t seek this title out. Spotify’s recommendation spiders found me. While they still haven’t cracked the code on the fact that we can have multiple music personas in one profile, they—it?—got this suggestion right.

I’ve recently entered my second season of life coaching, so this book’s recommendation resonated on a personal level, and I’ve always been one to want to get under the hood of whatever new activity I’m getting into.

But I’m not here to write my review of Gottlieb’s book or to unpack the eeriness of being recommended this book in perfect time with my re-entry into coaching.

My purpose in this post is more specific. I want to talk about change.

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In my latest correspondence with my coach, she noticed a pattern. I’d been describing a series of moments where I felt stuck—not just situationally, but physically through emergent knots and tightness. As someone who partakes in a steady yoga practice, tight hips are a terrifying reality. This is new for me, and I don’t like it, but I’ve been working it out through added morning stretching sessions.

I’ve noticed another area where I fear stuckness: I feel stuck in preparation mode as I think about a series of changes I want to make in my life. But what seems even scarier than change is my resistance to it.

I’ve long believed I’m a rare type of person who not only welcomes, but maybe even craves change. I can trace this back to my childhood. I was open to a new sister in 1st grade, moving to Texas in 4th grade, switching high schools sophomore year, moving 10+ times in 10 years during my first early adult years (counting college). And I’d become familiar with the constant change that came with climbing through the jungle gym of my creative strategy career.

But now, I’ve become more rooted. I’m in Atlanta, and have been for 5 years. That’s now longer than the time I spent living in LA or New York. I bought a condo—another move toward rootedness. And I’ve been at my current company for three years. For me, that’s yet another sign of staying the course.

All this rootedness, coupled with my desire to make some new changes in my life, has me wondering if I’m still the girl who proudly owned her love of change? It’s strange to think that changing into someone who’s not hyper eager to change is change in and of itself, but maybe this is true for me.

More than strange, I’ve been struggling—struggling to tackle change this go-round, but maybe for good reason?

I don’t want to just change aspects of my life. I want to change on the inside too.

And maybe therein lies the crux of the struggle. Could it be that before I found comfort in change, and deep down there were problematic aspects to this? Now I value having a growth mindset and being adaptive, but I also know more acutely the consequences of risks and that sometimes changes aren’t always for the better. Intention counts for something.

Still, I want to change! And continue to rack my brain, wondering, why is this hard?! Why am I still scared of the same things I was when I was 17: basic things like asking for help, knowing how to set boundaries, reaching out to new people, long car rides, that point in a new relationship where you have to figure out what you want beyond next week, walking into rooms not knowing the latest scores or so-and-so’s name or what all the news headlines were that day…

I want to make progress in certain parts of my life, but even more so I want to change from my past approach to tackling newness. It really is true: I want to change on the inside too, but that’s really hard to do when I’m still holding on to basic fears and habits that I feel have been holding me back years later.

But before I come across as completely stalled, I’ll throw myself a bone.

I’ve heard the phrase “I need to program my life” from friends more often. And for a while, I was in that camp. I wanted to organize my life and adopt new tiny habits I believed would lead toward the big changes I was after. And I knew this would require me to take inventory of all the areas of improvement I believed would best set me up for the big beautiful life I could see for myself in hazy daydreams.

But now I’ve done the programming—at least for now. And it feels great to see my life and ambitions mapped in a massive organizer. But I’m realizing I’m not a bot. I still have to do the things I promised myself I would do.

Why is this so hard?! See! I made progress, but the feeling around change persists.

How is it we can get so close—create a to-do list that prescribes all the right activities—and still struggle to tick them off the list? Do I possess a defect in my hardwiring, or is this just my personality?

I will admit my personality leans toward deep dives. I’m what survey giant Gallup calls a “learner,” meaning I have a tendency toward rabbit holes in the name of understanding.

And that’s likely how I went from “I’ll spend 15 minutes finishing this email to my life coach” to spending upwards of 2 hours turning an email into a blog entry.

But, and here goes my other rabbit hole thought, deep down I really only want to change some things. While this 2+ hour detour wasn’t what I planned for my morning, I’m enjoying myself. I wanted to write! These feelings feel like they’re breaking out of me in a way I couldn’t have planned for, but it feels right to continue with this spontaneous moment.

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And I will leave myself with this reminder from my new book:

The only constant in life is change, and one of the core reasons people go to therapy comes down to the fact that it’s human nature to resist change.

There’s a certain comfort in remembering even the grittiest, most admired people in this world have likely been challenged to muster up the actions needed to move in new directions. It makes me feel less flawed. That this isn’t just a me thing. Was that really all I needed to get unstuck?

Oh the comfort considering the commonness of change’s challenges.