Beth

“Julie gives more examples of what helps when she tells people she’s dying. “A hug is great,” she says. “So is ‘I love you.’ My absolute favorite is just a plain ‘I love you.’ ” “Did anyone say that?” I ask. Matt did, she says. When they found out she had cancer, his first words weren’t “We’ll beat this!” or “Oh, fuck!” but “Jules, I love you so much.” That was all she needed to know.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“Wendell says, like my patient, I’ve come up with my own way to cope. If I screw up my life, I can engineer my own death rather than have it happen to me. It may not be what I want, but at least I’ll choose it. Like cutting off my nose to spite my face, this is a way to say, 'take that, uncertainty'.
I try to wrap my mind around this paradox: self-sabotage as a form of control. If I screw up my life, I can engineer my own death rather than have it happen to me. If I stay in a doomed relationship, if I mess up my career, if I hide in fear instead of facing what’s wrong with my body, I can create a living death — but one where I call the shots.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“It’s impossible to get to know people deeply and not come to like them.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

“at some point in our lives, we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.”
― Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed