TABOO TUESDAY: The Power & Stigmas of Therapy with Best-Selling Author, Lori Gottlieb

Emotionally Fit

Doctors go to the doctor, yoga teachers take yoga classes, and yes, therapists go to therapy. In this Taboo Tuesday, best-selling author of the book “Maybe you Should Talk To Someone” and psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb joins Dr. Emily to discuss all things therapy, from why people often wait too long to start, why the stigma around therapy is tough to break, even for therapists, and why our friends don’t necessarily make the best substitutes for help and support from a professional. Listen now to find out how to avoid having your own emotional heart attack.

Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Tuesday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health, and surprising, funny, and shocking conversations on Taboo Tuesdays - because the things we’re most hesitant to talk about are also the most normal. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Follow Lori Gottlieb on Instagram and Twitter

Read Lori’s book: Maybe you Should Talk To Someone

Watch Lori’s TED Talk: How changing your story can change your life

Listen to Lori’s podcast Dear Therapist

Read Lori’s column for The Atlantic: Dear Therapist

Thank you for listening! Follow Dr. Emily on Twitter, and don’t forget to follow, rate, review and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! #EmotionallyFit

The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:31) - Mental health is as important as physical health - “They feel like you have to be in crisis or have a diagnosable condition before you step in a therapist's office, and so they don't do anything about it, and then they land in my office when they're having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack.”

(04:49) - Idiot compassion vs. wise compassion - “A therapist will hold up a mirror to you and help you to see something about yourself that you haven't been willing or able to see.”

(07:36) - On growing as a therapist - “You go and you get trained and you learn the scales and the technique and the form and all of the rules. And then when you get really good at that you start to improvise, and the more you improvise, the more you see who you are going to become as a therapist.”

(11:23) - Stigma and therapy - “People need support andI think it would be a lot easier if we just acknowledged that human beings are ridiculous, and I mean that in the most compassionate way.”

(18:22) - Embracing our feelings - “Feelings don't go away. They just get stuffed down, but they're still there. And in fact feelings need air, so they just get bigger. So I think the danger is that you feel like you've numbed out your feeling, but numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings.”

(25:41) The connection between therapist and patient - “The person's training, the kind of modality that they're using, the years of experience, all of those things definitely matter. So I'm not saying they don't because they do, but what matters most of those factors is the relationship that a person has with their therapist.”