534534564587654323456789's review

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3.0

I liked those behind the scenes, but a hundred pages in it’s clearly bread-crumbling and not worth it. Needless to say that’s just my personal opinion coz I have no interest in memoirs of people who live in a society I’m familiar with, and why is she telling me she doesn’t want a sperm donor with Scandinavian features so that her hypothetical kid won’t look “stick out” in her Jewish (brown-hair, small frame) family, you know he provides only half of ur kid’s genetic makeup and brown-hair is dominant after went to med school right?? Ok the reasoning behind this decision doesn’t make sense to me and it certainly doesn’t have to, I don’t have a problem with people making their own decisions based on their own preferences. What I do have a problem is why do you think I need to know this??? It serves no purpose as far as I can tell and honestly it doesn’t hurt to make this book SHORTER!!! That’s just an example from right before where I gave up, this book’s(first 100 pages) full of redundant details….

I identify a lot of myself in her ex-bf so in the beginning I was a little hurt because I felt what she called him could realistically be what people thought of me, ‘psychopath’, ‘child-hater’, and she seemed to embody some of the worst of what heterosexuality/heteronormativity represents.

helloamymo's review

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

khockett's review

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

aische24's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

indiaj's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

alelovesbooks's review

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

melissa_bookworm's review

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5.0

TW: Death of a child, cancer, infertility, death

This book had me close to tears on several occasions. It is a love letter to the human condition - we all have struggles and face adversity, even the people we turn to to help us through it. Lori gives us a compassionate insight into the mind of a therapist (and a patient). It is interesting, seeing as a lot of the content can be quite 'heavy' emotionally, I somehow felt uplifted after reading it. Maybe it is the effect of "I'm not the only one with issues!"

Gottlieb also de-stigmatises the therapy process. What might be a 'shameful' issue to some is met with kindness and compassion (with the right professional).

The sessions with John and Julie were the most impactful for me. Seeing John change from a real asshole to an 'regular' person as his therapy continued was really lovely. And Julie, well, I'm not sure how to put it in to words, but their conversations were beautiful and gave me perspective on how short life can be.

clairedrown's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

4.25

thriller_buffet's review

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5.0

No words can describe how grateful I am to read this book. It’s so deep and thought provoking.
I loved how the author touched many aspects and “thoughts” in our lives that we must have felt or pondered about at some point.
It discussed deeply how we have to have a more meaningful life and live in peace with our pasts (good and bad). How being hurt and hurting others in our relationships is what comes in the package of the “intimacy “ that we sign up for. And many other aspects that should be taught in schools before universities.
I LOVED all the patients in this book, mainly John who made me cry the most of all the patients.
I loved Charlotte, Julie. Loved Rita and was so happy for her and how her life lightened up for her at her 70th birthday...
Therapy opens doors in ourselves we never imagined they existed and makes us more thankful for being alive.
This is the best psychology and self development book I’ve ever read and probably it will take me a while to stumble upon another book as good as this one.♥️

irenejean's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved this book! The stories of the author and her patient are stories about what it means to be human. I laughed and I cried.