From my bookshelf: Maybe you should talk to someone

I'll be honest with you, I haven't felt like writing in the recent past. I have been enveloped in a feeling of languor and listlessness, musing over the tedium of life, being unable to muster up the energy to do the most basic of things. Sometimes when this happens, I simply let it be. Writing, as all forms of art, cannot be forced. I have to feel like it. But at other times, such as this, I remind myself that writing is cathartic for me. It is a powerful coping mechanism--I like to imagine that it is a milder form of sublimation, where I take my ennui and transform it into something meaningful. But this time, I have no inspiration. What can I write about then? This is how this book review series was born. If I have no stories of my own, I will share with you the stories of others. Glimpses into different worlds, insights from other people. The books I read shape my world to a great extent. Maybe some of what you read here will also change the way you look at the world. Maybe you'll be inspired to pick up the book I write about. I don't know, but let's see where this goes.

Book: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed

Author: Lori Gottlieb

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40203647-maybe-you-should-talk-to-someone

This book is a memoir of a therapist, offering detailed behind-the-scenes glimpses into her patients' lives and her therapist's, apart from her own. It also addresses some of the commonly held perceptions around therapy, some of which I was surprised to find that I subconsciously harbored.
For instance, is it normal for your therapist to see a therapist? What does that say about her professional abilities? Or, what would you make of your therapist's inability to deal with the problems of her own life? How do you expect her to deal with yours then? The author clarifies that a therapist is not someone who has his/her own life in order. While it is one thing to treat a patient and point out things that they are unaware of, it is harder to look at oneself objectively. Therapy is still the dark underbelly of the medical profession, the author tells us. People are secretive about the fact that they have a therapist, sometimes even to their own spouses and family.

The book goes into the details of what goes on in a therapy session and also the thought process of a therapist. Interwoven into this book are the stories of several of her patients, and also her own as told to her therapist. Perhaps one of the intentions of the author was to normalize therapy for people who look at it as a taboo. By lifting the veil on what actually goes on, people might be less intimidated. I concur with her, and I think therapy can be really beneficial. When we go through problems, most of us lack the objectivity to distance ourselves and figure out what's actually going wrong. Our family and friends could help us with this, but they are incentivised on different things: they do not want to see us sad, they do not want to ask us those uncomfortable questions. They often use short-term solutions and hope that the problem magically disappears, just as we do.Sometimes they refuse to acknowledge that we have a problem, and tell us that's all in our heads. But having someone who is trained to help us look in the mirror and see the answers to our problems can really, really help us. 

While the subject itself was quite engaging, where the book went above and beyond for me was its central theme of humanity. How it deals with the various facets of what it means to be human--suffering, struggle, sadness, guilt, abandonment, vulnerability, mortality, disease--in a very empathetic light, through several well-crafted stories.
This book, in a way, helped me realise and acknowledge my own humanity.