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

Getting her haircut at Cory’s, Lori tells him about her problems with the publisher. He responds by mentioning the suffering of Kenyans who have no clean water, nor homes or food. However, “pain is pain” (660), and everyone suffers their own lot. To minimize personal pain means not to face it and deal with it. Suffering is not a competition. 

John informs Lori that he has told Margo about seeing a therapist, to which she reacted badly asking him why he kept it a secret. He reveals that for the first time he talked to Margo about Gabe, and then he starts to sob desperately. He feels terrible that he has blocked the accident and the happier memories of his son: “[T]he loss of his memories brings him closer to the loss of Gabe” (667), because through his pain he connects with the dead child as if he were present and alive.

He relates how he could not talk to Margo about Gabe after his death, which hurt her. Then they had another baby, because she wanted to, and he hoped it would be a girl, because a boy would forever remind him of Gabe. He also admits that when his mother died, he felt like he had killed her, just as he feels with his son. When Ruby was born, he was ecstatic, but he also felt that if he were happy he could not hold on to the pain of the loss, as if he was betraying Gabe.

Lori tells him about the psychological immune system, when “your brain helps you recover from psychological attack” (677). People react better to loss than they would anticipate, and feelings by definitions are impermanent and transient, prone to quick changes. John finds that talking about Gabe with Margo is not as bad as not talking about him.

Wendell makes a point of differentiating between counseling (professional advice) and therapy (self-understanding). He is not averse to giving Lori practical suggestions (e.g. a free initial session), but he admits he made a mistake when he advised her to continue writing the book about happiness, because Lori forced his hand. Lori also introduces the term paradoxical intervention, where “the therapist instructs patients not to do what they’re already not doing” (685).

Lori finally asks for counseling about the situation with John and Margo (who is Wendell’s patient), by questioning Wendell if he thinks she is a good therapist. By replying that he knows she is, he tells her without words that Margo has been noticing changes in John, and this “lessen[s] the awkwardness” (691). Lori realizes that her sessions with Wendell have made her a better therapist as well, because she has learned that strict rules of behavior during therapy can sometimes bend intelligently and contribute to the process. 

As Lori waits for Julie to arrive for her session, she contemplates the imminence of her patient’s death, and how the word termination, used in therapy to signal the end of the process, this time means something completely different. Julie has been getting sicker, and she is planning every detail of her funeral service, so that Matt has dubbed her “Deathzilla.” In sessions, both women are now often silent, the silences filled with shared stories and emotions. Julie shares how Lori has become the inner voice in her head that helps her through difficult situations, which Lori has also felt about Wendell, and which means we have internalized the helpful nature of our therapy. Julie says that she loves Lori, and, against the rules, Lori returns the sentiment verbally. 

Rita has written a long confessional letter to Myron, explaining why she thinks things would never work between them. In it, she details the years of abuse by her husband, Richard, and how she colluded by ignoring his drinking and his hurting the children. She was afraid to leave him and be on her own and poor. She takes responsibility for her selfishness and traces it back to her lonely and unhappy childhood. She believes once Myron learns the truth about how her children cut her out of their lives, he will reconsider his desire to be with her. The letter reminds Lori of her mother, and how she struggled as a child with a single parent, and she finds a new way to appreciate both her mother and Rita. The writing of the letter has freed Rita from some of the burden of her guilt, as she becomes aware she has written it not just for Myron but for her children as well.