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Lori Gottlieb, a national advice columnist, wrote a charming, compassionate book entitled, Maybe You Should Talk with Someone. Some of you may have read it. As a psychotherapist, she writes insightfully, vulnerably, and thoughtfully about her journey through life as a mother, professional, patient, and human being.

Besides chronicling her own journey through life and therapy, Lori speaks of her therapeutic work with her patients: a prickly, arrogant, and narcissistic man who is hiding his pain behind his coarse exterior; a young woman with terminal cancer who comes to Lori to walk with her through life and toward death; an older woman who looks back on the wreckage of her life with such deep regret and hopelessness that she plans to suicide.

As I was reading Gottlieb’s book, I recalled a book (and its sequels) I read decades ago by James Herriot called, All Creatures Great and Small. Herriot, a veterinarian in Yorkshire County of northern England, writes about encounters with both animals and people in his veterinary work just as Gottlieb recounts her experiences with patients in psychotherapy. Both writers are gifted and speak from the heart. Their books are riveting.

Alas, I am straying from the point of this post.

Gottlieb’s book is unique in that it opens the curtains of her patients’ lives but also reveals her own thoughts and emotions as she walks with them on their path of discovery (growth?). I don’t remember Gottlieb using the word growth very often (if at all–I could be wrong), meaning possibly that she does not envision her clients moving toward some destination called health as much as she sees them sharing existential moments of knowing (and unknowing, as she refers to it) themselves through the consistent presence of the therapist.

One of those powerful existential moments occurs at the end of her own therapeutic journey when she dances with Wendell–her therapist–in his office. Looking back on their dance to the Beatles’ song, Let It Be, Gottlieb writes later, “There will be an answer, let it be” ~ p. 406.

She appears to view the dancing moment with Wendell as the culmination of her therapeutic journey: leaving behind a restrictive mindset and translating that into an action of freedom that will bleed out from the therapy relationship into everyday life. Again, my reference to this moment is to highlight that it appears that Gottlieb emphasizes the shared experience of therapy and less the actual meaning. At least, it appears that she emphasizes the meaning to a lesser degree.

I believe that both are essential in therapy and in life. Experience is the power of presence—the personal relationship with God and others. Meaning is the content, the north star of the journey, the destination to which all humans are traveling. Postmodernism says the journey is life. A believer in God would say that the journey is essential but that it is leading toward an end that is actually the beginning of life.

Gottlieb has some compelling insights scattered throughout her book.

She comments that “. . . the pain of divorce is only partially about the loss of the other person; often it’s just as much about what the change represents—failure, rejection, betrayal, the unknown, and a different life story than the one they’d expected.” One woman Gottlieb knew who divorced and later remarried in midlife commented, “‘I will never lock eyes in the delivery room with David,’ she wrote. ‘I’ve never met his mother’” ~ p. 114.

Having spent some time in medical school, Gottlieb compares psychotherapy to brain surgery: The surgeons are “constantly calibrating how close they are to sensitive regions of the brain, and if they hit one, they back off so as not to damage it. Therapists delve into the mind rather than a brain . . . But unlike neurosurgeons, we gravitate toward the sensitive area, pressing delicately on it, even if it makes the patient feel uncomfortable” ~ p. 115.

It is interesting that Gottlieb mentions the mind as opposed to the brain. It seems like she might believe that the human is more than a biological accident composed solely of physical material (?). However, she never really mentions God in the book.

About therapy, she says, “Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. . . Therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself—to let go of the limiting stories you’ve told yourself about who you are so that you aren’t trapped by them . . . But how to help people do this is another matter” ~ p. 151.

Here we encounter Gottlieb addressing the power of old narratives and trying to replace them with something different. She goes on to speak about the ‘how’ a bit but never seems to develop a clear path to freedom and growth. What she does do well in therapy is being with her patients not as someone above them but as someone in life with them. She listens patiently and serves as a mirror to reflect back to them who they are.

Describing a moment in her own therapy when she is sitting in silence with her therapist, she observes, “Just presence. Sitting like this makes me feel relaxed and energized at the same time” ~ p. 152.

Gottlieb does a good job communicating the power of being with someone, of being in their presence and experiencing acceptance and safety. Personally, I believe that Gottlieb’s moment of presence with her therapist gets so close to what Christianity is all about, namely, Immanuel, God with us.

Gottlieb shares a touching moment with her older patient who is very isolated largely due to the prison of shame she has constructed: “Rita [who had been divorced three times and currently was all alone in the world] tells me that she splurges on pedicures not because it matters if her toenails are painted (‘Who’s going to see them?’), but because the only human touch she gets is from a woman named Connie. Connie has been doing her toes for years and doesn’t speak a lick of English. But her foot massages, Rita says, ‘are heaven.’”

Gottlieb clearly creates a safe environment for her patient to be vulnerable and even trusting?

She also shares a professional insight that all therapists would be wise to remember: “During training, whenever we interns felt frustrated by resistant patients, our supervisors would counsel, ‘Resistance is a therapist’s friend. Don’t fight it—follow it.’ In other words, try to figure out why it’s there in the first place” ~ p. 199

Responding to the habit of humans to distract themselves with devices when they actually have a few moments to look inside themselves, Gottlieb impressively states, “The therapy room seemed to be one of the only places left where two people sit in a room together for an uninterrupted fifty minutes. Despite its veil of professionalism, this weekly I-thou ritual is often one of the most human encounters that people experience” ~ p. 260

In this observation, I believe that Gottlieb touches on the meaning of life: to be with others and God instead of avoiding them or keeping them at a ‘safe’ distance. Designer Therapy for Life would say that humans are designed to experience presence with God and others. Loving relationships is the goal of life.

Of interest to myself as a believer in God, Gottlieb comments that “The four ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaninglessness” ~ p. 266. I would agree with her and add to that list separation. I see the battle of the universe as between separation and intimacy, aloneness and with, alienated and loved, not a people and becoming the people of God, an orphan but then adopted into an eternal family.

Gottlieb esteemed the wisdom of the Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, who survived a concentration camp during WWII. She quoted him as saying, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances . . . Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” ~ p. 289

I maybe would not say that attitude is the last of human freedoms, but I certainly would agree with her that attitude is integral to a life that doesn’t succumb to helplessness or victimization. Frankl and Gottlieb seem to be aligned with James in the New Testament who wrote, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” ~ 1:2-4.

Overall, I see Gottlieb’s book as a heart-warming trek through the human psyche. I also see it as an example of general revelation. She shares many insights that are true and helpful to the human condition. Her work with patients reflects compassion and intelligent insight.

The relative weakness of her book is also its strength, namely, the wisdom to be found in general revelation. There is no special revelation in her book—truth that lies above and outside human knowledge. God is not to be found on its pages. Gottlieb’s view of the world appears to be limited to a materialistic one after all.

So, how would special revelation be helpful when doing therapy with a person or when simply living in this current world? Let me briefly list very few advantages of doing therapy and life as a born-again believer who by grace has encountered the God of the universe and who knows Jesus personally in a loving relationship. Some of these advantages are:

• In therapy and in life, faith in God brings the power to grow and to change. I love 2 Corinthians 3:17-18: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” As a Christian, there is a divine personality outside of us who empowers us to grow and change and love and forgive.
• A desire not to walk in sin but to practice something new—to be free, as Gottlieb seems to value.
• A desire to worship Someone outside of us instead of being hyper focused on me and my problems.
• The truth that we are not alone in this universe—ever. There is a divine being who is a personality who can be known and loved who says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” ~ Hebrews 13:5b
• Not being limited to physical senses but having spiritual ones, too. We do not simply walk by sight but also by faith. We see beyond this material existence. We also have spiritual ears to hear the Spirit of God speaking to us. We have the ability to taste and know what is good and what is bad for us in an unmoored world that chooses to see evil as good and good as evil and sour as sweet and sweet as sour—relativism at its finest (ugliest).
• Having the Holy Spirit within us—a built-in counselor and teacher. Christians are not limited to psychologically internalizing people to have an experience of object constancy. God literally lives inside of us, empowering, comforting, and speaking to us.
• The word and the Spirit are present to help us understand the difference between false guilt and true guilt. One of the major challenges in therapy is to divest people of shame and guilt. The nuanced part of this challenge is that some guilt is healthy—it shows us what we are doing wrong and how it might hurt others and ourselves. How we know the difference between God’s desire for godly sorrow and Satan’s desire for annihilating accusation is found in the word and the counsel of the Holy Spirit.
• There is no more condemnation for those who believe in Jesus. See Romans 8:1ff.
• The knowledge that there is life after death. We know we will live beyond this world! What supreme comfort for our dying days but also for our living days on this earth as we see everything from an eternal perspective. How might this perspective help us? We don’t have to envy our neighbor who has the lake cabin or constantly regret that we did achieve our master’s or doctorate degree or be totally crushed when we must go through life with a disability or find out that we are going to die young. Why not? We know there is a day coming when all will be made right, and we will gain our heavenly inheritance, and we will be given new bodies like His glorious body (Philippians 3:20).
• Our sins are forgiven and forgotten by God. We are pure. Holy. Clean. Our conscience is clear. It may take a journey to completely arrive at this reality in Christ, but it is true.
• Jesus has given us His righteousness, His perfection. Therefore, we can abandon our lifelong quest to be good enough or to achieve or to be perfect.
• We have a defense attorney in Jesus who intercedes for us before God the Father. He is for us. He will stand between us and all our accusers.
• At one time, we were strangers to God, aliens, even enemies. Now we are friends with Jesus. Friends! Talk about knowing people (divine personalities) in high places!
• We are fearfully and wonderfully made! We know where we came from—the mind and creativity of the eternal God.
• We have a God who through His Spirit will correct us. We will not be left alone without growth, challenge, correction, and discipline. If we belong to Jesus, He will grow us. He will change us. First, of course, He will love us right where we’re at. But He loves us too much to leave us there. He wants us to experience complete joy. See Hebrews 12:5-11 that ends with the words, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

Lori Gottlieb does not mention any of the aforementioned spiritual advantages in her book. Certainly, her book is humanly warm and conveys the truth that suffering people do not need to be alone in this world, that they can have another person with them to hear them and know them even in the darkest times. But to leave out all the advantages of knowing God shrinks the human therapy experience to Lilliputian size.

I do want to make it clear that my point here is not to criticize Gottlieb’s book. I simply wish to add to it the bedrock foundation of God’s love and truth. Her general revelation truths are rock solid, for the most part. She just needs to add the most important truths for men and women that are only found in special revelation.

I must note here that not all people who come to therapy wish to swim in the celestial waters of God’s presence. Some want to limit their work to earthly things, to matters of general revelation. They may not even believe in God. All well and good. A Christian therapist will still walk with them where they want to go but always be listening to something they might be saying between the lines that points to a deeper reality where love, peace, and joy live–to a world beyond their earthly sight.

Others might come to therapy as believers but have had such painful experiences with church hurt or hypocritical parents or abuse that they are far from a sense of God’s presence and are struggling to trust Him. The Great Wall of China intervenes between them and a healthy attachment to God. Certainly, the therapist who loves Jesus is not going to simply quote Bible verses to these people but bring to them in human skin a patient presence who hears their hurt and holds their anger and points them to the sympathy of Jesus.

Regarding this godly presence, Hebrew 4:15-16 says, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

If I would ever meet Lori Gottlieb, I would tell her that her book (and her heart) runs deep with amazing awareness, sensitivity, and compassion. I would let her know that her book wonderfully ventures into the therapy room and offers a rare look at the infrastructure of the therapeutic journey. She also vulnerably and beautifully allows us to see her own heart as she responds to her patients and labors with them in the trenches of suffering, dying, loneliness, regret, fear, and suicidal ideation.

Then I would ask her about Jesus, the One who is called Immanuel, God with us.

When speaking of therapy and patients in her book, Gottlieb says this: “but what they’re really there for is an experience, something unique that’s created between two people over time . . . It was the meaning of this experience that allowed me to find meaning in other ways” ~ p. 405.

What is this experience that Gottlieb is referring to? She did not say it in her book, but I believe it is the experience of the presence of God and others as we open to them the door of our hearts. It is the experience and truth of relationship, unconditional love, and withness as we trust and commit ourselves to the God of the universe.

Gottlieb says, “So many of our destructive behaviors take root in an emotional void, an emptiness that calls out for something to fill it” ~ p. 135.

Well, God Himself says, “Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things” ~ Psalm 107:8-9. And Jesus says, “but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” ~ John 4:14.

So, if God calls you to it, maybe you should talk with someone. Therapy can be an amazing relationship where the curtain over the holy of holies of the human soul can be pushed back and seen by someone who will walk with you on your journey.

I would just recommend that you find a believing therapist who embraces the two great commandments of loving God and then loving your neighbor as yourself because general revelation will be of help in this world, but special revelation will be of help both in this world and in the next.

Jesus is the only One who can fill the deep emotional, relational, and spiritual void that echoes with loneliness inside us all. He alone is able to bring the existential experience of His presence along with the eternal truth and meaning of the universe which is found in Him alone.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” ~ Matthew 11:28ff.