When it comes to mental health, the sad truth is that many of us suffer in silence. We feel shame, and as much as we want to feel better, the negative thoughts persist, we believe we can handle it on our own and the cycle continues. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Parade.com interviewed therapist and bestselling author Lori Gottlieb about how to take back control of your mental health and how to be your own health advocate, especially if you’re living with a chronic disease. Here’s everything she had to say.
On Being Your Own Health Advocate
One of Gottlieb’s missions these days is to help people who are struggling with chronic illnesses or struggling to get a diagnosis. She explains first and foremost, it’s important for people who are dealing with any illness that they can’t get a diagnosis for to believe themselves. “Oftentimes, people are walking around with numerous symptoms, and they know that something isn’t right with their bodies, but other people are telling them ‘no, it’s okay’ and that’s why it’s essential to be your own advocate,” says Gottlieb. And this includes getting support from the people around you: Once you’ve found your way to a doctor who is really listening to you, putting together a team and working collaboratively with you, it’s important that you educate your friends and your family about what it is that you’re experiencing, what your disease is, and what it looks like. Once people understand this, they can learn to support you better, Gottlieb adds.
Gottlieb’s Unique Perspective on Therapy
In her book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Gottlieb provides insight from both a therapist and patient perspective. “When I was writing this book it was really important to me that I didn’t just follow the lives of four of my patients, but also include a fifth patient in the book,” says Gottlieb. “And that fifth patient was me. I wanted to showcase what I was going through in my own life and my experience going to a therapist.” At the beginning of the book, she says her greatest credential is that she’s “a card carrying member of the human race.” In other words, she knows what it feels like to struggle and go through challenges like everyone else. “My hope is that everyone who reads this book is seeing that all five patients are reflected in every single one of us and it’s very different from what we see on social media,” Gottlieb explains. “I think people have this idea that whatever issues they’re having in their lives, whatever struggles they’re having, that other people are not struggling in the same way. But when you read the book, you see your life reflected and how to get through those struggles.”
The Most Common Myths About Therapy
One common myth about therapy is that you’re constantly going to talk about your childhood, but that’s not what therapy is. Therapy is a very active process, and it’s not so much focused on the past, but more so focused on the present and the future. So, while therapists are looking at how some old narratives that you have, or old stories or experiences, are influencing the way that you’re interacting in the world now, that’s why they are looking at them. “We’re looking to see, ‘what is this old baggage that you’re carrying around? What are these clothes that don’t fit anymore, that you’re still like you’re wearing?’ I really feel like therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who’s not already in your life,” Gottlieb states. “And I think that part is crucial because we have the vantage point of not already being in your life so we can see things more objectively than maybe people who are already in your life.” Another myth about therapy is that you have to be really struggling to go to therapy. “Many people will say, ‘I’ve been feeling sad,’ ‘I’ve been feeling anxious,’ I’m having trouble sleeping, or ‘I’m having this difficulty in my relationship, but it’s not that bad. And so they don’t go to therapy,” says Gottlieb. Interestingly, we don’t do this our physical health. If you’re like having discomfort in your chest, for example, you’ll probably go to a cardiologist before you have a heart attack. But we don’t do that with our emotional health. “In some cases, people don’t come to me until they’re having the equivalent of an emotional heart attack,” Gottlieb explains. “And at that point it’s harder to treat because now, things have gotten really bad. But, the heartbreaking part about it is that because of this myth, people suffer unnecessarily, sometimes for months or years, when if they had just come in when they were first thinking about they could already be feeling better and wouldn’t have had to struggle so much for all that time.” The bottom line: If someone is asking themselves, “should I go to therapy?” Gottlieb says that your inner therapist is telling you you should go to therapy. There is no stigma around this and no shame. “We don’t wait until we’re like extremely ill to go to the doctor. We go and get a checkup every year. The same principle applies with therapy. There shouldn’t be a difference between our emotional health and our physical health,” Gottlieb states. There’s also a hierarchy of pain in our minds. “If you break your arm, you don’t think, ‘somebody else has stage four cancer, so it’s not that bad and I’ll just walk around with my broken arm for a while,’ says Gottlieb. “We don’t do that. We don’t think that the doctor is going to laugh at me for coming in with a broken arm. That’s not what happens. You get it treated. But we do that with our emotional health,” Gottlieb explains. So, we don’t need to rank pain and say ‘oh, it was just a breakup, not a divorce’ or ‘I don’t need to go to therapy, even though I’m really having trouble.’
Gottlieb’s Top Tips for Avoiding Burnout
In a recent survey conducted by Parade.com in collaboration with the Cleveland Clinic, results found that we’re dealing with high levels of burnout—especially moms. Gottlieb’s top tip for avoiding burnout? Letting go of perfectionism. “There are many times we feel like we need to be doing everything perfectly, whether it’s our careers or parenting, and that just leads to burnout. You need to know your limits,” says Gottlieb. The truth is a lot of people have a lot of trouble saying ‘no’ to things because they have trouble disappointing people. “I always say, ‘please disappoint other people so that you don’t disappoint yourself.’” Furthermore, we overestimate how much we’re going to disappoint people. “The people who love us will not be disappointed. The people who love us will be glad that we’re taking care of ourselves,” Gottlieb explains. “People don’t realize that other people are actually on our team, that the people who truly love us want us to take care of ourselves, want us to feel good and focus on our well being. So. those are the people who are going to understand.” In addition, prioritize self-care and remember that self-care isn’t selfish. “Self-care helps you be more present for everybody else. So as a mom, if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not going to be able to be truly present for your child. The only way that you can be present for your child is if you are whole and you are rested and you are well fed and you’ve gotten your exercise and had some social connection with adults. All of that is going to help you be a better parent,” Gottlieb says. Note: Lori believes strongly that writing can be therapeutic and with her new “Dear TED” campaign, she is encouraging people living with the chronic condition known as Thyroid Eye Disease (which may affect up to 50% of people with Graves’ disease) to write a “Dear TED” letter directly to their disease so they can take back control of their health. Next up: 30 of the Best Mental Health Apps, Because We All Deserve to Feel a Little Better Right Now
