Lori Gottlieb: Understanding pain, therapeutic breakthroughs, and keys to enduring emotional health

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in-depth content if you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level. At the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are, or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay, here's today's episode. My guest this week is Lori Gottlieb. Lori is a psychotherapist and author of the New York Times bestselling book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, a book that I've read twice. And basically the second time I read it was right after the first time I read it, but more on that in a moment.
She also writes a weekly column in the Atlantic titled Dear Therapist.
Lori also has a new podcast, Dear Therapists, that's plural, hosted by Lori and her friend Guy Winch.
Their podcast allows you to sit in on some of the intimate, raw and transformative sessions as they guide patients through the everyday challenges of daily life while offering the kind of behind the scenes insights into what makes us all humans.
Dear Therapists is out right now and you can find it on iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And I can tell you right now, I am absolutely jazzed to be listening to this because my discussion with Lori was riveting. And as I mentioned earlier, her book is really what kind of got its hook into me. So the second I finished reading Lori's book, which I basically read in a matter of days, I went back to rereading it. And then I reached out to Lori and said, hey, sorry, you don't know me from Adam, but I'd really love to sit down and have this interview with you. Now in this episode, we talk about her journey in terms of how she became a psychotherapist. And also we go through a lot of the stories in her book. Now, I think we together make a very good effort not to spoil anything, because my intention is that those of you that have not read this book will actually go out and get it. I think it is on the short list of books that one should read this year, regardless of your interest in mental health, emotional health. If you have any interest in living a better life, I think this is a book for you. In this discussion, we pull out some of the backstories and we dig into some of the nuance a little bit more. And I think honestly, those of you that have read the book are gonna get a lot out of it. And again, those that haven't certainly will. And I hope it encourages those of you that haven't to go out and read it. This is an episode for anyone who cares about what it means to live a better life, to live a more fulfilling life, to live a happier life, to suffer less and to kind of understand the nature of the human condition. I think Lori is a fantastic writer and I think she's also a great speaker and I think you're gonna enjoy this episode a lot. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Lori Gottlieb.
Lori, thank you so much for making time to chat today. I know how busy you are both clinically and in terms of your outside of clinical activities. So it means a lot.

**Lori Gottlieb** (3:22)
Well, thank you for having me. I'm really glad to have this conversation.

**Peter Attia** (3:26)
I have wanted to sit down with you and I was hoping it could have been done in person, but obviously given the circumstances, it can't. From the moment I finished reading your book the first time, which is to say I've read it more than once, which I think speaks to how much it impacted me. And it's my hope that either people listening to this podcast who haven't read it will certainly go out and read it.
And even people who have read it might go back and reread it with sort of a keener eye to I think the beauty of the book. So maybe for folks who haven't read it, let's just start with kind of an explanation of this beautiful narrative that you managed to do so poetically where you kind of weave your story in that with a group of patients. But tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do for a living and what it means for you to be both a patient and a therapist.