Posted on by Cassidee Lanstra · 2 Comments

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Review

“We can’t have change without loss, which is why so often people say they want change but nonetheless stay exactly the same.”

Oh, where to start. This book has been sitting on my shelf for about a year now, not because I didn’t want to read it, but because I wanted to save it for when I was feeling low. After the year I have had, I knew it was time. Whenever I read a book that involves therapy, it becomes completely evident to me that I could benefit from it. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb is no exception, in fact, it makes me want to talk to someone even more. If a therapist can benefit from therapy, what does that say for the rest of us?

“Will you spot the insecurities that I’m so skillful at hiding? Will you see my vulnerabilities, my lies, my shame? Will you see the human in my being?”

As I read this book (which isn’t particularly sad, Gottlieb has an amazing sense of humor) I found myself on the verge of tears. I think it speaks to her abilities that she can make you feel seen throughout this book, and she validates that even the most self-aware to have things to work through. We all hide pieces of ourselves, moments that shamed us, the secret pride in our heart. Even when we think we are being entirely open, even when we are paying someone to help us work through our issues. This book highlights how the therapists and counselors of the world SEE that. They work through your memories and help you see the truth and the lies that you hide even from them, even from yourself. I found myself wishing Gottlieb was MY own personal therapist.

“An interesting paradox of the therapy process: In order to do their job, therapists try to see patients as they really are, which means noticing their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles. Patients, of course, want to be helped, but they also want to be liked and admired. In other words, they want to hide their vulnerabilities and entrenched patterns and struggles.”

Throughout the book, we get to see her through her work with her patients and her time with her own therapist. I found myself incredibly endeared to her patients, even the tough-to-love ones. I cried when they were grieving, laughed when they laughed, and took joy in their breakthroughs. The one that was most insufferable, John, ended up being my favorite. There’s certain people that you’re positive won’t find any clarity in therapy, and yet, they do. John was one of those, and he really found a way to reveal himself to Lori AND to himself.

Gottlieb tackles many issues; death of a loved one, terminal illness, love, guilt, addiction, the lack of societal support when it comes to men and mental health. Especially when it came to the men’s health aspect, I realized how many men are unintentionally angry because they don’t have an emotional outlet. We have conditioned men for ages to not seek help for their mental health. This creates generations of people simmering with unresolved issues, pulling others into their destructive orbit.

“Men tend to be at a disadvantage here because they aren’t typically raised to have a working knowledge of their internal worlds; it’s less socially acceptable for men to talk about their feelings. While women feel cultural pressure to keep up their physical appearance, men feel that pressure to keep up their emotional appearance. Women tend to confide in friends or family members, but when men tell me how they feel in therapy, I’m almost always the first person they’ve said it to.”

During this book, she blends her professional schooling and training with real life experiences. She approaches things from a clinical stand as well as from a tangible, personal viewpoint. She feels like a friend and a professional all at once. I highly recommend reading this! I give it a 4.5 stars out of 5.

There were so many amazing quotes and moments that I can’t pepper this article with them all, but if you’re interested, I put my kindle highlights in this link here!

“In this room, I’m going to see you, and you’ll try to hide, but I’ll still see you, and it’s going to be okay when I do.”

Posted on by Cassidee Lanstra

Hollywood Park by Mike Jollett

Happy Release Day to Mikel Jollett! Well, I absolutely adored Hollywood Park. 5/5 stars. First off, I love memoirs. Getting access to someone else’s brain and a true insight to their life is something that we don’t often get in real life. People can tell you, but I find when someone is able to sit down and sort through their life and the feelings attached to their experiences, it’s so much more thorough and enlightening. You can see from the way my cover won’t lay flat that I took this book everywhere with me until I finished it. It was breathtaking, heart-wrenching, horrific, and endearing all at once.

Hollywood Park is written by Mikel Jollett, front man to The Toxic Airborne Event who was a child escapee of the cult Synanon. If you haven’t heard of Synanon, it started out more as a drug rehab and turned into taking children from their parents to become children of the universe (aka, raised as independent beings instead of nurtured by biological parents), forcing couples to divorce and be with other partners, and beating the hell out of anyone that disobeys the rules or tries to leave the commune. Eventually, Mikel’s parents leave the commune separately and Mikel’s mom sneaks him and his brother Tony out and here is where our book really takes off.

Hollywood Park is a poignant, revelatory window into a child’s brain that has been affected by trauma. Not only that, but the way that trauma follows us into adulthood. Mikel’s mother is clearly a narcissist, it’s plain as day from the first few chapters. Once she frees her sons from Synanon, it’s all about hers It’s INFURIATING to watch her play her emotions off of her two sons, to put the blame of her depression on them, to constantly tell Mikel that he’s supposed to be taking care of her. She takes no responsibility for what has happened in her life, or the misery she inflicted on her children. Mikel perfectly describes this pure love that a child has for their family, and how easy it is for an adult to take advantage of that pure love instead of nurturing it. When he starts the story off, he does his best to put us in his childhood perspective, his misunderstanding of words and their meaning, of behaviors, of all the bad parenting that he was none the wiser to at the time. How different the world would be if children were able to recognize the trauma that they are being exposed to, if they could set themselves aside for it and say, “I’m not going to let this affect me.” Kids don’t have that ability, though. They are sponges, absorbing the good and the bad parts of their parents, and later in life it will be up to them to sort through those parts of themselves and see what they can keep, what they desperately need to work on, and where they need to cut things off completely before it destroys them.

We see the way Mikel transforms. He has this amazing journey of succumbing to his childhood, fighting his way out of that destruction, and the long and winding road of constant vigilance that is often required when you’re a child that has been mentally, emotionally, or physically abused. Trauma is similar to addiction, in that it’s something you spend your whole life fighting, relapsing, and fighting some more. Through his sad childhood, through all the bad stuff, there’s this sweet spot that runs through it. Mikel’s relationship with his father is absolutely beautiful. It’s not perfect. Mikel has this reckoning where he realizes he can love his dad and not want the same path as him. He describes that feeling of love for a parent, even admiration you have for a parent, while wanting better for yourself. He struggles with this, and I think it’s something that really should be talked about because it’s very natural to want more for yourself. I believe his father would have been completely understanding of that as well, and probably was subconsciously. You should always want your kids to be a little (or a lot) better than you are. It’s okay to not be perfect, to make mistakes as a parent. I have the utmost respect for Jollett’s father. He had a hard life and still managed to be there emotionally and physically for his sons, where their mother failed to do so. I just really loved how this book took us from a child’s perspective, to a teenager’s, to a young adult’s, to a man’s. Seeing the way his thoughts changed through the different stages of his life, his reactions to his family’s behavior, to his own self awareness becoming more potent. I think there’s a lot of adults out there with traumatic childhoods that this book might be cathartic for. I hope that writing this WAS cathartic for Mikel Jollett. I can’t imagine something more freeing than writing down these raw moments and putting them out into the world regardless of judgement or the shame he felt in these moments, regardless of what his mother might think. There was a part of the book that Jollett talks about that shame, about how ridiculous it is that we feel shame for the things that were done to us. It’s a natural human reaction, but man, that just stuck with me. Well done, Mikel. I wish you all the success. Thank you for sharing your life story with us, there’s a lot of people you’ll be helping by doing so. Thank you to Celadon for this ARC to review, I am very appreciative of this chance.