Finding Your Way Back to Yourself: What Our Stories Can Teach Us

A reflection inspired by Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Sometimes finding your way back to yourself begins with becoming curious about the story you’re living.

We often move through life carrying stories about who we are.

I am the responsible one.

I should be stronger.

I should have figured this out by now.

This relationship should have worked.

I need to keep going.

Some of these stories may have helped us at one point. Others may have come from family, culture, relationships, or experiences that shaped us before we had the opportunity to question them.

But what happens when the story no longer fits?

This August, our theme at Curated Collections is Finding Your Way Back to Yourself—an invitation to explore books that give us space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with the person beneath the expectations and stories we have accumulated.

This week, we turn to Lori Gottlieb’s Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

When the Person Helping Others Needs Help Too

Gottlieb is a psychotherapist, but in this book she places herself on the other side of the therapist’s office.

Following a personal crisis, she becomes a patient herself and begins working with a therapist named Wendell. At the same time, she continues working with her own patients.

The book moves between these experiences, bringing together stories about loss, relationships, change, uncertainty, and the ways people try to make sense of their lives.

One of the things that makes the book interesting from a bibliotherapeutic perspective is this shift in perspective.

The person who spends her professional life listening to other people’s stories must also become willing to examine her own.

The book does not present self-understanding as something that happens all at once.

Instead, it shows how complicated our stories can be—and how difficult it can sometimes be to see our own patterns clearly.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

One of the questions that emerges from Gottlieb’s work is not simply What happened to me?

It is also:

What story have I created about what happened?

There can be a difference.

Two people can experience difficult circumstances and understand them in completely different ways.

One person may see failure.

Another may see a turning point.

One may see rejection.

Another may eventually recognize that a relationship was no longer right for them.

This does not mean that painful experiences should simply be reframed as positive.

Some experiences are genuinely painful.

But reading can sometimes give us enough distance to look at our experiences from another angle.

That is one reason books can become meaningful companions.

What Readers See in the Book

Goodreads readers have responded to Maybe You Should Talk to Someone in many different ways.

The book currently has a 4.36 average rating from more than 421,000 ratings and more than 37,000 reviews. Readers frequently mention its humanity, humor, compassion, and the opportunity to see therapy from both sides of the relationship. Other readers have found the book less compelling, reminding us that a book can resonate deeply with one person and not with another.

That variety matters.

Bibliotherapy isn’t about declaring that one book will change everyone’s life.

It is about asking what happens when we encounter a particular book at a particular moment in our lives.

What do we notice?

What stays with us?

What makes us uncomfortable?

What question follows us after we close the book?

Finding Your Way Back Doesn’t Mean Going Backward

The phrase finding your way back to yourself might sound as though there is an original version of ourselves waiting somewhere in the past.

But perhaps it is more complicated than that.

Maybe finding your way back means becoming more aware of who you are now.

It might mean recognizing that some expectations no longer belong to you.

It might mean admitting that something you once wanted has changed.

It might mean allowing yourself to ask for help.

Or it might simply mean becoming curious about the parts of yourself that have been quiet for a while.

Gottlieb’s experience as both therapist and patient offers an interesting reminder: understanding ourselves is not a finished project.

We continue to change.

And sometimes, we need another perspective to notice what we cannot see on our own.

A Reflection for the Week

As you think about your own story, consider:

What story about myself have I been repeating for years?

Is that story still true for me today?

Where might I be holding myself to an expectation that no longer fits who I am?

And perhaps the gentlest question of all:

What would I like to understand about myself more deeply?

You don’t have to answer everything.

Choose one question.

Write about it.

Sit with it.

Let the answer take its time.

A Book Can Be a Place to Begin

Reading does not have to give us a solution.

Sometimes it gives us language.

Sometimes it gives us perspective.

And sometimes it simply reminds us that the questions we carry are deeply human.

As we begin August’s Finding Your Way Back to Yourself series, we’ll explore books that invite us to slow down, look inward, and consider the stories that shape the way we see ourselves.

Perhaps the way back begins not with changing who we are—

but with becoming curious about who we’ve become.

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Disclaimer:

_{Bibliotherapy is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, medical treatment, medication, or therapy. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding any mental health symptom or medical condition. Bibliotherapy is not authorised to make recommendations about medication or serve as a substitute for professional advice. Never disregard professional psychological or medical advice or delay in seeking professional advice or treatment because of something you have read in bibliotherapy.}