“There’s a huge difference between examining and dwelling,” says Lori Gottlieb, the LA-based psychotherapist behind The New York Times bestseller Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. Gottlieb—whose book interweaves the crises of her patients with her own reckoning with therapy—is decidedly against navel-gazing. Instead, she advocates therapy as a tool for personal progress. Likening her role of therapist to that of editor, she explains how she helps patients reshape their own narrative through self-examination.

When someone comes to see you, what are you looking out for?
I like to say that that I’m listening for the music under the lyrics. The lyrics are, “Here’s why I came today,” and the music is, “What’s the underlying struggle or pattern that got you into this s...