Lori Gottlieb opens with candid personal account of her own experience seeking therapy as a practicing therapist herself, illustrating how even trained mental health professionals genuinely benefit from and need their own therapeutic support during personal difficulty.

Why this therapist-seeking-therapy narrative matters:

• This candid account normalizes therapy-seeking even for those with extensive professional mental health training, countering any assumption that professional expertise alone provides immunity from needing genuine support
• Gottlieb's dual perspective — as both practicing therapist and therapy client during this period — provides distinctive, credible insight into the therapeutic process from both sides
• This opening establishes the book's distinctive dual-perspective narrative approach, motivating its subsequent detailed examination of both her own and her clients' therapeutic experiences

This opening establishes the book's distinctive dual-perspective approach, examining Gottlieb's own therapy experience alongside her professional therapeutic work with clients.