TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Where do we start today?

CLIENT: Well, if we could start talking about my insurance. I called them and some woman on the phone was manually counting a list of claims and she seemed really confused.

THERAPIST: I was actually trying to remember where we were when we left off. I thought we had some left, right?

CLIENT: I thought we did, too, and she told me she was going to call me back and she hasn't done that yet. I don't know if you have anything.

THERAPIST: I forgot to look until I heard you come in. I haven't gotten there yet, but I will remember to do it this time.

CLIENT: Oh, okay.

THERAPIST: The one thing I did actually check on was you were paying me a reduced rate because of the recording for your co-pay; and you paid me the full amount last time.

CLIENT: That was $50?

THERAPIST: It's only supposed to be $50 and I think you paid me $65, so you shouldn't do that anymore.

CLIENT: Okay. (laughs) Things are fine now.

THERAPIST: Wow. That's a quick turn-around. What happened?

CLIENT: I got really sick last week and I slept a lot. (chuckles) I don't know. Josh's mom is still driving me crazy, but it hasn't been causing me panic, maybe because there's just been more talking about it? I don't really know.

THERAPIST: Has there been? Have things changed in the communication? [00:02:04]

CLIENT: No, it's still really awkward and no one really cohesive discussion, but progress is being made so...

THERAPIST: What's changed?

CLIENT: I've had a few more discussions with her about what does she want and she doesn't really seem to be able to articulate that.

THERAPIST: Too broad a question for her.

CLIENT: Do you want to live alone? Do you want to live with other people? Do you want to have the dog? She seems to care more about what we think she should do.

THERAPIST: She's very dependent on you guys for making a choice for her.

CLIENT: I don't know. She's been waiting until we get up in the morning to ask us questions about like this morning it was about going to her storage locker and telling us that she was going to visit apartments; and then telling me the whole saga of the apartments. I sent her an apartment recently because I like going on Craig's List for fun, and she sent me back this long e-mail about all of her troubles with apartments. [00:03:20]

THERAPIST: So you're communicating via e-mail with a woman who lives at your house?

CLIENT: Well, no. We talked about it. I don't know how to get her to tell me what's going on directly. She just never will. She just sort of goes about it in pieces.

THERAPIST: It does seem like she's going about it?

CLIENT: Yeah. She is going about it. She's going to see apartments and stuff. Josh had a discussion with her about having to choose an option and deal with it.

THERAPIST: One of the things you mentioned when I saw you a couple of weeks ago is setting a time frame for when she had to be out. [00:04:07]

CLIENT: There's not an official time frame.

THERAPIST: What do you want it to be? Do you want there to be a time frame?

CLIENT: Yeah, as soon as possible would be great. Of course I want a time frame. Whenever things at school are stressful I would like to be able to come home to a quiet house, which is more often than not, so...

THERAPIST: It does seem like kind of setting a time frame or an end date with her might be helpful because she could look at apartments forever and not ever choose one; and so having a date that is a pretty firm date of when she would move out by gives you some assurance that the looking process doesn't take as long as this deciding to look process. [00:05:11]

CLIENT: I guess I'm still really struggling with whether it's okay for me to ask her to move out. I did a workshop this past few weeks and we've been having lunches and things. One of my friends was talking about how she was living with her boyfriend and telling us the whole story of her boyfriend and asking me about my living situation. Some people know that Josh's mom lives with us and she was asking about it and I kind of went on a whole rant about it. I felt so embarrassed that I was talking about stuff that maybe I shouldn't talk about. I don't know if people think I guess I'm afraid of what people think about my wanting to kick her out. (laughs) [00:06:00]

THERAPIST: What do you and Josh think about it?

CLIENT: I think I told you last time we think slightly differently about it. He told me he feels like he owes her a life debt.

THERAPIST: So does that include unlimited living with you guys?

CLIENT: I don't know. He would just deal with it, I think.

THERAPIST: Does he feel that you should deal with it?

CLIENT: He did agree with me that if it was my mom living with us he would probably be going crazy.

THERAPIST: So it would be okay with Josh to have his mom live with him forever. He understands that it's not necessarily okay for you?

CLIENT: Yes, he does, but he made it clear that he's doing this for me, which makes me feel really bad.

THERAPIST: How does that affect the two of you?

CLIENT: I don't know. We have not been connecting very well lately. He's also been struggling with the thyroid problem and with his drugs. He's been really struggling badly lately and feeling really crappy.

THERAPIST: You said "lately". How long has that been a problem?

CLIENT: He's been having a thyroid problem since January. They started putting him on drugs just a month or two ago.

THERAPIST: To combat the hypo-thyroidism?

CLIENT: Yeah. And they have to ramp it up slowly, I guess. So every few weeks he takes a higher dose and he's not at a point where it's a sustainable does yet so he feels good and bad and good and bad and good and bad. It wears off and it's really driving me crazy. He feels great and then he's exhausted for another week. He started doing stuff like doubling his dose and then feeling really funny and then telling me and then me yelling at him to call his doctor. I can imagine how frustrating it is. [00:08:01]

THERAPIST: Yeah, to feel so tired and lethargic.

CLIENT: Even just when I started taking the Zoloft and it kind of wore off, I freaked out because I was suddenly feeling great and then it all was a mess again. Then it was fine, so having that happen over and over...

THERAPIST: How has his health been otherwise? How is his heart?

CLIENT: I'm not sure. He hasn't had a big work-up about where things stand in a while. We have to give it three months or four months, in which we're not really major checking things out.

THERAPIST: You're going to wait and see.

CLIENT: Yep. He's convinced that a few days or maybe a week after he's started seeming a little better that he's fine and everything is great. (sniggers)

THERAPIST: Are you convinced about that?

CLIENT: No. No. (laughs) Also, ever since he didn't get into grad school... [00:09:06]

THERAPIST: I didn't know that he didn't get into grad school. So he didn't get in?

CLIENT: Oh I never told you that he didn't get in. Ever since he didn't get into grad school he's still been finishing up his Masters, but he's just really upset about it. He doesn't want to do it. He just laments the whole thing and he won't hang out with my friends anymore. I've tried to drag him out of the house to go to a party on Saturday night with a bunch of my friends who he's hung out with before and I know he likes them. He doesn't really want to be best friends with them, but he'll talk to them. And he wouldn't talk to them. He told me finally later when I asked him why he was hiding in the corner the entire time it was because he didn't want to talk about himself and how he was a failure. Yeah, I guess he's not doing very good. [00:09:57]

THERAPIST: It sounds like he's not feeling well about himself and not feeling well.

CLIENT: He's doing really well. The bike shop is promoting him. They gave him his own position he created and he's, basically, become like his boss's favorite guy, so that's good.

THERAPIST: What position did he create?

CLIENT: Actually like paying attention to marketing numbers and I forget. It's got a silly title. Actually looking at profit numbers and [...] (inaudible at 00:10:30) numbers using them to make decisions. [...]

THERAPIST: Sounds like a really good move. Really valuable.

CLIENT: Yeah. He feels really invested, but for some reason he can't be happy telling other people that's what he does right now so it's [...] (inaudible at 00:10:49). I also feel uncomfortable telling my friends that because, of course, they all ask me what's wrong with him and I don't know if I can say or if I should just say that he's not feeling well. I always feel like I share too much, but then it gets me in trouble when I don't. [00:11:12]

THERAPIST: Have you talked with him? What would he be comfortable with you sharing with your friends?

CLIENT: I wonder if that would... that's a pretty good idea.

THERAPIST: There's sort of a line between wanting some privacy, but also being able to connect with your friends in a genuine and sort of intimate way. Knowing what's really going on with you and part of that is your relationship, so finding a way that you can maintain whatever privacy he wants to maintain for himself, but still be able to not cut yourself off from the support that you might get from your friends.

CLIENT: Yeah. I should talk to him about that. Sometimes it becomes sort of a fight, like when we were talking about his heart problem. He did not want anyone to know and I just couldn't. [00:12:12]

THERAPIST: That's too hard a volume for you.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: You're kind of going on the assumption that the same thing would hold for this, not telling anyone anything.

[...] (crosstalk at 00:12:25)

CLIENT: It's just so frustrating because I know if he did, they would love to talk about whatever he does.

THERAPIST: Yeah, he's got an interesting job.

CLIENT: It seems detrimental to him. It's not to be social at all.

THERAPIST: It sounds isolating.

CLIENT: I don't know. Maybe he just is okay like that.

THERAPIST: It doesn't really work for you.

CLIENT: Basically I can't bring my boyfriend to do anything with me. He won't go. Or if he goes, it's because I really ask him to. [00:13:09]

THERAPIST: He's not really there.

CLIENT: He's not there, yeah. We even had a party at our house. He was hidden in the corner the whole time.

THERAPIST: So that doesn't really work.

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: How are things between just the two of you? Are you going on dates? Are you being intimate?

CLIENT: Well, for a variety of silly health reasons, no. Well, yeah.

THERAPIST: Silly health reasons?

CLIENT: Yeah. (chuckles) (pause) I guess things between us with nothing else involved are fun. It's just any interactions with the world. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Yeah, so that's kind of limiting. It's important to have things between the two of you be good, but it doesn't really feel satisfying if you can't also be out in the world together, I would imagine. [00:14:06]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess the outside world [...] (inaudible at 00:14:08). I'm pretty sure it causes him a lot of stress or the fact that I'm stressed about it causes him stress. (pause)

THERAPIST: It sounds really frustrating.

CLIENT: Yeah, I almost didn't want to come and talk about any of it today because maybe it's just fine but maybe I'm just ignoring it all and it could all just blow over again.

THERAPIST: How do you determine if it's really fine?

CLIENT: For now, if I'm not feeling panicked and I can fall asleep.

THERAPIST: That's a pretty low criteria. (both laugh)

CLIENT: And I have energy, I guess. [00:14:57]

THERAPIST: So if we raise the bar a little bit. Those are good things. Definitely not feeling panicked good; being able to sleep good; having energy to go into work good. What would you say your level of life satisfaction is, on a scale of one to ten? Ten is totally satisfied; one is feeling unsatisfied.

CLIENT: I don't know. I guess it feels like it's all sort of being pieced together, mish mash, like it's not very stable. That's not particularly satisfying. It's like going, it's working kind of, but it's not satisfying. (laughs)

THERAPIST: I'd like to reset "fine" as satisfying, not totally perfect, but satisfied enough. It sounds to me like you're sort of below that bar where it feels survivable, maybe even kind of okay sometimes, but pretty precarious. This idea that if you talked about it, it may all fall apart that's not fine. Fine to me seems like you have a wider safety net or more stability. [00:16:17]

CLIENT: I guess everything is a battle. Everything I do seems to be a battle, as opposed to his...

THERAPIST: I have higher hopes for you than that, if that's okay.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. That would be good. (pause) I don't know how much of it I should just accept because it's not just me running my life. (sniggers) It does feel like there is a lot else going on.

THERAPIST: Okay. So let's look at the different battles that you feel like you're fighting, and maybe we can make some sort of ideas about which ones you have some control over and which ones you have to accept because they're not necessarily in your control. You do the thinking and I'll do the list making. Battle number one.

CLIENT: The people. There are battles with Josh and battles with his mom. [00:17:07]

THERAPIST: What are the battles with Josh?

CLIENT: The battles with Josh are over what we do together, when we spend time together, and just how we want to live our lives, I guess. A lot of that comes from him wanting me to support him because he's having trouble mostly [...] (inaudible at 00:17:28).

THERAPIST: Support, financially support, emotionally?

CLIENT: I guess emotionally. (pause)

THERAPIST: So he wants more emotional support than you feel like you can give? What's the battle? What are the sides? [00:17:56]

CLIENT: (chuckles) I've decided I need my life to be on schedule so that I don't know. It just feels safer to me. If I know I'm going to school every day at exactly the same times, then it feels easier to handle. That was a fight. That was a fight with him because if he wants to go exercise he wants me to come with him. The way he has to live his life is so driven by when he has to take his medication, when his body feels okay which is like very specific times of the day (chuckles). It doesn't seem like it would be a big deal, which is why it becomes a fight because I don't ever think it's such a big deal. For some reason it's a really big deal to him for me to go.

THERAPIST: With him for exercise or other...?

CLIENT: Mostly for exercise. That's really all we do together right now (chuckles) is exercise and go out to dinner once a week or so. I mean it sounds really silly when I say it, but I think he feels like if we don't do that together then we're going to not be a couple or something. It seems so important to him. [00:19:17]

THERAPIST: Do you know why it's important to him?

CLIENT: (pause) One, because he needs the emotional support (sniggers) to get him out of his head a little bit. He gets in a kind of panic if he doesn't exercise, then his heart will just sort of like give up; like he has to do it to keep himself in one piece.

THERAPIST: Every day?

CLIENT: No, not every day. (sniggers) And he gets really, really upset because, unless everything is perfect which it never is, he's usually feeling crappy in some ways. [00:20:00] There have been many freak-outs on my part and his part at the gym over how he's feeling. He just kind of sometimes has meltdowns, so it requires a lot of emotional support. (laughs) I don't mind doing that, but I want to also get to school at a reasonable time and be able to do the work I want to do. Even at home late at night we're watching TV or something and I'm working, he'll get upset at me for still working and that comes out of I mean he said a few times to me that he's upset that I'm doing something that I enjoy and I want to keep working on while he didn't get into grad school and there's no hope for him and his life is just pointless. (sniggers) (pause) [00:20:58]

THERAPIST: So he's a little bit jealous?

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, totally.

THERAPIST: What's that like for you, for him to feel that way about you?

CLIENT: If I've had a good day... He's really smart. I believe that he can figure it out. It's really frustrating that he is just so down about it, but I can't imagine what it's like to have tried so hard to get his life on track after having this heart problem and all this stuff. Sometimes I just don't want to deal with it and run away, which I've done before (sniggers) so... I don't know. I go from believing he can do it and telling him he can do it and trying to help him... There was one morning he had this meltdown and I ended up helping him make a Linked In profile and not going to school for a half day, just trying to give him some hope, I guess. [00:21:59]

THERAPIST: What does he want to do? What's his dream?

CLIENT: His dream was to be an anthropology professor. He's convinced that academia is perfect for him and he thinks he's good at it, so he was real upset when he didn't get in anywhere.

THERAPIST: It's a huge setback for him.

CLIENT: But it's also frustrating for me because he's not so ambitious that he'll go after that and neglect everything else, like he won't apply somewhere so far away that we can't be together, move anywhere. He says he feels too old to deal with that (sniggers) which I can understand, I guess.

THERAPIST: So he didn't get in anywhere, but he only applied to local places?

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean I applied to six places and got into five and he applied to four and got into none. [00:23:02]

THERAPIST: It's not a direct competition.

CLIENT: No, but I mean he knows...

THERAPIST: But he knows that. It feels a little bit like a competition to him or a comparison, a direct comparison, even though they were different fields and have different backgrounds.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I don't know anything about how you get into anthropology or do it. I have no idea if he's fooling himself or if he's [...] (inaudible at 00:23:30). I just encourage him to try again, but I don't know why he bases his self-worth so much on one thing, like cycling or getting [...] (inaudible at 00:23:42). He can't seem to have some amount left over, that sort of thing. If I think about those kinds of things too much, then it makes me want to run away.

THERAPIST: What is it that you're really running away from when you think about running away? [00:24:01]

CLIENT: Kind of the same thing that drives me nuts with his mom. I guess his inability to solve problems, in a way, his own life problems or handle them or deal with them.

THERAPIST: Yeah, feeling like he's too dependent upon you to make decisions, make choices.

CLIENT: It's even fine if he's dependent. If he's hiding out because he's too upset to talk to anyone because he's so upset with his own life... and he didn't get into grad school in March.

THERAPIST: So not just the dependency, but the avoidance?

CLIENT: Yeah. Maybe I just need to give him more time. That was March, now it's June. I don't know.

THERAPIST: A few months? It sounds like you expect him by now to have a Plan B, per se, or be okay with this as the plan. He's created an interesting and useful position for himself at the bike shop. Is that okay to be the plan? [00:25:07]

CLIENT: I don't know why. I mean he makes more money than me, so I don't know why he's not happy with it. Maybe we should talk more about if he does feel like he's competing with me. I certainly don't want that.

THERAPIST: Do you need him to go to grad school?

CLIENT: No. I need him to have a career he's happy with. I would also prefer not to have him... like when I met him he was barely scraping by. There was just so much uncertainty. It's not like there was certainty in his job because I really need that, I guess. He wasn't waiting on his hourly schedule every week to see if he got hours, that kind of thing.

THERAPIST: Is that still the case or not?

CLIENT: No. No.

THERAPIST: So the way it is now would be fine for you?

CLIENT: It would be fine.

THERAPIST: I wonder if he knows that? It needs to also be fine for him.

CLIENT: I tell him that. I don't know if he believes me, though. [00:25:59]

THERAPIST: So it doesn't feel fine for him, even though you've said it's fine for you?

CLIENT: When he talks about the bike shop he will sit me down and talk to me for an hour about how excited he is about his grand plans and show me his plans that he's made. He's really into it. It isn't like he's depressed about going there. He's happy to go there.

THERAPIST: And like you said, it seems like he feels invested and connected to it.

CLIENT: Yeah, but he's also ashamed at the same time, so it's really frustrating.

THERAPIST: Yeah, it doesn't feel like it makes sense, but clearly has a big impact that and the feeling like he really needs you to be available in a way that doesn't really match with your style of wanting an known schedule and consistency.

CLIENT: Yeah. We have this concept of what would we each give up for the other, I guess. And it makes it really hard that his job is completely different from mine. When he works is totally different than mine, so if we didn't make time, if we didn't do that, we would never see each other. [00:27:14] If I went to school at 8:00 and he gets home at 8:00 or 9:00, we would never see each other. He works all weekend, so then there's no relationship there at all.

THERAPIST: So what do you give up for each other?

CLIENT: Right now I give up half my morning a few days a week, if not more, to support him, I guess. (sniggers) I mean I guess it sounds so dumb when I'm saying that. It doesn't sound like a big deal at all.

THERAPIST: It doesn't sound like a big deal to give up a few mornings, is that it?

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess it's so uncertain. I don't know.

THERAPIST: Do you know which mornings you're giving up?

CLIENT: No, because I never know how he'll feel, if he'll feel good or bad. [00:28:04]

THERAPIST: It sounds like that would make it a lot easier because when you think about it, a few mornings doesn't sound like a big deal, but not knowing when they're going to be is a big deal.

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess his whole day-to-day health is really stressful. Is he okay; is he not okay?

THERAPIST: Yeah, so you give up some brain space to that, too. The emotional coping of not knowing how he's going to be.

CLIENT: Nobody else I know has to deal with that.

THERAPIST: It's pretty unusual, especially at this age. You kind of expect a 20-something boyfriend to be healthy.

CLIENT: Yeah. (sniggers) (pause) [00:29:04] But, again, I still don't know what [...] (inaudible at 00:29:04), which I guess is [...]. (pause)

THERAPIST: It's a combination of things. You're prone to anxiety with or without Josh or his mother or any of this stuff. I think that would still be the case because you're someone who craves a lot of consistency. Those routines and schedules help you to feel secure and without that you feel a little bit anxious. [00:29:41] Put that together with your environment which includes feeling pretty out of control about what's happening in your house; having his mother there; questioning whether or not it's okay to want her out; not really having control over when she moves out; not really having control over the boundaries in the house because she doesn't pay attention to the cues or she can't read the cues and doesn't have the same innate set of boundaries that you would have; the environment of being with someone who's pretty sick and not knowing a course of either his cardiac help; the symptoms of the hypo-thyroidism and not knowing if it's going to be a good day or a bad day or when is the medicine going to be up to a level where it's sustainable. [00:30:33] That's a lot of environmental stress. Putting the external things together with what your innate internal disposition is makes you pretty prone to having intense anxiety, whether it's a panic attack or just sustained high anxiety, they're both really uncomfortable. It can really get in the way of feeling comfortable in your life.

CLIENT: It's so frustrating because it's not my I guess it is me, but it's not I don't know. I made choices that brought these things into my life, into my house. [00:31:24]

THERAPIST: So you feel like you're responsible for it?

CLIENT: Yeah. Well, partly.

THERAPIST: Partly you didn't know, you didn't have the information yet to know that these were going to be particularly difficult choices that you were making. You had never faced any of this before. You've looked back before with me and said, "I don't remember feeling this way in high school." You had never been faced with any of these things before. You didn't know that they would be problematic for you. How are you supposed to know until you've encountered it? Now you know, but now you're pretty attached to some of these people. Our job is to find what are the ways that you can control some of it? What are the ways you can put some boundaries around how much these unpredictable things actually remain unpredictable? How much do they eat into your sense of security? (pause) [00:32:31]

CLIENT: I'm pretty sure grad school is not really the best for me and my personality. If I'm going to continue to have things in my life that are just unstable because I've chosen them and don't want to give up on them... I don't know.

THERAPIST: So what are the things that you can make more stable? Some things you don't have control over and some things you do. What can you make a little bit more stable?

CLIENT: I'm not even sure. I hate to have another really long discussion/fight with Josh over how I need what I need. I think he thinks I'm crazy. He's like, "I really need you to support me and you just really need to go to school at the same time every day." It just seems unimportant to him, I guess. [00:33:20]

THERAPIST: What makes your need less important than his need?

CLIENT: (sighs) I don't know. Maybe we need to talk a little bit more, too, if he really is trying to compete with me.

THERAPIST: It sounds like one of the themes I hear running through this is judging whether or not what you need is okay and it sounds like both you and Josh do this. You need to have his mother out of the house, but I hear you questioning whether or not it's okay for you to need that. "Maybe I don't have the right to kick her out." It doesn't really matter. What would work for another couple or what would work for him alone, those things don't really matter because what's happening in your life is that it's not working for you and, therefore, we need something that actually works for you. [00:34:18] Do you get to arrange your world perfectly just for you without taking any one else into account? Of course not. That's sliding too much in the other direction, but discounting what you need is also too far to the other extreme. Finding a way to be respectful of the other people in the situation, but also set down some limits about what you need. You need her out. Does that mean you can say, "Tomorrow if you don't find a place, your stuff will be outside in the lawn?" No. But find a reasonable time frame for her to find an apartment with a reasonable amount of help from you guys. It sounds like it's something that's too overwhelming for her to handle. That sounds fair. That takes into account Josh's need to feel like he is being supportive to his mother, her need to get some help and get time to do this, and your need to have a known ending date. [00:35:16] It balances the three peoples' needs in the situation and you can set that up in a respectful way. You have a need to know what your schedule is going to be with some consistency. Josh needs you to be available to go work out on the days that he feels like he can, that his body is up for that. How can you balance that, taking both of what you need into account for that?

CLIENT: My dad's entire side of the family is all not easy-going, kind of controlling people. I have never wanted to be like them because some of them aren't particularly nice.

THERAPIST: What would they do? And we'll scale it back from there. [00:36:04]

CLIENT: What would they do? I don't know. Probably be much more [ordered] (ph?) about everything. They're very much about fixing problems, which is causing me trouble, too. They would fix all these problems probably much more drastically than I am. They might tell her just to be out next month or something. I guess I respect a lot of them for thinking less about what other people... I mean they would say more what's on their mind, I guess, but that's always been kind of scary for me growing up.

THERAPIST: So find a way to temper that a little bit. If they would say very directly, "You need to be out by the end of next month," you could temper that by saying, "I need to know an end date of when you will be in your own apartment. How does end of August sound to you?" It's a tempered way of addressing the same thing. [00:37:18]

CLIENT: I still haven't even said to her, "I need you to move out." (pause)

THERAPIST: You can put it positively. "I need you to find your own place." Doesn't that sound so much better?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: With the morning work situation, it could be one day a week or two days a week that you definitely go in; and these other days are available if he can work out on those days.

CLIENT: There's a running joke. Every time we make a plan or schedule, not talking about work, but for life or something, mostly I get really sick. I had actually managed to go into school we had set on 10:00, which is the compromise for two days; and then I got whatever it was, some sort of flu thing. (sniggers) We had tried. [00:38:24]

THERAPIST: It's another one of those things that's out of your control. Try again. Maybe one of these days it will work.

CLIENT: It's really, really hard to keep things like that going when it was sort of a struggle to create, because there's always the pressure to go back to something that was easier but more stressful, I guess.

THERAPIST: Would it be more realistic to have it be sort of a more flexible, rather than having a certain day that you go in or stay home, have it be sort of an every other, where if you stayed home on Wednesday, you went in on Thursday; but it's not always the Wednesday/Thursday thing. [00:39:06]

CLIENT: No. I mean... No. It wouldn't help.

THERAPIST: Okay. This sounds like a tricky one to find the compromise on.

CLIENT: It does seem really silly, but I also used to work at a different place and I had a boss who needed me to be there by 8:00, there is something he could do about that, although he tried. He would go on long rants about having to be in a place at a certain time was silly and you should be able to make your own hours. I guess it's almost the clashes were life philosophies, too.

THERAPIST: My guess is the struggle is not really about the gym versus you going into the office. There's a power struggle and also this philosophy, this difference of life philosophy, where for you structure, following the rules, fits in really well with your philosophy. [00:40:06] He's a little bit more sort of free-wheeling in that way. Figuring out how you guys can be respectful of each other's needs and respectful of each other's views without having this tug of war all the time, because that kind of tears you apart.

CLIENT: It's also really hard to give him a shock and stuff like this when he's always not feeling good. He can't handle it.

THERAPIST: Yeah. This is pretty intense stuff to process. When he's feeling low energy and not feeling really good it's really hard to step outside your perspective to see another person's perspective.

CLIENT: I'm so sick of talking about how he feels but also how I'm feeling, too all the time. It get's really old.

THERAPIST: I can imagine that it does feel very wearing. [00:41:04]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Hopefully it will help to have a safe place to talk about it where you're not being judged. It does sound like you fear what other people are thinking about what you're feeling.

CLIENT: No one else is at least talking about ugly things, I guess.

THERAPIST: This is a safe place to do it.

CLIENT: I don't know. I'm like, "Should I be talking about this with my friends? Should they be talking about ugly things in their lives?" Part of the problem is that one of my friends is quite closed. It's like a struggle to get her to talk about anything personal.

THERAPIST: And people have different levels of what's comfortable for them to be open about. There is no hard and fast rule about whether you should talk about it or not. You have a need to talk about some of this stuff; and finding people with whom it's safe to talk about me included, but also feeling like there are people in your personal life who it's safe to talk about you need that. [00:42:08]

CLIENT: It's hard to talk about Josh and about his mom because a lot about Josh it's not like we're married. My friends who don't know him will tell me to leave. Friends who do know him, I feel it's really uncomfortable for them.

THERAPIST: Right now you don't really have a safe outlet for that, but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a safe outlet. It just means you haven't found it yet. Why don't we stop there for today? Let's assume today is covered by insurance for now.

CLIENT: If it's not, will they send me a bill?

THERAPIST: I will send a bill.

CLIENT: You'll send me a bill?

THERAPIST: What will happen is and I'll look tonight to try to get an idea. Yeah

CLIENT: Is next week July Fourth?

THERAPIST: Yes, on Thursday. We're scheduled to meet on Tuesday, the 2nd. [00:44:14]

CLIENT: I was going to say if I'm out, it would be good to do it every other week.

THERAPIST: Okay. So I will look before then and send you an e-mail.

CLIENT: Thank you.

THERAPIST: You're very welcome. (chuckles)

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