TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Come on in.

CLIENT: Good morning.

THERAPIST: Morning.

CLIENT: So I'm doing more or less okay today. Which is a good thing. I feel like I'm in an okay place. I haven't necessarily been in the last several days, but I am now. (pause) I was struggling with what is important to say and what is going to be helpful. And, you know, if I knew exactly all of it I wouldn't be here in some sense. [00:01:02]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But there's also no way to like It's essentially like trying to draw a map for you without knowing what the important features are. I can't reproduce the entire experience because you would have had to be there to do that. And I can't necessarily tell what the important features are always. Does that make sense?

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Well you started to draw that map because you said, "Today is okay but the last several days haven't been.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: So that seems important.

CLIENT: (laughs) Fair enough. I just try to tell you why I can say that and then it takes me a while to formulate what the next thing is. I think that the most important place to go is, over the weekend I sort of continue to feel angry and sad and hurt but I also felt kind of alone. [00:02:04]

Which we've talked about loneliness before. You suggested that therapy was one way to help deal with that, and that has been helpful. But (pause) But, I don't know, I ended up feeling sort of disconnected from friends and family.

And also like I had this great pain that I couldn't talk about with them because I don't want to hurt them. And at some point I just sort of decided that I need to talk about it. I can talk about it with you and that's good and helpful.

So I guess Friday, or something like that, I called my mother just to talk. I told her some of what I was feeling but in a like outline sort of way. And she just did not seem, you know maybe it was a bad day talk, but she didn't seem like she could handle hearing about it. [00:03:20]

I think there's a sense in which she hurts for me already knowing what I've been going through. And so hearing the details sometimes are hard. And I think it's harder, like I think it was harder on that day than in a general sense. I think she was just tired from whatever had been going on in the normal day to day. But sort of like my mother is one of the first people I would talk to about emotional issues in some ways. And so feeling like I couldn't do that was isolating. (pause) [00:04:22]

So I sent a lot of e-mails to friends that I had been, that I've been in correspondence with by e-mail a lot but it's been a while since we've been in touch. Just as a like, just following the thread of whatever conversation we've been having.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

Tanya and I had our weekly games night with our friend Franco and that was good. Or it started out well. I like playing games. I actually don't mind losing games usually, but found myself rather upset at the end of the evening. And knowing that in a general sense I don't really care about losing the games. I like to win, I really like to win but it's not an issue that really comes outside of the bounds of the game in some ways. [00:05:25]

I feel like there was some essential feature of what was going on in the games that like played into what is going on in my life. And sort of, the games we're playing one of the strategies is to bog your opponent down by just filling their deck of cards with worthless cards. And this is a strategy that Franco is good at and the cards lend themselves to. But it's not one that I'm willing to play because I don't like what it does to the person.

And so the counterstrategy is just to like run out the cards that are crappy by dispersing them as quickly as possible. But I don't like that because I don't like the strategy. And somehow sort of end up playing these games bogged down by this sort of disproportionate thing that seems like in some ways analogies to the rest of my life are not too hard to draw. (voice sounds a bit strained) Does that sound right? [00:06:30]

THERAPIST: Mm hm. I see.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: What are the particular analogies you're drawing?

CLIENT: (pause) So there's the one of just feeling bogged down in what I'm doing. Like, you know, I think I mentioned that someone swiped the mirror of our car while it was parked on the street. And just, you know, daily life things to deal with that happen to come amongst all of these other larger things that are hard to deal with. Just I feel bogged down in trying to handle that sort of thing.

So there's that particular sense. And then there's the sense of like (pause) playing by a set of rules that I have artificially imposed that in some way make the experience worse for me. (pause) [00:08:05] And then I think there's a sense in which like (pause) I find the analogy harder to draw and it's not the one that occurs first, but it's probably relevant. There's this sense in which like Tanya has been making my life very hard for a long time and I'm not really willing to make hers hard in response. I don't feel like that's a reasonable response or something. So those are the ones that come to mind.

THERAPIST: Mm. I was thinking about the sort of the wasteful useless cards.

CLIENT: Hm.

THERAPIST: There's something sort of useless and wasteful with no particular point.

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean there's no point for me. For Franco the point is that it lets him win because then it dilutes the useful cards. But, yeah. [00:09:13]

THERAPIST: Well I think, I mean there's a feeling of like sort of what Tanya's doing is wasteful and useless. And what is the point of this? In a sense.

CLIENT: (sigh) Yeah. Yeah.

THERAPIST: What is the goal? You know, what is the goal in all this? What is the point?

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) (voice sounds strained) And I think in the last several weeks I've settled on a narrative of what's happened as like, she really needed to leave Brown and some of the life circumstances surrounding it, but couldn't do it. Just could not identify her own needs or was unwilling to do it, or something in that line.

And so that's the (pause) Put another way, given a set of fairly obvious problems, could not deal with them until they were life threatening. And in a sense couldn't deal with them then. Other people had to. (pause) Yeah. That's interesting. I hadn't really thought of that analogy. [00:10:37]

THERAPIST: Mm. Do you feel like you were particularly upset or unhappy this last several days versus other times? Or just you noting it in comparison to today when you feel better?

CLIENT: I mean definitely noting it in comparison to today. (pause) I think over the last several weeks I'll go through a few days where I feel reasonably okay. And then a few days where I'm hurt or angry or something in that spectrum. And so it wasn't particularly unusual in that scale. I feel like part of it is as Tanya gets better that this question of futility or something like it becomes bigger. [00:11:47]

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: Just, I mean both the immediacy of the crisis is gone, and so there's like we don't have to be in the crisis mode where I just handle the things. Which I'm actually really good at doing for the most part. I mean you've seen me. (laughs) I'm also not really good in some ways. But I come here and deal with it.

And, at any rate, as the crisis mode is gone it's sort of like I have the feelings of the experience to deal with. And also as she gets better, there's just this question of, if you can be okay now, where were you?

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: Why couldn't you be okay through the same path but skip the part where you almost kill yourself? And there's a part of me that knows that's not fair because there's a real sense in which the hospitalizations and potentially the ECT, although it's less clear, are all a part of time passing. [00:13:02]

And her doing therapy and her working to come to grips with what she needs to come to grips with, whatever exactly that is. But there's still that question. (pause) Why can it be okay now? And why couldn't it be okay before? Which I think is in a lot of ways what you were talking about is uselessness or something.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: At least the way I see it, that it's like (pause) we've done all this stuff, but it's not really clear that anything I did mattered other than she's still alive so that she could do this thing now. But essentially she's just gotten better. (sigh) [00:14:09]

THERAPIST: Mm. (pause) And so that in some way, at least before (ph), is there a feeling that she's failed you, failed herself and failed you? (pause)

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. (pause) And I think it's failed me in a way that I can't really understand. [00:15:23]

THERAPIST: Mm hm. (pause)

CLIENT: You know, you made a comparison a couple of weeks ago to infidelity and loss of trust there. I still think it was a good and interesting analogy. But I could actually deal with the infidelity more easily. It's not like that's entirely gone, it doesn't hurt at all, but like it was never as bad in some ways.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: Like it never hurt as much. And I think part of that is I could always understand how it happened. It just it made sense in a way that this doesn't make sense. (pause) You know I understand what infatuation or falling in love is like. I don't understand what wanting to kill yourself is like. It doesn't make any sense to me. [00:16:38]

I don't know that I want to understand it. And that becomes more of a problem, right? Because (laughs) for me often compassion comes through understanding. So there's also just sympathy for someone else's pain, but like really understanding where they're coming from and why helps me to -

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: relate or something like that. I don't want to understand why she wanted to kill herself.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: I can't see why anyone would really want to (sigh) at least experientially understand it.

THERAPIST: Mm. I'm not sure if I'm detouring us or not with this. But how do you understand the infidelity? (pause) [00:17:38]

CLIENT: (pause) (sigh) I think by extrapolation more than anything else. But like I have fallen in love before. I have been infatuated with people before. And certainly during Tanya and I's relationship I have found other people attractive. And so it's sort of like I can see how it would start in some sense. And it doesn't seem like where it got to is so radically different that I can't more or less understand.

It's still like a breach of trust that is not a part of who I am. But I also have this sense of like I hold to commitments more firmly than many people. Tanya does also, but still it just like, I don't like, I don't know. Extrapolation I think is the answer. [00:18:43]

THERAPIST: Hm.

CLIENT: But not far. Does that make sense?

THERAPIST: So I see what you mean by understanding.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: (inaudible)

CLIENT: I think I'm equivocating some.

THERAPIST: Are you? I actually didn't think you were equivocating.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: But how do you think you're equivocating?

CLIENT: I think I'm I'm thinking being a little fussy with "understand." I think I'm sort of moving a little bit between like "understand by direct experience," and "understand by extrapolation from experience." And I think I really want to mean the latter more than the former.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But I think they're somehow related for me. And there's some sense in which I just either can't or don't want to extrapolate to where Tanya has been. (pause) [00:20:02]

I'm sorry. I've let you lead us through some interesting places. We're a little bit off the narrative I was telling.

THERAPIST: I know. So please let's get back on.

CLIENT: Okay. We don't have to. If you have more.

THERAPIST: No. No.

CLIENT: I'm interested.

THERAPIST: No. I had some thoughts but I realize we were doing that. I realized that I was potentially detouring.

CLIENT: Okay. I mean, I don't mind the detour. I just, when we're detouring I'm not steering the direction anymore and so (pause) Which I don't mind. Like that's not it's out of my control and I'm upset. It's a like I'm not going to start talking about the next thing because I'm interested in where you're taking this.

THERAPIST: Mm. I wasn't thinking about taking it anywhere in particular at first. I was more just thinking, because I actually don't think we talked that much about what sense you made of her infidelity, emotional, however, whatever. Infidelity seems like a good just sort of broad way of describing, you know, couching (ph) it. [00:21:04]

I don't think we ever talked about that. I mean I sort of felt like I learned what happened, but not the meaning it had for you as much.

CLIENT: Hm.

THERAPIST: So when you were making that comparison between understand one and not understanding the other, I thought, "Well, I actually don't know how you understood that." (laughs)

CLIENT: Okay. Do you have a better sense of that now?

THERAPIST: No, actually.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: And then my mind went to just thinking about what questions you do and don't ask. Like the questions about last week. Like, "Why are we going to your brothers graduation if he flunked out and that's why he's not graduating. Is that a celebration?" (laughs)

CLIENT: (laughs)

THERAPIST: You know like there's just certain questions that are not asked. Because like I I'm jumping around a lot.

CLIENT: That's okay.

THERAPIST: So you can let me know if this is less helpful, but I'm just having a lot of thoughts. Like what you're saying is you can understand Tanya's infidelity in the context of having feelings about other women, other people in general, and so you can see why. But it's not quite the same as having an emotional affair with someone just before you're about to get married. [00:22:08]

CLIENT: We were already married.

THERAPIST: Were you already married?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I wasn't sure if it was right before the wedding or it was right after the wedding.

CLIENT: So her feelings started to develop while she was at William & Mary. A sort of, you know, a crush on an academic authority figure with whom you're working closely. That all makes like just good sense to me. It's really kind of who Tanya is in a lot of ways, to like fall in love easily and to like authority figures.

So there was no problem with her having some feelings for him. It started like after we were married I think, or maybe right before we were married. So she's longer his student directly.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But she was working on editing a (inaudible at 00:22:51) that he was, like she was copyediting it and he was collecting it.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: And so somewhere in there he told her that he had feelings for her and she said that she had feelings for him, and it developed from there.

THERAPIST: I see. So for some reason I got the timeline slightly off.

CLIENT: I'm not sure that the timeline matters too much.

THERAPIST: Well, you were married.

CLIENT: Sorry?

THERAPIST: You were married.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, yeah. (pause) So, I forget what the original question was now. What were we -

THERAPIST: Yeah. Well I was just thinking about what it means to understand. Like I was sort of just outlining your thought process about how you think about understanding.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: It's adjusting, I guess, in a sense that there's a lot that I don't understand about how you understood the that.

CLIENT: (laughs)

THERAPIST: And not necessarily having feeling for someone else. You were saying since you understand that you understood her situation or what happened. I was saying they're not quite synonymous. [00:24:08]

CLIENT: No that's fair. There's a (pause) No, that's fair. I think there is still a piece of it that I really don't understand of just like how she could, (pause) how she could think it was okay to continue that relationship in that way once they had confessed feelings for each other. To continue to exchange any sort of correspondence on that subject. Like, yeah.

So I guess I understand that more in the general category of making mistakes than in So I feel like I can understand the emotions part of it. I can understand the people make mistakes part of it, even if I don't get like, "How could you do that?" part. And so I can get close enough, I think. Or something like that. Or close enough for me to deal with it. [00:25:26]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: I think that's more correct.

THERAPIST: I see. So how you're thinking about it is less in terms of what her motivations were and more in terms of making mistakes, realizing that you've done There are different kinds of explanations. (long pause) [00:27:04]

CLIENT: Yeah, there really are. (pause) I mean there's a sense in which I understand her motivations in terms of she wanted to be married to me, but she also wanted to be in a relationship with her professor. And (pause), you know, phrasing it in that way makes it seem in some ways more directly relevant to the current problems where I see the issue as being one of like failing to resolve competing needs and wants, or wants or something like that. In a way that I don't know that I had recognized. [00:28:28]

(long pause)

And I guess I can, in general, understand the idea of wanting more than one thing at once that is mutually incompatible. Does that make sense? Like I can understand that. And so I can I don't know. I guess I feel like the place that I put her feeling is in failing to resolve the competing desires and responsibilities. (pause) [00:30:13]

And it's just hard to construct a narrative where I can like understand that and can't exactly understand what has just happened. When in a sense it can be extracted to failing to resolve competing desires and responsibilities.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: So I'm not sure whether that means that the explanation isn't correct, or whether I just have inconsistent positions. (pause) I don't know.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. I was thinking, and this is not to psychoanalyze Tanya at all. It's to understand well not really "not at all," but mostly not. (laughs) But to understand the meaning you make of her and you of yourself. I mean, I think that's one of the things that we're doing together is trying to make meaning of what is otherwise a chaotic and seemingly meaningless experience. [00:31:17]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: In the context of, you know, with your wife whom you, you know, hope to have a future with.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: I did think about the issue of responsibility. And again, this is really armchair psychology. But given the -

CLIENT: What do you mean by "armchair psychology?"

THERAPIST: Well meaning that you're sort of doing it like about something, you know, "Well I think that," you know, I don't know, you know, "Robert Downey Jr., really this is what's going on for him."

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: And, you know. (laughs) That's sort of what I think about as armchair. You're kind of just making hypotheses about things you don't, people you don't obviously know, or not, whatever. Obviously, I've met Tanya. But -

CLIENT: Well, when my advisor speculates about other people's biomechanics, I feel like it carries a little more weight than when my mother does.

THERAPIST: Yeah. I guess. I have to actually look up the definition of "armchair psychology."

CLIENT: Sorry. (laughs)

THERAPIST: No, that's okay.

CLIENT: Digression.

THERAPIST: No, not at all. I was thinking about, you know, the context of the affair, the timing of it. Maybe there was something about just the responsibility of being a wife that felt overwhelming and it was her way of sort of retreating or being fearful or something. I don't know. But there's something about responsibility that she finds just incredibly overwhelming. And it's so interesting given who you are and your relationship to responsibility. [00:32:41]

CLIENT: You know, it's not that I never find responsibility overwhelming.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: It's just that I have, I think I have a higher bar than she does.

THERAPIST: I wasn't contrasting it in that way.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: I think you have different You certainly have different relationships. That you have the polar opposites, I wouldn't necessarily say that, per se.

CLIENT: Okay. Yeah, that's a really interesting suggestion. (pause) The months planning the wedding were really horrible. She was finishing up her master's degree and also applying to graduate school. Itself kind of a demoralizing process in a lot of ways, and particularly in her field where I think at three hundred applicants and accept three people. [00:33:38]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: So that's sort of a just, you know, rough. (sigh) And we didn't necessarily make it easy on ourselves in part through not having a lot of money, and instead of trying to, you know, balance in some sense the needs of us and of our families. And we made up as the needs of our families, because I think there was a lot of that going on. (pause)

Yeah, so Tanya was a wreck the week before the wedding. And (pause) yeah, I don't know how much of that related to her own like fears about marriage. Her parents' marriage not having been a happy one. And having, in a sense, ended catastrophically for her because her mother left her when she was eight, in a sense. [00:34:54]

And so (long pause) certainly as an armchair explanation, I think it's a really good one. You know, it's hard to say whether it's really true.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But it rings fairly true.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) It's less helpful in some sense because I don't (pause) I don't know quite what the analogous piece of our current situation would be. [00:36:16]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Not that there has to be one. Just it would've been really tidy if there had been. Or if -

THERAPIST: Well, I'm not sure if this is analogous per se, but you do wonder whether she abdicated her responsibility to herself in her depression.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And this question of how responsible should she be to you and should she be and have been to herself is something that weighs on you.

CLIENT: Yeah. That is true. It's a place that perhaps some reality would be helpful. So if you have thoughts there that, I guess I would appreciate it. If you don't want to weigh in, that's okay too.

THERAPIST: Mm. I'm happy to if I have thoughts about it. Reality about?

CLIENT: In terms of like if you think there's a clear answer to how much responsibility someone bears for that sort of issue, then that is helpful. Does that make sense? [00:37:16]

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: Like I feel like you may have a professional judgment on the question, and I trust you and your professional judgment. So if you have one, I would really like to hear it.

THERAPIST: Well, I really feel that's almost more of a moral question than it is a psychological one. It's only a psychological one to the extent to which someone has the capacity to bear it.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: That's more Whether one should or not feels very much like a moral question. Whether one has the capacity to is somewhat of a more psychological question, of that makes sense.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: The thing that bothered you, that it bothers you, which I understand and can especially relate to this in terms of responsibility or sort of how bad things got, is was she motivated to try? (laughs) Even if she was horribly affected (ph), was she motivated to try? And I think that you don't feel she was or certainly not enough. And the piece of responsibility that I think irks you. [00:38:27]

CLIENT: Hm. (pause) Yeah, I think that's probably right. Using the, "How does that ring?" test. So this is something that like she felt at some times. Like she was trying everything possible. You know, she tried whole bunch of different medications. She was doing a lot of therapy. These things continue to not work in some sense.

And so (pause) And so we would always come back to some crisis point. It would always come back to some crisis point of one kind or another. Not always suicidality, but often suicidality. (pause) [00:39:56]

You know, we've talked about what someone can do and can't do. And we've talked about pulling an airplane.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: Really vivid image. And you might remember that I responded that, "Well if I get together enough people it would move the airplane. And isn't that moving the airplane?" I feel like I don't know to what extent it is fair to say, "The airplane has to move. Figure out how to move it."

But I feel like that's what needs to happen in sort of the circumstances Tanya was in. And there's some way in which I don't think she was willing to do that in a non-local sense. In a sort of step back and solve the problem sense. (pause) So it's sort of like, yeah, she was willing to make small changes that were easy in some way. [00:41:17]

Like changing medications really sucks and it's hard, but in some sense it's easy to go to the doctor and she gives you a different medication. You take it and you do the tapering thing and it looks hard and it feels hard, but it's not dealing with any larger problem in some ways.

Unless, in fact, the larger problem is chemical, which then gets into like (pause) Then gets into theories of mind that I'm not sure that we have, we as a human community, have actual complete answers to. So it's easy to I think it gets easy to say that you're doing enough at that point because there's not a clear answer.

But in some other way, like there is a clear answer. If she's continuing to want to kill herself or self-injure very often, something is not good. [00:42:29]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that's probably right. But maybe you can see from the direction, the running in all directions my explanation took, I don't know whether that's a fair thing to be upset about or not. It's like to what extent It's not true that she was not motivated to try at all.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: And so if she was unable to solve the problem one way or the other, does that mean that she wasn't motivated enough? (pause) Certainly my experience with most problems is that they have solutions if you work hard enough. Not all, but most. And so then at what point am I applying some, you know, really unfair criterion to a really hard time in her life. (pause) [00:44:05]

THERAPIST: Well there's fairness and then there's your feelings.

CLIENT: (sigh)

THERAPIST: And they may overlap and they may not overlap. As I think is true with most people. (pause) I guess all feelings are fair. Expectations may be realistic or unrealistic depending on the situation.

CLIENT: (laughs)

THERAPIST: Whatever feelings you have about that seem fair game at the very least. (pause)

CLIENT: Fair enough. Yeah, we talked some about fencing and sort of coaching friends fencing on the strip. And how I can sort of inspire them to do what they really want to do but don't feel able to do at the time. And you suggested, by analogy in some sense, that Tanya didn't want to be doing okay. [00:45:16]

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: This was some months ago.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Okay. We've talked a lot. It's okay if you don't remember everything. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: I know I don't.

THERAPIST: You were talking about coaching and sort of making the analogy of coaching him and coaching Tanya.

CLIENT: Yeah. That's right. And sort of like one of the things that frustrated me most is when I feel like Tanya is intractable in some ways. So it's like Sean was very tractable in the sense that like I could find words that helped.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: There are many times when Tanya is just utterly intractable. There's nothing I can do to buoy her mood at all.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: And so it's definitely at times like those that I feel like there's some sense in which she's not even trying. And that's not accurate. (laughs) In some sense the low bar level, she didn't kill herself so she was trying. [00:46:27]

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But -

THERAPIST: We're going to [I want to let you know.] (ph)

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: We're going to need to end today. But I'll see you next week.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Take care.

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