TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Good morning.

CLIENT: I was afraid I was going to start on a (unclear). Anyway, so I guess I feel like we’re doing two different things at the same time and that’s good because we need to be doing it. But one is like dealing with the emotions that I have and one is like figuring out how to change the circumstances that cause the emotions in some sense. So I have a lot of negative emotions from what has happened but also from ongoing things. And so it’s a matter of like dealing with that and then altering circumstances so life gets better. Does that sound about right?

THERAPIST: Um hmm.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Well I would say that the latter, dealing with things so life gets better is also about feeling less helpless which is also an emotion.

(Pause): [00:01:24 00:01:30]

THERAPIST: That you could actually do something so that life could get better is itself, would be hampered by feeling like you can’t do anything.

CLIENT: (Laughs) Yeah. Yeah, and that’s where it gets complicated because they’re sort of separate tasks and sometimes they’re really not. So that’s one way they’re not, I don’t think.

(Pause): [00:01:56 00:02:05]

CLIENT: Right. So you had suggested that I can’t actually know what anything I say is going to do to Tanya emotionally. Which I think is right, but I think there are variable bounds on it like when she’s been – so Thursday evenings after she’s been working for three days is probably not the best time to talk about anything of any importance with her somewhat. Does that make sense? I can’t pick a time that is not useful. Or I can pick a time in which I actually know nothing like –

(Pause): [00:02:49 00:03:10]

CLIENT: Some of the prior information that I have is better than others. She’s been working at this job for about three months now. Every Thursday, she’s pretty drained. She’s been working pretty hard. So it’s fairly good prior information there in terms of how she’ll respond to any particular conversation. Say Saturday when things are reset more or less. I don’t think I have particularly good prior information to warrant how she was doing four months ago. So I mean, it matters but it’s not exactly the – it’s not that informative to how she’ll respond to any given situation which I think is what you were trying to drive home.

THERAPIST: In the particulars yes, and I think I was also making a larger statement about just the inevitable uncertainty of life.

(Pause): [00:04:28 00:05:04]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I struggle with both parts in independent ways. I don’t particularly like uncertainty except in certain circumstances, so –

(Pause): [00:05:15 00:07:05]

CLIENT: Do you think that anyone really likes uncertainty?

THERAPIST: Some people are more okay with it than others. Some people find it exciting because they associate it with possibility.

(Pause): [00:07:17 00:07:26]

CLIENT: Yeah, but then we’re playing something more like word association I think.

THERAPIST: Maybe. How so?

CLIENT: In the sense that you’d suggested that in order for someone to feel safe they need to have some predictability but –

THERAPIST: That’s a good point, right? So it depends on –

CLIENT: I think it’s a contextual thing. I don’t know that there’s that many people that are really excited about not knowing where their next meal is going to come from. I guess there’s possibility embedded in that. And maybe there are people who really embrace that.

THERAPIST: Actually, I think that that’s true. I mean, but in order to embrace that you have to know that there is going to be a next meal. You just don’t know where it’s coming from.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: And actually some people find that very exciting. They travel, they hike the Appalachian Trail. I don’t if it’s exciting. You don’t know, you don’t know. There has to be some – there has to be certainty that there will be a next meal.

CLIENT: Right. And besides hiking the Appalachian Trail there’s – you have done that in a very specific – hopefully you’ve done that with some knowledge of what that entails.

THERAPIST: But you ask that – what did you have in mind when you asked – ‘does anyone like uncertainty’?

(Pause): [00:08:39 00:08:50]

CLIENT: Well, to start with – clearly I don’t. I was trying to work out how that fits into the range of experiences people have of the world, or something. And I was coming to the conclusion that while it’s – you know, the extent to which I dislike it maybe (unclear) or it may not be but it’s not like – I’m certainly not alone in not liking uncertainty.

THERAPIST: Yeah, and you actually sort of forced the issue of specificity about this. So yeah, so I guess what I would then say is it depends on what you’re uncertain about. If you’re uncertain about your safety then no one – if you’re uncertain about your survival – that’s untenable for anybody.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: So it really depends on what you’re uncertain about.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: And if the uncertainty is laced with fear – that’s a problem.

(Pause): [00:09:53 00:10:08]

CLIENT: Yeah, I think I probably have uncertainty laced with fear. But I don’t know that I recognize fear as fear. So – it makes that more complicated.

(Pause): [00:10:16 00:10:24]

THERAPIST: Well, your uncertainty with Tanya and the issues that you have with Tanya, to me seem very laced with fear.

CLIENT: Okay. That’s helpful.

(Pause): [00:10:33 00:10:38]

CLIENT: That doesn’t particularly surprise me. It makes sense.

(Pause): [00:10:42 00:11:17]

CLIENT: One of the things I’ve liked about being married, early in my marriage was the certainty that came with it. There wasn’t a need to keep making a Plan B. You know, I’m going to go to graduate school and if this relationship falls apart, then where will I be sort of plans. To what extent is it reasonable to make plans that are super-entangled and etc., etc.? Initially, marriage removed that need to keep making another plan. That’s gone.

THERAPIST: I’m not sure I follow that. What other plan did that take away the need for

CLIENT: There was not a question in my mind of whether the relationship would end or not. So it took away the need to plan for that possibility or think it a possibility.

(Pause): [00:12:28 00:12:35]

CLIENT: That’s not to say I thought of us as immortal but you know some security in that relationship was enhanced by the state of being married.

(Pause): [00:12:46 00:12:57]

THERAPIST: But then not (unclear) after dismantled to some extent when you found out what Tanya was doing.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:13:06 00:13:15]

THERAPIST: I mean the security must have been challenged on some level.

(Pause): [00:13:17 00:13:48]

CLIENT: Yeah, but that took a long time to unfold.

(Pause): [00:13:48 00:13:58]

CLIENT: So she’d had like a crush on this professor for a while but that’s just a thing. I didn’t find that threatening or bothersome at all.

(Pause): [00:14:10 00:14:35]

CLIENT: That unfolded over a couple of years ultimately and that was something like I can’t separate the years from each other at this point. There’s only been three of them but – it’s one of those things where the crush turned into – they both expressed that they had feelings for each other but that wasn’t going to change either of their marriages so – and I knew that as this was going on because Tanya was talking to me so in some sense that didn’t shake my security in anything.

THERAPIST: So she told you that they disclosed this to each other?

CLIENT: Yeah. Maybe that should have bothered me.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But I already knew she had feelings for him sort of like –

THERAPIST: Why didn’t any of that bother you? Why didn’t that bother you?

CLIENT: I don’t know how to begin answering that question. Why would it bother me?

THERAPIST: You’re coming from a very different perspective.

CLIENT: Right. (Chuckle) Right. So I don’t know –

THERAPIST: Well, I guess it would bother you if you felt that your wife shouldn’t harbor feelings for somebody else and so if you don’t feel that way then it wouldn’t bother you.

CLIENT: Right. I have a very hard time finding what set of feelings she should have exclusively for me. I think there are some and maybe certainly – I don’t know. You might not agree with this but I feel there is more to a relationship than the feelings involved. There are the actions one takes also, that matter a whole lot.

THERAPIST: Well, and disclosing to another person your feelings is a huge – I actually absolutely agree with that. It’s the import you give. I mean feelings matter. If you have no love for your spouse and an intense love for somebody else that probably matters.

CLIENT: (Laughs).

THERAPIST: Absolutely. I mean, people have all sorts of feelings. People develop crushes and whatnot in the course of all sorts of experiences in life, so it’s the extent to which you give import to those feelings and then what you do with them.

CLIENT: Right. Right. So I think the disclosure should have bothered me in retrospect but I – there’s no new information about her feelings involved in that. Does that make sense? And I guess I did not recognize it as an action at the time that was probably problematic. She clearly loves her family and that shouldn’t threaten me at all. So like loving someone else – she loves her friends, so – yeah.

(Pause): [00:18:21 00:18:56]

CLIENT: The places that I think it got quite problematic is that eventually she would get to the place that she would talk to him about issues, professional, personal, whatever, instead of talking to me. So in a sense he had displaced me in her like hierarchy of loyalties or trust or something, I meant noncomitantly wanted to develop a physical relationship further. To my knowledge they didn’t, but that’s sort of – you know, I may very well know all the facts now and I may not and I may never and that’s just how the world is.

(Pause): [00:20:08 00:20:38]

CLIENT: So there’s at least nine months, maybe a year or more before I knew that that was going on that it was – does that make sense? So it didn’t immediately shake my security in that relationship. Someway even knowing that it had and going on the way it was, didn’t really shake my security. I was upset about it but –

(Pause): [00:21:17 00:21:47]

CLIENT: I think I felt like she had been struggling with this issue and trying to stay on the right side – whatever that means exactly in this context, and not been able to find, exactly, where right was.

(Pause): [00:22:03 – 00:22:28

CLIENT: And in some context I have a great deal of patience and empathy for human failure. In others, I really seem not to, but –

THERAPIST: I was thinking that in some ways you have extremely high expectations and in others you have really low expectations.

CLIENT: It’s weird.

THERAPIST: Do you feel that way about yourself?

(Pause): [00:22:51 00:23:32]

CLIENT: Maybe. I don’t always feel like my high expectations are high. I think that’s the – yeah. So maybe that’s an important thing to sort out there. I’m just not quite sure how to do that.

(Pause): [00:23:53 00:24:03]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I expect people to fulfill whatever responsibilities they have and again, in the context of whatever legitimate responsibilities they have. How legitimacy is conferred can be complicated. But I don’t expect perfection from anyone in doing that. Just like in a given instance I expect someone to do the thing they’re supposed to do and give a person who generally has done or does what they’re supposed to do will have a great deal of patience for failing to do it occasionally, I think.

(Pause): [00:25:00 00:25:12]

CLIENT: Given a person who habitually fails to do, to engage in their responsibilities in some way, I have very little patience even when they do finally fulfill their obligations.

(Pause): [00:25:23 00:25:39]

CLIENT: (Laughing) You’re giving me that face that says you’re not quite sure that’s right or something.

THERAPIST: No, actually what I was thinking about was your sort of thinking about Tanya’s feelings toward this professor and just the impact it had on you and how you were thinking about them and that’s sort of – I went back to that for a moment.

CLIENT: Okay. (Cross talk).

THERAPIST: I just tried to mull that over – incorporate that somewhat. That’s probably why I had that look.

CLIENT: Okay. Sometimes you give that to me when I’m saying something really crazy.

THERAPIST: Really? Do I think you say things crazy a lot?

CLIENT: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: That fact that I will look for that implies that I have that feeling that you’re saying something crazy.

CLIENT: Yeah, clearly it’s also a look that you get when you’re thinking about something hard so that I’m not sure that that’s – sometimes I’ll talk for a while like when I was talking about that thing. Then you gave me a similar look but I think that perhaps you were thinking hard about, what are you doing?’ or something like that. I don’t know what’s going on inside, so I guess, or something like that.

THERAPIST: I don’t really think that anything you think about is crazy.

CLIENT: Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I’m not particularly –

(Pause): [00:27:18 00:27:31]

CLIENT: It’s not a word I particularly attach a lot of meaning to, so it’s not like I’m really worried that I’m going to you and you’re going to decide I’m really crazy and that’s going to have some impact or something so – it might have been a bad word to use.

(Pause): [00:27:47 00:28:10]

THERAPIST: Maybe, but maybe there’s sort of an underlying question given everything that’s going on as – what is crazy?

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s a real question. It’s one that Tanya found herself asking while she was in one of the hospitals. At the time she came down on the side of well if you’re on this side of the locked door, you count. I guess I have amusing associations with that question, but I don’t really know what the answer is. But yeah, it really is an important – like what does it mean to be whatever that word means? Does that absolve us of responsibilities? Does that have – does that alter what can be expected of us in some way? How does one get to be there?

THERAPIST: I also ask about the issue of contact. Like to me the implication that someone’s crazy, you can no longer make contact with them. They’ve lost it, you know. There’s no contact that can be made anymore. They’re off in their own world or whatever the sort of colloquialisms are.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: There can’t be a shared understanding.

(Pause): 00:29:53 [00:30:24]

CLIENT: You know, it’s all very interesting. I don’t think I was meaning to attach any (unclear) meaning to that word or that exchange, but this has been very interesting.

THERAPIST: Well, you may not have. I took it and ran with it.

CLIENT: That’s great.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Well –

CLIENT: So I really like the field of literary criticism but I have a really complicated relationship with it because people writing literary criticism are near that – the themes they’re pulling out are actually like in the text, instead of creating a narrative out of what they found in the text. I think the distinction is very important.

THERAPIST: I agree. That’s a huge distinction in my field as well – it’s written about well.

CLIENT: Oh, okay. That makes sense.

THERAPIST: For obvious reasons it has more importance than a book.

CLIENT: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Whether you’re actually excavating something that – you know, finding something in another person that’s there and it’s there regardless of who goes looking for it –

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: You know, you (unclear) versus something a meaning that you create together that has meaning and import and truth but not the truth – a truth that is useful.

CLIENT: Right.

(Pause): [00:31:36 00:31:51]

CLIENT: That’s really interesting.

THERAPIST: I think so, too.

CLIENT: (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:31:52 00:32:07]

THERAPIST: Or really, the therapist’s truth and not the patient’s which is a catastrophe.

CLIENT: Humph.

(Pause): [00:32:13 00:32:37]

CLIENT: It seems like it would be easy to do.

THERAPIST: How so?

CLIENT: It seems like a – I guess I was thinking particularly – I think Tanya had some interesting therapists as a child. Like she had a therapist from when she was like eight, around the time that her mother left. Particularly in that relationship there is a real power imbalance, so – one of the problems that I see in the academic community is that professors are perceived by students as having much more power than they actually have. Professors know this but don’t really do much to change it, other than to say no we really don’t have much power. But like when a person in power says, no we really can’t do that, it’s not that convincing. So I could see a circumstance in which it would be easy to – particularly with a child like accidentally construct a narrative around – that didn’t fit them or something.

(Pause): [00:33:54 00:34:25]

CLIENT: Which is very interesting. I don’t really have the feeling that you’re doing that to me or anything.

(Pause): [00:34:32 00:35:37]

CLIENT: So Tanya and I did talk about some of these issues over the weekend. That was a good thing.

(Pause): [00:35:41 00:35:54]

CLIENT: I mean it does have – it is hard for her and it does have negative consequences but –

(Pause): [00:35:57 00:36:09]

THERAPIST: I’m not sure if it is hard for her or what is “it”.

CLIENT: Talking about me having negative emotions about our relationship is hard for her or me having negative emotions is hard for her. Particularly because I feel like she has abandoned some of her responsibilities – that’s not a – And you know under the best of circumstances, that’s not an easy conversation to have when you’re the person being told that you’ve – that the other person thinks you have failed in some way. And obviously, these are not the best of circumstances,

(Pause): [00:36:54 00:37:18]

CLIENT: But I’m not sure there’s any alternative that doesn’t also have negative consequences for her. Not talking about it actually not good for either of us. It’s clearly not good for me and does not seem to be good for her either, so – that’s not really a good choice. I think that a fear that I have is that the negative consequences I have at the moment will be more than short term; that they will cross some line and long-term consequences will happen.

THERAPIST: Such as?

CLIENT: You know (Pause) – she’ll be distraught and kill herself, which could go all the way to the extreme end of things.

(Pause): [00:38:22 00:38:36]

CLIENT: I think that’s a fear of mine but I also think that it’s a fear because it’s not impossible. This is –

(Pause): [00:38:46 00:38:56]

CLIENT: I think it’s a possibility that I dramatically over-weigh and that I don’t think it’s that likely.

(Pause): [00:39:02 00:39:38]

CLIENT: So I don’t have much else to say (unclear) without having another thought coming –

(Pause): [00:39:46 00:40:04]

THERAPIST: What did you say to her that is specifically about this?

(Pause): [00:40:04 00:40:46]

CLIENT: One of the things that (unclear) is that it was not a short conversation, so I can’t really recount – and one of the things that stands out is – was I said that I felt like she had abandoned me in just about every way there was except obviously being dead, but – which was interesting because (laughs) her response was, “I’m sorry you feel that way. I feel like I have spent the last several years fighting as hard as I can not to abandon you.” Just –

(Pause): [00:41:23 [00:41:51]

CLIENT: People who play a lot of board games like my friend, Franco, make a distinction between strategy and tactics. Strategy is like an overall plan and tactics is the choice you make in any given game play mode. I think it’s a nice distinction, and maybe one that other people make also. It’s the context end of it. So I think in a tactical sense, what Tanya says is absolutely true.

(Pause): [00:42:17 00:42:27]

THERAPIST: Yes, that’s a very interesting distinction and I would also add that’s in part because she has a hard time with strategy. Period.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s right.

THERAPIST: Of having a larger plan and executing that and continuing to be held responsible to that, or holding herself responsible to it is extremely difficult.

CLIENT: And given the strategy of going to graduate school, like abandoning that strategy in light of it only leading to worse and worse tactical decisions was not a choice she could make, so there’s – yeah.

(Pause): [00:43:09 00:43:18]

THERAPIST: Was that comforting to hear?

(Pause): [00:43:20 00:43:39]

CLIENT: It’s comforting now with the rationalization that I’ve added this distinction to it. I think it’s fairly close to correct. I think it’s a good description of the situation. You did seem to ring relatively true. Yeah, which is comforting in some sense also, but – so yeah, it’s comforting in that sense because I feel like I can accept the truth of what she says. In that moment it was harder to accept the truth and then like, because I guess comforting in the sense that I could see the truth like it’s not like I forget the last several years she’s been there and struggled the whole time, but this last distinction is helpful to feel the truth of both things at the same time.

THERAPIST: We’re going to need to end on that note, okay?

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: I will see you next week.

CLIENT: Okay. Two weeks from now I think I’m out of town so I will –

THERAPIST: That’s the second week in –

CLIENT: September.

THERAPIST: September. Okay.

CLIENT: I will e-mail you to let you know (unclear).

THERAPIST: Thank you. That would be great. I’ll see you next week.

CLIENT: Okay.

END TRANSCRIPT