TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Sorry to keep you waiting.
CLIENT: It's not a problem. So last time you sort of described me as brooding, which I which was a very funny moment for me. [00:03:17.03] It's interesting, too. It was interesting to sit here and sort of say yeah, that seems accurate. I guess I don't really like that but I don't have any objection to that as a descripter. That's interesting. So that's been kind of an interesting thing since then. Guess we also talked about or you sort of suggested this other way of interpreting things that have gone on. Here's this thing that we kind of did that was a united thing and also a way of interacting with the world, Tanya and I. And but then she went too far. [00:04:07.15] So I kind of tied into the brooding and tied into you also described it as like being too serious in some sense. Or maybe that wasn't exactly what you said, but it was (pause) yeah, the idea of it being about taking things very seriously kind of tied it to that description. [inaudible] some of that idea. I thought it was very interesting, sort of an approach that we hadn't looked at it from in a while, if we have ever. I don't think we've really done that. (pause) It's in some ways a description that was particularly striking because while Tanya was at William & Mary, she didn't take the career aspect of it seriously at all, so she sort of fairly often would say that she was there to learn and to have fun. And it was a it was a good and fun experience for her. [00:05:37.16] But towards the end of that she started applying to PhD programs and taking all of that more seriously and recognizing the career things, and then got to Brown and things led too far. But it seemed like there was something interesting, this idea of taking it too seriously like. [00:06:05.05] That's not that articulate but (pause) And I guess it's interesting because it's something I'm trying to find, a balance point between two ends. One end is like taking everything very, very seriously, but the world is very depressing at that point. If everything that happens is incredibly serious, then [inaudible] things happen also. So if you and then at the other end, if you take nothing at all seriously, a lot of bad things are still happening and nothing's being done about that. [00:07:07.01] So it seems there is very clearly somewhere in the middle that is not either of those ends. But it's a tough place to find I guess. I don't know. (pause) I guess it's been a very strange week since I last saw you. [00:09:04.29]
THERAPIST: Strange how?
CLIENT: It has seemed very, very long, but not in a bad way. It just seems like a very long time since I last saw you. (pause) I guess when I saw you when I came in last week I was very down, but a [inaudible] combination of talking about it with you and you suggesting this other interpretive framework which is kind of interesting and to think about, and also this comment about brooding. I was in quite a good mood leaving here. (pause) Now I can't remember whether it was Tuesday or I guess it might have been Wednesday. [00:10:17.22] One of those two days I found out that a grant proposal I had written a couple of years ago got funded. Did I tell you that?
THERAPIST: No, no.
CLIENT: Okay, then it might have been Wednesday afternoon that I found that out. So that was...
THERAPIST: That's awesome.
CLIENT: Yeah, it's very exciting. So there's kind of that. So it was a good day in a lot of ways. Like it started very poorly but got better as the day went on. So my advisor had finally written a letter of recommendation for me so I could start applying for jobs. But that is a demoralizing process in some ways, particularly when as I told you I felt like there was this whole piece of my dissertation that was falling apart. It was hard to be in the right place to say yes, I am the person you want to hire to do these things when I feel like this. [00:11:07.01] I don't have a handle on the things that I want to claim that I have done, in some sense. So I spent some time working at that on, I guess, Thursday. And that was frustrating and hard, and I guess I was sad and anxious during that process. But I got through it. I mean I still haven't finished writing the applications but I've been able to get back to having a handle on moving forward with the dissertation, so that's good. [00:12:01.17] I went to a conference on Saturday, just it's been a strange week. I guess yesterday morning [inaudible] I went back to [inaudible] in July and made up some samples, and I sent them to a collaborator in Alabama. And he's been fixing his instrument ever since but he finally, a couple of weeks ago, got around to got it fixed and got to running the samples that I sent him. So he sent me the first specter [ph] yesterday and it came out very well. So that thing we had hoped we might see, we do see, plus a couple of other interesting features. So it's kind of been just a positive week in a lot of ways. That's really nice. I guess we've talked before about maybe I'm not always in touch with how frustrated or upset I am, which is so again I feel like this space of like trying to find the right balance between like I'm pretty happy about these things. [00:13:26.07] I'm probably still frustrated about other things, but (pause) Yeah, I guess I'm just not I don't have a clear sense what the right way to balance the conflicting feelings is, in some sense. [00:14:14.22] Because I feel less frustrated but I don't know how accurate that really is.
THERAPIST: How accurate the assessment that you...
CLIENT: Yeah. [inaudible] have a question like what does a feeling mean. That's a strange question to yeah, it seems clear that one can have moments of being very happy surrounded by being sad. [00:15:05.11] So that's sort of like you have a mood of sadness overlaid with a single happy moment or something. I don't know if that's really an accurate description or not though.
THERAPIST: Did it feel different to feel good?
CLIENT: (pause) Yeah, not like I've never felt good before, but yeah, it was nice to feel good. [00:16:01.04] And also, I guess, in some sense to feel okay, to feel okay or something, to feel good. (pause) Yeah, I think that maybe that gets at why I found the brooding comment helpful, is sort of to say that things in my life are very frustrating, but I don't have to feel frustrated all the time just because of that. So I think that was I think I kind of got at that somehow, for me, without like tackling that directly or something. [00:17:09.22] So I have felt pretty good. And then a lot of other good things have also happened, so I've continued to feel pretty good while many of the circumstances of my life have not really changed. I like it. (pause)
THERAPIST: Does it give you hope that you could feel better?
CLIENT: (pause) Yeah, I think so. [00:18:18.26] Yeah, and also that's somehow related to that, that things will be better. So we've talked like that things will be better and their outcomes and all of that, but sometimes that's a hopeful thing and sometimes that's a descriptive thing but not that hopeful. (pause) Which is I mean you described it as the map of I will be okay in one of these two ways, so that's a very specific definition. But sometimes the will be okay part is less clear or something. [00:19:06.20]
THERAPIST: Less clear that you could be okay?
CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. Or (pause) Or the meaning of it gets lost, I think. Because like I still know that that I know in a words sense that I will be okay but I don't feel that to be true or something. (pause)
THERAPIST: So then this week you saw what it might feel or you felt what it might feel like to feel better or okay rather than it just sort of being a concept. [00:20:15.04]
CLIENT: Yeah, I think that's right. That's not how I was interpreting it while it was happening, but yeah, I think that's right. It's nice. (pause) I think I'm very anxious that one of us is going to say something and I'm going to lose that sense.
THERAPIST: One of us meaning you or me?
CLIENT: Yeah, [inaudible] feel very tense or anxious. [00:21:03.29] Trying to figure out why that is. It's the I think that's close to the reason.
THERAPIST: And how would that happen?
CLIENT: I don't know. Maybe we would talk and we would find that I'm really unhappy. Maybe you would say I really don't think you should look at things that way; that doesn't sound healthy. Not sure how else. (pause) I feel like we're both sort of sitting here talking about being happy and neither of us looks very happy. [00:22:38.03]
THERAPIST: Really. Do I not look happy?
CLIENT: No.
THERAPIST: And do you feel you don't look happy either?
CLIENT: Yeah, but I don't I can't see myself, but yeah. It's almost like I'm sitting here brooding about being happy. And I'm using description. (pause) I think another part of the your description of this thing, of the problem as being this thing that had been sort of self-indulgent or useful or whatever for both of us but went too far for Tanya. [00:24:35.15] It's interesting because it resonates with a view that I have of analytic thinking as has sort of a duel use or a powerful but potentially dangerous. We've talked some about feeling [inaudible] but that comes from particular for me that comes from a particular application of deep analytic thought, like continuing to push and ask what does that mean, what does that mean, or how is that helpful. [00:25:24.00] But this is that particular trait is one of the things that makes me very good at research because that's necessary to do it really well. So it's good when applied to the right problems but not all problems are the right problems or that was...
THERAPIST: Well maybe I'm not understanding your sort of how you're framing it, but it seems like there's a difference between of sort of using a question continuing to question and continuing to inquire as a way of research method and sort of this sort of ending up in well nothing means anything. [00:26:17.18] I don't think that that's the inevitable outcome of a paradigm of continuing to question. (pause)
CLIENT: I'm yeah, that's probably right. [00:27:09.13] I'm not sure it's inevitable and I'm not sure it's the correct outcome, but it's certainly an outcome that a lot of people come to. Sort of a whole philosophical discipline that results, I feel like, in some sense from that process, and then somehow deciding to write about that. I'm not sure how one makes that jump, but (pause) Yeah, I think life probably does have meaning and that but I'm not sure that that's easy to (pause) I'm not sure that's easy to argue from some particular first principle unless you start with life does have meaning. [00:29:13.28] Then it's defensible. But then that's okay. In some sense that's just to say that (pause) deductive reasoning always starts from some set of axioms. And there isn't really we don't have a logic that really works between axioms at all, or that doesn't exist. So in math what they do is they say well, this axiom we're going to hold onto because if we take it we get all of these other proofs that we really want and sort of intuitively agree with. See I guess maybe a way of rephrasing it is, if you don't question the axioms given that questioning the axioms isn't going to get you anywhere, then yeah, that's not the [inaudible] I think it is it might be an inevitable result of trying to decide between axioms without another like metaxiom or something like or a super axiom. Like if you don't start somewhere, with some assumption, then I think you do inevitably end up in the abyss. [00:31:01.16]
THERAPIST: Any axiom can be a metaxiom in a sense.
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. But you'd have to have one, I think, in order to get anywhere. (pause) To use the mathematical thing again, because I don't particularly care about them and I'm not an expert in it, they it's my understanding that several of the axioms, there's no good reason to believe that they're true, such that someone sitting down to question them would reject them. But they do give quite useful theorems. And so they're why they're not universally accepted. [00:32:02.16] So that's I feel like there's a relevant analogy there maybe. There's not any particularly sound argumentation of the idea that life has meaning, but you sure get a lot better things if you accept that axiom then if you don't.
THERAPIST: Well if you [inaudible] that life doesn't have meaning you end up where Tanya is. And even for her that's not entirely true because she's alive and she wants to be alive for you, and there are parts of her that want to be alive too. [00:33:07.29]
CLIENT: Yeah, I think now there are parts of her that just want to be alive. That's really good. Yeah. I think that it might not be inevitable that you end up where Tanya is, if you accept that life doesn't have meaning. I think there's kind of two life has no meaning.
THERAPIST: Yeah, what are your thoughts about that?
CLIENT: I sort of I suggested to you that this needle as a thing was actually very helpful to me. It wasn't because I was feeling suicidal or something like that, and you didn't seem to take it that way, although I don't know. It was more that (pause) in some sense for me it was a way of rejecting the idea of finding an ideal meaning like, an ideal purpose for my life, which is obviously I mean obviously it seems to be a very difficult problem at best. [00:34:21.01] And you've sort of suggested that the looking for an ideal thing in everything is maybe a good way to be very frustrated a lot of the time. It's also it's a defense against the analytic. It is itself an axiom against the analytic problem of if I can question meaning in everything, well it doesn't have any meaning. But if you just accept that none of them have any meaning, you can stop questioning everything. You could say well, it's not defensible at some higher level but...
THERAPIST: I was thinking it also can lead to like hedonism. If nothing has meaning, everything should just be more fun. So [inaudible] suicide. [00:35:11.28]
CLIENT: Fair enough, yeah, yeah. (pause) I feel like many of the pieces of things we've been talking about are sort of tied up at this point. So I don't have a clear direction to move in.
THERAPIST: Is that my cue? [00:36:01.16]
CLIENT: Oh, it's a sometimes you respond to a cue like that with another suggestion and sometimes you respond to it with waiting for me to say something. It's not a cue that you have to do something; it's a statement of where I was. Because I know sometimes you wait for me to be done talking so you can...
THERAPIST: Do you feel like you and Tanya are in a better place this week, or in general? (pause)
CLIENT: Yes. I don't think we're in a good place necessarily, but yeah, a little better I think. I think the couple's counseling is a helpful thing. It's been helpful I think both in terms of airing out frustrations and in making it possible to talk about them. [00:37:08.11] And I think that's a good thing. And then so we've it sounds like we've done that on the larger scale problems, and so now it's sort of the into the task of well how do we move forward, where do we go from here. And that's good. (pause) Yeah, so I think it's a things are a little better. [00:38:10.04] I think I'm also not I'm also working to not let my frustration in that relationship damage or prevent me from having other fulfilling things in my life. And other fulfilling things in my life have been cooperating this week by it being a relatively good week professionally. So that's (pause)
THERAPIST: What are you thinking about now? [00:39:33.23]
CLIENT: I was thinking about ultimately I don't feel like that much has changed, but in some ways I'm more okay with it this week. And in some ways I'm yeah, so I guess I was just sort of reviewing what where things are. I don't really know where our relationship's going to end up. Tanya and I haven't really talked about that I don't really know where our relationship is going to end up as you and I talked about it, I think, a couple of weeks ago now. [00:40:14.03] We still haven't so that's not changed. [inaudible] sort of review things and we're kind of the same. So I said okay, it's not...
THERAPIST: Do you feel that Tanya has doubts too?
CLIENT: I don't know.
THERAPIST: Really.
CLIENT: Yeah. Which maybe is a way of saying no, I don't feel that she has doubts. But I just don't actually don't know whether she has doubts. And I mentioned that she had articulated a lack of doubt but (pause) I don't really question the truth of that when she said it in the sense of like I'm sure she felt it to be true then. [00:41:16.06] I don't know whether that was representative of her general worldview or whether that was a particular moment.
THERAPIST: You seem brighter today. [00:42:03.13] (pause)
CLIENT: Cool. That's nice. Thanks. I guess one of the things that I thought about in context of the brooding comment was the impact of my mood on other people around me. It's one thing to like have a negative mood for a while and it's another thing to always have a negative mood when you interact with other people. Certainly our relationship is a little bit different than my other relationships in that not everyone else in my life is working with me to help me interpret my experiences in the same way. So...
THERAPIST: I should hope not. [00:43:06.25] That would be weird.
CLIENT: (laughing) But yes, so it's not that I think I have an obligation, or a desire, if not an obligation, to bring things other than sorrow to my other relationships, if that makes sense. (pause) But then a consequence of feeling a little better is that I have a less clear sense of like what should we talk about. [00:44:14.10] (pause) [inaudible] sort of thinking about the nature of my relationship with other people I guess. So my thesis adviser might have strong emotions but he doesn't really bring them to any situation most of the time. [00:45:45.17] So he's a person who seems to not have very strong emotions as a result. I think that might also actually be true. He does not seem to be easily offended or anything. But I guess I was thinking that I perhaps bring my emotions to the my interaction with other people more than that. That's not all that particularly profound but I was thinking about that. I feel like you're waiting for me to say something and I really am not sure what the thing I am to be saying is or something.
THERAPIST: I'm certainly not waiting for you to say something specific [inaudible]. But something is different for you this week. (pause) [inaudible] we're going to need to stop.
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: I'll see you next week, okay. Take care.
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