TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in. Thank you very much.

CLIENT: How are you today?

THERAPIST: Good, thank you. [New/You?] opening.

CLIENT: I’m trying to. [pause] So I’m supposed to defend my dissertation in three weeks, which means I have to send to my committee in two weeks. It’s not really written yet, so that’s a little bit stressful. I’m going to have a lot more to say about that than “that’s a little bit stressful,” or a lot stressful. So that’s going on. [long pause] Yeah. So on Monday during our couples counseling session Dr. Jannis suggested… he suggested that Tanya has two voices going on inside of her, one that’s like telling the other, “You have to hold it together, you have to do this,” or whatever, comply with whatever, and the other that doesn’t want to, and presumably feels sad. This seemed to really resonate with her as a description. That was fine, it’s not particularly striking. He then suggested that for her I get associated with the other voice. [pause]

And then he said that he felt like one of the things that we might continue to work on in the couples therapy is separating the identity, because I’m really not that voice. Although sometimes we say the same thing, but that’s just a feature of, I don’t know, something. Anyway, so I thought this was a very striking description really. I’m not sure that I’ve done any justice in explaining it, but I’m sort of assuming that it’s not conceptually that far outside of what you’re familiar with or something, so you’re getting pieces that I may not be conveying properly.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [3:30]

CLIENT: I think I find this striking because it rationalizes a lot of observations very well, in the sense that… [pause] …in a sense that the worse Tanya gets, the more she seems to think she has to be okay in front of me all the time. Which I think is just really not helpful, either for our relationship or for her personally. But that serves as a very simple explanation of that feature, because if I’m associated with this voice telling her she has to hold it together, then obviously she has to hold it together finally. It also makes a lot of sense in the context of her past relationships, with her first boyfriend, with her father, both of whom were—you know, we’ve talked about me being angry sometimes, but I don’t really plot on the scale of their anger management issues. [5:00]

[long pause] But I guess I don’t have—I’ve felt before that there was a sense in which she was not seeing me as me, but as one of them in some sense. But if all of the people in that specific role map onto this person who is probably heavily associated with her father, because presumably it comes direct but has existed since she was young when that trouble was going on, then that makes a lot more sense also in some ways. Not that I… It makes more sense. So… [pause] So there was a sense in which it was really good, a clear picture and perhaps a useful model for moving forward. There’s a sense in which it’s sad, because I almost don’t exist. [pause]

We’ve talked before that I felt like I couldn’t really help, I could only hurt her. And while that’s not really true, the feeling was true, and the feeling was real, and I think it’s related to this feature in some way. Anything I say that’s negative she’ll take and use against herself, but anything I say that’s positive will just kind of fall off. So… [pause] I think I’ve stumbled through everything that I had wanted to say on that, so I’m curious what you think about that. [7:40]

THERAPIST: Well, I like the—I don’t know if it’s an analogy or metaphor, I’m not quite sure, but it seems like it fits very well, and I’m not at all surprised that Tanya sort of feels that you’re, you know, one particular voice, [it’s not?]—in some ways she both wants to rebel against it but feels she needs it. And so I can see like that makes sense. I’m kind of curious about your—sort of the scary part of feeling like you don’t exist.

CLIENT: I mean, I think I said sad, so I guess scary is—

THERAPIST: Oh sorry. I misheard, that was my—

CLIENT: Okay. I wasn’t sure if you were taking that from what I was saying—

THERAPIST: No. No, no, no, I guess I misheard. I’m not sure why I heard it that way. Interesting.

CLIENT: Yes. Sad is how I feel about it, because I feel like I’m not—I feel like I don’t really exist for her in some sense. And so then it’s like I don’t matter, or particular features of me are not… [long pause] Maybe another way of describing it is like I feel like on that description my role is to continue being who I am and wait for her to work out the difference between me and this other voice. [pause] I don’t like waiting a lot.

THERAPIST: Hm. [10:00]

CLIENT: I guess I would describe myself as patient. And I’ve sort of been struggling with that idea for a little while. And I think maybe I’m not exactly patient if I have to sit and wait. I think I—

THERAPIST: You’re patient if it’s not challenged? If your patience isn’t challenged?

CLIENT: I can sit and do tedious things for a really long time, which I think is a form of patience. But it’s an active patience, not a passive one.

THERAPIST: You’re not waiting for somebody else—I mean, you’re not—it’s within your control even if it’s [overtalk].

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s probably right.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I’m not quite clear why you feel you need to wait. Or what are you—

CLIENT: Well, what do I do? Like I don’t… Sorry, maybe I should let you finish forming your question.

THERAPIST: No, no, no, no, no. What—

CLIENT: I was starting to respond, then I wasn’t really sure what the question was, so I—

THERAPIST: Yeah, no, no. No, no, no, tell me—yeah.

CLIENT: But I lost—I’m afraid I lost track of this question once I— I don’t know that I have a… What else do I do in my— Obviously I can leave. Or I can wait for her to come to see me as someone else, the person I actually am. But like in between those two lines what—

THERAPIST: Well, it assumes that, you know, what Dr. Jannis was saying, you know, if true, that’s not the totality of her experience of you.

CLIENT: Sure. Sure.

THERAPIST: It’s not like she can’t see you at all outside of this experience. [11:45]

CLIENT: Right. [very long pause, to 3 ½ minutes to 15:15] Yeah, that’s probably right. [long pause]

THERAPIST: What were you thinking about? [15:50]

CLIENT: I just—the—trying to, um… trying to articulate or figure out what exactly I mean there by—yeah, absolutely her experience of me extends beyond her association with me with this voice. But… [pause] Yeah, and one sort of thing to do is to continue to do the things that are not associated with that voice, because that is the path forward for us in some sense. You know, being nice to her. [pause] I guess I just have this feeling that there’s a lack of robustness to that relationship. It’s fairly tightly delimited at that point. I don’t know. [pause]

Yeah, as if the extent to which she can see me in actuality, or some approximation thereof, it depends on how well she is at the time. So the worse she is the less I exist to her. Or the more I look like this other voice. But I’m—you know, I guess… [pause] I guess at some point that’s okay. We’re never fully known by another person, that’s just… you can only be yourself, so you can’t really know someone else a hundred percent or else you would be both of you or something. So that’s fine at some point. But then at that some point… I don’t know where okay is in between the two ends. [19:00]

THERAPIST: Well, [it does sound normalized?]. I mean, couples project onto each other all the time. [pause] I mean, how we experience other people is a composite with—you know, about who they really are and how we see them based on our own experience and our perception and our needs and our own fears. [long pause]

CLIENT: Yeah, I don’t know. I hear you, and yes, that makes sense. And I don’t really have any objection to that, that’s fine. But… [pause] I find something unsettling about this that I don’t seem to be able to articulate usefully. So… [pause] Maybe I’m upset because the description says something about the nature of where our relationship is that I don’t like. And maybe I’m mixing that up with some concern about the future here. [pause]

I think one of Tanya’s concerns is meeting my needs in some larger sense, but… Which should be a good thing. But because she, (a) puts a lot of pressure on herself to do it, and (b) essentially makes up what those are, she makes them up and then fails at them, and so they were never needs of mine in the first place, while needs that I actually have are just being ignored entirely. So I think this is maybe what I’m trying to get at in the “I don’t exist.”

THERAPIST: So it’s not just, you know, this piece, it’s part of a larger fabric of feeling not seen.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. That she’s relating to an idea of you and not you. [23:00]

CLIENT: Yeah. But again, I acknowledge that that’s all we ever do in some sense, like with other people. We relate with our idea of the other person, which is hopefully based on them actually, but…

THERAPIST: I absolutely agree.

CLIENT: Okay. I wanted you to—

THERAPIST: No, I absolutely agree. But there are sort of degrees of that.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: And one person—when the other person feels recognized you can assume that there’s enough relating to that person that the other piece is not the predominant piece.

CLIENT: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

THERAPIST: And maybe a slightly different way of saying this is it speaks to your fear that Tanya’s sort of in her own world dealing with her own difficulties and doesn’t have enough space for you in the relationship. [24:00]

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that’s right.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. [pause] I feel better, thanks. So do you want to talk about my parents? [laughter]

THERAPIST: Enough about what you want to talk about, let’s talk about what I want to talk about?

CLIENT: Well, I actually don’t—we haven’t actually covered all the things that I’ve really felt like I wanted to talk about, and I know you do want to talk about that, so. And I feel like the longer we don’t talk about it the more it’s going to seem like there’s something really important to talk about. I’m not really convinced that’s the case, so. [25:00]

THERAPIST: That was certainly on your mind—my bringing up that was certainly on your mind.

CLIENT: Oh yeah.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. It stuck out for you.

CLIENT: As a percentage of the time I’m here you won’t seek that much. I think we probably spend about a third of it in silence. So yeah, when you do speak I hear it.

THERAPIST: Mm hm, mm hm.

CLIENT: On the other hand—

THERAPIST: So go for it.

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s not going to work very well, because I have no idea what to say at all here.

THERAPIST: [inaudible]

CLIENT: You know, you sort of expressed a general curiosity. But I think I assume that you have some specific curiosities, and if I start talking I have no idea where I’m going to.

THERAPIST: Maybe. [And everything else? 25:54] in terms of the specific curiosities, like yes and no.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Because I’m curious, but then I don’t presume I know it’s there. I’m just very aware—you know, but I’ll work with people, I usually know about their relationships with their parents in some respect, their experience of it. I mean, I certainly know a lot of events that happened in your family.

CLIENT: Mm hm.

THERAPIST: I feel like I know less about your experience of them, if that makes sense.

CLIENT: [chuckles] Yeah. [pause]

THERAPIST: I don’t know much about who they are to you. [pause]

CLIENT: That’s really interesting. Like in some ways I don’t know who they are to me now. Because I’ve been away at school for a long time. [long pause] So I was thinking about you saying that you knew a lot about events but not a lot about experience, and I feel like there’s something particular to how I talk about things that that reflects. I was just thinking about that a little bit.

THERAPIST: I don’t feel that way across the board with you at all.

CLIENT: Oh, okay. [28:15]

THERAPIST: No, no, no, not at all. I feel I very much know a lot about your experience. So not in general—

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: —in particular with your parents. Like I know a lot of the things that happened in your family to your family. So I was referring to that very specifically.

CLIENT: Okay. Because I feel like often I’ll come in and I will present a set of facts and that you’ll ask questions about experience, and that’s sort of how that—those conversations go.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. But I feel like I learn a lot.

CLIENT: Okay. All right. Yeah… Yeah, I guess if you could prompt me I would find it very helpful too. I just am not really sure where to start talking, if that makes sense.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Okay. That’s such a good question, and I don’t know how to start prompting. I feel anything I choose is somewhat arbitrary. For some reason I have a particular curiosity about your relationship with your mom.

CLIENT: Okay. So my father worked, my mother raised us, the five of us. And… I really love my mother, and she loves me. And… [pause] Yeah, I think in a general sense I want, and still want very much for her to be happy. So I think that I often like worked to make that happen, because it was clear that the things that I did might have an impact on that. [pause] Yeah, I guess I find this challenging. I’m not quite sure why.

THERAPIST: Why that in particular, making her happy, do you know? [30:15]

CLIENT: That’s a good question. Why did I say that in particular, or why did I feel it?

THERAPIST: Yeah, just what about—not necessarily why you said that, but what about wanting to make her happy in particular do you think is important?

CLIENT: Um… Yeah, I don’t know. I think it sort of… [pause] I think that was a sort of causal thing for a lot of my behavior as a child. So like I wanted to be good because I didn’t want to upset my mother. In some sense, or something like that, I don’t know. I don’t know that that’s a complete description, but.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Do you feel like she was easily upset?

CLIENT: [pause] Yeah, I don’t know. Sort of in retrospect I think she’s more easily upset than a lot of people I know. But I didn’t really feel like that at the time, I felt like it was fairly clear what would upset her and what wouldn’t, and like… that it wasn’t… yeah, um… [pause] It was sort of like she was upset when we did things that were bad or wrong and she was not upset when we did things that were good, and like that the easy thing didn’t really… I guess when I hear you say that I sort of hear the question like was it easy to upset her sort of arbitrarily or without cause or something. I’m not sure that’s the question you’re actually asking, but.

THERAPIST: No. I mean, you know, a lot of kids don’t think about it, their parents seem fine, they don’t really think about whether they’re going to upset them or not. So that’s why I was sort of asking did she—

CLIENT: I see.

THERAPIST: Not, you know, did she not seem fine some of the time, which is why that became—that went on your radar. [33:00]

CLIENT: I see. No, no, not particularly. Like I just… [pause] Yeah, and maybe we’re speaking to some feature of me that’s been around for a long time and like I… Yeah, I don’t know which order it goes in, right. Did I want to do the right thing, whatever that was exactly, to please my mother, or… Yeah, or did I want to do the right thing and then my mother was like the—a signal for whether it was right or wrong in some sense, because… But I…

THERAPIST: Were there particular things that were right things and particular things that were wrong things?

CLIENT: Uh, yeah, I don’t have a—I don’t have a really… So there’s the—there’s this time, my mother had made a cake for some function. And my older sister really wanted some cake, and so she said, you know, “We should have some cake. We’ll just take a little bit out of one side of it and then turn that side to the wall.” [laughter] Because she’ll never notice. I think I must have been five at this point, and so my sister’s seven. So that’s clearly not—so. My mother yelled a little at that one.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But that one actually stands out particularly distinctly because she was really upset. And in that context I think she was taking the cake to some event, and made it, and just made it in time, and let it sit on the counter to cool. And then along came [unclear 34:54]. So yeah, that seemed clearly wrong in some sense, to make our scene at the time. Like, yeah, no, we shouldn’t have done that.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [35:00]

CLIENT: There’s one example at least.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [pause] That’s a very particular thing, your thinking about pleasing your mom. [pause] Do you feel like your siblings had that same sort of desire?

CLIENT: [pause] Well, I really didn’t want to upset my mother. I don’t know if that matches as the same thing. The other problem is that we’re talking like a fifteen-year time span here, and so I… I can say something, and then you ask a question that I can answer about ten years later, but I’m not sure that’s really the right—you know, the… But… [pause] Yeah, I think my mother has a very clear sense of right and wrong. But yeah, my mother has a very clear sense of right and wrong that kind of just covers everything, and that is a particular feature of her worldview. I think there’s a sense in which the ministry was a good thing because it gave a sort of justification for a set of things that were right and wrong and that was really helpful for her in some way.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: So guess all of us had more challenging teenage years as a result of this than childhood years I think. So when you asked did my siblings want to please my mother, I think more easily to the teenage years where like… they still didn’t want my mother to yell at them, but they wanted to do what they wanted to do. A lot more than I did. But even I, you know, sometimes wanted to do what I wanted to do. My mother had a very clear sense of right and wrong, but it was also not always exactly right. So like… Or not always exactly logically consistent maybe. But… [38:00]

THERAPIST: Do you feel like she wanted to understand when you did do something that was quote-unquote “wrong”? Like was she curious about that?

CLIENT: Interesting. That’s a really interesting question. You know, I think… I think she would ask a question like, “What were you thinking?” but I don’t know that she really wanted to understand. Yeah. [pause] But now I guess we’re talking about a specific like… I am talking about a sort of specific feature of my mother’s anger in response to infractions. In a sort of more general sense I think my mother works very hard and is very interested in understanding who we are and what we do. So… [pause] I guess I wanted to say that.

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: But not when she’s angry now, not so much. But that doesn’t last long, it’s not like…

THERAPIST: Did you experience her sense of right and wrong as rigid at all?

CLIENT: More so as I have grown up, yeah. And sort of as some of my views have changed I see hers as more rigid.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [40:00]

CLIENT: But I don’t think that experience really started until I was a teenager. I think sometimes in that time period I had the sense that my mother’s justifications of right and wrong maybe didn’t match. Or like the things she would say, “This is clearly not right,” would not match onto like something that was actually wrong. So like I don’t think she really liked any of the people my siblings and I dated, the first people that we dated, so my first girlfriend, or either of my sisters’ first boyfriends. So I don’t know whether that was particular to who those people were. I think there was some of that. I think there’s some anxiety about that phase of our lives on her part. And so I think that sometimes the what is right and wrong got more arbitrary in that context. Like she was seeing it through not liking those things already, so.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. So what is right and wrong turned to be very sort of idiosyncratic.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. A little more so than I felt like it had been as a child.

THERAPIST: Do you know why she had a hard time with that period of your life?

CLIENT: No, I don’t really know. I mean, I can speculate, but I don’t really have a—it’s not like we’ve talked a whole lot about it. I think there’s a sense in which we were starting to make decisions on our own, and she felt some moral obligation for us to make the right decisions, but also couldn’t make the decisions for us anymore entirely. And so I think that tension was probably a large part of her being uncomfortable with our place in the world.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [42:15]

CLIENT: Do you actually find all this interesting? It’s okay to say no.

THERAPIST: What I was going to say is that’s a question of skepticism. Do you actually find this interesting? [laughs]

CLIENT: [laughs] Yes.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Is it confusing why I asked?

CLIENT: [pause] No, not particularly. I think it’s confusing for me for you to be interested, but maybe not, I don’t know.

THERAPIST: For me to be interested in this particular thing?

CLIENT: Yes, but I think more as a general feature, yeah. Yeah, I think there’s a sense in which I am very curious about why you do what you do. So I think that was reflected in that question. It wasn’t just skepticism, although I did say it fairly skeptically, so sorry.

THERAPIST: No need to apologize, I was sort of commenting on… [44:00]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I just feel like I’m sitting here talking about things that happened in my childhood that—or young adulthood, and I don’t know that I—I don’t know that I attach a whole lot of weight to them. And so—

THERAPIST: Yeah, that’s what I found interesting. I mean, I don’t feel like it’s only sort of traumatic events that shape who we are, it’s the whole experience, you know.

CLIENT: [laughs]

THERAPIST: Just like you know Tanya’s experience shapes a lot of the sort of difficulties, but not just difficulties, just who she is.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: And so it’s not me—traumatic events sort of punctuate certain, you know, childhood—sort of shapes a childhood experience, but that’s not the only feature of it, so.

CLIENT: Okay. Okay.

THERAPIST: Yeah. So I’m going on sort of very general I—you know, yeah, just wanting to know more about your childhood experiences, and thinking about how that fits into who you are today, and how it maybe can better form how I think about what you’re looking for and what you need.

CLIENT: And so when I answer these questions about things that happened many years ago, to what extent are you filtering it through the experiences you know I’ve had recently as you hear it?

THERAPIST: I don’t know, you know. [laughter] I don’t have any specific—I’m listening, there’s nothing—it’s not [egenic? 45:32] in that particular way I’m listening, I’m seeing what sort of strikes me or doesn’t strike me and how I can make better meaning or not.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: So not necessarily in any particular way. I’m not looking for anything specific, I’m just sort of listening and thinking about sort of putting things together on maybe a deeper level, higher level, however you say it. But on that note we actually are out of time for today. I will see— So wait, are you here next week?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: You are here.

CLIENT: Are you?

THERAPIST: I’m here next week.

CLIENT: Okay. [46:00]

THERAPIST: I didn’t keep track of—as well as I usually do here. So I thought you said—yeah, I’m here Wednesday morning for sure.

CLIENT: Okay. All right.

THERAPIST: So I will see you next week then.

CLIENT: All right.

THERAPIST: Okay, take care.

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