TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in.

CLIENT: Good morning.

THERAPIST: Good morning.

CLIENT: Thank you for seeing me again.

THERAPIST: Sure, my pleasure.

CLIENT: I stopped, we talked toward the end of last time a lot about my feelings about you and about therapy. Sigh, sigh. In talking about it, I expected it to be very anxious after leaving, I’ll talk more about it in a moment, but because of that, I feel like I’ve been avoiding that subject for a long time. [00:01:08]

In a lot of ways, so you sort of, so I guess you summarized why I feel this might be a problem, one of two ways. One, to talk more about that, but tried to explain why I’m here today as opposed to next week. As the argument might very well go, why don’t we just have a couple of sessions after we have a break to try to break that pattern, hopefully, of being hard, coming back. [00:01:59]

And so, at the end you sort of, I actually can’t remember what you said, and this is, I think, a particularly telling thing, because usually I can (inaudible at 00:02:13) what you say, particularly when it is important to me. I left not feeling anxious, and was not anxious for several hours, but I think there’s something about the level of anxiety I feel about the topic in general that left me unable to retain what you said. So I started to get anxious later in the day.

I think that is also exacerbated by somewhere around the same time I had finished one task and was moving on to writing applications for postdocs. In my field, you just send out an application to someone and see if they have a position. There are a few positions posted, but relatively few. I don’t know if that’s similar to your field or not. [00:03:09]

THERAPIST: Not so much, I don’t think.

CLIENT: So it’s a silly way of doing things, but it’s how we do it. As a result, though, there is never clear guidelines as to what to include in the application. General guidelines, but it’s not that helpful. The associated claim is always, well they’re getting multiple applications a day all the time so yours has to stand out. Well, it would be nice to have a, you know, some metric for what a good application looks like. So that is also anxiety-inducing, so I think that played into it some.

So that’s the large reason that we’re here today as opposed to waiting.

THERAPIST: So what do you think you’re feeling anxious about? [00:03:59]

CLIENT: [LONG SILENCE] It’s a, I spent a lot of time thinking about this while I was anxious. At some point, was anxious enough that it was difficult to do any work, so I really need to pay attention to this and handle it. [00:05:01]

So it, try to find the right like entry to explaining that, so sorry it’s taking a little bit. [LONG SILENCE] [00:06:01]

So I think, I think that it’s bottom-level, it mostly can be summarized, I was anxious that my feelings would drive you away, which is, which I think reflects a particular kind of lack of trust of, I don’t think that’s particularly about you. [00:06:57]

Probably, you can either quit then. So that was one thing. I think another thing is that I was anxious about my own feelings. I think those two things are related, so one of the, after sitting with it for awhile, I think that I, in a general sense, I have very strong emotions, just I don’t know whether they’re stronger or less strong than other people’s, I’m not sure that there’s a good metric for that anyway, but I have had the experience before of sort of expressing strong emotions and having people kind of be shocked in one way or another. Not necessarily like, I can’t actually think of any time that’s had a really large negative impact, just maybe you’re familiar with the sort of experience of someone expressing a strong emotion and someone else saying, “Tell us how you really feel.” [00:08:14]

Which I find one of the most frustrating responses to emotions, because it’s, I’ve seen it done in sort of a commiserating or supportive way, but usually it’s a, “Well, you should really keep your feelings to yourself,” when I hear that.

THERAPIST: Too much, that’s the implication.

CLIENT: Yeah. At least, that’s how I feel right now. So certainly with anger, I’ve spent a lot of time like controlling how I express it, or attempting to control how much of it I have, I think. I’ve talked a lot about that, for a long time now, about how I can like put it away and then it’s not really gone, I’m just not facing it because I don’t feel like someone else can handle it. [00:09:18]

Which I think has two pieces to it. One is I don’t want to hurt the other person, and the other is that part of the other person withdraw hurts me and I don’t want that either, sort of an offhand example is that there’s a rejection involved also. Here is how I feel and whoa, that’s not an acceptable way to feel or that’s too much or something. [00:10:05]

THERAPIST: So what about the feelings themselves make you anxious? Having them? The implications of them?

CLIENT: So I think there’s, I think there’s, having them makes me one kind of anxious and then talking about them another kind. I don’t know if they manifest any differently, but I think they are separate pieces. [00:11:08]

So I think last time, it’s actually a little bit fuzzy, particularly after, I think last time I said that I’m scared that I will fall in love with you. Why would that be a bad thing, which not at all a response that I anticipated, and then you sort of presented two ways and said that it might be a bad thing if it competed with my relationship with Tanya in some fashion. or if I think it was if you couldn’t handle it in some way. I think those are what you said, but I don’t have a very, you know, they sounded right at the time. [00:12:02]

So I thought a lot more about it, so I think there’s one thing. So I’m not in love with you, and I’m actually not afraid of that, I don’t think, at this point. [00:13:00]

So I think that I have been doing, with other emotions, the same thing I’ve been doing with anger. I think I love you. I know I love you, and I, from here those are different things, like loving and being in love are separate things. I think you’re wonderful, I think you’ve been kind and supportive and I think you’re intelligent and successful.

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: Thank you for hearing that and responding that way. But I think one piece of anxiety is I was scared of facing that myself, and scared of telling you. [00:14:07]

So we’ve talked some about why is that, and I have very strong feelings and I feel maybe they’re not appropriate, they won’t be received well or things like that. [00:15:03]

And then I think it’s also complicated by I am attracted to you. You’re beautiful, and I love you. I’m lonely, so those are like, that’s, I think those all, it makes sense, and I’m actually less scared of that, although I found myself a little bit anxious to say that also.

THERAPIST: Well, thank you.

CLIENT: I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody respond with “Thank you” to that. You’re welcome.

THERAPIST: Is that a surprising response?

CLIENT: I can also talk more loudly, if -

THERAPIST: No, no, that’s OK. It was loud enough, so it was— [00:16:01]

CLIENT: And so I think last time we got close enough to those subjects to inspire a great deal of anxiety. I really appreciate you actually coaxing it out of me last session. It was important to me that it get said then, so I could start trying, and whatever you said at the end was very helpful for awhile, so thank you for that also. So the anxiety is still there, or is more there, you know, there’s anxiety about saying, there’s anxiety about if I just suppress it then I have control over it in some way. [00:17:06]

But now you have control over what you do, and that’s actually a good thing, but it’s also a scary thing.

THERAPIST: How so?

CLIENT: Maybe you will find my feelings repulsive. I think, actually, the worst case for me would be if you found my feelings were repulsive, but also felt a sense of professionalism and said, “I will keep working with you and not tell you that I feel repulsive, or feel repulsed.”

THERAPIST: Sound pretty bad. It sounds like a bad case.

CLIENT: I feel like if you feel, felt repulsed and said, “I don’t want to see you any more, we can’t meet any more that that would be,” you know, that would hurt some, that would be hard, but I can deal with closure, things that end. I can have, for whatever reason, better tools to handle it, or feel it. [00:18:11]

THERAPIST: I can see why the first case is better than the second case.

CLIENT: Better than the second case? Or worse.

THERAPIST: The first case is better because at least there’s not a semblance of saying, “Goodbye,” versus sort of, I don’t know what I would describe the second case to be, kind of, extremely inauthentic encounter.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Seems yucky.

CLIENT: Yeah, but it also seems like, I think, I’m not saying I think it’s the correct choice, if that were the situation, but it’s a thing I could see a person doing. [00:19:11]

Mistakenly, perhaps, but I can see why one might do that for good reason, do it for a reason. Does that make sense?

THERAPIST: I guess the reasonable reason was I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings.

CLIENT: Yes, not that that’s yeah, again, that’s a correct choice, but—

THERAPIST: Well at least one way to think about it is your feelings about me mean something about you, and that we have the opportunity to talk about that. They don’t only mean something about you, but they certainly mean something about you.

CLIENT: Sure. [00:20:01]

[LONG SILENCE]

THERAPIST: And I think about, there are two other things, well one other thing that comes to mind that has two facets to it. [00:20:58]

One, is I absolutely believe that, you know, who I am as a person is sort of, you know, part of the feelings are coming from who I am as a person and who we are as, you know, who we interact with each other and how we get along in our relationship. I absolutely feel that to be true. I also feel to be true that there’s very much a structure of this whole setting that engenders what you’re feeling.

In general, particularly for you especially, I feel both are true. I wouldn’t, I don’t think it’s either or, but I think both are important. [00:22:01]

CLIENT: That makes sense, not in detail, like I don’t, yeah. So I think what I really need at this moment is reassurance. Are you OK? Are we OK? [00:22:52]

THERAPIST: Absolutely. I’m more than OK, because like this, I don’t know, like I feel this, like very good things are going to come out of this. Like I feel like I don’t know, I feel like this is, there are obviously, you know, a lot of limitations on the two of us as two people in the world, but there’s so much in terms of what it means about you and your growth and development and what you need in life that this is about.

And what you crave in your life and all the different ways we can think about how you can get it yourself. [00:23:57]

CLIENT: Thank you. [LONG SILENCE].

THERAPIST: And it certainly speaks to the way you, in which you crave and feel unfulfilled, at least to some extent, being taken care of and nurtured and cared for by someone you respect and are drawn to and look up to. [00:25:11]

[00:26:02]

CLIENT: My sort of initial response of, “Who are you talking about in my life?” Sort of a variety of relationships that that describes in one way or another. [00:26:59]

So I don’t want to leave this, but I do want to talk about other things that have happened this week, as if that wasn’t enough emotional thing. So I, Saturday morning, for reasons that I still can’t quite trace back, not that I’ve tried very hard, I started reading about the religious organization that I grew up in, which is not hard to do, there’s plenty about it online. And, you know, so I also had couples counseling this morning with Tanya, so I’ve been talking about this some already today. [00:28:00]

Also, over the weekend Tanya and I talked about it. So I think the important features there are, I’ve had this, I sort of described them as a cult, to you once before, and you were like, “Well why do you use that word?” And you were sort of asking whose word that was. It was mine. I think I told you then that I was using the word as a way of like distancing myself or because it was a thing they didn’t like. Well, reading about them again, they’re a cult, by any definition of the word, if there’s actually a definition of the word. [00:29:01]

So in the Christian community, a cult is like any Christian organization with non-orthodox views, it’s not a very helpful definition, because who’s orthodox. Most of them are cults, then. In a more general sense, it’s like a, I don’t know, do you know a lot about cults?

THERAPIST: Well it depends on what, yes and no. I mean, I don’t specifically study historically a lot of cults, no. I certainly have ideas but I guess it also depends.

CLIENT: But you do have like professional, a professional understanding of the—

THERAPIST: The dynamics of it? Yeah, somewhat.

CLIENT: Right. I guess I don’t—

THERAPIST: Yes, somewhat, yes.

CLIENT: If it’s most of those, so you know, not like that I have read psych theory all that, but there are a number of psychiatrists or ‘ologists, both that write at least some about it. [00:30:03]

Some of them posting things online for people who are leaving cults because it’s a traumatic experience for them. And so the sort of one view of it describes it as the bike model, so it’s several different forms of control that are exerted by the organization or a person, behavioral, now I’ve lost all of my thinking. Oh well. One of them is emotional, behavioral, but basically, it’s—there are a variety of forms of manipulation and I guess another way of describing it just is an emotionally abusive relationship in the same way anyone, other abusive relationship is, but it can also have a variety of other things.

THERAPIST: What made you decide that, did something appear online or did you sort of seek out?

CLIENT: Oh, I sought it out, yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, well is there something that brought it to mind this weekend in particular? [00:31:01]

CLIENT: No, or this is the thing that I started out by saying, I can’t trace it back, so I think I had told you some time ago that Dr. Jannis (sp?) talked about Tanya and I’s relationship as having lots of other people in the room, sort of suggesting that Tanya’s family background, if they’re present in our relationship and her abusive high school relationship is very present, and I think he suggested for me, this organization’s also present. That was fine, I don’t object to that in any particular way.

I think a couple weeks ago now I said something like I don’t think all of my trust issues come from Tanya. That was one of them I very intensely said. Yes, I agree with that statement. So I think that’s probably the reason, but I, but I can’t pick out what did I think at that moment that made me, I can’t remember. [00:32:04]

So anyway, so I think the important conclusion is definitely a cult. But that has a lot of implications, right? Yeah, that has a lot of implications. A few days before I had been reading about the graduate school, which is like, my conclusion there is that itself quite cult-like like this. A peramble (inaudible at 00:32:48) peramble of power structure to it that’s a very in versus out mentality to it, leaving is seen as like dangerous and horrible and (inaudible at 00:33:02) could happen. [00:33:03]

Particularly when you’re in, but once you’re out, if you survive the transition out process, many people have very fulfilling lives, and you’re just fine. So the other, sorry, the other really important thing about this cult so is left is, the thing that left when it was uncovered through two lawsuits that were filed in state court, or in a district court there that the president knew the organization had been forcing married women to sleep with because he was the man of God and they needed to serve his needs. So whether the allegations are entirely true, those are entirely true, though. Whether other allegations are entirely true, I don’t know, but there are allegations going back to the very beginning of the organization that was a common practice that forcible adultery, which is just rape. [00:33:03]

Was a part of the upper echelons of the movement always. Very strange, because it’s not a piece that I have, had any access to personally. It doesn’t seem like my parents had any access to it, even though they’ve lived at the headquarters of the organization for a few years. That was important, also, and so the pieces that I’m telling you are important, in probably a ton of ways.

But in this particular application that I’m talking about, the similarities between Tanya’s experience and mine, Tanya experienced a form of sort of that abusive power in her relationship with her former adviser. They’re not colleagues, he was her adviser. It’s (inaudible at 00:35:02) [00:35:02]

Said a lot about her, that’s good, but where it went actually says a whole lot bad about him, and that’s almost all that it says, and you know, if people leave cults, suicide is a very common thing. If the mind control aspect of cults is just horrifically damaging, not for everyone, and there are many good things involved also, that’s why they have any appeal at all, but so, that’s all had gone on.

Oh, and in talking somewhere through all of that, I can’t remember what I said to Tanya, but something to the effect of, “What do you want?” And she said she wanted me to forgive her. She didn’t feel like that was the thing she could ask for, but for me that was a very powerful thing. [00:36:06]

Because I told you last week that I felt like that was something she’d ever asked for, and every time she said, “Sorry,” I felt like she was saying, “Sorry, but,” without any agency to it. But forgiveness like, has a particular acknowledgment of guilt in some way. It’s a, so that then jumbled this, also.

THERAPIST: Well that was, one of the ways I was listening to it, I’m also just very curious about it, and it’s interesting that you thought about it this weekend, but it sort of addressed the second part of what I said, in terms of the extent to which your feelings grow out of the structure of this relationship, irrespective of who I am as a person.

CLIENT: Yeah, and, and I heard that that’s where I think I said I agree in detail. I don’t have a clear hold on that. [00:37:04]

So if you have more to say, or—I’m really interested.

THERAPIST: Yeah, well I’m someone who meets people at often their most vulnerable time, and there’s definitely a power structure to it. Power structure’s—it’s a complicated power structure. It’s not only one direction. I mean, you’re, you know, to put it very crudely, my employer in some respects, right? So there’s—it’s not, so there’s some, you know, the power structure’s complicated. But there’s certainly the idea that you’re entrusting yourself, you know, in my care. And that I’m, and that there are ways in which it’s easy, easier certainly, to bracket my needs and who I am, to be attentive to you in ways that are not structures of other relationships to help bring that out. [00:38:00]

And so that you see, I think the real me, but you see certain sides of me, you know, and maybe not all of me, although it sort of begs the question what relationship does anyone see all of someone, that’s interesting itself, and something I think about a lot, but it’s a situation that is could be certainly designed to abuse someone’s trust.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, which I don’t feel like you do, and I’m very grateful for. But yeah, that has a common feature to people who either, it’s not quite clear to me, people who go to cults and keep going to cults because they’re still missing the same thing, or because they’ve been trained to be looking for that same thing. But it’s sort of an observation that it’s fairly common to go from one to another. [00:39:04]

And I think it’s, I mean, I don’t know how you feel about most power structures in the world, but I have negative feelings about many of them.

THERAPIST: You do, because you see the dark side of them, which there are. I mean, the dark side is not to be ignored. The dark side is there when people in powers of authority are there to either treat the people over whom they have power as objects, or to actively exploit them, which are somewhat different but you either just treat them as nonhumans or actively abuse them.

CLIENT: Yes, right, no that makes sense.

THERAPIST: And they probably relate. They even have both happen at the same time.

CLIENT: Sure, sure.

THERAPIST: But you’re very aware of how, and you know, the reality is that with most power structures, there’s good and bad. In a cult, the bad far outweighs the good. In a lot of power structures you could probably find features of deeply problematic, you know, aspects, like you know, in academic settings where you could certainly see those pieces of maybe more, hopefully the entire structure isn’t designed that way. [00:40:18]

I probably see more about certain structures, not cult, a somewhat more balanced than you do. But—

CLIENT: I probably see cults as more balanced than you do.

THERAPIST: Maybe.

CLIENT: Because I’m also very aware of the good that is in them, particularly far away from the center.

THERAPIST: Well, certainly the power of feeling connected with whom you’re, especially if you’re away from the center and not as susceptible to the gravitational pull of the center, that on the edges, I imagine, it’s an extremely bonding experience.

CLIENT: That’s right, that’s right.

THERAPIST: And communal, and very—

CLIENT: They’re all people who share your values, right?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: That’s always the way. [00:41:00]

A positive feeling. Whether that’s always a good thing, I’m not sure, but—

THERAPIST: Absolutely. So yeah, I actually hope that maybe it is true, but I hope that it’s not true that they would, I hope that I would see the good in cults too.

CLIENT: Well you certainly saw it just fine when we talked about it, so I think I have more experience of it than you do.

THERAPIST: That’s probably true.

CLIENT: So that’s almost silly to say that, but—

THERAPIST: It happens to be true. But you think very deeply about, you know, the sort of the corrupting influences of power and then, but you know, the other side, somewhere, you know, by definition, someone who’s caring for you and taking care of you and ministering to you in a way that you’re not to them is a position of power, by definition.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And there’s something deeply appealing about that for all of us. [00:42:00]

CLIENT: Do you have that in your life? Is that too personal?

THERAPIST: That, and when you say that?

CLIENT: People speaking to your needs, ministering to you, taking care of you?

THERAPIST: I feel taken care of by the people in my life. I feel like it probably less, it feels less of a power imbalance than I think this particular situation, this structure of our relationships is.

CLIENT: Sure.

THERAPIST: If that—

CLIENT: No, it does. I would hope so, I think.

THERAPIST: Well I wanted to, you know, be that person, you know.

CLIENT: Good. I’m fine.

THERAPIST: I think it would be hard to do this work if I didn’t feel that way.

CLIENT: That makes sense.

THERAPIST: What were you, in asking that, do you have thoughts about like when you’re curious about it, you just wanted to know? [00:43:00]

CLIENT: Yeah, I care about you and I’m curious about you, and those overlap very heavily at that point, I think. Oh, so I started talking about drifting from cult to cult because I feel like there’s a not too, it’s not too bad an analogy to describe the U.S. military as a cult, it certainly treats people both as objects and you could argue, abuses them. It depends, and so I think it’s particularly interesting that my younger brother sort of sees that structure as fulfilling now. He wasn’t really a part of the cult, but he’s still like, (inaudible at 00:44:01) by my parents. [00:44:01]

It’s interesting to talk about my mother who sees a whole lot of good about the organizations that they’re a part of, just the Junior version of the ROTC, so—

THERAPIST: Is he still in high school or is he in college?

CLIENT: He’s in college. So is my other sibling.

THERAPIST: And your youngest is in the ROTC in college.

CLIENT: That’s right.

THERAPIST: I actually don’t think I even knew that.

CLIENT: Yeah, it’s the Junior ROTC. And so you can see how I might be particularly, OK—

THERAPIST: Wow, that’s—

CLIENT: Has a different impact on you when I put it at that age then, OK.

THERAPIST: Wow. I actually didn’t know that existed.

CLIENT: A little disturbing, isn’t it?

THERAPIST: Wow. Has that been, is that like a, like that’s not new, they’ve had the Junior ROTC program?

CLIENT: It’s existed for, I don’t know how long, actually, I think for a long time. [00:45:07]

It’s new at the high school I went to. It started about, I think I was there while it started, but no one did it. But now ten percent of the school or something is in that group.

THERAPIST: I was thinking, I mean I certainly have my own personal associations to the ROTC, and then I also thought about, you know how, for some people, joining the army or military can be extremely organizing and meaningful and provide some people who really feel like they’re completely lost in their life, addictions and so forth, a meaning and purpose much greater than them and where they feel very valuable, so I mean, I was just sort of, I’m actually making a counterargument in my own mind.

CLIENT: And for me, that’s part of the argument. So the thing that the cult gives you, so one interesting quote I read said something to the effect of, “The people who join cults are by and large just normal people. They tend to actually be, yes, they’re missing something, but they’re,” [00:46:13]

I’ve lost pieces of it, but they’re thoughtful and open-minded and curious and want to improve themselves and the world around them. And it’s those features that actually make them susceptible to the exploitation that is the cult, so I think that is very true about the military also. There is a real need that it does meet, it does give people a lot of good, but then it sends them off to die, and it uses that too, you know, expand the American empire and a lot of other like not good things. So it’s [00:46:59]

THERAPIST: Well this is very, I’m very important because it’s important to you and my helping you is very interesting too. We do need to stop for today, I will see you on Wednesday.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Okay, great.

CLIENT: I’m glad we will.

THERAPIST: Okay, take care.

CLIENT: You too.

END TRANSCRIPT