TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: It's really cold out there.

THERAPIST: Yeah it is really freezing.

CLIENT: I hate winter so much. Dave and I had dinner with our priest on Tuesday night and she just went on and on about how much she loves the winter and how it's so wonderful, the muted palette and it encourages serenity and grace and stillness of the spirit. It was like by stillness of the spirit you mean seasonal affective disorder. (both chuckle) [0:01:00.4]

THERAPIST: Yeah, this is the coldest it's been.

CLIENT: All winter, yes. I forgot my hat this morning.

THERAPIST: Oh no.

CLIENT: I don't know what to talk about.

THERAPIST: Well, what pops into your head?

CLIENT: I don't know. I guess many things are popping into my head, but I can't seem to grab any of them long enough to be able to put them into words, if that makes sense. [0:02:01.2]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I bought an electric piano off the Internet, they're cheap, a 67-key keyboard, and I'm starting piano lessons next week.

THERAPIST: That's exciting.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Cool. Are you going to have somebody come to your house?

CLIENT: No, I'll be going to his place for the actual lesson. The keyboard is so I have something to practice on in-between.

THERAPIST: Have you played before?

CLIENT: Nope. I have no music background because my parents didn't think it was valuable. I guess I've always wished I was musically talented, I guess is the way I'd phrase it, but you know my parents always described music education as a waste of money. Yeah. They're the reason our public schools have to cut parts of the music programs. But yeah. [0:03:35.3]

THERAPIST: I hope you enjoy the piano.

CLIENT: Yeah, I hope so too. Of course, I haven't even started and already, I've got the imposter syndrome, where is this going, that you know just being able to play someone else's music isn't nearly as great an accomplishment as being able to compose your own music, and I'll never be able to compose my own music because I'm not creative. That voice just is off and running.

THERAPIST: I see.

[Pause: 0:04:15.2 to 0:04:51.6]

THERAPIST: I just was thinking about how those sorts of voices, they're never all that consistent or logical you know like-

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: -it's a total waste of time and you suck at it.

CLIENT: Yeah. This food is terrible, I'll have portions that are small.

THERAPIST: Exactly.

CLIENT: And it's always a moving target.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: Right? Because it used to be like I sucked because I'm not the smartest kid in the room, right? And you know, now I have the job that I wanted when I was 20 and you know, I'm not the smartest person in my group but certainly you know, in the top tier of smart people. [0:05:46.2]

THERAPIST: That's great.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I mean I have the job I want and it's a good job and it's interesting and it's challenging. I got the graduate degree and I've proved that I am a very smart person, for whatever that's worth. Now, instead of beating myself up because you know, you have a crappy job doing Excel button pushing monkey work that anyone could do, because that's not true any more, I have a job that not anyone can do. I don't think it was true that anyone could have done my last job but it certainly was not challenging and stimulating in any way.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: This is the job working on satellites. It turns out rocket science is actually kind of boring. (laughs)

THERAPIST: That's too bad.

CLIENT: But again now it's you suck because you're not creative enough, so like I don't know, it's a little bit unfair that that voice has completely changed targets on me, because you know, I've spent the last ten years trying to shut that voice up because it was saying you know, I wasn't smart enough. [0:06:57.0]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I wasn't doing challenging enough work and people wouldn't notice my intellect, and now it's just like a pfff, fuck intellect, that's not what's important.

THERAPIST: Right.

[Pause: 0:07:06.4 to 0:07:41.0]

CLIENT: It's funny, my piano instructor asked me you know, what are your goals for wanting to learn piano. It turns our really, it's because I wanted to learn to play the piano when I was 12, and my parents wouldn't let me. And then I'm not... I'm not actually sure what any tangible goals I have other than you know, indulging my inner 12 year-old.

THERAPIST: What else comes to mind? [0:08:42.9]

CLIENT: I feel like I've been indulging my inner child. I hate that phrase but let's run with it for now. I indulge in my inner child a lot in the last I don't know, two years or so? I'm doing a lot of things just because I can, because I have the freedom and the income and I can, so why the hell not?

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: I don't know. On one hand, like to an extent that's healthy, like doing things just because I want to and that's been something that I have not been able to do for so long. On the other hand, I'm terrified of going too far into self-indulgence and wastefulness, and not being a grownup.

[Pause: 0:09:49.1 to 0:11:52.2]

THERAPIST: I guess I feel like you want me to reassure you about treating your inner 12 year-old well, because the thought of doing that makes you nervous.

CLIENT: Not so much reassurance. It would be nice if you could tell me where the line is between you know, this is okay and this is taking it too far.

THERAPIST: I see. Do you have thoughts about where the line is? It's really hard to tell. And taking it too far means what exactly? Is there like a reason you don't put a thousand dollars in a 12 year-olds bank account and say go for it? [0:13:27.6]

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't think it's so much about the money as just the self-indulgence. I guess I've kind of internalized a bunch of messages about how being a good person involves self-sacrifice and like almost a puritanical effect towards luxuries and possessions. You know, if I indulge too many desires that would make me greedy or indulgent or dissolute.

THERAPIST: And we're talking about desires like learning to play the piano?

CLIENT: Yes. [0:14:27.9]

THERAPIST: Okay, just to be clear about the level of debauchery we're talking about here.

CLIENT: I noticed. Or like to give another example, there's this restaurant that Dave and I really, really like a lot. The head chef there published a cookbook that I went and bought as soon as it was out, hot off the presses, even though most of the things in that are beyond my skill level. I only made three dishes out of it and they all turned out badly because they were beyond my skill level, but I still stubbornly keep trying to make an effort because I can, because I want to be able to have fancy food. I don't know, there's part of me that says you know, this is ridiculous, who are you trying to impress? This is beyond your skill level and you know, stick to what you know. I don't know. It's a sense of I don't know, stepping above my station. [0:16:00.4]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. Do you actually enjoy trying them out, because that's sort of the impression that I get. I can imagine a scenario in which you or somebody was trying to do something just for kind of bragging rights about how you've done it, but actually was kind of miserable through the whole process of feeling so anxious about it, that it wasn't any fun. But that's not how it sounds.

CLIENT: No, not in this case.

THERAPIST: And I imagine it's frustrating in a way, when it doesn't turn out how you want, and you probably get on your case about it, but in another way, I would guess that you recognize that it's an ambitious effort.

CLIENT: Yeah. Or you know, there's a circus school in the area. A couple of friends of mine take aerials classes there. [0:17:05.7]

THERAPIST: They have trapeze and stuff?

CLIENT: Yeah, trapeze. I think it's called the bigtop. And so they've been telling me I should come and check it out and it's like I could go check it out and be you know, classes run for two months, that's the length of the sessions, and it's two hundred dollars, which I can afford, and I'm not going to stick with it. I probably won't even do it on a long-term as an amateur like my friends do, and I'm certainly not going to join the circus professionally. But it would be fun. I don't know and again, the voice in the back of my head saying that it's a waste of time and money because you're not going to stick with it long-term, nothing is going to coming from it. You just want the experience just to say you had the experience. I'm trying to think of more examples, so we can try to find a purpose.

[Pause: 0:18:20.1 to 0:18:57.8]

THERAPIST: It sounds like things that you do mostly because you enjoy them are a problem, I gather more obviously because they're not necessarily so productive. I suspect that more subtly, they're a problem because just enjoying things is bad or dangerous or something.

[Pause: 0:19:43.1 to 0:22:27.5]

CLIENT: So, a completely different topic.

THERAPIST: Yeah?

CLIENT: One thing that got talked about a lot at the retreat I was on, was letting go of mental clutter. The monk who led the retreat talked at length about how when we hold on to relationships that are clearly not good for us any more, that causes a lot of mental clutter and discordance, and that's both psychologically and spiritually bad for us. It seems pretty straightforward and unobjectionable to me that you know, he encouraged us to identify relationships that might have once been good but aren't any more, might have once been better and weren't any more, and get rid of them. And you know the only thing I could think was you know, this describes our relationship with my parents to a tee, like this is... (sighs) I don't know, I keep coming back to the idea that my life really would be phenomenally better in many ways if I just cut my parents out of my life. [0:23:53.4]

My mom messaged me on Facebook yesterday and I just felt really bad and terrible about it, even though she was just saying hi, how are you, how are things going, because I had started a new job. Like it was a totally innocuous conservation except that conversations with my mother are never innocuous. I kind of wished there was someone who was in a position to just absolve me of guilt and say you know, this is totally okay and you should do it and not feel bad about it, or you know, draw a hard line saying no, they're your parents and you actually have to have some kind of relationship with them and it sucks but you know, you're strong and you can do it. I want the decision taken out of my hands essentially, is what I'm saying. [0:25:09.6]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. I guess there's something about your having to make the decision or be responsible for it, so I don't play any part in it.

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't notice how long it's been since the last time I've talked to them, like it just doesn't register with me that it's been a week or it's been a month since the last time I spoke to them. [0:26:26.1]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: I don't miss speaking to them and I don't particularly feel a desire to catch up with them. I feel that that's an unusual thing, like you know Dave will say, you know it's been like a couple of days since I talked to my parents, I wonder what's going on with them. I don't have that. But I know that they're counting the days and keeping a ledger of who called who last and how long it's been, and it's just really I don't know, burdensome to meet their emotional needs around feeling loved and valued and being in contact.

[Pause: 0:27:15.9 to 0:28:56.0]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I guess one way I find myself thinking about it is in terms of your having been so constrained, I mean sort of invested so much in like taking care of them actually, mostly through doing things that were superficially about you and for yourself, that you're really not sure most of the time in terms of like how to look after yourself or make some kinds of decisions for yourself, because that really had not been the focus of your attention most of the time, and that when you know, you're sort of wanting from me like hey, so tell me when I start to get ridiculous about doing what I want to do.

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: Or tell me whether I should or shouldn't or if it's okay or not, or I can handle it or not, to like defenestrate my parents. [0:30:52.4]

CLIENT: (laughs)

THERAPIST: You know or you're like, I don't have a clue, anything about that. I'm not used to thinking about myself and what I want in this way and what's okay about that.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: I guess part of the main point or the thing that at least to me, you know comes in tricky to see is that someone might judge what you do when you have time. It's about taking care of things or doing things that are kind of nominally or superficially about what you want, but really are about what it felt like (inaudible). [0:31:59.3]

CLIENT: My parents have even found a way to turn the things that I regret into being about them. Like there's things on my mind that happened like six or seven years ago.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Not that long ago, maybe five years ago-ish, that just stayed with me and it makes me angry every time I think about it. I was staying with my parents and like I don't know how it came up, but I ended up speaking to someone in Japanese in front of them and you know my dad was like you know, you're so good with languages and you learned French so easily. And I was like yeah, I learned French when I was five, when it's easy to learn new things. And now you're speaking Japanese, and I just, I wish I had taught you words too, because now you're not able to speak to my relatives and you're so good with languages and maybe if I had encouraged you to learn more languages, now you would be a translator for the United Nations or something, and he just went on and on about his fantasy life and it was... (sighs) [0:33:27.4]

It makes me so angry because the regret that my parents refused, like made a conscious decision to not teach me any language except English and you know, my mother's relatives speak Spanish and my dad's relatives speak and I can't speak to any of the elders on either side because I only speak English. And then they stuck me in a Montessori school that taught both French and Spanish, and they chose French for me when I was five, because heaven forbid people know I'm Latina, because I don't know, in terms of what I was raised a little more, something, but and they just appropriated my regrets and it was just well dad. I don't know if mom was part of that but dad certainly just kind of appropriated my feelings of regret and sadness and loss, and it's like you know, that's not cool and not fair to me. Then dad took credit for me getting my masters degree, which was just all kinds of ... (sighs) [0:35:06.2]

THERAPIST: This seems to I'm not quite sure, but I don't think I know, is your mother Latina? I have no idea.

CLIENT: Yeah, sorry.

THERAPIST: That's okay. I guess I had assumed like her I knew the background somewhat of your dad's just because of geography and varied stuff, but where is her family from?

CLIENT: My grandfather is Puerto Rican, was Puerto Rican. My grandmother was white.

THERAPIST: No kidding?

CLIENT: My parents met after my dad immigrated to this country. Dad was mom's boss.

THERAPIST: Oh.

CLIENT: Yeah. Mom was the nurse and dad's a doctor.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: She worked for him and then they got married, and he's 12 years older than her. It's all kinds of sketchy, like I do not approve at all. Like if one of my 35 year-old friends started dating a 23 year-old woman who worked for him, I would yell at him. I would tell him that is not ethical and not okay, and what the fuck are you doing. Yeah. [0:36:34.1]

THERAPIST: (inaudible)?

CLIENT: No. I got the Rosetta Stone course for Spanish I last year for Christmas and I just haven't been able to maintain the discipline of practicing every day. It feels almost pointless now, because all of the relatives who only speak Spanish have died. All my other relatives also speak English. I feel a little bit like an imposter, you know to my cultural events, just because I don't speak the language, and I know that there's a whole thing about linguistic imperialism, and there are plenty of reasons why the second generation immigrants don't speak Spanish. I'm not the only one. I would like to be able to speak it but not enough apparently, to actually put in time every day and to practice the language.

[Pause: 0:38:56.7 to 0:41:58.7]

THERAPIST: We can stop for now.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: I'll talk to you later.

CLIENT: Yeah.

END TRANSCRIPT