TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Unless anything new has come up that you wanted to talk about, when you left off we were going through the story of the various times you left home. If I recall where we left off is that you had graduated, gone through those traumatic episodes with your eye, and you had moved back to DC to look for a job. Your mother had left and you were a bit apprehensive, so why don’t you take it from there.

CLIENT: At that point, I think I mentioned last time, it was almost instantaneous. I think the hard part was just the immediate separation. After that, at that stage I didn’t feel too abandoned. [00:01:00] There was a lot for me to focus on otherwise. I was starting my job, moving into the new apartment, so I think just being busy with other things kept my mind off of it.

THERAPIST: You had gotten the job already?

CLIENT: Yes. I think she left on the Saturday or the Friday and I was starting on that Monday.

THERAPIST: What stands out for you as you think about it? What stands out about what that was like for you, in those early days or weeks starting the job and moving back to DC?

CLIENT: (pause) At the beginning, I don’t remember too much apprehension, really. I think it was kind of a novelty of being back up there and that was exciting; then I guess the novelty of learning the job and being busy with adjusting to the new job. [00:02:11] At that stage I was living with university friends of mine in DC.

THERAPIST: How many guys were there?

CLIENT: Three of us total.

THERAPIST: So three in an apartment there?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: What was the job like?

CLIENT: It wasn’t my dream job, but as I think I said, it was kind of something to get going. By that point I think I had almost just about gotten over the illusion that my first job wasn’t going to be my dream job, so I think I viewed it as it was. It was something to do between 9:00 and 5:00 that allowed me to be up there and have some independence. [00:03:10]

THERAPIST: I know you told me what it was, but refresh my memory about it.

CLIENT: It was a company that dealt mostly with publishing.

THERAPIST: It was some kind of Internet . . ?

CLIENT: Yes, online publishing.

THERAPIST: Did you have an office? Were you in a cubicle?

CLIENT: It was open. It was in the old leather district of DC in an old warehouse building, so it was just big and open. We had kind of clusters of tables.

THERAPIST: Did you cold-call or did people call in and you were answering?

CLIENT: You had clients. You would work on a team. You would have your account. I worked under an account manager. [00:03:59]

THERAPIST: So he would get the contacts and then you would follow up?

CLIENT: A team would pitch a company an idea and then they would hire us to do their online publishing. Then our company would assign a team of people to work on it and for the duration of the contract that team would carry out, execute, whatever they wanted. We would communicate. We would have weekly calls with the company.

THERAPIST: I want to get a clear picture of what you were doing on a typical day.

CLIENT: I did a lot with developing content for the online presence.

THERAPIST: So you weren’t actually having to make contact with the clients? You were developing? [00:04:57]

CLIENT: We had weekly conversations. We would have a call and discuss how things were going with accounts. Obviously, some of them had different hopes for what they would achieve online.

THERAPIST: I guess my question was, and I didn’t actually say what I meant, you weren’t actually publishing then, you were developing materials?

CLIENT: We were acting as their in-house publishing. It was like they were outsourcing their publishing department to us.

THERAPIST: All right. Tell me how the story went until the downsizing thing.

CLIENT: Around late summer it was more like talk around the water cooler that they were going to have to downsize, so a few people at a time would be let go.

THERAPIST: How many? This was just months into your getting the job? [00:06:03]

CLIENT: I arrived in January and this was in August.

THERAPIST: Okay, so it was less than a year.

CLIENT: Yes. (pause) And then the rumors kind of carried around for quite some time and, at that point, in DC most of the leases go from September to September, so at that point I was kind of unsure what type of contract to sign with [electing agent.] (ph?) If I committed for a year, then I was committed for a year and if I did lose my position I was kind of like a fish out of water, not having to fork out $700 for an apartment with nothing coming in. [00:07:07] Then eventually things kind of developed in November, shortly before Thanksgiving, I was part of another group of lay-offs for the company. There were a few in Chicago and a couple in DC that they let go.

THERAPIST: How did that happen?

CLIENT: How was I informed do you mean?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I was called into my supervisor’s office. DC had their own managing director of the office. I was called into that office. I think as soon as I was called in, I kind of knew what it was about and she said, “Unfortunately, we’re going to have to let you go. Some of the clients didn’t sign on again.” [00:08:06] This was at a time when people were still cutting back with budgets and stuff.

THERAPIST: What year was this?

CLIENT: 2011.

THERAPIST: What was your first reaction and what did you experience after that?

CLIENT: It was a bit funny because I remember I think I was more worried about it happening than actually when it happened. I had been so worked up about it actually happening, I think I kind of worried myself out.

THERAPIST: It’s kind of anticlimactic.

CLIENT: Yeah. So when it actually happened it was kind of like, “All right. Well, that’s that.” [00:08:57] When I heard the words it was still a bit of a shock, but afterwards even my parents commented when I came home, “Oh, you don’t seem that bothered by what’s just happened.” I said, “I guess I think I’ve just been thinking and worrying about it for so long that when it actually happened . . . “ like you said, it was kind of anticlimactic.

THERAPIST: You said when you came home. Do you mean you went back to your apartment and called them?

CLIENT: Yes. I was coming home anyway because they told me, I think, the Friday before Thanksgiving week because I was going home the next week anyway. I went home and then I ended up coming back to gather everything together and then I ended up going back for Christmas. [00:09:59] I stayed at home and came back to Tallahassee.

THERAPIST: So when you came home to Thanksgiving, what did you experience? What was it like for you from the time you came home for Thanksgiving – this was right after you had found out – through the period until you came home again after Christmas? You came home before Christmas.

CLIENT: That was very short. That was only about a week. I gathered my things together, tied up loose ends in DC, and came back to Tallahassee again.

THERAPIST: Does anything stand out for you about that week? What you experienced, felt?

CLIENT: I think I didn’t really place any focus on thinking what’s going to happen next, as far as looking for another position. At that point, I thought, “All right. I’ll gather myself and then after the Christmas period, refocus on looking for work again.” [00:11:09] At that point, I thought we were entering the Christmas period. It’s unlikely that someone is going to be looking for a full-time position in something like publishing because Christmas is such a busy time for companies like that. They’ve kind of got their pieces in place already. I figured if I’m going to find something I’m going to be more successful once this period is over.

THERAPIST: After. It sounds like realistic thinking. During that time, in addition to your starting to plan what you were going to do next, do you recall anything disturbing passing through your mind about this situation? [00:12:02]

CLIENT: I think what passed through my mind most was, looking back and thinking, what could I have done or should I have done to ensure it wasn’t me that got laid off? That maybe it was the person sitting next to me? I guess I was rehashing over in my mind what I could have done differently.

THERAPIST: Did you come up with anything?

CLIENT: Not really. Looking back, I was placed in quite a difficult situation. I was given, I inherited I guess, from people who quit all of a sudden, the largest account that that company had. [00:13:05] For about a month-and-a-half period I didn’t have an account manager. My account manager quit two weeks after I was hired. I was looking back upon that thinking, “What could I have done differently in that situation?” but I guess, at the time, I was thinking, “I should have done this. I should have done something differently.” With the benefit of hindsight, I see that it was a difficult and unreasonable situation to be placed into, to be a couple of months into a job and have the most difficult and important account to be working on by myself. This was my first job. [00:14:00]

THERAPIST: Yeah, it does sound like a difficult situation and, as you said, it was a very tough time economically and there were a lot of people getting laid off, a lot of businesses collapsing. At the same time, you realized that there was still a part of you that felt that maybe there was something you could have done.

CLIENT: I tend to do that with everything. I always think when something doesn’t go right, if something doesn’t go how I planned or I hoped it would go, it’s something I did wrong or something I could have done differently – a mistake that I made, a wrong decision that I made.

THERAPIST: So it’s pretty common, characteristic of you, to blame yourself when something goes wrong or think that there was something that you didn’t do or should have done?

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: Can you think of other examples? [00:15:02]

CLIENT: (pause) Even when I had gone to Europe. to look for work, when I would be unsuccessful at an interview or anything, I would think, “Now what did I do wrong that they didn’t hire me?” instead of thinking, “I probably just interviewed for a job where 50 other people have interviewed, probably some of them with much more experience than me.”

THERAPIST: Does that tend to be your reflexive reaction?

CLIENT: Is to think that I did something wrong?

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: It is. Why do you think that is?

CLIENT: (pause) I think it’s because I kind of have an expectation of myself that I should succeed at something. [00:16:08] If I go for something I expect myself to succeed at it and if I don’t, I look for things. My first instinct is to kind of look at myself and look internally and think, “What did I do wrong that that was not a successful outcome?”

THERAPIST: Is there a particular feeling, state, emotional experience that you have that tends to go along with that first reflexive reaction? What did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? Better?

CLIENT: I think just frustration at myself. Why didn’t this go how I wanted it to go? Again, just getting irritated at myself by thinking, “You should have done something differently. Obviously, if you didn’t get it it’s because you didn’t do something right.” [00:17:11]

THERAPIST: So frustrated and irritated with yourself? You are a big disappointment to yourself at that moment. Having positive expectations of achieving something like you go for a job interview and you get this job, that sounds reasonable. I think to be successful you have to have some confidence in yourself. What’s not so clear, what’s not so obvious, is why your first reaction – if I’m hearing you right, it’s almost always or always if things don’t turn out the way you hoped – your first reaction is to always blame yourself, to be frustrated and irritated and disappointed with yourself. You should have done better. You could have done something better. [00:18:05]

CLIENT: I think I’m certainly someone who prefers to be in control of my own situations and I think it might be a coping mechanism to think that if it’s something that I can look at myself and say “this was in my control” I think I feel better; rather than thinking me being successful or not successful was, to a large extent, not within my control.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I can see where that might be helpful, except that it’s in your control and, if I’m hearing you right, you see the opportunity to have some control over the situation, but you fail. [00:19:05] (pause)

CLIENT: If I can pinpoint something that I could have done differently, then it’s something that I can look at and say, “Well, because I didn’t do this, that’s why,” as opposed to “because there was somebody better qualified or somebody had more experience.”

THERAPIST: How often does that way of looking at something that didn’t turn out the way you wanted, how often does that way of looking at it “there is something that I could have done better,” how often does that help you?

CLIENT: I think it hasn’t too much. In terms of looking and thinking, “What did I do wrong?” I do think it’s something I’ve been doing less of, the more I’ve done it. [00:20:07]

THERAPIST: Wait, I’m sorry?

CLIENT: I think it’s something I’ve done less of, the more recent interviews I’ve gone on and maybe haven’t been successful. I’ve done it less because I think probably the experience of “it didn’t help you before” and maybe come into the realization that maybe sometimes it’s not a personal thing on you. They’re looking at 50 or 100 candidates and you’re one person. I think the wake-up call for that was I was sitting in a waiting room for a position that was an entry-level position and I was talking to the guy next to me and he was interviewing for the same position. [00:21:00] It was at a publishing company and he had ten years. He had worked with [] for ten years and was laid off. He was interviewing for this entry-level position; and there I was with one year’s experience, interviewing for the same position. So to a smaller extent, I don’t do it as much. There is a part of me that always probably will look internally and say what things could I do differently or what could I do differently, but I think more recently I’m not so caught up in it’s something that I did wrong. I’m better at accepting that some things are just – the guy sitting next to me was more likely to get the position because he has nine additional years of work experience. [00:22:03]

THERAPIST: Yeah. So that was a kind of realization that times are tough. How has that been since you doing that less, when you’re disappointed about something and you’re not as often blaming yourself, does that leave you feeling any differently?

CLIENT: I think I probably take rejection a bit better, but I also think to an extent that as long as it’s not too much, it is helpful and to a small extent it is a good thing. I do look internally and am constantly trying to think “review the situation. What did I do? What could I do next time?” I think what I’ve done more now, whereas in the past I was thinking too much about what I could have done differently that time, I’m changing that conversation in my head to, “Okay, I didn’t get that, but what can I do differently the next time?” [00:23:12] I think I was too caught up on not getting the last position, as opposed to using that to my benefit to try and catch the next one.

THERAPIST: That, I think, is a real important distinction, that it’s one thing if a situation doesn’t work out, to look inside and say, “What can I do differently next time?” as a way of learning from a situation, whether or not you had any control over it. And correct me if I’m wrong about this, but it sounds like what you had been doing is not using a disappointing situation to learn something to plan for the future, but rather just blaming yourself for failing in some way, for not being up to the task, whatever it was. [00:24:11]

CLIENT: Yes, that was definitely it. For me, entering the job market and not being successful was really, I guess, the first time I experienced – major failure is not the correct word – but a significant failure. Throughout schooling I had done decently well in school and I got into a good university, so I never really had experienced failure on a more significant scale before. I think it was difficult for me to experience a job that I thought I really wanted and didn’t get. I immediately thought, “It’s something you’ve done. What did you do wrong?” [00:25:07]

THERAPIST: I don’t think there’s any question that’s just a terribly painful, disorienting, terrible experience to have your first job after all these years of education, where you’re going and starting your career and your first job and it disappears after less than a year. That, I’m sure, has bothered lots and lots of people over the last few years. For you it seems to also have really fueled that vulnerability, that part of you that wasn’t sure whether you could really go out there and do a job. It seems like it really undermined your self-confidence in a major way. [00:26:05]

CLIENT: I think because it does seem to be kind of since that time and during that time where my confidence has been shaken. Before I was fine going off to university, going off to DC, but since then I’ve been, like you mentioned, shaken a bit by the whole thing.

THERAPIST: Shaken is, I think, a good way of putting it. Correct me if this doesn’t resonate for you, but it sounds like you’ve got a lot of talent, you’re smart, so you’ve had a lot of successes and you’ve been moving along through your education and doing well, succeeding. But there always was this vulnerability, this readiness that if something didn’t go right, to immediately blame yourself and see yourself as a failure and be frustrated and irritated with yourself. [00:27:10] Then this thing happens with the job. It’s a major setback and it really intensified this feeling that somehow you’re not up to the task. You’re a big disappointment to yourself, but that vulnerability had always been there. Where do you think it came from? (pause)

CLIENT: I think, again, it comes from how I was brought up. I’ve always been on the cautious and kind of timid side of things. (pause) [00:28:07] I guess I’m not sure where it stems from apart from, as long as I can remember, I just remember being that way. My mom kind of brought up she would say when I would go to the playground or when I would be playing with friends I would, for the first five minutes or so, kind of stand a little bit back and observe before getting involved and jumping in, kind of surveying the situation. I can’t really pinpoint or think of something that would have initiated or started all of this, but I do recognize that I have, at different stages in my life, see things where I have, for as long as I can remember at least, been more cautions and timid, erred on the side of caution before getting involved. [00:29:20]

THERAPIST: You said you couldn’t think of something in particular, but you did think of someone in particular. (pause)

CLIENT: I think my mother is – and I’ve inherited the worrywart character trait from mom. My dad jokes around; my mom’s middle name is Anderson. He says it’s the Anderson way because, apparently, my grandmother was like that. People on my mother’s side are quite like that. He jokes around that it’s the Anderson philosophy. [00:30:01]

THERAPIST: That’s her maiden name?

CLIENT: Yeah. Expect the worst. Expect the worst.

THERAPIST: How has that worrywart philosophy been manifested with you? In other words, how has she expressed that with regards to you?

CLIENT: I think it’s more the fact that I’ve kind of observed over the years her way of managing was planning everything to a T so her attitude was if I can plan everything precisely, then she could avoid the worst from happening. I think, to an extent, I do the same. [00:30:55] If I plan something and then, all of a sudden something deviates from that plan, sort of teetering on the path of the worst is happening, as opposed to if it was going according to plan. Nothing is going to go wrong if it’s going according to plan.

THERAPIST: So you’re quick to catastrophize?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Another way in which her worrywart philosophy or attitude may have impacted you is what we were talking about last week when we ended. Remember how we ended last session? We were talking about your relationship with your mother. (pause)

CLIENT: She always jumped in to fix things when things didn’t go right.

THERAPIST: The fixer. The fixer. She’s not only a worrywart, she’s a fixer. Do you remember the comment I made? [00:32:03]

CLIENT: About how coming in and fixing things made me think somewhere in the back of my mind that she’s always coming and fixing so I don’t have the ability, if something goes wrong, to fix it myself.

THERAPIST: I suggested that as a possibility. We didn’t know for sure. In light of what we’ve been talking about today, what are your thoughts about that?

CLIENT: I think that probably definitely is a lack of confidence in my own ability to manage situations that don’t go how I would like them to go.

THERAPIST: So that resonates for you? [00:32:56]

CLIENT: Yes. I think I view her and my parents as a whole, too much as when something goes wrong I can go back into my shell and everything will be okay.

THERAPIST: She’ll take care of it or they’ll take care of it.

CLIENT: Yes. (pause) I think the past few times I’ve been away from home that’s manifested itself as going out and then, as soon as things don’t go quite right or get difficult, I kind of come back into the safety of home.

THERAPIST: It’s hard to have confidence in yourself, especially in the face of something that really shakes your self-confidence like the job loss. [00:34:02] It’s hard to have confidence in yourself and have that attitude of learning from “what can I do next time?” when you’re struggling with the feeling that “it’s my fault somehow. I’ve failed in some way.”

CLIENT: I think the fact that this job was really the first time that I was kind of entering the adult world for real and the first venture I take into that wasn’t a success, I think probably, if anything, it intensified that concern or that idea in the back of my head that I won’t be successful again. Should I go back out into the real world?

THERAPIST: I think that’s very nicely put. It is. It’s your entrance into the adult world and, after you lose the job, there’s a part of you that feels like “I can’t make it in the adult world.” [00:35:07] “I can’t make it without my parents to fix things, support me.” But as you stand back and look at that attitude right now, what’s your . . ?

CLIENT: With the benefit of hindsight, I do recognize that there were, obviously, a number of things that weren’t in my control at that time, that to a large extent it was an unreasonable burden to place on somebody who had been in the workplace for a couple of months. [00:36:01] Overall, in some ways I’m looking back and I think it might be a good thing that I didn’t completely succeed in it because I don’t know if I would have had the confidence in myself because I knew that that wasn’t really long term what I wanted to do; but like I said, at the time, it was a job. I don’t know if I would have the confidence, if I was still in the job, to say I’ve done this for a while but I know it’s not what I want it to do, so I’m going to leave this and pursue what I actually want to do. I think I might have just ended up continuing down it and just going with it because it’s what I had and it was what I knew. [00:37:00] I guess it would have been easier and more comfortable to stick with it than to pursue another degree.

THERAPIST: So you feel the danger if you had kept the job is that you might have gotten stuck in it.

CLIENT: I don’t think I would have been the one to say, “Okay, this is definitely not what I want.” I don’t think I would have left and, like I’m doing now, choose to go back into school and pursue another degree for something that longer term I would be more successful at and enjoying more.

THERAPIST: A couple of minutes ago we were talking about being at the DC job. You said “if I had succeeded at it.” The implication is that you feel you didn’t succeed at it, even though you were downsized at a time when millions of people were being downsized. [00:38:06] Is there still a part of you that feels that, somehow, because they called you in to let you go it was because of some failure on your part?

CLIENT: I think there probably still is a part of me that feels I still have the idea in my head that I should have been able to figure out a way to deal with the situation. At the same time, I do recognize that it wasn’t a situation in which success was facilitated. [00:38:59] A lot of what happened kind of precipated (ph) the outcome by getting the largest client, by losing my account manager. I recognize that things were kind of playing against me at the time.

THERAPIST: In other words, given the circumstances, if I’m understanding what you’re implying, both in the company and in the work world at large at that time, that the chances of you being able to keep that job had nothing to do with you.

CLIENT: Right. Since then I’ve talked with my dad and he keeps saying his career was about 90% being in the right place at the right time. [00:40:06] He said, “You were just, unfortunately, in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He said, “At some point, hopefully it will work out that you are in the right place at the right time and things work out.”

THERAPIST: Do you believe him?

CLIENT: I’m hoping that it will. I’m still a bit skeptical, I guess. Probably the Anderson philosophy still rings very big. If something can go wrong, it probably will, to an extent. I think looking back, I’m in a better position now to look back and think things occurred that there was no way for me to control them or to put me in a good position at the time.

THERAPIST: And this vulnerability that we’ve been talking about today, this proneness to see yourself as having failed in some way, regardless of the circumstances, just think, give more thought to how that influenced you at the time, how it influenced the way you saw things, how it still influences you, even if it’s less. Is it still influencing you and how?

CLIENT: (pause) It definitely still influences me to an extent insofar as I think the experience as a whole was a bit of a shock to my self-confidence. Like I said, it was the first venture out.

THERAPIST: By the way, I think that is an understatement, “it was a bit of a shock.”

CLIENT: Since then I’ve just completely, even more so than I would have before, erred on the side of caution. I think still, in recent decisions, I’ve erred on the side of caution. I’ve kind of taken the easier way out, thinking again to short-term as opposed to thinking that it may be difficult for a period. For example, the university offer that I got for this year and deferring it to next year. To some extent I think that although it would have been very difficult for a short period of time to find housing, to get everything arranged, maybe in the long term that would have been a tenable position or a tenable situation to put myself in.

THERAPIST: That’s interesting. Yeah. Do you know if they got your transcript yet? [00:44:02]

CLIENT: No, I don’t know.

THERAPIST: It’s the waiting.

CLIENT: The bureaucracy takes a long time.

THERAPIST: Yeah, apparently. We’re going to have to stop for today, but I would like to – you’re looking in the last couple of minutes into how this proneness to be uncertain about yourself may have influenced your decision about going to Scotland this year. I think it would also be useful between now and the next time we meet to think about how is that influencing what you’re planning for this coming year.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Okay. 10:00 next Tuesday. Again, I appreciate you are willing to cooperate with the taping.

CLIENT: Absolutely.

THERAPIST: And, again, if at any point you decide you don’t want to do it, just let me know, okay?

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: All right. See you next week.

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