TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi. Good morning.

(Pause): [00:00:12 00:00:22]

THERAPIST: Oh, thank you.

MAN: Thank you.

THERAPIST: And I submitted your claims before going on, so -

MAN: Thanks a lot.

THERAPIST: Sure.

MAN: Happy New Year.

THERAPIST: Yep. And to you.

MAN: So, Tanya's a little bit -

CLIENT: Tense. (Laughs)

MAN: Tense today. She had a session with Chad the first (unclear) back.

CLIENT: I'm wondering whether, do you have any other times open during the week? I'm finding that trying to see Chad and then coming here, I feel really drained when I come here and I feel like I don't have as much attention as I want to have and so I can I think Chad is trying to figure out how for me to meet with him on Monday so I can try to switch the time earlier this morning with him or I can try to switch this time with you.

THERAPIST: Okay. What are you looking are you looking to meet on a day you're not seeing Chad?

CLIENT: Just not quite so close.

THERAPIST: Back to back?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I could yeah, let me take a look. It sounds like your schedules are otherwise fairly flexible.

CLIENT: Yeah. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: I should have something. I'm teaching a course but it ends at the end of January so my Tuesdays are going to open up a lot because I teach on Tuesdays. So that's a possibility and I'll take a look. The other possibility is Thursday afternoon.

CLIENT: Okay. I meet with him on Thursdays around 1. So.

THERAPIST: (Cross talk).

MAN: Probably not.

THERAPIST: Sorry. I don't have anything else on Wednesday or Monday at this time. I definitely will have something on Tuesday afternoon.

CLIENT: Okay. Yeah, that sounds like it would be good.

THERAPIST: I (unclear) on Tuesday mornings but I'll talk with him about seeing if I can switch this morning time to Monday.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: See if that and if not Tuesday afternoon is definitely a possibility.

CLIENT: So we're going to try to try to switch to Monday anyway instead of Thursdays.

THERAPIST: Right. Wednesday afternoon might open up and early in the afternoon might be a possibility. I don't know if that's going to help much. I don't know.

THERAPIST: Okay. Yeah, check in with him and if not, I'll let you know what times I could do.

CLIENT: Okay, thank you so much. Yeah, so okay, I'm tired but we had a really good Christmas, actually. It was a really good visit with family. I personally am doing a lot better. I feel like we are doing pretty well right now, too, which is really good.

MAN: I think both of us are right and I think you look worse at this specific moment than you've been most of the time since we got back.

CLIENT: That's true. Yeah. You know, things are ratcheting up again. Yeah, visiting family was good. It was a little tough. It's always a little tough, you know?

THERAPIST: Tough in what way?

CLIENT: Oh, we have lots of family and they really like us which is good but they want to spend a lot like all of our time with us and they all have lots of opinions lots of opinions. And so figuring out how to kind of stay sane and stay centered in the middle of that can be hard I think.

THERAPIST: Is that about right?

MAN: Yeah, that's about right. I think we did a pretty good job of that in two different ways. This time around though, the first was you just went away when you needed to and everyone seemed okay with that and that was good.

CLIENT: I feel like I have trained people into being okay with me sleeping, which is good.

MAN: And the other is we, some of the time we reduced our visits with people to just one person at a time and that was also really good. So we had probably the best visit we've had with your mother in years by virtue of having no one else around.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think the trick is not to see her with my siblings, just to have the two of us to be there with her.

THERAPIST: What makes that better?

CLIENT: She feels like we gang up on her otherwise, the three of us. She never says that but she really likes to be the center of the conversation and I think she feels lonely and distant from us because my siblings and I are very, very close and my sister kind of raised my brother and I and I think because my mom left and I think she feels badly about that and really wants to be the mom but doesn't really have a very clear idea of what moms do and we tend to resent it when she tries to be the mom and also I think my sister is less good at hiding resentment and frustration than I am around my mom. So, you know, it's easier for things to just like slide off my back than Amanda and I get anxious when Amanda is worked up or upset.

MAN: I think Amanda is still really upset with your mother.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I'm pretty upset with her, too, but I have very different ways of handling it than Amanda does.

MAN: Yeah, I think Amanda just doesn't want to see her and so when they're in the same place there's already one person who is upset and several of the other people can tell when someone's upset. You and your mother being particularly good at it. And it all just bombs out of control from there.

CLIENT: My mom always does the thing where I'm always the good child and Amanda's always the bad child. We know I'm very much her favorite and you would think that that would be a good thing for me but it's really not. And you know, I just worship Amanda and always have and so you know I think mom wants to be closer to me than Amanda is and that's not going to happen.

THERAPIST: How old were you when she left?

CLIENT: I was seven.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That's really young.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was really bad and I missed her a whole lot. Amanda was I guess, nine and a half and -

THERAPIST: Did she leave in part because she just couldn't function?

CLIENT: She, I mean, I think she tried to kill herself. She left. She either tried to kill herself or she ended up in the hospital one way or another but I think she tried to kill herself.

MAN: She's told me that she never voluntarily ended up at the hospital so I think she tried to kill herself, but that was the only time.

CLIENT: But not until latter days at least.

MAN: So I think she probably tried to kill herself.

CLIENT: Yeah, so she was she just wasn't functioning. She was certainly really unhappy with my dad. Something needed to change and so it changed. But, that's -

MAN: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: What?

MAN: Some kind of an understanding, huh? (Laughs)

CLIENT: But so, James and mom get along really, really well. She just adores him. She likes men but she also really likes you. I don't think there are really that many, I don't think there are that many people who are involved with Amanda and I, who know us, who don't feel the need to take sides between us and mom. I think you're very good at, yeah, at not taking sides, even though also you are on my side.

MAN: I'm totally on your side.

CLIENT: (Laughs)

MAN: But I don't feel like there's any battle that needs to continue going on.

CLIENT: Exactly, that. (Laughs)

MAN: Which I think is itself a problem but all of your siblings are bound to this because I think there is very much something going on for Amanda. It's just not a resolved issue. It's not an issue of the past. It's a present issue.

CLIENT: And you know it's a present issue for me, too, I think. I just placate along with Amanda.

(Pause): [00:09:42 00:09:46]

MAN: I think you feel obligated to see your mother more than Amanda does. Do you think those are the same thing?

CLIENT: I think they're similar but not the same thing. And in a way that's really good that you are with me.

THERAPIST: Was it okay for you, too?

MAN: Yeah. You know, it was you know, like I said, it was the most pleasant visit we've had with her mother and I guess in the time we've been dating.

CLIENT: Yeah, well we started dating when she and I weren't talking. Like that was right in that mess.

MAN: Yeah, so that was okay for me. And of course, there was only one person. I had a bit harder time with my family this time around than I have had recently. Not that I don't love them or not that I don't get along with them really well, it's just that they when Tanya and I come into town they tend to just all show up at the parents' house all at once. Really, like the four siblings and two of them have spouses and children and it's a whole bunch of people there and I'm not very good at crowds. I can talk to a person one on one or a couple of people in small conversation, but there are no small conversations when my family gathers anymore. (Cross talk). (Laughs)

CLIENT: One person will say something contentious and another person will jump on them and then everybody else starts in, too. It's yeah, yeah, mostly on Cory, his second to the youngest brother who is nothing if not contentious.

MAN: He's young.

CLIENT: He's sort of just learning to keep his mouth shut.

MAN: Sort of?

CLIENT: Not like keeping his mouth shut all the time. He shouldn't do that but learning like when to pick his battles is the hard thing I think for him. You know he likes to disagree violently with a statement and then say hold on to being right regardless of what is actually the case at all. So that naturally irritates people, so yeah, everybody jumps on him. I ended up talking a lot less in those kind of conversations because I feel like it's not that I don't have an opinion, it's not like I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing my opinion, it's just I feel like there are enough opinions flying around already.

MAN: And I often feel like I have to sort everything out or help everyone see why the other person is not an idiot and why they can believe what they believe and things like that. It just gets to be very tense and a lot of work.

CLIENT: You do a lot of mediating.

THERAPIST: I was just thinking that word "mediator." Is that what it feels like?

MAN: Often. Yeah. And often even when so most of my family have a lot of strong opinions and often though, they'll overstate a claim to a large extent, you know. Anyone who believes this must be an idiot. I just knowing a lot of people who believe whatever it is they're saying, I tend to feel like maybe they need to relax those views just a little bit in order to interact with other humans in the world. So I guess I end up feeling like I have to mediate between my family and each other and the world, often.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think it doesn't help that a lot of times that person who believes these things and thus is an idiot is me, and I'm not always going to say that I violently disagree with somebody but, or maybe not often I'm going to say that, but James usually knows and so I think a lot of, or a fair amount of trying to say, 'well, you know, some people can see it this way,' out of care for me I guess. I appreciate that.

MAN: Without having any anti confrontations between you and whomever.

CLIENT: Yeah, because you know God forbid I have a confrontation (unclear).

MAN: Well, but that's the other thing, right? If you actually had a confrontation they would all just walk away from the issue. They would just abandon some element of their belief because they really like you, but then they wouldn't really know what to do. So -

CLIENT: Yeah. I've gotten better at speaking up when I disagree with things. Sometimes it's useful and sometimes it's not. I think they really like me and I really like them. Which is good.

MAN: Again it might not be huge. It might be Franco or Cody or other close friends who of all of my friends seem to have really liberal views and my family is very conservative. I don't know how that happened. (Laughs)

CLIENT: I was going to say, 'that's what you get when you go away with Tanya,' but yeah -

MAN: There were plenty of unexamined conservatives there. (Laughs)

CLIENT: That's true.

MAN: But I think this, so we went to the museum with my mother and we took my dad out to lunch and both of those were very good. So those two plus seeing Tanya's mother alone and that being really good, it was kind of like, 'ah, okay, maybe there's a straight forward answer here just like let's not all gather except for maybe for a meal here and there. Let's just mostly visit in small groups.' Which I think was said before but I think maybe we'll stick to a little bit more next time we visit.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. I found visiting with just your dad and just your mom difficult as well as good. Because that was the only time when it was incumbent upon me to talk about what's going on with me and you know, that's really hard.

MAN: Gotcha.

CLIENT: James's dad asking, 'how was I doing, what was I doing now?' You know with job searches and so forth. It just took a lot out of me to answer. I had to go back and go upstairs and hide for a little bit. Yeah.

THERAPIST: What was hard about that?

CLIENT: I am just really scared. I am really scared about looking for a job and really ashamed that I don't have one. I worry that James's parents will think I'm not a good wife for their son and I worry that I'm not doing what I need to do to keep us going.

(Pause): [00:17:27 00:17:35]

CLIENT: And then when we're at the museum with James's mom we ran into a friend of mine from high school, which I knew was going to happen. I wore nice clothes to the museum specifically because whenever I go out in San Antonio I see people I know. And you know, I really like this woman and her husband. I just don't want to talk to anybody. I'm ashamed to talk to people.

(Pause): [00:18:01 00:18:09]

THERAPIST: Is your fear because they'll ask you what you're doing?

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah.

MAN: Which she did and which you answered, I thought, very well.

CLIENT: Yeah. That's mostly true. I said I was mostly looking for teaching jobs now' yeah, I really miss teaching. Yeah, the only way for me not to leave so much out of that response is to make it substantially not true. I feel like I don't want to tell everybody. It's sort of not appropriate to tell everybody like, 'oh, I'm looking for a job because I've been suicidal for the last several months. Severely depressed for the last couple of years and I can't hold down a job, I can't function anymore.'

(Pause): [00:19:10 00:19:28]

THERAPIST: Well, that's one characterization of what's going on.

CLIENT: I know.

THERAPIST: I could also think about that you're struggling to figure out what kind of life you want to lead and how you want to be in the world and what kind of vocation you want and the struggle is painful right now.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:19:48 00:19:56]

THERAPIST: But it sounds like it really taps into a deep sense of inadequacy.

CLIENT: Yes. Yes.

(Pause): [00:20:01 00:20:17]

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean I feel like I'm not in school anymore because I wasn't good enough for it.

(Pause): [00:20:23 00:20:58]

THERAPIST: You look so pensive there when you said that.

MAN: I really, really don't agree.

CLIENT: Thanks, I know.

(Pause): [00:21:06 00:21:17]

THERAPIST: So what if Tanya says that do you not agree to yourself? Or do you sometimes explicitly not agree?

MAN: I sometimes explicitly don't agree and sometimes I don't agree in myself.

THERAPIST: What is it like to hear Tanya express that about herself?

(Pause): [00:21:31 00:21:54]

MAN: I don't agree. (Laughs) I guess I'm not sure how to describe that anymore than that. Like I'm just -

CLIENT: You're wrong. (Laughs)

MAN: More or less, yeah. That's not a correct characterization of the events. That was not an appropriate way to construe that. Like it's not a real story there that means that, I think. If anything, they were not good enough for you or to you. But -

(Pause): [00:22:16 00:22:30]

MAN: I guess I feel a little bit full of outrage that like they spent a considerable amount of time beating her and telling her that if she was good enough she could take the beating and that has continued even though she's walking away. It's like they get to continue doing it even though she's left and that is just not okay.

CLIENT: Thanks.

(Pause): [00:22:56 -[00:23:06]

THERAPIST: Outraged at the injustice?

MAN: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:23:11 00:23:15]

MAN: One of the toughest times that we had was at dinner with my family and it wasn't tough between us but we both had a tough time interacting with my family. My younger brother is in the military and everyone seems to think this is like a good thing and I think it's going to get him killed and so it's people giving him advice of retirees and it's easy to see them as good people and -

CLIENT: Maybe we should not be giving advice on colleges to somebody like Billy.

MAN: Nah.

CLIENT: He's just -

MAN: He's just very bright and has a lot of talents and skills and works hard and they've really brought out of him some discipline and effort and he's intensely focused but it brought that out of him. They haven't created any in him. And so but then they're going to take that and that him at this impressionable age and convince him that dedicating his life to killing people for politicians is a great thing because you're doing it for your country. I feel like something similar has been done here. It's just this sense of outrage and they've sold you some sort of great lie that you must sacrifice yourself in order to be good enough, or something like that.

(Pause): [00:24:45 00:24:51]

MAN: But the dream they're selling you is not that. They're selling you that life of intellectual freedom and discovery and research and endeavors and -

(Pause): [00:24:59 00:25:09]

MAN: But they're not giving you the support and the collegiality and the sense or worth that would go along with that dream if it really existed.

(Pause): [00:25:19 00:25:27]

MAN: The major parallel is the kind of hierarchical structure and the orders down and you follow orders the sense of the systems you just have to do all these things. You have to pass the next exam because passing the next exam is how you get the next rank and obviously you want the ranks. I see a lot of injustice in both of those and I don't like it. That was a lot more talking than I meant to do there.

CLIENT: It's okay. I wasn't ready to talk anymore anyway. (Unclear).

(Pause): [00:26:06 00:26:13]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I mean especially since one of the I guess, some sort of goals is that you both have is for you to (unclear) to express yourself more in here.

CLIENT: (Laughs)

MAN: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: That's my understanding.

CLIENT & MAN: (Laughing)

THERAPIST: It seems like that's one thing that you both want.

MAN: I think that's right.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:26:34 00:26:42]

THERAPIST: Were you feeling I'm sorry, what were you going to say?

CLIENT: Oh no. I don't remember. It was not important. I remember that.

(Pause) Now you don't believe me. (Laughs)

MAN: (Laughs with client)

CLIENT: Well, it didn't seem important anyway.

THERAPIST: Well, we'll table that for the -

MAN: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: I just wanted to ask James what you were saying about a kind of self-sacrifice piece. Were you were talking about Tanya's family in particular?

MAN: I'm sorry.

THERAPIST: When you were talking about sort of seeing an injustice and sort of how Tanya was treated when you were talking about the sacrifices you sacrifice this for to get this so I didn't know if you were referring specifically to her family.

MAN: I wasn't really. I was thinking more about her in the academic community. Yeah, I was thinking of her.

THERAPIST: Yeah, I wasn't sure.

MAN: That's okay. I'll have to think about that a little more. I'm not sure if I think that or not about her family. Certainly, Tanya describes her relationship with her mother very much in those terms.

THERAPIST: It sort of feels like that there's some sort of glory in self-sacrifice.

CLIENT: I'm not sure if I would call it glory but it certainly seems like I have to sacrifice my own opinions and desires in order to keep her happy. And for whatever reason the idea of not trying to keep her happy is unbearable to the point that I'd scarcely even consider it. You know, I was always afraid that she was going to kill herself when I was little so I always thought it was my job to keep her safe.

THERAPIST: Did you feel able to do that?

CLIENT: Not really. But I felt like nobody else was going to or why there was nothing else I could do.

THERAPIST: You don't feel like your father was invested in that?

CLIENT: Well, I mean this was after they were divorced. (Unclear). And she dated around a whole lot but they were all more or less scumbags so I didn't ever really think any of them were going to stick around and they didn't.

(Pause): [00:29:31 00:29:42]

THERAPIST: Did it feel like a zero-sum game like the more she had the less you had (inaudible)?

CLIENT: Yeah. Still does to a large extent.

THERAPIST: Is she still suicidal?

CLIENT: I don't think so. No.

THERAPIST: Is she in a better place than you were when she was younger?

CLIENT: Yeah. It's only in the last 10 years I guess, maybe the last five even. But she's been significantly better. And she's finally like found a therapist who works really well with her. She's been seeing this woman for 10 years and I think depends on her a lot but seems to be in a much better place. At least in terms of suicidality I think. She's very fragile and she doesn't have a lot of relationships.

(Pause): [00:30:31 00:30:47]

CLIENT: Oh. I was going to say that I see what you mean I mean in that and I agree with you about the, in some sense I kind of really got played. And yet that doesn't make me not feel like it's my fault or like even if I were better I wouldn't be able to feel that.

MAN: I understand.

CLIENT: I know.

(Pause): [00:31:20 00:33:03]

CLIENT: I guess I feel like for whatever reason I've got some breathing space and I don't think it's going to last and that scares me a lot. You know we still have James's stuff in storage. So that's saying, let's really try to get that out soon because I'm doing well now and I'm not sure how long that's going to be so I don't know how I'm going to be able to help with that.

(Pause): [00:33:40 00:34:04]

MAN: So why do that this weekend? But I didn't think that was the important part of it. (Laughs)

CLIENT: (Laughs) It's important to me.

MAN: Good.

(Pause): [00:34:15 00:34:19]

THERAPIST: So when Tanya says that, where does that go in you? The sort of fear that this is sort of a momentary (unclear) of betterness.

MAN: Well, I know she's right but it sort of splits into several pieces. One piece is that there's a self-fulfilling prophecy there like she's constantly inspecting how she's doing and that makes her worse over time. Most of the time. And so she's just going to get worse as time passes and nothing really good comes along. That might be correct. That's how I see it. Another is the longer she goes without a job the more time she'll have to beat herself up about not having a job and so she's going to get worse. It's sort of a (Pause) how do we keep moving forward with the steps necessary to find a job in the short and long term without (Pause) it taking so long that she can't bear it. I feel like it is true conditional upon her continuing to be unemployed but this is a temporary respite. But if she's employed in a job that is fulfilling for her, whatever she likes, I don't know that it's true or I don't know that relapse will be nearly as bad as it's been in the last few months.

CLIENT: That'll be nice.

THERAPIST: Do you feel that way?

CLIENT: I want to say what about what the benefits of having a job could have for me but you know -

MAN: To use a different word?

CLIENT: Optimistic?

MAN: Yes. I go to blood every time and I don't know what it means bloody or bloodless. But hey.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think it's a possibility that I would not relapse or would not as severely if my life situation changed, but -

THERAPIST: That was my guess that you feel differently about this.

CLIENT: Yeah. You know, I keep making changes.

THERAPIST: I'm sorry.

CLIENT: I keep making changes in my life. I've changed day to day so much in the last year so many times to try to like I kept thinking if I can just get to this place with all the external stuff then the internal will be better and it just hasn't happened. So. Yeah, I guess I'm less optimistic about that.

MAN: I guess the other piece that I didn't have is that given a long enough time of more or less stability, I really think that what you're doing with Chad will work. So, because I think it is working and so I think that part of the point of the job is not that like to fix you or something but that it gives you guys and gives us time to work.

CLIENT: Yeah.

MAN: And I think that it will do that.

CLIENT: Thanks.

(Pause): [00:38:38 00:38:41]

MAN: But I thought that before. It hasn't always worked out.

(Pause): [00:38:43 00:38:51]

THERAPIST: Do you feel like James carries optimism for you?

CLIENT: A lot of the time, yeah. (Pause) I'm usually pretty optimistic actually, but I've run out of it in the last year or two.

(Pause): [00:39:09 00:39:21]

CLIENT: You don't have to. It would be okay if you were pessimistic.

MAN: Thanks. I'm not.

CLIENT: I know. Just being the optimist can be kind of a burden. I don't really think of myself as the optimist, so it doesn't really feel like a burden. Yeah, what have we come to when you're the optimist of this couple? (Laughs)

THERAPIST: I'm missing a piece of that.

CLIENT: James's just usually pretty cynical I think. And pretty, doesn't let what he wants to happen interfere with his judgment of what is going to happen most of the time. I try not to. It doesn't mean I'm actually that good at it, but -

CLIENT: You're usually a lot better at it than I am.

MAN: Hey, I try to assess somewhat separately what I want to happen and what will happen. But it's work.

CLIENT: People are really bad at that.

MAN: People? It's good to know.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:40:46 00:40:59]

MAN: So when there are long silences in the transcript, what do they do? Do they note the time?

CLIENT: I actually want to know, too.

THERAPIST: That's an interesting question. Usually it's noted as pause. I don't think they normally note because I've actually seen transcripts. I usually don't. I just basically provide the audio recording although transcripts are very helpful. But a huge bonus actually if someone transcribes the sessions so you can look it over (cross talk and laughter). But yeah, usually it's just a pause.

MAN: Interesting.

THERAPIST: Are you aware of the pauses?

MAN: Oh yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: What do they feel like?

(Pause): [00:41:41 00:41:48]

MAN: They feel like long pauses where someone over here is supposed to do something.

CLIENT: Yeah, me too.

(Pause): [00:41:57 00:42:00]

MAN: Eventually something happens.

CLIENT: Sometimes.

MAN: (Laughs)

CLIENT: Most of the time.

MAN: It feels almost like that game where everyone sits around the table and waits for someone to speak and whoever speaks loses. It feels kind of like that game but -

THERAPIST: Certainly not.

MAN: I don't think sorry, except for the losing part, just like the long duration is uncomfortable in a similar way.

(Pause): [00:42:29 00:42:32]

MAN: I don't think speaking in this room is losing. I think it's a good thing.

CLIENT: There are so many things I could say to that. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Like what?

MAN: (Laughs) You stop you lose. You must continue speaking.

CLIENT: Like are you sure?

MAN: (Laughs) Pretty sure.

THERAPIST: Is he sure or sorry?

CLIENT: Are you sure that speaking isn't losing? Oh, we're just making fun of you for (unclear) talking as much. Although it's not even that you don't talk as much, I think. I just had this expectation that you do.

THERAPIST: Oh.

(Pause): [00:43:21 00:43:27]

THERAPIST: Well this is, yeah, I mean I think you talk, I don't know a lot, but you certainly express at some point I can never sort of, in a very theoretical way never know what people do not express, right? But I was just thinking about you know, how much like plans and structure and how among the things that are difficult about your situation and Tanya's situation together is sort of how amorphous and unpredictable it is. I was thinking that when I asked I forgot exactly what it is that you said. It wasn't the comment about feeling inadequate. It was a later comment and I asked you, 'oh, that you were less optimistic that a job would make a difference and I asked where it went in you and you sort of thought it as sort of a plan. So -

MAN: I sort of thought it was more of a map than a plan because it was kind of a the difference is like a plan is something that I'm trying to do and a map is a description of what may happen. I feel like those are different things and they're importantly different. You have to have a map before you can have a plan. I don't have plans, or the very small rudiments of a plan which is like kind of help Tanya to make small steps on both getting the short term job like substitute teaching and a long term job like teaching next year. But that's about all I have in terms of a plan. But I have something like a map of where we're going or where we might go.

CLIENT: Sorry I made fun of you.

MAN: That's okay. It's all right to (unclear).

CLIENT: No, not at all. One thing I was thinking is I really want to keep in mind any anxiety you might have about maybe having a map that has less contours than you might like.

MAN: Thanks.

THERAPIST: You know, I want to it's sort of reflected and maybe they're certainly structured to the session but there's also a lot that's not structured and so I was really thinking about your comment about that at that lack of those silences really speak to a lack of structure I feel like because there's really not quite the turn taking that really happens through normal social conventions, right? So it is a lot less structured in that way.

MAN: Well, that seems okay. We've covered a whole lot of subjects. Part of what I was thinking about during the pause was that kind of breadth of things we ran through more or less quickly. I thought it was interesting.

THERAPIST: What came up.

MAN: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Were some of these things things you talked about since, you know, during the trip or since the trip?

MAN: Yeah, some of them were.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: What was new?

MAN: We talked a lot more about Tanya's childhood here than we did and we have since the end of the trip. Nothing new came up, I don't think for me. But we did.

CLIENT: I don't think I told you, James, that I was worried his parents would be disappointed in me.

MAN: Not this trip.

CLIENT: Fair enough. I guess they probably wouldn't be.

MAN: It was a more clear statement of it this time than I had not been thinking about that being an issue before. And I had forgotten how difficult that segment of the conversation with my dad was for you and how difficult the whole home deal was. What kind of happened in the middle.

CLIENT: Well I like to think I covered it pretty well.

MAN: You did.

THERAPIST: We are going to need to stop for today. Let's so we'll meet next week, the three of us. I'm aware that I met with James individually and I usually like to meet both partners individually and also very aware that you're feeling very worn out by all the therapy you're doing so let's talk about that next time. I was going to say, next week I have something in the early afternoon, or mid afternoon. Would that help just for next week and I'll be looking to schedule after that?

CLIENT: Yeah, that would really help.

THERAPIST: I'll look at the schedule after that.

CLIENT: Yeah.

MAN: That should give you time to figure out when you meet with Chad, right?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I might have I need to take a look but I think I might have -

CLIENT: We don't need to change everything right away. I just wanted to move toward moving -

THERAPIST: Well, why don't well, okay, for next week I could do 2:40 on Wednesday rather than 10:45 without (unclear)?

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Let's do that and we'll figure it out from there.

CLIENT: Okay. Thanks.

THERAPIST: Okay, well I'll see you guys next week. Okay, take care.

CLIENT: Thank you.

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