TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi.

CLIENT: It seems things are getting worse.

THERAPIST: Worse? I’m sorry to hear that.

CLIENT: I found out on Tuesday that my job, which previously they had said would go until July, actually is ending in mid-March, which was a big shock to me because I was hoping that, since they got a second grant, I could continue on. But the second grant is for doing something else. They probably would have kept me until end of June or July if it hadn’t been for the fact that the H.R. finance person was like, “Is there any way we can cut this position?” since I had already finished all the work that I had originally been hired for and they were just having me do more work. [00:00:58] If it hadn’t been for that, they wouldn’t have had to let me go. I guess July was also the estimate with how long they thought all my stuff was going to take, but because I’m so good at my job I have to end in March now.

THERAPIST: It certainly speeds up the timeline of pressure to find a job.

CLIENT: I definitely didn’t get the [Westford] (ph?) thing and I found out that I had that typo for the application for the two positions at Yale and at Stanford. I haven’t actually applied to anything this week because Monday Sydney ended up doing a phone session so he wasn’t there so I ended up going back home. Since then I haven’t really had a chance so maybe over the weekend I’ll do something. [00:02:01] But I’m just freaking out now because I’m wondering how – my parents are going to have to pay for even more stuff if no money is coming in at all. I actually took the news quite well. I was at work. I don’t know. At least it will be a relief not to commute any more.

THERAPIST: So end of March?

CLIENT: Second week of March, I think.

THERAPIST: So about six weeks?

CLIENT: Yeah, six weeks just to finish up all the projects that I’m doing and it might be even less than that if I finish everything sooner. I might finish everything sooner.

THERAPIST: So now you feel like there is this pressure to find a job.

CLIENT: And there is no way – well, there is not no way, but it’s very unlikely that I’ll find a job and actually get hired in that short a period of time. [00:03:07] I haven’t seen anything lately that has jumped out at me and been like “I would be perfect for that job.”

THERAPIST: Did you really have a chance to look this past week?

CLIENT: A little bit. I looked. I haven’t applied. There is one that wouldn’t be bad and I would be qualified for it, but I couldn’t find anything special about the position that I could turn into a cover letter. That’s why I haven’t written it yet because I don’t really know what to say, other than I would like to be able to work at Stanford and this job looks as good as any.

THERAPIST: Right – and you can’t write that in the cover.

CLIENT: You can’t write that in the cover letter or “I need a job.”

THERAPIST: What is it? What is this position? [00:04:01]

CLIENT: I don’t even remember the name of the position, but it’s something like helping retrieve things for researchers and stuff like that. It’s a little bit of showing people some library technologies, I think, or ways people can use it. I might be confusing it with the second position because there are two of them. I don’t know if it’s at the level I’m at now or maybe a step down in terms of authority-wise. It’s definitely not moving up, but I assume that they would be at least decent.

THERAPIST: But moving laterally right now would be fine?

CLIENT: Right. [00:05:00] I don’t really mind. I’m just not going to write a cover letter sometimes when I just . . .

THERAPIST: It’s hard to make it sound unique and interesting.

CLIENT: I don’t know if maybe I should send out more things and write more bland cover letters or send out less things and just only do the ones – like if I only do positions that jump out at me, I risk not applying to any positions. It’s something that I would enjoy doing, though.

THERAPIST: I think the strategy that you’ve used in the past that actually got you to move forward is to set a low number to try to send out each week. Just try to send out two or three a week. I think trying to push yourself to apply to everything and to apply to things that aren’t really that interesting doesn’t really behoove you because you’re less likely to get a response on something that’s not tailored to what you’re looking for. [00:06:04] And I think you’re also less likely to actually produce a cover letter and an application if you feel like you’ve got to do so many of them. Targeting your search, but making sure that you do get two or three out a week of the things that are most striking to you, that makes sense for what you’ve done and what you want to do and what your background is because those are the ones you have a better shot at anyway. And you can push yourself to write one or two difficult cover letters a week, where you’re not going to write five a day and you may not even write one a day. So if you can push yourself to get out a couple a week, you’ll hopefully be targeting them in a way that makes it most likely that you’re going to get a return on that.

CLIENT: It’s so hard when I have nothing to say in the cover letter and I’m just trying to make something good. [00:07:06] My cover letters end up being stuffy that I try to make them less.

THERAPIST: I think looking for those key words rather than making it the best prose you’ve ever written, I think really working from an angle of trying to match up what is the skillset that they say they’re looking for in the posting? And then looking in your experience and in your training how you match that and making it that kind of word game rather than trying to create the most captivating cover letter. A lot of times you’re being scanned for key words rather than being read from a human perspective.

CLIENT: I just wonder because I hear conflicting advice because you’re not supposed to use your cover letter to write all the stuff that’s in your resume. You’re supposed to write about things that aren’t in your resume because they can read your resume. [00:08:08] Then if it’s getting scanned for keywords, then you end up having to . . .

THERAPIST: Put in a couple of them. You’re not going to want to, in your cover letters, start listing all of your experiences, but I think it does make sense to say in a paragraph “I’m proficient in blah, blah, blah.” Those “blah, blah, blah’s being those key skills that they’re looking for because if you don’t demonstrate that you’re a good match for the position, they’re not going to get to your resume. You want to make sure that your cover letter is something that puts you into the read-the-rest-of-the-application file versus getting your cover letter scanned and not getting any further than that. [00:08:56] In looking through some of the information and advice and searching for jobs, this is some of the stuff that I’ve been reading, looking at what kind of strategies work in today’s environment of online applications and lots of applications.

CLIENT: The job market.

THERAPIST: It’s a very intimidating and frustrating place.

CLIENT: I always thought that maybe things would get better in a year and then they didn’t. At least I’m going to get really good recommendations.

THERAPIST: That’s great. That’s coming from a little bit of a different place than you were in.

CLIENT: But I didn’t meet anyone that could expand my network or anything. They’re all the way in Cheshire.

THERAPIST: They’re a little bit too far away to help where you want to be. But you do have that added experience and very recent, good recommendations. They’re not recommendations coming from a job two years ago, so hopefully that will impact your experience. [00:10:06]

CLIENT: I hope so, not that I’ve even gotten to the point of giving people references. I just don’t know who to talk to. I’m trying to do the whole networking thing. I did the networking I could. I guess it was good experience and practice, but it didn’t end up getting me a job or even an interview.

THERAPIST: It didn’t end up in a job.

CLIENT: I guess it’s a good thing because I would have been panicking about the commute to Westford as well. (pause) I was hoping I’d get a real job this time around, but I’ll probably have to take something that’s part time again or no benefits. (sniffling) [00:11:07] It’s just the same situation except worse because I’m in an apartment that costs more money. So I don’t really know what to do. I just want to curl up in a ball and cry because everything is going wrong. (sobs)

THERAPIST: It’s a scary place to feel trapped.

CLIENT: (crying) They only found out about this two weeks ago, so it’s not like they’ve been waiting forever to tell me that all of a sudden I couldn’t work there for as long as I thought I was going to. (pause) It’s just so frustrating. I feel like I’m not a very good candidate for any job. [00:12:03]

THERAPIST: What makes you say that?

CLIENT: Because besides being horrible at the whole job application process, I feel like I only did an okay job at my job and not like a good job.

THERAPIST: Where is that idea coming from? Did they give you feedback that you’re only doing an okay job?

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: So where is that coming from?

CLIENT: I don’t know. I guess just my own insecurities and thinking that because I haven’t gotten that much feedback lately.

THERAPIST: Absence of feedback does not mean that you’re not doing a good job. It’s important to notice the assumptions that you’re making based on a void. It’s not fair to say that no feedback means that you’re not doing a good job. It’s very common not to get feedback in a professional setting. [00:13:03] I know you did a lot of schools so you have a lot of experience in the academic setting where there are markers, but that’s not the case once you’re out of that element where feedback is pretty rare. Sometimes people have an annual review.

CLIENT: I didn’t even have one of those. (pause)

THERAPIST: In the absence of having that kind of structure where you get feedback, it’s unfair to tell yourself that that means that you’re not doing a good job.

CLIENT: Again this week, because I have had typos in some of my records, I guess with the catalog you have to be a lot more careful because it’s supposed to be in an official format and everything, but I’m guessing I probably let a few things fall through the cracks. [00:14:02]

THERAPIST: Sure. You’re not perfect.

CLIENT: No one said anything about them and I know I have one formatting error which, unfortunately, is the same for all the records because I thought there should be a period where there wasn’t. Luckily, they don’t need to be exact as long as all the information is right. If you do have a bit of punctuation wrong, I think it’s okay; but I was seeing it every time I do something to a record.

THERAPIST: That’s frustrating to see it pop up over and over.

CLIENT: And it’s happening over and over because I’m copying and pasting records now into this spreadsheet so they can give that to the people who are going to digitize their log books. So every time I’m having to erase that period that I should not have put there. [00:15:08] I made hundreds of these records, so I’m seeing it over and over again.

THERAPIST: It must be frustrating, but it’s not the measure of the work that you’ve done; it’s one period copied, but a period. You’re not a computer. You’re a human being. Human beings do make errors.

CLIENT: It’s just annoying and also because I feel like whenever I’m doing cataloging anywhere else they actually would care about that period and so then it’s like okay, I’m not cut out for cataloging in the real world.

THERAPIST: This is your first time.

CLIENT: That’s true.

THERAPIST: This is your first position of this type at a library school and so you’ve learned something. [00:16:05] Now, with more experience, you’re more familiar and you double check something like that.

CLIENT: Yeah. And now I don’ think I like cataloging very much because it’s just too hard and detail-oriented. I like working with whole collections better.

THERAPIST: You may or may not have the ability to be that choosy.

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s true. I think that they would probably say that I did a good job cataloging if they ask about it. I don’t know because I have had absolutely no feedback on my catalog records that I’ve been doing the past month at this point. There’s really not a whole lot of feedback. [00:17:00] I don’t think they’ll have me go back to the other program and fix things because I’ve already loaded them into the catalog. I think they’ll just stay the way they are. I don’t even know why I thought that period would be there. But yeah, I was copying records as a shortcut so I would always have to remember to delete certain things if I was using the field in the new record and it had something in it in the old record. I think for all of those I got rid of that. That would be a bigger deal because then it would be a subject heading that shouldn’t be there or something. I don’t know. Having no feedback is driving me crazy. At least I think the spreadsheet thing that I’m doing now is really straightforward, even if it’s also really annoying because it’s a lot of copying and pasting for 150 records, all of them just copying information from each one and pasting it. [00:18:09] (pause)

I just don’t know how I’m going to find a new job if I suck at my old, current job. (crying) Maybe I don’t suck at it, but I feel like I do. I should have been networking and stuff and I suck at networking and I don’t even know if there is anything going up that I didn’t even go to. I know the [S.A.A.] (ph?) conference is happening, but that’s not until August and I need to get a job before August. I don’t have any sort of backup plan unless I was to work at the store. But I don’t feel like I want to work at the store in retail for $10 an hour. [00:19:03]

THERAPIST: Have you talked to your parents about this recent news?

CLIENT: I did.

THERAPIST: What kind of response did you get from them?

CLIENT: My mom said to finish up my stuff quickly because I could, in theory, drag on how long I take with the work because I could work slower than I do, I think, because usually I end up working fast because I just want to get things done. My mom says I shouldn’t drag it out until I get finished and I won’t have as much time to apply for new jobs until I finish up with the old job.

THERAPIST: So it sounds like she would rather you have a gap in pay and have more time to devote to job hunting.

CLIENT: I think so. (pause)

THERAPIST: So if that’s the response that you got from her when you let her know, it seems important not to catastrophize the potential gap because it doesn’t sound like she freaked out about the potential gap. Her response was that it’s better for you to finish up, not be getting paid and have time to devote to job hunting rather than to try to extend your pay.

CLIENT: Yeah. It’s not like I was very effective at job hunting and stuff when I had no job at all.

THERAPIST: This time you’ll have to be a little bit more focused on it.

CLIENT: And I don’t know if I should try to find another volunteer thing just so I have no gap on my resume.

THERAPIST: You could be looking to see both for internships, for volunteer opportunities, for job openings. [00:21:00]

CLIENT: It would just have to be a volunteer thing that was something I could easily leave, since I do want to find something that actually pays money.

THERAPIST: Have you been in contact with the group you were volunteering with before?

CLIENT: The Pawtucket Historical Society, the person who I worked with, they have actually, I guess, sometime in the past few months, ended up leaving. I’m not sure why, but I found this out when I finally got around to making the template that I was going to make for them. [00:22:03] It wasn’t Tara who answered; it was this other person who answered and was like, “Oh, I’m actually the new person who is in the job,” so I guess I could work for her, in theory.

THERAPIST: That sounds like a potential person to connect with.

CLIENT: Possibly.

THERAPIST: You have her contact, obviously.

CLIENT: I don’t know her very well, but she is from a museum studies background instead of an archives background. I guess I could work there again. It would just be very different. I don’t know if she’s for the kind of work that I want to do because the whole problem is that the archives have been treated like a museum collection and someone from an archivist’s point of view would be like, “Wow, this is really bad;” but someone from a museum point of view would, naturally, know that there isn’t a problem at all. [00:23:01] I suppose I could volunteer doing something else there.

THERAPIST: Well you could certainly, now that the door has been opened to at least send an e-mail back to her, I think for networking purposes, just saying, “Glad you got the template I sent. Just to let you know, I’m finishing up at my position at blah, blah, blah at the Cheshire Whaling Museum. Do you know of anything? Do you have any opportunities? I would be interested in hearing about them.” You’re not committing yourself to anything. You’re letting her know that you’re looking for something, whether it be a paid position, a flexible volunteer thing to keep yourself current. Keep the door open for yourself. That’s what networking is. You’re not committing yourself to anything, but this is a content that you inadvertently made. [00:24:02] And then if Tara has gone somewhere else . . .

CLIENT: She, unfortunately, moved out to – I forget the name of it, but it’s a town that’s at least an hour away, so I can’t just follow her.

THERAPIST: You can’t follow her, but you can let her know that you’re finishing up your position. She may still know people that are not just working in the town that she’s in.

CLIENT: That’s true. She might.

THERAPIST: When you think about networking you think about not just who you’re talking to and where they’re working, but the idea of a network is that one person is connected to other people and they are connected to other people; and you want to keep that line of communication open to them so that you can hear about anything else they know about.

CLIENT: Okay. Yeah, I could do that. [00:24:55]

THERAPIST: I think, in terms of job-related stuff, your task for the coming week is to send an e-mail to Tara, to send an e-mail to this other woman at Pawtucket, and let them know that you’re about to finish up your position in Cheshire in March and that you’d be really interested in hearing about any opportunities they know of. Thanks so much.

CLIENT: Okay. The other thing that I was considering possibly doing was rejoining [music] (ph?) and I don’t know if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

THERAPIST: What made you think of that? Let’s talk it out.

CLIENT: The reason I left originally was because of the job. I wasn’t leaving because I didn’t like music anymore, especially with [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:43) it was all fine and better and fun. I actually e-mailed them because I was like “Can I re-audition? Do you even have space for altos?” Their response on that, which was not what I was expecting, was them actually saying that since it’s only been less than a year since I’ve gone, they don’t need me to re-audition. [00:26:08]

THERAPIST: So they would welcome you back with open arms.

CLIENT: Yeah. I’m just worried about the scheduling for now while I do still have the job. So I have to let them know and I haven’t written them back yet.

THERAPIST: It sounds like it would be – I mean you just said it was fun and all good. Those sound like positive things. One of the things that you’ve talked about missing was that sense of community, having moved out of that house and the people you were friendly with having moved out before that. So it sounds like getting back in touch with a group of people who you liked and who you enjoyed an activity of singing together, that sounds like it would be a positive thing for you. [00:27:02] The initial response you got from them, maybe it would be okay to delay for a month so that combining the commute and music would only be for a short amount of time. See what the timeline could be about you coming back or could you come back in sort of a stepping-stone fashion where maybe you didn’t go to all the rehearsals right away because you still have this long commute. Keep the option open.

CLIENT: Okay. I think I can do that.

THERAPIST: Having fun at something is a great anxiety reliever.

CLIENT: I wonder why I’m so stressed right now. I started panicking right before the appointment. I was okay earlier. [00:28:01] I had sent the e-mail about the things that were wrong with the apartment and this morning. The landlord sent somebody to do the electrical outlet this morning.

THERAPIST: Oh, fabulous.

CLIENT: So I still have the toilet.

THERAPIST: But you were able to really make some movement and get a quick response.

CLIENT: Yeah, it was really fast.

THERAPIST: That’s encouraging.

CLIENT: Of course, he didn’t tell me he was sending someone over. It was just a knock on the door.

THERAPIST: But that’s encouraging that he would be positively responding to other things as well. So maybe some of that list of problems might actually diminish.

CLIENT: It still won’t solve the small kitchen problem.

THERAPIST: No. That can only be fixed by figuring out how to navigate. You’re not knocking down walls and making the kitchen bigger, but you probably can maybe find a way to better navigate it or set up your space or adjust to it. [00:29:09] Did you stay at your apartment this week?

CLIENT: I did.

THERAPIST: And how did you manage some of those challenges?

CLIENT: I ended up distracting myself. We were watching Babylon 5 and we did take-out one night and one of the nights I made food and last night I ended up just having cereal for dinner because I didn’t really want to deal with the kitchen.

THERAPIST: How did you manage the night that you did cook?

CLIENT: It wasn’t that bad because I was only making macaroni and cheese, which is easier.

THERAPIST: It doesn’t require a lot of counter space.

CLIENT: Yeah. I haven’t yet tried to make something that does require counter space. [00:30:00] I still need to do something about all the boxes in the living room so that I can actually use the table there as an extension of the counter.

THERAPIST: That could work, if you figure out where you do prep.

CLIENT: The problem is right now I don’t have that space and I do have those boxes. Sydney was going to help me get rid of the boxes, but he ended up still being sick this week so he wasn’t able to. He was going to do stuff while I was at work and that didn’t happen and then the other days I was panicking so I didn’t actually make any progress. (heavy breathing)

THERAPIST: Deep breaths. When you start to think about the tasks I can see you getting really worked up about it.

CLIENT: Yeah. (crying)

THERAPIST: So let’s talk about it. What’s so scary about thinking about those tasks? About getting rid of those boxes? Because when you start to think about that, that’s when I noticed your breath getting short. [00:31:05]

CLIENT: Because of all the stuff in there and I don’t know what to do with all the stuff in there so going through it . . .

THERAPIST: Do you know what the stuff is or you don’t know what you’re facing?

CLIENT: Vaguely. Sort of. Yeah, I don’t really know what I’m facing.

THERAPIST: Okay, so I wonder if that’s part of what feels so scary, is that with these boxes you don’t exactly know what you’re going to encounter.

CLIENT: And I just don’t know what I’m going to do with the stuff when I do encounter it – like where I’m going to put it. I don’t really have a place for random stuff and that’s what the majority of it is, I think.

THERAPIST: Do you feel like you need stuff? Is there stuff that you’ve noticed you needed that you don’t have?

CLIENT: Not that much. Most of what I need, I have.

THERAPIST: Is it possible that if there are things you find in those boxes and you don’t have a space for it, that it could either eventually be transported to your parents’ house for a while or donated or recycled?

CLIENT: Possibly. I should just donate everything that’s useful in there.

THERAPIST: If you don’t have a need for it, then that is one way of coping with it, downsizing, in a responsible way. Maybe somebody else could get some use out of it.

CLIENT: I’d like to have less stuff.

THERAPIST: There are some places that could make that really easy for you. Places even come and pick it up curbside so you don’t have to worry. I know sometimes transporting things to the car and then, too, some place can sometimes be challenging for you. So if it makes it a step easier, calling one of the places that can come and get it for you once you’ve sorted a box might take one of those tasks away. [00:33:11]

CLIENT: Okay. (pause) Will they come for just a small amount of stuff?

THERAPIST: I know Big Brother, Big Sister does a lot of curbside pickup of clothing, small household items, and they don’t ask how much you have. They just ask if you have a donation and then they’ll let you know when they’re going to be in your area. So it might not happen right away, but you could call and set up a time for the next time they’re going to be in your area and then you don’t have to worry about transporting that stuff. You just need to get it out to the curb in a labeled box. It would fit a couple of your agenda items, getting rid of some of your stuff, donating it seems like it felt like a good way for you and not requiring an extra trip. [00:34:05]

CLIENT: I guess I could do that. It’s just the timing/coordination seems like it would also be a chore to get it out by a certain time.

THERAPIST: Yes, you would have to get it out for the morning of the pick-up, which probably means putting it out the night before. But you don’t have to get up super early.

CLIENT: But it means getting the box sorted by then.

THERAPIST: It’s having some stuff sorted, yeah. You don’t have to do it all. You can do it piece by piece. So earlier in the session I kind of laid out some job-related agendas of sending out those e-mails. Is it unrealistic to think about having that as a goal, sending those two e-mails plus sorting a box? Is that too much?

CLIENT: It might be. [00:35:04]

THERAPIST: Okay, so then let’s separate it. Let’s focus – I know we’ll meet again on Monday at our regular time, so for this weekend, let’s focus on the two e-mails, having that be the priority because getting a job is a priority and those e-mails might help pave the way to some opportunities. That gives you two days to craft an e-mail and send it to those people. Then we can think about if you can do that by Monday before you come in, then we can leave the next goal off until after that – keep it at a manageable pace.

CLIENT: Okay. (pause) Just the idea of writing the e-mails doesn’t sound like it will be hard, but the idea of the boxes does. I’m just dreading it so much. [00:36:02]

THERAPIST: Okay, so we’re going to take that off the list. When we talk on Monday, that’s when we’ll figure out how to make that one manageable.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: We’re not going to put too much on the list because I don’t want you to paralyze yourself with thinking about taking on too much at once. (pause) Are you staying in Vermont this weekend?

CLIENT: Yeah. I have stuff going on on Saturday and Sunday.

THERAPIST: What’s going on? Stuff to look forward to?

CLIENT: Yeah, my D&D game is happening on Saturday and then Sunday we have a Super Bowl party at Sydney’s friend’s house. (pause) [00:37:02]

THERAPIST: I’m glad you have some fun things planned – distracting. (pause)

CLIENT: I don’t know why I’m so sad right now.

THERAPIST: It was probably disappointing to hear about the job.

CLIENT: It was. It’s like even though it wouldn’t have been ideal to stay longer, it would have been nice to have more time to find something, especially since I really liked the work that I was doing. I was hoping they would then want to do more, but the grant that they got wasn’t for that.

THERAPIST: It sounds like it wasn’t a personal issue. [00:38:02]

CLIENT: It wasn’t.

THERAPIST: It was how the funds were directed. It’s unfortunate.

CLIENT: They wanted to have a balanced budget and I guess they didn’t have a balanced budget.

THERAPIST: I think your sadness makes sense. It’s disappointing to hear that the job is shorter than you anticipated, that they weren’t able to finagle a way to keep you on. It feels a little bit like a personal rejection, even though it sounds like it’s really not. It feels like “they’re not finding a way to keep me.”

CLIENT: I just wish I could find something permanent with benefits.

THERAPIST: That would be such a relief.

CLIENT: It feels so far off. I just feel like that’s something I’ll never find.

THERAPIST: Never is a really long jump.

CLIENT: It feels like something that I’m not going to find in the near future. [00:39:01]

THERAPIST: It does feel like a big task, but remember to think about what are the pieces you have control over? You don’t have control over what’s out there or when you’ll find it. The pieces you have control over are who you reach out to, where you apply to; the result of those things is the piece that’s uncertain and out of your control for sure and not letting that uncertainty stop you from doing the things that you do have a say so in. You have control over the applications you put out and the contacts that you try to make. That’s what we’re going to focus on. You have control over sending out those e-mails, trying to open up those opportunities that might be out there. And the other thoughts you can acknowledge that they’re there. They’re definitely scary, but you have to stop how much time you let them circle in your head because those thoughts are what make you so upset. [00:40:11]

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: So let’s plan on – I’ll see you at your regular time on Monday and your job by then is to do those two e-mails and we’ll tackle the next piece after that, okay?

CLIENT: Okay.

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