TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in.

CLIENT: Dive right in. (laughs) It's been quite a few days, I guess. Last time we were talking about being an adult versus a child and all that. [00:01:17] (long pause) [00:02:25] I'm not really sure what to focus on. (chuckles) (sighs) (pause) If you give me a topic to talk on then I can talk.

THERAPIST: Do you feel like the time between Wednesday and Monday has made it more difficult to dive in.

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess. I feel that inertia. (chuckles) (pause) [00:03:28] I threw a party this Saturday. It wasn't a party, it was a get-together. I didn't get my friends too much time. I sent the e-mail on Thursday and not many people could come. But I cooked a lot and people liked the food and stuff. I was so nervous that I was talking to myself. It's been a long time since I've thrown a party and invited friends over. [00:04:20] This guy I sort of like I guess I like him and I'm kind of [ ] (inaudible at 00:04:33) and so I'm not really thinking about anything. You look up to someone who you just met and they say they're going to come so I got all excited and nervous and wanted to make a good impression on him and stuff -but he didn't come. (laughs) That's okay. The preparation I was a little nervous like, "Have I invited the right kind of people? I hope when people come they don't get bored. I hope they like the food. I hope they don't get so bored they're like, 'Oh, I'm never coming to one of her things again,'" or something. [00:05:19] (pause) I'm just babbling. (laughs) You don't want to give me a topic?

THERAPIST: To talk about?

CLIENT: Yeah. (laughs)

THERAPIST: I feel like a big part of the process maybe the process itself is understanding where your mind is and how you're thinking about things and what you are or aren't thinking about things.

CLIENT: So I should direct the conversation? [00:06:07]

THERAPIST: Or talk about how you wish that I would direct it. It's certainly a theme that has come up before. I'm very interested in these states. Sometimes you come in here and you say, "I thought a lot about what we said last time and I've taken notes and I'm wondering this and I'm wondering that." There are other sessions where it seems like you feel a little bit lost or unfocused, so I kind of wonder what those sessions are about.

CLIENT: I did take notes (laughs) from last time. I took so many notes that I've never thought about any session before and I did think about what we said, which is way too many things, as usual, plus that inertia and I feel nervous and stuff. [00:07:02]

THERAPIST: Maybe the way you are today, is that a way to responding to that feeling of being kind of overwhelmed or so much material from last time?

CLIENT: Yeah, plus I feel like maybe those are dead ends the Chris/Victor thing. I was thinking of the child/adult thing and I'm just drawing blanks in both those buckets. I don't know what more to say about them right now. (pause) [00:08:02] I started thinking about the past few days and if I should talk about how I felt during them. I don't know what's most significant to talk about or interesting. I guess I was just thinking how to be I guess I'm always thinking about how to manage life, how to make the most of the time that I have and this and that. I feel like I can say this with confidence that I like the weekdays but I don't like the weekends. (laughs) [00:08:58] I just waste too much time during the weekends and feel sad and lonely and this and that and I'm thinking, "People just hang out. People go to parties. I may not have an invitation this weekend so maybe I should throw a party." That took care of a good chunk of Saturday. (chuckles) (pause) I just feel like I may make a mess of things or like I may not utilize time in the best way for the weekends. That makes me feel very un-adult. [ ]

It's just too much responsibility if you're given a big chunk of time like here do what you can with it and I should do good with it. I should make that time beautiful and share it with people. [00:10:09] (pause) I just feel inept or something when I don't have a plan or don't see that I've utilized time efficiently. Like last night (laughs) I felt like I really wasted time. I don't know if that's significant enough to bring up. (pause) Yesterday was a nice day so I ran and rode my bike and stuff. They'd blocked off a road (ph?) so Chris and I strolled about and stuff. (chuckles) I tried to feel the peace, the breeze, the river and stuff. On the way back to my place I just felt very confident. I felt like I had enough confidence to do anything by myself. I pictured myself sitting at a restaurant eating by myself and I was like, "Whoa that is big for me," because me in a restaurant somewhere by myself is an image out of a scary movie for me. (laughs) The confidence was there and then it vanished within an hour or even less. [00:12:00] Then I'm just sitting on my computer spying on Victor, (laughs) seeing what he's been up to. I just felt like that was not a good use of my time, you know? (sighs) And why am I still doing that when I've had a nice day with Chris? Am I just so I don't know what the word is insatiable, that Chris is not enough? What is going on, you know? (pause) [00:13:03]

So without Chris's structure and his orientation, like you said last time, I feel lost and I also feel bad about myself (chuckles), you know? I feel what I make on my own is not good. It's not useful or not pretty. That makes me sad. You said long ago that you don't think I can create beauty on my own.

THERAPIST: Have a beautiful life.

CLIENT: Yeah. But I had a party and I cooked very good food. It was delicious. (laughs) [00:14:00]

THERAPIST: I didn't mean that as an accusation.

CLIENT: I know. I'm just talking to myself here also.

THERAPIST: So you're having a conversation "I don't feel like I can have a beautiful life, but look at all the things I do."

CLIENT: Yeah, and maybe it's related to the thing you said that I don't take credit so when I do do something good and right I'm just scared to take credit for it. I get really nervous.

THERAPIST: What do you think makes you nervous about it?

CLIENT: I have no idea. I thought maybe you would have some clue. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Can you tell me about the nervousness?

CLIENT: Can you give me a scenario? Right now it's too abstract nervousness. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Yeah, there's a lot here in terms of your asking for some sort of structure and guidance. I don't mean to discourage you from doing so, but I want to understand it. [00:15:06] To me, the first thought that comes to my mind is wanting to be taken care of and, also, lacking confidence in your own capacity to think about it and make sense of it.

CLIENT: Yeah, perhaps. (pause) I feel that. I've felt for years . . . I remember when I would read some beautiful piece of prose or in the middle of the novel the writer has written a scene and it would be so beautiful that I would just be so shocked. My mouth would fly open and I would just have to shut the book. [00:16:05] I'd be too nervous to read further because when you said nervous I'm thinking about times when I can recall being nervous and that was nervousness; like when my professors would praise my work in class which doesn't, thankfully, happen so much here yet. It hasn't happened, but at MSU (ph?) there was a lot of that. They'd play favorites and there were very different teachers. They would just be like, "Oh, this is Dostoyevsky." They would say stuff like that. That would paralyze me not completely paralyze me but I would just be like I don't know what to do and I don't know what to say. I don't know how to take it. It was, for me, phenomenal. [00:17:06]

It was nothing that I'd experienced before. Not only to have work, but to have had an award-winning scholar like a famous person look at my work and not only say they're good, but praise them to the skies in front of others. That was just like, "Don't do it. Don't say it. Ahhh." Scary. Not like, "Yay," and doing cartwheels; but more like, "Okay. I just want to hide in a hole and die." (laughs) That was big nervousness and nervousness isn't that guy that I like that said he'll come. [00:18:09]

So that's what I mean by nervousness. It feels like the stuff that is happening is unprecedented. These days when I'm writing working I like what I've done or I narrow my scope and I'm like, "Okay, this is what I have to do," I guess I wonder and I'm sure people go through this that they just feel a moment of panic or fear that, "Oh, God, what if I don't measure up? What if I don't do this right?" They must have all those feelings, but somehow they don't articulate them or they're able to conquer tem. I feel like, for me, that moment is a little bit too prolonged. That moment of paralysis is a bit longer in my case. (laughs) [00:19:06]

THERAPIST: When your professors praise you, do you worry about the expectations they might have?

CLIENT: Yeah, absolutely. These few years since MSU have been bad in the sense that I constantly feel my professor looking over at me and being like, "Okay, where is that success that I foretold?" I have all these responsibilities and pressures, even though I'm not in direct touch with him. I'm just counting down. Now it's a little less, but previously I was counting down the months, the days, and now it's the years. (chuckles) [00:20:05] (pause) I'm not sure what else to say about the nervousness. I just want to run away and hide. That's the feeling. Is that unusual?

THERAPIST: Highly. Highly unusual. Most extremely unusual.

CLIENT: (laughs) I don't know. I haven't talked to other people about that, but they do seem to be pretty held together, you know? They're able to take stuff in their stride. [00:20:58]

THERAPIST: So when you say, "Is that unusual?" are you saying "I feel unusual?"

CLIENT: Yeah. My peers who have had more publications that I've had, I feel like they were able to take criticism and praise with a grain of salt. They had a level head and they were able to understand, "The praise means I'm doing this, this, this and this right, but I also have to think about what I'm not doing right." They take both of those things and they work on their prose and come up with a winner. In my case it's just complete paralysis like, "Oh, I'm great at this blank." My mind goes blank for days and months and years or something like that. (laughs) I'm unable to go back and look at what exactly they're saying. [00:22:04]

THERAPIST: Is there anxiety about what would happen if you let their praise in a little more?

CLIENT: I don't know what that means.

THERAPIST: It sounds like you want to push it away, so if you thought about doing the reverse, letting it in versus pushing it away.

CLIENT: I don't even know what that means. How do you take praise . . . like if I tell you that your earrings look beautiful . . .

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: (laughs) So how does that . . .

THERAPIST: Do you like them?

CLIENT: Yeah. How would you take the praise in? (laughs)

THERAPIST: It makes me feel good.

CLIENT: That's too little. Maybe I have to praise you for something really significant or close to you. [00:23:00] Maybe I can take, if you tell me I have very nice earrings, I'd be happy and think that was a good purchase. They were only $5 and I'm wearing them . . . [00:23:10]

THERAPIST: (laughs)

CLIENT: I assume that's what you mean by "taking praise in", right?

THERAPIST: If I put the question a little differently when you're running away, what are you running away from?

CLIENT: That moment when he's extending warmth to me and telling me I'm good and all the things I've been wanting for years may actually be within my reach; just welcoming me saying, "This girl is good and I'm going to stand next to her and give her the moment, a few minutes of my time. I like her." (laughs) I don't know. I'm trying to unravel or unpack that a little bit. [00:24:08]

THERAPIST: What about that makes you feel you want to run away?

CLIENT: Just fearing that I'll make a mess of it, that they'll get too close and see that I'm not good or they won't like me and leave me. (pause) I'm not trying to connect it too much to my childhood, but I just feel like maybe it had something to do with how my dad was. He was constantly there and not there and there and not there, like the sun on a cloudy day or something. (chuckles) Is it related to my childhood? Should I tell you more about this or . . ? (chuckles) [00:25:14]

THERAPIST: How can I help you develop more confidence in your mind and the confidence for you to just tell me what's on your mind for us to figure out what it might mean?

CLIENT: I don't know. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: When you write, do you write more free-flowing and then go over it, or do you tend to deliberate more on it?

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: You write more free-flowing and then maybe revise it?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Maybe we can think about your doing that in here because I can see that you stop and then try to censor. You begin a creative process just speaking and exploring and feeling and then you stop yourself and you sort of refer back to me or wonder if other people feel this way, so there's something you're kind of interrupting your own thought process. [00:26:14]

CLIENT: Yeah, I feel like I don't have that strong or good of a filter that people have, that adults have. I guess I want to acquire that and I think maybe I can practice here. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: That's an interesting thought because in here maybe I didn't explain it thoroughly enough. In here I think if you can aspire to having as little a filter as possible and just allow yourself to be and think and say what comes to mind, even if at times it's gibberish, I think that that will make the best use of our time or I can be most helpful. But I appreciate that what you're saying is that you want to do differently, so we need to think about that. I respect what you're saying. Is the thought that you could be that free in here, what does that feel like? [00:27:18]

CLIENT: It feels good and scary at the same time. I do wonder about that filter thing and I feel like I have to work on that because I don't like it when people tune me out; I'm saying something and they tune me out and I'm like, "Okay, maybe that's not how I should have said it or I should have thought about this and then just given my conclusions instead of walking them through each and every step." (pause) [00:28:06] I observe how people talk and how they write what they say in their e-mails and these are people who are very smart and have PhDs and whatnot, so I'm like, "I want to get there. I want to be able to communicate in that way what I want to say. It should be significant and conclusions of things and not the process so that people will listen when I speak and find me interesting." (chuckles)

THERAPIST: When people do listen that scares you, too if they not only listen, but admire something that you've said.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's scary. (pause) Again, I wonder if that's usual or not. (laughs) [00:29:02]

THERAPIST: It's highly unusual. I think you should see someone about that.

CLIENT: (laughs) Good thing I am. (laughs)

THERAPIST: I wonder in that moment when you say that it's scary and then you say "I wonder if it's usual," I wonder if that's a way for you to move away from thinking about what that scary piece is?

CLIENT: Maybe. (pause) I just wonder if it's just me standing there shivering or if a bunch of us (laughs) . . . Then I could derive some comfort that it's not just me. I wish that I had this conversation, it would be you and my peers, where they said it's scary and the professor says this and this, you know? We didn't have that kind of conversation. [00:30:12] I just wish someone would have come up to me and said, "You know, this is important to me and I'm scared." (laughs) But no one wanted to be that vulnerable in front of the competition, basically. (pause) I just wish people could have said that, "I'm not doing so well. Help me." You know? Like emotionally or whatever, but I guess you don't say that. You just say, "I've got too many things going on." (pause) [00:31:09]

But like with my dad, I wanted to please him very badly and it didn't really work out. (laughs) There was always a running list in my head of things I wasn't good at, things that he wanted me to work on and I guess I didn't really work on them to his liking. [00:31:52] (long pause) I guess it's also the nature of the beast in the sciences when you send out what you're working on and they give you comments. Here you just send stuff out and it's either a green flag or a red flag. Mostly it's a red flag, so you never really know. [00:33:20] I think I can know what I need to work on and what is good. This is gibberish. (laughs) (pause) I just wish sort of my goal is to be less nervous, have more confidence. (pause) (sighs) Isn't it related to my expectations? I don't even know how to approach them, from what angle to approach this and make it better. Do I just have too many expectations from these moments of approval, of promise? It makes me very, very clingy and I think that's what happened with Victor. I think I became very clingy, although I denied the charge vehemently. I would be like, "I am not a clingy person at all." But that's only the case with Chris. It's not the case with someone like Victor who gave me what I liked or wanted or was looking for emotional connection. (pause) [00:35:22] (sniggers) It's like I think of it as a breast and I just cling onto it (chuckles). I was not breast fed as a child, but still . . .

THERAPIST: In a lot of different ways.

CLIENT: What do you mean?

THERAPIST: The breast is something that's nurturing in a human and fulfills very basic needs, like the need to be fed. It's warm and is maternal.

CLIENT: Yeah, but I guess adults are not clingy. Only a child who cannot derive nutrition from anywhere else clings. He's completely helpless. He has to be directed to the breast like, "Here. Go at it." Like "Here. Live." But adult can get their own food. They can even go for days without eating. [00:36:30]

THERAPIST: Not healthfully.

CLIENT: No, but they're not screaming and crying when it's time to eat. That's the difference between being a helpless baby and an adult.

THERAPIST: But I think one of the reasons that adults can be like this and I really think it's on a continuum. I don't think it's all or nothing because we all have times when we feel more anxious and needing and "clingy", to use your word. I think it's a continuum; but it's because they have a nice, soft, warm, nurturing breasts inside so it makes the urgency of finding that outside less. [00:37:13]

CLIENT: Yeah, I don't have that breast. (laughs) I don't have that inside me and just feel like pulling my hair out. I think, "Why not?" I was saying like last night I felt confident enough to do anything by myself, to be by myself; but that quickly vaporized like someone had just put a vacuum cleaner on me and sucked that nice little halo around me or that bubble completely. I don't know why, what happened. (pause) I guess I thought about Victor and felt abandoned and all that. (sniggers) [00:38:05] (pause)

I told Victor about this. (sighs) At one time he was saying something about something and I said, "Yeah, it's my fear of abandonment," and then I told him the story that my dad would leave my mom and me constantly and, at one point, I think she went away and tried to kill herself. She just wanted to just stand in front of a passing train or something. I remember that moment of losing her and there is that fear. [00:39:05] One time this was very weird but it's so vivid in my head we were sitting in an auto. In India there are these big vehicles that take in passengers. It's like a three-wheeler and the driver sits in front and there are two rows of seats. You just kind of hop on and hop off. This guy didn't have a license and the policeman was coming and asking for his license. My mom had just gotten on and I haven't gotten on yet. He just drove off and I was standing on the side of the road screaming. (laughs) Then when the policeman went away he came back or he waited ahead and I ran to catch up. I remember that moment. (laughs) These little moments when I'm in a public space and my mom has gone away somewhere. I feared that she would never come back. (laughs) [00:40:13]

THERAPIST: How old were you when that happened that one time?

CLIENT: Like five or something. It wasn't even permanent. It was not permanent at all.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but time in the mind of a five-year-old is forever.

CLIENT: Yeah. (laughs)

THERAPIST: That's what urgency is. Urgency is sort of you can't wait and the question is "why can't you wait?" Well one is that the waiting time feels like eternity, so that's one of the things that creates a sense of urgency, that something that you need now there is going to be too much time that elapses. So maybe one of the things that you're saying is to really take in anything good will really raise your hopes up and who knows if it will be taken away from you? [00:41:11]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: You can't count on that good, nice presence, that safety.

CLIENT: Yeah. I feel like that. I felt like that constantly with Victor. Constantly. He was ready to pull his hair out because of that urgency. (chuckles) "No, I need to talk to you right now. I have to see you right now." So you're saying that if I let the praise in it will just sit there and become something else or it will raise my hopes, the longer that it's with me? I'm confused. (chuckles) [00:42:04]

THERAPIST: Yeah, or that just letting it in when you have something good you want to keep it or even have something more of something good. And if it can be taken away at any moment it's almost like if you're starving, is it worse to continue starving or have a little bit of food and have that taste of what it's like to eat, and then go back to starving or the fear of starving.

CLIENT: Starving? (chuckles) At that time, even the littlest bit of food is too much temptation; the risk is too great. (pause) [00:42:57] I've tried that. I've tried those things where you don't eat for seven days and whatnot.

THERAPIST: Why?

CLIENT: Cleansing or what-not. I hear it's good for the pipes and things. (chuckles) That was a juice diet. They extended the definition of "juice" to include beans and make a paste out of it. (laughs) In practice, it was in theory the tiniest bit of food is too much and your senses are too alive to even the smells. I don't know if I can do anything about that sense of fearing that the good things will go away. Is it because of my past that good things have always gone away? Or have I not had good things that have lasted? I don't know. [00:44:17]

THERAPIST: I'm not understanding the difference.

CLIENT: Am I reacting to this because of some pattern in the past where good things have constantly gone away from me? As a counter to that, have I not had good things that have stayed a while? Something to think about.

THERAPIST: And felt a great deal of anxiety when you have the prospect of having something good. That's how I was listening to your thinking or hoping that the guy will come to the party and what does it feel like when you have an expectation that is not met? There is so much danger in that. [00:45:05] There is a lot on the line and if it's your hopes and dreams, intellectually and professionally, and then you're wanting to feel good about yourself and have people you respect feel good about you, that's a whole lot on the line.

CLIENT: Yeah, that is.

THERAPIST: So much. We need to stop for today. I'll see you on Wednesday.

CLIENT: At 9:00.

THERAPIST: You got it. Take care.

CLIENT: You, too.

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