TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi. Come on in. (pause)

CLIENT: I thought there were a lot of people here. I thought I heard lots of people laughing.

THERAPIST: Here? In this office?

CLIENT: Yeah. I was just curious. (laughs)

THERAPIST: In here? I was by myself. It sounded like that just before?

CLIENT: Yeah. Maybe it was in the next room.

THERAPIST: You can hear a little bit in the waiting room that office. It was probably there. I was here by myself. [00:01:06]

CLIENT: How are you? (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Good, thank you.

CLIENT: I was thinking about from last time so you won't give me a cue, will you? (laughs)

THERAPIST: My saying that I will or won't give you a cue is a cue. (laughs)

CLIENT: Is it?

THERAPIST: Maybe.

CLIENT: (pause) [00:01:59] I guess last time we were talking about me feeling like I won't be able to change. I wonder if they're just basic instincts or they've become part of my nature to feel desperate or whatever. (chuckles) (pause) I guess I wanted to ask you if you think I could change and how I could change.

THERAPIST: Well, if I didn't think you could change, I wouldn't be working with you.

CLIENT: Oh. (laughs) [00:02:57] I thought who people are, they're just wired a certain way and the way they react sometimes some of their reactions are just that's who they are.

THERAPIST: Is that how you feel about yourself?

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess I'm beginning to feel that way. I'm not sure. (pause) It looks like I will be moving out of my apartment. (chuckles) I just casually mentioned it to a couple of my roommates and they told the main boss, the big roommate, and she's like all right, do this, do that, this and that, this and that. [00:04:00] I put her in touch with the one who had come and seen my room and now it seems like the ball is rolling. I feel really sad that I wasn't able to live on my own, to make a life of my own.

THERAPIST: Where will you live?

CLIENT: With Chris and with my mom.

THERAPIST: You mean go back and forth?

CLIENT: Yeah. Mostly with Chris, I guess. I don't know. I just get a great sense of being taken care of at his place. [00:05:00] Right now, or a few days ago before I took the decision, it felt like I was crashing at his place and I was there with very few of my belongings and a few of my books and my laptop. That felt good. That felt mature and fun and I was putting my work first. I guess I just wanted to extend that mostly it's money, also because, again, student I'm not making that much. If all of it goes to pay the rent for a place where I'm not even staying, I feel that's very wrong. [00:05:58] I shouldn't do that because my mom is living, she doesn't have much money right now and she has student loans. (laughs)

THERAPIST: From?

CLIENT: She's doing a Master's.

THERAPIST: Is she hoping to teach?

CLIENT: Yeah. It's not really working out very well. She has to pass these exams and Friday night we found out that she didn't pass this test that I think she's taken twice. I was just very sad, very depressed. I was saying all those things, my usual response. [00:07:01] Now I'm noticing that's what I was doing, was feeling like a martyr. I feel like my mom and I are alone in this world and no one wants us or like we are struggling. I just completely wanted to distance myself from Chris, who is so successful and everything is going right. All of a sudden I felt like it was just me and my mom against everybody else. (chuckles) (pause) I try to distract myself. I told myself I'm not going to go down this path of thinking like this, so I stopped. [00:08:05] I had to cheer up my mom also because she's more down that she didn't pass. I'm lost now. What was I talking about? (laughs)

THERAPIST: Do you feel lost in general?

CLIENT: Not so much. I don't know. Things are a little messy. I guess that's what it is and I guess I have to learn to either live with the mess or clean it up or pave a path for myself so that I can do what I want to do and stuff. [00:09:05]

THERAPIST: Did you need my help more on making the decision of giving up your apartment?

CLIENT: Sure, if you have advice I'd love it.

THERAPIST: It sounds like you already gave it up.

CLIENT: Well, I could say I want to stay. I could.

THERAPIST: I guess I asked you a slightly different question. I'm not sure if you wanted it.

CLIENT: If I want your advice?

THERAPIST: Yeah, because I guess I didn't get the sense that you were thinking about this and you were trying to make a decision. I know you've talked about it here before you're not sure but I didn't know you were actively in the process of making a decision. So I didn't know if you wanted to illicit my help in that way. [00:09:57]

CLIENT: Well, you've already observed this about me, that I don't really plan things and I don't take decision. The way that I do things seems very reactive, right? You've said this earlier. That's how I operate. Now I'm noticing that. I have two choices and I want parts of both. I want a place of my own. I want to live there. I want to be this independent woman, but I also want to be taken care of and I want to be at Chris's apartment feeling safe and secure. I don't know. This is what I need to do and that's it and everything else is secondary. I want both. (laughs) [00:11:04] The ultimate deciding factor, or one of the biggest ones, becomes money and I'm very tempted to save all that money that I would spend on my own place. So it doesn't seem like this is a well thought out, planned decision and, in my head, the story is that I'm just having to give up this place because my mom is not doing so well financially; so rather than wasting that money on my rent I'd rather give some of it to her. That is what I'm telling myself. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Well, if you have to tell yourself that, then there's a part of you that doesn't believe it.

CLIENT: What do you mean? [00:11:57]

THERAPIST: If I'm telling myself this story, it sort of speaks to the fact that maybe it's a whole truth, but is it the whole truth?

CLIENT: Yeah, because I'm seeing the way I operate. I'm just trying to understand myself and I think I do this because I can shirk the responsibility or not face cold, hard facts or maybe indulge in feeling a little better and what not. I don't know. I'm trying not to think about it because it will be really sad. I keep thinking, "Oh, I've failed. I've failed. I couldn't do it. I couldn't be an adult. People ask me to live on my own and be an adult and live my own life, but I couldn't do it." (pause) I'm supposed to find myself, be by myself. (laughs) [00:13:01]

THERAPIST: I don't think you can't do it. I think something scared you and you want to give up and maybe it gets to the question of change, feeling like you can't change, feeling like you don't want to change.

CLIENT: What was I scared of? What part of me?

THERAPIST: What do you think?

CLIENT: I don't know. (sniggers) (pause) Working and money cannot be an excuse, right? It generally is this practical issue that, when I was living at my place, I would have to drag my backpack all the way to the Square. [00:14:03] Most of the time I would walk just to avoid the longer subway fare and I don't have a very good back and I would just be like, "Why am I doing this? Why can't I find a caf� near home?" But I don't want to. I want to be in the Square. (laughs) It's just something about that place that makes me feel very productive because I used to come to the Square anyway before we moved. When I used to live in Hamden I would come here anyway and making that a priority cannot just be an excuse. It's true that when I'm at my place I have been able to work when I have a deadline, but there are too many distractions and this and that. [00:15:00] I'm just saying that it can't be just an excuse. It feels like a legitimate reason, but that doesn't mean that what you're saying is not true, that I got scared. I did get scared. (pause)

This probably is not it either, but I just feel like living in Arlington I feel like I'm waiting for Victor, you know? Or new things or a new relationship and I feel like that's not going to happen and he's just not coming back and what the hell am I doing living like a fool living here in this big, gigantic house wasting my money and waiting for him? (laughs) (pause) Do you think that is it or what would you advise that I keep the place, try to live by myself or not? [00:17:12]

THERAPIST: You want me to answer that?

CLIENT: Yeah. You said, "Do you need my advice?"

THERAPIST: I was asking a slightly different you took the question that way. I meant it slightly differently. It seemed that you kind of, by default, made a decision. I was wondering if you were wanting to more actively engage me at some point to really think about a decision. I think that how you responded was, "But you know me. I don't think about decisions. I just kind of react to things and that's how decisions are made." So I was more making a comment about whether you wanted to make this decision differently than you've made other decisions. I think that's what my comment was about. But tell me how much of a lose/lose situation this is. Here's a lose/lose situation. I could tell you, "I think you should keep the apartment," in which case any feelings or desires or fears about keeping it where do you put all of those, right? [00:18:11] Because I've already told you what to do, so how can you possibly discuss all those other feelings, feeling that somehow maybe you disappoint me or yourself. That would be pretty bad, right? Or doing something because I've said it and not because it's something you want. How can that go well?

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) (chuckles) Yeah, I guess. I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is that I may or may not have made this decision, but the ball is rolling forward. [00:19:00] I've just casually said to my roommates, "How would you guys feel if I moved out?" (chuckles) And now it's happening because there are other players in the thing as well, so it's not just me. I think I'm doing this to put my work and the money situation over and above the desire, the need to try and live by myself. (pause) [00:20:01] (laughs) I would have liked to try and take this decision like an adult instead of the way that I do take decisions, but I don't know. I feel like I didn't have a choice. (laughs)

THERAPIST: How? How didn't you have a choice?

CLIENT: Because I had choices and I didn't want to choose. (laughs) That's how I didn't have a choice.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: That makes sense, right? (laughs)

THERAPIST: Not really. It really doesn't. One thing in listening to you is it sounds like you feel disappointed in yourself.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's always the case. (pause) [00:20:58] I mean it's great that I've learned to laugh at myself and (laughs) if that wasn't the case mostly I cry. It's good that some laughing is happening. I just feel like what the hell? The plan was to try and see how it is. One lives by oneself and just to do it for a year. I was supposed to focus on my work and this and that. Living in that place, something about it didn't work out, I guess. [00:21:53] It felt too lonely or too abandoned or put out at sea or something and I didn't want to waste time feeling like that.

THERAPIST: I was going to ask you that, how you felt when you were there.

CLIENT: I love my room. It's very beautiful. I've made it very pretty and everything and I like it. I was sad when I was there yesterday for five minutes picking things up. (pause) I don't know. I just feel there was too much "me" there and I was afraid of that. [00:23:02] Yeah. I don't know if I'm making sense. There was too much of myself in there with all my books and my jewelry and my stuff. (chuckles) I didn't want it. It's so pretty, it's so cozy, it's so me, that I don't want it. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: What don't you want about you?

CLIENT: Me. (chuckles) I don't want. [00:24:02]

THERAPIST: But it sounds pretty and cozy; it doesn't sound ugly and cold.

CLIENT: No, it's not cold. I have a very nice heater. (laughs) I keep it right next to me when I'm working.

THERAPIST: So what's wrong with it?

CLIENT: I don't know. It's . . . I don't know. (pause) It feels like a prison, all the fuss. There are four of us and we all sit in our rooms and shut ourselves up and occasionally we go down to the nice, big kitchen and living room. [00:25:03] We should make use of that space and we don't. There's a backyard in which I've never stepped. (chuckles) I just stay locked up in my room and think or try to work. I don't want that. (pause) Sometimes it felt like a dorm, like here I am, off to college with my stuff. I drop myself off. (pause) [00:26:06] It was just too soft, I think. I want hardness. (laughs) I don't know what that means, but like at Chris's place there isn't much of me at all. It's all his stuff and there's just this old desk that used to be mine with my books on it and a little pouch with my things in it and that's it. I don't seem to mind that. I don't seem to mind that there aren't pretty lamps well I did bring him a pretty lamp but it's not mine. I like something about that, that I'm just crashing at his place. (sighs) (pause) [00:27:10] I don't know. I'm confused. But yeah, I am disappointed that I didn't continue living there. Everyone says that it's such a nice place. I don't know why I don't want it. It's not like it's a money drain or anything, that I can't afford it. I can. That disappoints me because that's what attracted me to Victor. [00:27:59] I like seeing people making a beautiful life and a beautiful home and I had a chance to do that for myself but I couldn't or I didn't want to.

THERAPIST: It doesn't feel like it could be a decision?

CLIENT: A decision about what?

THERAPIST: Like when you say "I couldn't", couldn't isn't a decision. Couldn't is you can't.

CLIENT: Yeah. I tried for four months. (laughs)

THERAPIST: What part of you feels like you can't?

CLIENT: (pause) I don't know. [00:29:02] (pause) I'm not sure. (pause) I don't want to think about that place and living there by myself. I just want to focus on work and cafes and I'm seeing myself sit there and that's it. Maybe I want to become more like my new professor. She is 70 years old, I think. She's tiny. She's so tiny, completely white-haired. [00:30:04] She's a very well-known artist. She has children and daughters who are also artists, but she keeps moving from one place to the next and I asked her if she would be here two years from now and she said, "No, I'm afraid I have that travel bug and I just cannot stay at one place for too long." I just imagine her with her work and a few clothes and a few essentials and on the move all the time. I just find that noble or attractive or something I want to aspire to. [00:31:10] (pause)

THERAPIST: She's free.

CLIENT: I don't know about free, but she's doing stuff. She's working and it's not that she's without family, although she gives off such an impression of that. She's all by her lonesome, but strong enough. She's going to Europe for Thanksgiving. It's not like she's not going to have food and good company and stuff like that. [00:32:00] I just feel like Victor's place was beautiful and he made it. I was kicked out of there and I thought I can find a bigger place and make it as pretty, but then I thought that maybe this is not what I want. Maybe I should be out in the cold and just forget about the physical space and just find comfort in the intellectual space with Chris. [00:33:01] Because I tried doing what Victor was doing and I feel like it was a complete waste, you know? (pause) At least if I go after what Chris wants and what he represents, I'll get something. (pause) So it's pretty and it's nice, but . . .

THERAPIST: It sounds like you're giving up on something that you'd like to have.

CLIENT: Yeah. I'd like to have it. I'd like to have that (sigh) big place that is nice and warm and friendly and host parties for our friends and cook a lot of food, but he's not there. [00:34:14] He's not going to come and he's not going to say "well done" or find me attractive. I think I've waited long enough.

THERAPIST: Is that what you thought you were doing, waiting?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Was that the only thing you were doing?

CLIENT: I was trying to work on myself, but I wasn't doing it at full speed. (chuckles) There was a lot of other things that life was full of roommates, three of them, and talking to them and stuff and cooking for myself and cleaning after myself. [00:35:16] Cleaning the house. I mean I can do it. It's not like I can't do any of those things, but now I'll just have my work to worry about; and that's good because that will bring me the results that I want.

THERAPIST: You're so conflicted about this.

CLIENT: Yeah? I don't know. Maybe it's been several years going back and forth. (chuckles) Now I'm undecided, for now. [00:36:10] (pause) I just hope living with Chris I don't lose my sense of independence (sighs), like the space that I've been able to create in my head for myself and my projects. I hope that doesn't go away when I'm done with the program or when I don't have deadlines. I hope I can keep myself motivated and learn to make that structure, that I feel only comes from Chris. [00:37:06] I don't know.

THERAPIST: You've looked at the time a couple of times today. Are you aware of the time going by?

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't want to open Pandora's box right as it's time to stop. (laughs)

THERAPIST: What's in Pandora's box?

CLIENT: I don't know. I might touch about something that needs unraveling, needs time. So do you think I'll always be conflicted about this? (pause)

THERAPIST: I'm pausing because I'm thinking about your comment just before.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. Go ahead. [00:38:00]

THERAPIST: The thought that came to my mind was feeling like being asked to leave before you're ready to leave. That's what you're talking about getting into something and having to leave, not being ready to, being afraid of that. (pause) I must still have feelings for Victor. I am still crying about it, (laughs) which is why it feels weird, also, to live with Chris.

THERAPIST: Well you're also crying about the life that you feel you really want and can't have. [00:39:04]

CLIENT: I'm not sure if that's right for me.

THERAPIST: If that's what . . . that's certainly a piece of it, too. (pause)

CLIENT: It's great that he has a nice place, but is that what he wants? Is that his top priority? Didn't he want to make films? Hasn't he given up on that? Isn't the house there to kind of take away some of the pain or disappointment of that? I'm not sure. He would probably deny it and say, "I don't define myself just on the basis of that," but isn't that . . . (pause) [00:40:14] I'm just talking . . .

THERAPIST: The sacrifices of decisions are very much in the foreground for you. It seems like when you think about wanting something, you think about all of the sacrifices that need to be made to have it.

CLIENT: What do you mean?

THERAPIST: Like you imagine this sort of life, Victor's life, where it's beautiful and nice, but then you' have to sacrifice sacrifice ambition, sacrifice personal goals. And then you think about a life with Chris and you think about having to sacrifice any warmth or love a particular kind of love a warm love. It seems cold and hard. [00:41:08]

CLIENT: Yeah. Is there a different way of thinking about it in terms of sacrifice?

THERAPIST: Yes. Is it true that all decisions involve sacrifice? Absolutely. You can't have everything in one thing. It seems like it's so much in the foreground. If you get enough of what you want, then it's not like you forget about the sacrifice, but it doesn't sort of plague you. But the sacrifice is the foreground, not the background.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) I don't know. That's the way that I think, I think. (chuckle) [00:41:58]

THERAPIST: I do think you have a lot of feelings about having a life that is better than your mother's.

CLIENT: Yeah?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: How does she connect sacrifice?

THERAPIST: Her whole narrative is about sacrifice.

CLIENT: You mean giving up her career to bring me up and stuff?

THERAPIST: Yeah. It sounds like her narrative I'm not saying this is the reality but her narrative is about sacrifice.

CLIENT: Yeah, I know. That I completely understand. I've been plagued by this, as you say, that in the whole victim standard is there and we just very quickly jump to that when anything bad happens. I'm not sure what the connection about that is. Like when I have to make decisions I feel . . . is that what it does, a victim's narrative? I was doing that here; I think of sacrifices? [00:43:10]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you had brought up the issue. I hadn't thought about victim, per se, in terms of making sacrifices, but that's what came to your mind.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Certainly victims don't have choices. That's probably one of the definitions of a victim, that they're helpless; and so being a victim is not someone who has choices in life. Things just happen to them and usually quite bad things. But you do have this experience that things happen to you kind of out of your control, out of your volition; although not entirely because the idea of being disappointed in yourself means that you could have done something differently and you didn't. You being disappointed in yourself implies that you do have choice. [00:44:04]

CLIENT: Maybe that's because I'm aware that there is this narrative and sometimes I'm conscious about it and I steer clear of it, but other times it's so buried in my psyche that it's so much a part of my subconscious that I don't even sense it, like this whole thing with moving out. The way that I talked about it and the way that it's in my head is that, "Well, all I did was say something and now the ball is rolling and now it's completely out of my hands because there are so many other people involved," and it's no longer my decision. I didn't say, "Hey, roommates, I have decided to move out." I never said that. [00:45:00] (pause) Maybe I'm disappointed because I never said that or I never said, "I know I haven't been living here, but I still am keeping the place. I'm paying the rent. I'm still one of your roommates."

THERAPIST: How did they get the idea, then, that you wanted to move out?

CLIENT: I'm not really living there.

THERAPIST: They came up to you and said, "You don't seem to be living here. We're going to sell your room?"

CLIENT: No, I said, "What would you guys feel . . ." and not to all of them, just the two that I saw. I said, "How would you feel if I moved out?" (laughs) That's all. And they conveyed that to the main one.

THERAPIST: You're parsing words.

CLIENT: No, that's what I said.

THERAPIST: No, no, no. The difference between that and what you first said you said, "I didn't say, 'Hey, guys, I want to move.'" You said, "I didn't say this, I said this instead." [00:46:05] They seem to convey similar meaning.

CLIENT: But they're not . . . because . . . but that's what I said, I said, "What would you guys think?" I never said, "I have decided. It's done. It's coming from me. It's coming from the desk of . . ." (laughs) I didn't say that and maybe that's why I'm disappointed. (sighs) (chuckles)

THERAPIST: We are getting to the end for today. I will see you on Wednesday.

CLIENT: Oh, you'll be here?

THERAPIST: Yes. I'm here all day on Wednesday.

CLIENT: Because it's Thanksgiving.

THERAPIST: When I'm not here, I'll always let you know. I'll never assume that you know I'm not here, okay?

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Okay. Take care.

CLIENT: You, too. Bye.

THERAPIST: Bye.

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