TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi! Come on in.

CLIENT: How are you?

THERAPIST: Good, thank you.

CLIENT: It's so cold. My jaw is frozen.

(Pause): [00:00:52 00:01:20]

CLIENT: This is continuing from the last time.

(Pause): [00:01:19 00:01:38]

CLIENT: (inaudible) last time.

(Pause): [00:01:40 00:02:02]

CLIENT: (Unclear) after my last session here on Monday I spoke to Chris and we were just talking about our fight and I said to him that I feel judged all the time and he thought it was all in my head and that I was feeling inferior and like always comparing myself to him. He says he does it as well like a subconscious thing perhaps and I've noticed him doing that to most people, mostly women, I think. (Laugh) Like some of his colleagues his criticism for them mostly is like, 'oh, yeah, she's not here on time, she's not efficient, she has not idea, she's unrealistic and being a little dismissive on them, too, so I've just been very aware of this habit of his. He's nice and kind and everything but he's still and he might think he's not at all chauvinistic, but there always is (laughs) a little of that in every man I don't like to generalize but yeah.

So, I was just wondering and talking to him and thinking would it at all be possible for me to have my own set of criteria that I measure myself by? And like Chris was asking, 'how would you feel if you felt completely free and you're not at all judged?' I was like, 'I don't know. I'm sure I've felt like that, (laughs). It's not like I've never had that feeling but it's been very rare in the past couple of years or more. So I just don't know if I have the confidence to make my own criteria. Like it's so easy to rely on someone else's. Because you see them as successful and so if it worked for them if I could just morph myself into what just borrow their path and their goals, it's easy. But then when you actually start doing that you realize you (unclear) and really unhappy if you try to do what they do, I just completely lost sight of myself and what's the point of living if you're not yourself? That's what I realize or feel or something.

(Pause): [00:05:39 00:05:48]

CLIENT: I don't know if I should go back to my apartment and try to live there until I find myself but there's so many things to deal with. There's loneliness (laughs) as well as trying to get rid of other people's judgments.

THERAPIST: What comes to mind about the loneliness?

(Pause): [00:06:35 00:06:39]

CLIENT: Feeling lost. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:06:43 00:06:56]

CLIENT: Unless I occupy my mind with something I feel kind of strange about being by myself. And I'm very aware of the cost of leaving my mom, leaving Chris, so I could be happy right now if I could be with them. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:07:23 00:07:37]

CLIENT: I don't know like there are such like negative associations or like Chris pointed this out to me like I have to judge every thought or judge everything instead of why can't this just be? Why does it have to be judged? I don't remember the exact words but yesterday Mom and I went to download some pictures she had taken on her camera and like she did a little video on her birthday. I think I had to go somewhere on her birthday and we didn't celebrate it. And I bought her like a new computer but she was just singing happy birthday to herself and had a cake and she lit a candle and that really depressed me. I was like she's lonely on her birthday and I felt guilty that she was all by herself.

THERAPIST: She did that in front of you or she was telling you about it?

CLIENT: No, it was just one of the videos on her camera I downloaded for her.

THERAPIST: So she took a picture of herself?

CLIENT: A video, yeah.

THERAPIST: A video of herself doing that.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Huh. Do you have a sense of why she would do that?

CLIENT: I asked her and she said, 'oh, I was just testing it.' She cannot take a photo of herself but she can make a video. That's something that was so sad to me like (unclear) I started crying. Like at an earlier time I would be just unable to get up (unclear). (Laughs) I was feeling so guilty. Why, do you think?

THERAPIST: I don't know. I have no idea. That's sort of a striking thing.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Capturing yourself on camera doing something that seems very sad.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's what I thought. Is it me or is it really sad? But I just want this whole thing to like change. Like I mean like think possibly the same way but I don't want to. It's okay to be by yourself on your birthday. That does not mean that people don't love you or they've abandoned you or something, you know? But going back to what I was saying what was I saying? Yeah, loneliness and like I would be very aware that this was the cost of being by myself.

THERAPIST: You mean isolated like your mother?

CLIENT: I'm not exactly like her. I'm also very aware that she's very messy and (laughs) she's yeah. So I would not be surrounded by at least physical mess, or maybe mental mess in a physical mess. So -

(Pause): [00:11:47 00:11:51]

CLIENT: I'm not so isolated also, because (inaudible) and she does too but is more limited. And I would have roommates again.

(Pause): [00:12:10 00:12:13]

CLIENT: I feel isolated in a very kind of weird way like last fall that I was talking about where I could actually see people but like there's like (crying) it's hard.

THERAPIST: You can't make physical contact behind a glass wall.

CLIENT: Yeah, this is like I really need your help with this kind of thing because and it's not just for the people it's like for the whole world, like it's the landscape, a lot of things. Like I see them but I feel like I lack the motivation or the confidence or like yeah, the desire to want to engage.

Like last night we went to, we had this vigil for I don't know if you heard this gang rape in Nepal a couple of days ago and the woman died. She was 23 years old and when they had beaten her up so much that she succumbed to her injuries so like we had a vigil for that in the Square last night and that was all well and good but like something about that really depressed me. I feel so bad talking about my depression when something that effects other people but yeah, like it just I mean I was there physically and stuff. And obviously as a woman and as a creative person that has a desire to protest or engage with this problem on an artistic level and I do that (unclear) but just like when I was actually physically there I was kind of depressed. I don't know why. Like it was very cold and we were standing there for like an hour and I don't know if that was the thing like because of the holiday and there weren't as many people around. It was dark. I don't know, but like I just completely shut up on such things. Like something depresses me, you know? I don't feel it at all. Like people are suggesting we should go and see the Mount Rushmore I was just saddened by that thought. (Laughs). I don't know why. It was just really irrational.

THERAPIST: I don't understand the reference to the Mount Rushmore.

CLIENT: People said let's go do it and I was like it's going to be in the middle of nowhere and I don't know, I'll be depressed if I see it. I don't know. Maybe I have this idea of this like ideal engagement of where I'll get something out of a scenario and I'm afraid that I will be disappointed. I don't know.

THERAPIST: So the glass wall is to keep you disengaged from the world?

CLIENT: Yeah. Like why would I want to go travel? Why would I want to see the Mount Rushmore? It's not exactly fear, like the desire not to do something because it will depress me. I don't (unclear) at all, so.

(Pause): [00:16:26 00:16:34]

CLIENT: Yeah, and it is like a (unclear).

THERAPIST: (Unclear) contact with anything feel depressing or just certain thing?

(Pause): [00:16:45 00:16:50]

CLIENT: It has the potential to take over everything but yeah, I don't know certain things.

(Pause): [00:17:00 00:17:12]

CLIENT: Like you know people have happy thoughts or I think celebrities have these things called "happy places" or something like they go to their happy place. (Laughs) And you read in magazines that some of those happy places like some villa in somewhere like France or something (laughs). And I used to have maybe we all have that idea maybe you're happy place could be like England or something. We all have that idea of sunny and warm, you know. You go there when you're, yeah. (Laughs) But I feel like when I'm depressed, even those places get taken away from me, like I think, oh, I don't know, it's not going to be any different because the last time I went abroad it was I felt kind of disengaged with all that beauty around me and I don't know (laughs) I don't know why, like what was I expecting? You know? And like how much more fulfilling and deeper kind of engagement that I wasn't able to have and why? I don't know. Because I was with Chris and he was distracted or I don't know. But that jut kind of takes away that happy place from me and then the aspiration to go see it again or think about it lovingly and creatively and so -

(Pause): [00:19:29 00:19:34]

CLIENT: It leaves me debilitated and weakened, I think.

(Pause): [00:19:39 00:20:15]

CLIENT: I feel like you have to grapple with the world, you know, like nothing comes easy if you seek that kind of magical engagement. You have to work for it, right? It doesn't just happen unless you're like a genius or someone, you know? Like if you want to get more out of landscaping you're going to have to do some research. You have to read up. It's history and have a plan of how you're going to engage with it. Like, who are you going to talk to and what are you going to see and who are you going to see it with?

(Pause): [00:21:09 00:21:29]

CLIENT: Would that break the glass wall? I mean -

THERAPIST: I don't know. Do you feel like your mother is behind a glass wall?

CLIENT: Well, I feel she's behind many walls. (Laughs) She's always been like this and it's been very, very distressing. She doesn't say anything. Like it's really hard to get her to talk but (laughs) it's always like, 'what do you want to do? Where do you want to eat?' She never has an opinion and I think on some level she just expects me to know. You know? So in that respect, I'm like her and she's like me. I really like it when this person (unclear) just knows us. And she's mentioned this to me, 'you and I really get each other. We don't need to say anything. We just get each other.' (Laughs)

THERAPIST: How does that make you feel?

CLIENT: At those times when she's actually talking and I take it as a compliment and like yeah we have a connection, yea! But most other times it's very, very frustrating to have a black box for a mother. (Laughs) Chris talks to his parents every week and they talk for hours. They talk about everything. Their fortunate that their distance gives them a repository of things to talk about but I still have this idea that my mom and I will hang out and will go shopping or just do (unclear) things, just be mom and child or daughter. But that doesn't happen so -

(Pause): [00:23:39 00:23:49]

THERAPIST: When I think about a video camera like it feels very much like a glass wall you can see but there's such a separation from the outside looking in, I guess.

CLIENT: You mean the video camera is looking in?

THERAPIST: Yeah, I guess it's a I mean it's just your talking about your being able to see but not be in contact. A distance and there's something, just even taking a I'm not against photography and videography but there is some distance there.

CLIENT: From her, you mean like when I see the video? Or -

THERAPIST: Maybe that. I just think about you looking at yourself that way, too. Like it's sort of interesting was she taking this so she could watch it later?

CLIENT: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Or you know, (unclear) with watching her? It's so (unclear).

CLIENT: Yeah. I think I thought she was just trying to make herself feel better, like at some level subconsciously she does feel because I received a voice mail a few months ago 'you guys have dumped me in Cheshire.' (Laughs) So like at some level she definitely she feels that she's been abandoned and then on her birthday not being there or being there but still like she's feeling lonely so to make herself feel better she buys a cake and puts on the candles and lights the candle and pulls out a greeting card with the song inside with like children singing happy birthday to you. (Laughs) So that, yeah, like -

THERAPIST: Do you feel like it was a way for her to feel that she could celebrate even in the absence of people or so you feel like she was trying to communicate a pathos?

CLIENT: I think both. I think it's both like it's both a sign of loneliness and like a cure for it, you know? Like the things we do to make ourselves feel better indicate that there's something wrong but they also make us feel better, right? Like no one likes buying cold medicine but you do it because you're sick and you really feel groggy as a result of it. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: So loneliness is a kind of sickness.

CLIENT: I didn't used to think about loneliness all the time. Actually I was pretty content if you would believe that. (Laughs) As a child I didn't even notice. I always was reading or in my thoughts or something. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:26:55 00:27:07]

CLIENT: (inaudible) insecurities.

THERAPIST: What do you think changed for you?

CLIENT: Through the years? Well, that would take several novels to figure. (Laughs) I don't know. I guess being on a path and not seeing myself getting there and doubting myself and having seen other people succeed and wondering how do they do it and if I should align myself to their ideology or something. So -

(Pause): [00:27:54 00:28:01]

CLIENT: And then feeling like what I have, what I had in myself was not enough, you know.

(Pause): [00:28:07 00:28:18]

CLIENT: And just like lots of other things that happened.

(Pause): [00:28:23 00:28:44]

THERAPIST: Lots of other things like what?

CLIENT: Like moving to the U.S. was the biggest like rupture in my life. It just brought along a kind of self-awareness that I would never have had. (Laughs) Really, I was in Istanbul before I came to the U.S. so it was like crowded and multi-cultural on several levels and like when we came here we were in this really small town in Virginia. Like it really is just sort of tiring.

THERAPIST: What led you to go there?

CLIENT: My dad's sister was there so it's kind of like she was supposed to help us build a life. (Laughs) You know, losing all your friends and like completely seeing yourself in a new environment that you have absolutely no connection with because you go inside your bubble that I don't think every really breaks. You try to break it. I try to break it in a big way. (Laughs) And I got to college and I joined a church and I had an American boyfriend and acquired citizenship here so like I tried to break that bubble on many levels but in some ways it doesn't necessarily go away.

THERAPIST: What grade were you in when you moved here?

CLIENT: Eleventh.

THERAPIST: Those two years of high school are always hard.

CLIENT: (Laughs) Understatement. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Yeah, were they understandably hard?

CLIENT: Well on several levels you know I came from Nepal, a very conservative place and all of a sudden I was surrounded by 16 year olds who were pregnant. That would be like the biggest taboo ever you know? Like weirdly backward, you know, in the sense that I mean yeah, Nepal is repressive, but like the middle class would say, 'women should work, women should go out there and be like men in the workforce and not be mothers when they're 16, you know? Or stay at home. So that was weird, like this is supposed to be the U.S. and those people are supposed to be so like liberated, which means women, are supposed to be like men. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Is that common for the kids to be pregnant?

CLIENT: In my high school? Yeah. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Was it a poorer neighborhood?

CLIENT: Yeah, it was the majority in that town were Indians like Native Americans, yeah. And so in that sense liberation was economically skewed in a different direction from the rest of the country or Ohio or someplace like D.C. So I just didn't manage to make any friends.

(Pause): [00:32:41 00:32:57]

CLIENT: I really don't like to think of those two years. I try to write about it but it was a complete disaster because they're so depressing.

THERAPIST: Depressing in what ways?

CLIENT: In so many ways like what do you mean?

THERAPIST: Feeling like an outsider? Feeling lonely.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Missing home.

CLIENT: Like missing my identity like I didn't know who I was. I really kind of made me even more lonely.

(Pause): [00:33:35 00:33:48]

CLIENT: Like in Nepal before that I knew who I was. It wasn't like I had tons of friends. And I would hang out with people I was my dad was very strict and I was only allowed to go out after school. But I knew like these are my friends. This is what they think. This is their music they listen to and I'm different. Like, I don't do those things or like I had a very strong sense of who I was like yeah my dad is very nasty but my mom was very courageous. So I had a sense, I had a very grounded sense of who I was and what I wanted and that grounding was really lost, was really gone. That really like I don't know if I can still figure it out. (Laughs) Actually, (unclear) has been a little (unclear) since then. And the U.S. I didn't really know, like where I belonged and what kind of identity I had.

THERAPIST: What about your mom was courageous?

CLIENT: Well she was the breadwinner of the house. She didn't make much money because she was a teacher but like she did she had a job. She always had a job and my dad was always unreliable and he was most of the time not with us. So. (Laughs) So I thought of my mom as a very strong woman and she had her moments. She was sad and especially when they used to fight but like she was constantly there so -

THERAPIST: Where would your dad go? Would he still be with other women when he came here?

CLIENT: Oh yeah, like that was and that thing got worse and worse when he came here.

THERAPIST: He would just stay at other women's places?

CLIENT: Yeah. Here? In the U.S.? Yeah, yeah. He had some pretty terrible affairs, so.

THERAPIST: Terrible in -?

CLIENT: I don't know if this is actually true. This is what my mom has told me and I have trouble believing it but like I was away in college not in the same town, and my mom was still working at the hotel. Like when we first came here the three of us were working in a hotel. My mom and I in housekeeping and my dad was working at the front desk. And he bought this computer and (Laughs) apparently he started like he had an online affair with this woman and he knows just what buttons to press and all that so this woman really fell for him, like she really fell in love with him and she said, 'I have to see you' and this and that and he'd been lying, saying he was much younger and he had an 11-year old daughter and was divorced and you know I was 19 when my mom was living right there. So she was still (unclear) at the hotel and she would need to call him to pick her up and bring her back home and he didn't work the night he used to work nightshift but he was chatting and she couldn't get through and these were just the details she told me and like so this woman is coming, driving over from Ohio to see my dad and apparently she had an accident and dies. But my mom found their letters or something not on the computer but physical letters and so she left everything and came to Orlando where I was. This was the summer.

THERAPIST: Oh, that's when she showed up at that house that you were renting.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Then like my dad came back or something. I forget the chronology but like after the woman had died and like she didn't show up at this place they were going to meet at, her brother called and said what I don't know, so then he came back to my mom. Like this was really, really weird to me. Like, the hell, you know? I really don't want any part of this drama, you know. Like it's embarrassing and it's -

THERAPIST: What's embarrassing about it?

CLIENT: I want to be respectable. I don't want to have a dad who's like this, you know? (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:39:32 00:39:41]

THERAPIST: You feel like he brings shame on you?

CLIENT: Yeah. Like I want to belong to interesting, respectful, beautiful people and this situation on the non-superficial level it's also hurtful and damaging. So it's like there's already so much struggle within the world like why do you have to make, bring even more messes?

(Pause): [00:40:15 00:40:25]

CLIENT: So I really don't like to think of those two years.

THERAPIST: Did things get better when you went to college?

CLIENT: I thought they did but then soon after I graduated my parents split up and like I lost all my church friends, especially this one roommate, my roommate who I was very close with and she kind of, her parting words were, "I don't even know if you're religious anymore." Like that was the only thing that mattered. Like I didn't -

THERAPIST: Because your parents split up?

CLIENT: Yeah, it was this whole like big weird thing that really like I was just very taken by the gospel like I the church that I belonged to in college was very evangelical like they would make us feel really guilty for giving more time to our studies than to God. (Laughs) but like part of our thing was we had to belong like to so many different things, like we couldn't just show up to church on Sunday, we had to have like a home group meeting and (unclear) group meeting. And then we had to go in the [break] (ph) yard and show the [bridge] (ph) diagram to people so that they would be interested in the gospel. (Laughs) So they would want to accept Christ, get saved, you know. Are you Jewish, by the way? (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Why did you ask now do you think?

CLIENT: Well, I'm just like I would say judging from your last name you're Jewish so then I wished you Merry Christmas and I was like, I should have asked first (Laughs) if you even celebrate Christmas.

THERAPIST: I assume that brought it to mind when you were talking about being involved with the church.

CLIENT: Yeah. I was just curious, like -

THERAPIST: Do you feel that I wouldn't understand?

CLIENT: No, no, no. I mean living here, obviously you would understand more than me but I just was you know, I wanted to flag that. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Tell me about that. Flag me how?

CLIENT: Well, no, just like I just wanted to know if you were amused or critical or you know, like actually if you were, if you indeed were not religious then you would look at this more weirdly (Laughs) than you already would being a psychiatrist.

THERAPIST: Why would I think it's weird that you wanted a sense of community and direction?

CLIENT: Well, it's more progressive people who kind of look at this as and not just Nepalese. A Nepalese would just not be very kind to the story, but like you know, you needed to have stronger back so they would like strongly hint of it and say, you were brainwashed. Like my dad said and like he wasn't like strong religiously, he was just you know, a stupid guy, my dad. Any progressive person would be like you know this is the problem with religion or this country. But you know, more kind people like you would say, no you needed a community and that's what my mom says. She like, she still goes to church on and off like I might have I haven't been to church in years, since I left Orlando, I think. But I've just been I felt really betrayed not just by the church people but maybe by God, too. (Laughs) What happened was we have time?

THERAPIST: We have just another minute.

CLIENT: Yeah. But like something weird happened which is why I kind of (unclear).

THERAPIST: Aside from your parents getting divorced or separated.

CLIENT: Well, no, like my dad just kind of used the church like so he was getting very abusive. Like he'd been abusive all our lives and we just wanted him to go away like my mom, to get a divorce and like split. But the church kept insisting that that was wrong in the eyes of God, you know. Like for like two years or more I have to bring all this paraphernalia to my mom that says, 'the power to pray,' like pray for your husband and this and that and all these ladies are very upset but my mom decided to leave my dad and my dad was using them basically, like he would dangle his soul like a carrot in front of all the church people that like, 'look I've accepted Christ and she's just abandoning the young child,' like this is what religion is all about and they were like oh no, and like don't do this and -

THERAPIST: It was manipulative.

CLIENT: Yeah. So God was not God anymore. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: (inaudible)

CLIENT: Do you want me to write you a check right now, or -?

THERAPIST: If you want to. I actually don't know how much it is though.

CLIENT: I think it was $90.

THERAPIST: Okay. It was like $16 from last month. Oh yeah, yeah. So maybe you should include that. There's $16 from last month or something like that.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: So I think so if it's $94 this month I don't (unclear) balance. I think, I don't remember your paying for the $16. So then maybe it's $106. Is that right? Okay.

CLIENT: Yeah. I think that's right.

(Pause): [00:46:48 00:47:27]

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: Thank you.

THERAPIST: So I will see you on Monday.

CLIENT: Monday. Thank you.

THERAPIST: Thanks. Have a good rest of the week.

CLIENT: You too.

THERAPIST: Okay. Bye-bye.

END TRANSCRIPT