TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

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CLIENT: Good morning. [0:01:00.8] I wonder if you were disappointed when I was stopping you.

[Pause: 0:01:36.2 to 0:01:54.7]

CLIENT: It seems like there [Pause] it wasn't the right time to stop. [Pause] I don't know how to say it. Like was that disappointing that there is a lot more potential there? I guess you probably say goodbye to patients all the time, prematurely. [0:03:51.5]

THERAPIST: I'm... I guess I'm wondering if you're asking me two questions. One to do with a kind of disappointment, if I'm feeling like there was more that was done, that would have been helpful, or that I could have been helpful with maybe. And another about how sad was I to see you go.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think it's only the second one.

THERAPIST: Okay. (laughs)

CLIENT: Or am I like not that there's more you could have helped me with but that there's more you could have enjoyed or gotten out of it for your own...

THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:05:06.4]

CLIENT: Satisfaction.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: It seems like if I were in a profession where like the currency was more about I don't know what the currency is for you. Presumably, there's some pleasure or benefit that comes out of meeting with patients and helping them and getting to know them and understanding them, and like you were, you were going to let that go with me. Not that I guess you didn't really have a choice. [0:06:41.3]

THERAPIST: Are you sad that I didn't stop you?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Are you feeling about, really cared or if you really meant a lot to me, that's what I would have done?

CLIENT: I don't think so. I don't know how I would have reacted had you tried to stop me. But it's not like you knew this was going to happen. You said you were surprised.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [Pause: 0:07:38.2 to 0:08:21.1] I was. I mean there was as I also said things about impressions that I had that it was what happened, but I did not predict it and was surprised.

CLIENT: I guess it's just, it feels unsettling, how... how there's a lot more fulfillment left for you and or maybe I'm just imagining it, but I could imagine how there how this is fulfilling to you, and it wasn't clear that you were going to get it. I don't know, it's hard. For some reason it's hard to express. [0:10:06.7]

THERAPIST: Is it most unsettling, is what I would miss out on?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: Or that like you were watching, that maybe you knew that there is more to take part in and despite that, you didn't do anything or couldn't do anything to stop it.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: But maybe you're used to it. [0:11:10.1]

THERAPIST: I guess I was kind of helpless.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And I guess also voiceless.

CLIENT: Well, I think you're kind of voiceless all the time. I don't think you could say a lot.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: You've trained yourself so deeply it seems, that maybe, maybe your feelings don't feel like they need to get out the way that other people's might. [0:12:31.9] [Pause] Maybe I'm like purposely being provocative too.

THERAPIST: You're kind of maybe tweaking me because you really want to know more about what I feel, what I think, what my reactions are to you and to having to come here. [0:13:25.8]

CLIENT: I mean, I think about all of this a lot and I'm not like making it up.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But yeah, this also feels like kind of a means.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. To get me to if I can speak up already.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. [Pause] Something came up in the meditation class that was seemed, seemed very important. Someone was talking about like grades of suffering in the world and somehow we, we compare ourselves and our suffering with other people's, and for some reason think that we should adjust, that that should translate into a similar set of grades for reactions or feelings to the suffering, like what we ought to feel, because there's [0:15:23.2]

THERAPIST: Based on how much they're suffering?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: Or in what way?

CLIENT: So like my trauma history is much worse than yours, or I don't know, like I feel a lot of happiness all the time and some people never do. Anyway, so the teacher, said that there's sort of a classic for this teaching in response to that, and that that's not necessarily what she wants to say, but she wants us to know about the classic response, and that is that we've all been through everything and we've all been everywhere, so if you feel like your suffering isn't as great as somebody else's or is much greater than anyone else's, you from a practical standpoint, you might that might change. You might experience a lot more suffering or you might experience great joy. [0:17:13.1]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: But I think from the from the standpoint of the teaching, it's like there have been an infinite number of cycles before us and you may not know what you you may not remember or know what you've been through but you've been through it all. And that this idea of awakening to that is like, is part of the way out.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [0:18:15.7]

CLIENT: I don't know if I'm summarizing that correctly, but it seems really important.

THERAPIST: Well, the idea is that you can look around and see people in kind of very different situations and different types and intensities of like kind of manifest suffering, in different lives. We've all lived so, so, so many lives that we've pretty much suffered in every possible way. [0:19:19.5]

CLIENT: And experienced joy in every possible way.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh. And that part of the sort of past, out of suffering, involves awakening to our vast and various experiences out there?

CLIENT: I don't know. I don't know about that part. Just the idea of I mean just like sort of beating my brain, that construct, it's kind of like a huge relief and also a huge disappointment, depending on like what mood I'm in, I guess. If I'm feeling really down, it feels like a huge relief. If I'm feeling like I'm striving a lot, it feels like a huge disappointment because a lot of what drives striving, maybe for me, is um, like having a new experience or achieving something that I haven't achieved before. [0:21:16.2]

THERAPIST: I see. [Pause] It sort of takes the edge off of it either way?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm, yeah. It puts into context, that idea that we aren't anything but these ever changing thoughts and feelings, but it also... [Pause] It also highlights the role of awareness, which I've begun to define for myself as a sense of like holding everything that's happening in the present moment, rather than being held by it or grasped or clutched or squeezed by it. I shared that with people in this class and they really liked that. [0:23:21.9]

THERAPIST: That definition of awareness?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. Like that your awareness is a superset of everything that's happening right now. What?

THERAPIST: I guess I wonder, does that sort of is a corollary that you are a subset of all the things that are happening to you.

CLIENT: Yeah, except that what's where is your awareness coming from then, like who's doing that and what are her thoughts and feelings. It's very difficult. [0:24:43.8]

THERAPIST: To like come up with a model for that?

CLIENT: It's just difficult to practice it. It doesn't feel entirely congruent or consistent, but somehow I can do it, I can feel like I'm sometimes I can be like I'm really... I'm surrounding everything that's happening or I'm holding it and there's a little bit of space between what's happening and what and who I am.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: But it's more like a lot more often I experience that things that are happening or feelings that I'm having are completely surrounding me.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [0:25:59.4]

CLIENT: So I think it's been helpful or it feels very important, to think about these two things; one, that we've experience everything and two, this definition of awareness. Not so much in like the way that I want things to be, but how clearly not how clearly things are not like that and how sometimes there's a glimmer of oh yeah, this feels like kind of, it has a kind of different quality and I'm a little bit removed from this and yet I'm still completely with it and in it.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [Pause: 0:26:43.2 to 0:27:44.1] Do you know what's hard to contain at the moment?

CLIENT: It's very hard to contain my feelings for you and it's hard to contain kind of like a fear of feeling bad, like in general.

THERAPIST: What feelings for me are difficult? [0:28:49.7]

CLIENT: Attachment. I mean...

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm?

CLIENT: This frustration with how things don't seem fair or this knowledge that things aren't fair.

THERAPIST: I imagine there's like frustration in a sense, of being pushed back or rejected, even if you know at another level that that's not what I'm doing, that it feels that way and it hurts. [0:29:49.5]

CLIENT: I don't know that I've let myself like really form that thought? For some reason for some reason, I'm very hesitant to blame you.

THERAPIST: Hmm.

CLIENT: I can't like get myself to actually believe that you're doing anything wrong, but I think I am feeling hurt and as if I were being pushed away, even though I don't think I am.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [Pause: 0:30:29.7 to 0:31:05.8] One way to think about this or an aspect of it, is in terms of basically the same thing you said about awareness. [Pause]

CLIENT: Yeah?

THERAPIST: Yeah. I mean, do you want me to elaborate and say it clearly? Sometimes having somebody else around makes it easier to contain things. [0:32:08.6]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And that's one of the ways this can help, like therapy analysis in general.

CLIENT: I guess, except when like the person who's around is also a very polarizing presence, at least like in my mind.

THERAPIST: Really? Is causing a lot of the trouble to begin with.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Or a lot of the joy.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I mean, both of those things I guess are trouble.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh. Yeah, I see. [0:33:09.6]

CLIENT: Like I can never feel as sad or as helpless as I do sometimes when I'm here, because in some sense this is where I want to be.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. Sorry, I want to -

CLIENT: Does that make sense?

THERAPIST: make sure that I followed you, because what I thought you were saying, what you seem to say is something different. What you said, I'm pretty sure, was I can never feel as sad or as did you say helpless, as when I'm here.

CLIENT: No. I can never feel -

THERAPIST: When you're here, without the as.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Right. That's what I wondered about. [0:34:10.7]

CLIENT: Like I'm not going to feel like I miss you to the full extent when I'm here, even though I think I do miss you when I'm here, in the way that it feels unfair and incomplete, and not right. The part that I have felt many times in my life comes up like when I'm not here, which is like this sort of gloomy, sick, kind of like sick to my stomach sense that things feel completely wrong, because the thing that I'm missing isn't around. And that's how I was feeling on Friday, and I think talking about Jeremy's experience with therapy and then talking about my own experience was like very cathartic, the right word? [0:35:49.6]

THERAPIST: It could be, yeah, or like a release.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But not just like a release like the way that turning away from the feelings is a release, but it's -

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: a way in which a way, a release that comes from turning towards the feelings.

THERAPIST: Yes. And really having that.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Even though I gather they're really painful and often overwhelmingly so.

CLIENT: Like you're implying that I can't that I haven't that I can't really have them because they're painful and overwhelming?

THERAPIST: I don't know, maybe. I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is you can feel so, I think terribly, on your own, and sad when you feel that way. I'm not saying in some literal sense you are, or do I have (inaudible) love you a lot, but I'm saying... [0:37:19.8]

CLIENT: Yeah, but there's no one who really understands.

THERAPIST: Hmm.

CLIENT: Which is okay. I mean, it probably contributes to how sad it feels, but I don't feel myself like really yearning for that.

THERAPIST: I'm not sure it is so okay that no one really understands.

CLIENT: I guess what I mean is the solution to why it feels bad, that nobody understands, isn't to find somebody who understands.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: It's to figure out some way to understand it enough myself.

THERAPIST: We've got about five minutes. So I guess why?

CLIENT: Why isn't the solution to find somebody who understands? [0:38:19.2]

THERAPIST: Hooked on Friday.

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't think Jeremy really under maybe he does understand. It helps to... [Pause] There you're right.

THERAPIST: I wonder if you just want to fucking turn away from everybody at that point. I mean, you're feeling so hurt and so upset, like the last thing you want is to turn to somebody else who is then not going to be around some other time.

CLIENT: Yeah. But he's sort of the best bet in terms of -

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: people who are going to be around. [0:39:24.4]

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: It almost feels like I need to talk to Jeremy about... like if it's causing more, this is causing more... I guess to an outside person it's like I need to have like two layers of therapeutic, like relationships. One is like this one, which is causing all this trouble and also causing a lot of pleasure, and then there's like the one with Jeremy that's like helping me cope with it.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [0:40:45.0]

CLIENT: And I can already tell that the second one is really like changing the way that we, Jeremy and I, are relating to each other, and it's very helpful.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: But I guess I also kind of feel a little bit embarrassed or like it's too private to share with anybody.

THERAPIST: And I, I also wonder I gather from what you said that if I can't help you cope with it, because you don't feel it when you're here, in the same way as you do when you're not. And the way you put it, you know it was kind of quite sensible. I wonder if there's more going on there, like that there is an aspect of wanting to turn away from that when you're here. Yeah. [0:42:32.0]

CLIENT: Okay.

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