TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: This Thursday at 10:00 would work for me if it works for you.

CLIENT: Yeah. We'll do that.

THERAPIST: Ah, good. We settled on the week after at 3:30, right?

CLIENT: Yeah, I think so. Sorry about that. I think, yeah.

THERAPIST: Here is this for you. I didn't put the balance for the deductible on there. [00:00:58]

CLIENT: I'll just add that on myself and I'll make a note of what's left and whatnot.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: It should be fine. So, talking about that e-mail on Thursday that Jordan sent me. I read it on my way back. I opened it up on my phone and I read it. I can understand why I didn't want to read it, I think. It was a little unsettling. [00:01:58] He was basically saying that my dad said he was going to pay for this wedding or something and then something happened and he was just not returning or getting in touch with Jordan or my sister at all. My sister was getting pretty upset and he was getting frustrated. It wasn't the same kind of thing for him, not being his son and whatnot. He was asking me if I could figure anything out about it, if I could get back to him with any information. He included some line about he understands that maybe, in some instances in the past, my dad might have not come through for Irene when he said he would at different times. [00:03:12] I wouldn't really know any specifics of what that was referring to. Clearly Irene communicated that to him in their time together. He was saying that this is a pretty big time, the wedding would be a pretty big thing and it would be pretty important for him not to fall flat on this one, which was seriously bizarre to read that and I didn't know what to make of it, anything to fill in all of that stuff. [00:04:02] I had spoken to my dad on Thursday before I even came here and I had just sort of mentioned to him, "Jordan was asking for you." My dad kind of just brushed it off and was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. Jordan is annoying me and I'm dealing with the hotel." He didn't want to get into it. He was just kind of like, "It's fine. It's taken care of." I didn't even speak to my dad over the weekend at all about the whole thing. I don't really know how I would if I was to speak to him again. I don't really know what about that e-mail I would share with him because I kind of said to Jordan, "Yeah, I'll look into it," trying to be delicate and diplomatic about this. [00:05:00] I don't think it's in anyone's interest to fan any flames that are going on right now. I haven't heard back from Jordan and I haven't heard back from anyone about it, really. I don't know. I feel really weird about the whole thing.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Weird, huh? What have you noticed? What have you been feeling about it?

CLIENT: I feel like I would not have to. I feel like I would just like for it to deal with itself and I wouldn't have to get any more involved or any more interventionist in it. Then I wonder if that is just an easy way for me to try to not have to deal with it, not have to engage with it or something. [00:06:06] It seems like when Jordan e-mailed me he was being very reasonable. He was like, "Your sister is very upset, scared and nervous and doesn't know what's going on. Your dad's not talking to us. I feel really awkward reaching out to you with this stuff, but I feel like I need to try and get an understanding of what's going on. Your dad's not talking to us." I totally sympathized with him but, at the same time, I didn't want to do what I felt like would be a pretty reasonable thing to do, which would have been to call my dad and be like, "Dad, what are you doing? Get in touch with them. Get in touch with your daughter. Let them know what's going on." [00:06:59] That seemed like what the respectable approach would have been. I didn't want to do that at all. I would have much rather let it deal with itself and not have to stick my head into it anymore. My willingness to do that, even just hypothetically, was frustrating that I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing that because it seemed like a completely reasonable, rational thing to do.

THERAPIST: What did they want you to do?

CLIENT: They were just like, "We have no idea what's going on. We don't know if your dad is going to pay for the wedding. We don't know if your dad is going to come to the wedding. He won't talk to us. We have this whole wedding planned to be at this place. We have all of these people we've invited and now your dad isn't getting in touch with us. He hasn't paid for the whole thing yet. The hotel doesn't know if he's going to. We don't know if he's going to. We have no idea what's going on at this point. We don't know if he's going to pay for it and if we're going to have it here or if we're going to have to go somewhere else. We don't know if your dad is coming." [00:08:21]

THERAPIST: So they wanted you to intervene.

CLIENT: I just really did not want to. It seemed a very reasonable thing from their perspective. I could totally understand it.

THERAPIST: They were just kind of asking to see if you knew anything?

CLIENT: Yeah. In a way it was asking if I knew anything, which it was very easy for me to say, "Jordan, I really don't know anything about this. It's all kind of news to me." It took me awhile to even write the e-mail to him because afterwards I was like what am I going to say? I'm going to talk to my dad and communicate this stuff to him? Because I wasn't going to. I didn't know how to [ ] (inaudible at 00:09:13)

THERAPIST: Yeah, you felt like you wanted to be able to help them out in some way.

CLIENT: I would have loved to do that. I felt kind of ashamed that I didn't because I felt like I didn't for not respectable reasons. I felt like I would have been in the right to have confronted my dad about it. I could have said it in a million ways. I could have just been like, "Dad, you're always telling me to keep in touch with my sister. I wouldn't if you didn't constantly harp on it. And now that I've done so, at your request, now I'm in the middle of something. You have an obligation now not to make me caught with my pants down in this triangle that I, quite frankly, didn't really want to even be in. I did it out of a courtesy to you, so figure this out. Don't pull me into this and then just sort of like leave me having to look like an asshole and take the fall for your questionable decisions and how you want to handle these situations." [00:10:40] Don't put me in the middle of that. I think this is precisely the stuff that I feel like I disassociate with, being more and more involved in my sister's life or something. This stuff is all rolling to the surface of it. Do you know what I mean? [00:11:02]

THERAPIST: That's a really important aspect of it. In some ways your lack of involvement is precisely because it would lead to this kind of thing.

CLIENT: Yeah. Completely. You could do it your way, but then it's you.

THERAPIST: No, you're caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

CLIENT: Yeah. And the same with my mom. It's not like I don't talk to people in my family just because I'm an asshole. This is just like a perfect example of that. I would just love to recall every single moment where my dad would have been like, "Chris, it's important for you to talk to your sister." Do you know what I mean? I would never say back to him in those instances every single time, "Well, maybe I don't really want to. (chuckles) I don't want to be brought into your life." [00:12:26]

THERAPIST: I hear too, Chris, that it not only brings you into his life in the political sense of what goes on between your sister, but it also really confronts you with some things about your father.

CLIENT: Right. My decision, in this respect, you would see as almost preservative of our relationship. This is a great example of how it can go the other way. This is now making it really difficult for me to get in touch with my dad about work now, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with it. I would like him to be able to acknowledge and expect, but I don't think that he does unless I explicitly said it to him. [00:13:37]

THERAPIST: Acknowledge and respect . . ?

CLIENT: That that formulation is going on in my head. I think that that is pretty [on the move] (ph?) from his understanding of this. I don't know how to go about broaching that [ ] (inaudible at 00:14:26) discuss that with him.

THERAPIST: It seems like it's hard enough even to wrap your mind around what happened, I think. One thing I'm thinking about is how is it that your dad's not been in contact with them and it looks like he's not paying for the wedding? It looks very dubious. What has that meant to you? [00:15:09]

CLIENT: (pause) I don't know. (pause) It feels upsetting. It feels like it makes it harder to be accepting of my dad, I guess harder to be able to rationalize me speaking to him, me liking him, me not being angry at him or something. That's something I feel like I try to do for his interest. Yeah, it's hard. I think about calling up my dad now and it's just like that's the only thing that's in the front of my mind. [00:16:40]

THERAPIST: Your feelings about this, what he's been doing . . ?

CLIENT: It makes me angry. It makes me really frustrated with him. I'm really frustrated that he doesn't . . . that element that he would just be so persistent with me being in touch with Irene a lot; and then he would do this thing where he just literally stopped talking to them. He deactivated his Facebook so they couldn't get in touch with him. Then he sort of pulled me into this constant communication with them. It's like Jesus, Dad, more people than just you are implicated in this. If you want to go rogue and just start destroying everything in your life it's your decision. It would have been easier to do before you tried to make "Team Chris and Emma" out of this, do you know what I mean? [00:17:52]

THERAPIST: With the whole going over there and . . ?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just bringing me into this. Leave me out of it. Don't bring me into stuff like this. Nothing good is going to come out of it. I'm going to just become a backboard for your decisions and stuff. It's not going to help anyway.

THERAPIST: I'd been thinking this on Thursday, but it's cursing me again the whole issue when you had gotten the price on the airplane tickets and he kind of asked you to look at them again or he thought he could find something cheaper. It's probably while this was going on. Maybe that's why he was kind of putting it back on you. Remember that whole thing we were talking . . ? [00:19:08]

CLIENT: Yeah, I've never really thought of my dad as someone who is having a hard time with money, but this has definitely been a pretty recurring thing that has come up with him this little thing with getting paid last month and the tickets and this conversation with my mom and then Jordan saying that dad . . . Now I'm thinking to myself I don't even want to work for my dad anymore. I don't even want to be another thing that he has to worry about, almost out of concern for him, not any anger or anything. Now I feel bad that I'm even exacerbating this stuff. [00:20:03]

THERAPIST: And he did pay you?

CLIENT: Yeah, he just had to wait until he got paid. But yeah, I don't even think he paid for the plane tickets yet. They're just going to keep getting more expensive.

THERAPIST: When is the wedding again?

CLIENT: It's in August, early August. (pause) Part of it is I would just say I don't care if, for some reason, this whole thing just falls apart, which it might; and for whatever reason the wedding doesn't happen. Go over there or something. I have no idea. That could happen I suppose. I consider a lot of this stuff with my dad and his family extremely unpredictable a lot of the time. It's frustrating now that people like Emma have kind of come into the mix, who he's invited, and it makes me really uncomfortable that those kinds of consequences could spill over into other domains. [00:21:24] That was one of the things that really frustrated me about the money thing with my dad. Last month it was spilling over into Emma's life, too, which was really, really frustrating for me. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I could just contain it to my own domain or borders or something. (pause) It's just a very sad, sorry picture of my dad, buying all of this. [00:22:17]

THERAPIST: Yeah, what do you see?

CLIENT: He's not paying people. It's like he's made commitments that he doesn't investigate and think if he can do. He's keeping people hanging. It's just so odd to me. He's so persistent about being in touch with me and me calling people and me like if I don't answer his phone calls for a day or two, he'll get mad and make a thing about it. He'll be like, "Oh, you're not answering my calls," or something. "Give me a call now and then. We're all busy." It's just so weird putting that up against not talking to people. The same thing with my mom, just not getting in touch with them knowing that they're trying to get in touch with him and him deactivating his Facebook or something. [00:23:32]

THERAPIST: Your mother why? The connection between your mom your mom will sometimes not hearing from him when she needs to hear from him?

CLIENT: Yeah, like the other month she was asking me if she had the right phone number or e-mail. It's just so evident that she's been trying to get in touch with him for so long she's wondering if she's calling the right number. It's just such a different set of terms that seem to operate.

THERAPIST: Do you know if he's paying alimony to her?

CLIENT: I don't know. I'm an independent now. I don't know if any stuff was squared up like that. I don't think they had any court-ordered business. I think it was between them to . . . which was always known to me which I guess I always saw was a virtue played out with those two. It looked less like that sometimes. [00:24:55]

THERAPIST: I asked because I was wondering if your mom was trying to get in touch with him because of some payment.

CLIENT: It probably was. He's on her insurance, which is just really odd to me. That's effectively her saving and a shitload of the money. I think that that would obligate someone to be responsive to them if they called.

THERAPIST: I wonder how she gets insurance for him?

CLIENT: I don't know. I have no idea.

THERAPIST: They are legally divorced?

CLIENT: I think so. I don't even know, to be honest. I think so.

THERAPIST: It's not like you've been going down to the town hall to . . .

CLIENT: Make arrangements. I don't think they were mad, I think they were just [ ] (inaudible at 00:25:47) union, I think. I increasingly feel less and less confident about what I thought about that stuff. (pause) [00:26:11]

THERAPIST: What I think about is that I forgot how you put it on Thursday, but I thought it was really important what you were getting at some way that you had a sense when you were younger about something in the air that wasn't being spoken about. And I think, in a way, you knowing in some way that there is something going on that's not really shared or out in the open; and yet you feeling compelled almost to look away almost to say "this is not something we want you to look at, Chris". I see that particularly with you and your dad. Don't look at certain things. The divorce, too, whatever it was separation. [00:27:16]

CLIENT: I guess I'm just more comfortable now with it. It's weird. Sometimes I feel like I'm with my mother and my father and in a way that I can respect my mom will share stuff with me, almost like it's over now and in the reconciliation phase. It's benign comments like, "I didn't get to tell you a lot of things." I feel like it's just unfair. I had nothing to do with that. I've erected this whole way of making sense of this stuff, not because I wanted to, but because that's all I had access to and now you mention these little drops of a comment from my mom here and an e-mail here. It pulls at the cord of that. There's nothing I can do with it. It's frustrating and it makes me feel stupid and na�ve and angry that I'm even as close as I am with my dad, who does these things. I've sort of been robbed of my ability to interpret it in my own way, like the only interpretation that I seem able to hold onto and act upon is one that's just a fantasy delusion. Maybe when I was nine or ten it presented some benefit, but right now it's just really unpleasant morally and practically. Maybe from the family perspective it played some productive role. . [00:30:21] It avoided certain things. It allowed for certain formalities to play out, but now it just seems to complicate things for me because this isn't news to anyone else. My mom seems to have set up an interpretation. Whether or not I'm aware of it, I know what it is that takes these things into account. Now I have to find a way to assimilate this stuff into an edifice that I've built up that has no room for it. Do you know what I mean? I have to assimilate these really ugly truths into this really rosy relationship that I've maintained with my dad and it seems unfair that I would have to have the burden of trying to be angry now at someone years later for something. [00:31:35]

Even if it were more unpleasant back then, I would have much rather done those things that all my other friends did, where they got angry at their dad and stopped talking to him. Then maybe my dad and I could have some relationship now past that era, instead of me having to dig back and try to find some room for that, some place that I've left it. That just seems really like demobilizing I think. It just requires these mental back-bendings that just . . . (pause) I don't know. It makes me mad. It just seems like it's something that benefits everybody but me. It makes me really upset that that wasn't allowed for me. I feel powerless, even these little teeny things like this e-mail, I just feel like David and Goliath. I just don't want to look at it. I have no ability to engage with it. It just completely . . . I don't know. That stuff just makes me really frustrated and angry. [00:34:04]

THERAPIST: These elements about your dad, your father . . ?

CLIENT: Yeah, these things that were intentionally kept away from me when I was younger because, I suppose, it would seem more desirable if I could maintain a relationship with my dad and I didn't have to let that be conflicted by knowing what was going on between my mom and my dad or my dad and my sister. That's based upon the assumption that that wouldn't be relevant to me, that that wasn't important to me then and wouldn't be important to me in the future. Maybe that that's even something that someone even if they were 12 or 13 would want to take into account if they were going to have a relationship with their dad. Maybe that it's not just that it's unpleasant, but that it's actually relevant at the same time. I don't think that that's what was thought of. I think it was like this won't seem as horrible if you don't [ ] (inaudible at 00:35:22) my dad sometime, but Chris can sort of find this behavior that, when he's with his mom or his dad, that almost seems like there's nothing else that went on. [00:35:34]

THERAPIST: Yeah, as if there was this idea of your father and the hope being that nothing could get in the way of you having a maybe idealized is too strong a word but an idealized image of your dad.

CLIENT: Or inaccurate even, right?

THERAPIST: Well, yeah, that didn't jive with something that your mom was seeing that was happening around you; what happened in his past with his daughter, what happened at any stage in all that. Now it's almost like you're hit with all of these things, whether you like it or not, and you've got to deal with the fallout of the consequences of it. [00:36:33]

CLIENT: Yeah, and I guess I would have really liked at the time to have known these things. When [ ] (inaudible at 00:36:40) mom she's like, "I didn't tell you so many things." And she was even saying, "And I'm still not going to tell you all of these things." It's like who benefits from you not telling me all of those things? To what end? Maybe because it would be upsetting to me at the moment. Maybe because it would complicate things in the unfolding of your divorce. It just doesn't seem helpful to me when all is said and done. I'm angry at that decision to keep me out of that stuff. My ability to actually react to it was sort of completely wrong [ ] (inaudible at 00:37:59). [00:38:01]

THERAPIST: There were so many elements that were obscured.

CLIENT: Now I realize that. I realize that I was sort of robbed of those things, but now I almost don't even want them because it's like what would I do with them now?

THERAPIST: That's the thing. That's the other half of the thing you're confronted with right now.

CLIENT: I don't even know what I'd do with it. I realize that I feel like I should have it, but I almost don't even want them because it's just . . . What am I going to do? Sit down with my dad now and talk to him about what I'm angry about from eight years ago? I feel like I was put in that situation. It's very evident to me when I get this e-mail and it seems so obvious what the right thing to do would be or it's just like a square peg in a hole that just doesn't fit. It just sort of has nothing to do with it. (pause) That's everything I want to move away from in my life. [00:39:51]

THERAPIST: There's a lot in there in terms of I assume because it really unseats a lot of things.

CLIENT: It's bringing me back to that . . . I even told you a little while ago that there has been a moving away from my home, from seeing my parents as much, from seeing my family as much, to being in my family's homes as much. There's been a relaxing. There's been an easing of a lot of things. It feels good with that separation. I feel more in control of myself. I feel less at the whim of that stuff. These things just pull that right back over me again. I feel like everything I've been doing has been trying to go away from it, do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, and it's pulling something back and pulling you back into something.

CLIENT: Yeah. I just feel like in some way everything I do is on some level implicated in trying to go away. It feels very counterproductive and defeating when it seems like that happens and I feel like there's no progress.

THERAPIST: No progress? [00:41:34]

CLIENT: I'm in my own apartment. I have my own life with Emma. I have my own future that I've made for myself with [ ] (inaudible at 00:41:41). I might as well just be living back at home with my mom going to see my dad on weekends. I guess I felt like some of those changes, because in a way it did, at times, relieve some of those things a little bit. Now it's like even when I'm in this house that my parents don't live in and I have nothing to do, this thing manages to sort of pervade into it or whatever. [00:42:24]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you're trying to kind of hold onto the separate life you've carved out away from them and established on your own. I mean psychically, logically speaking, and it's pulling you back in to take some sort of really deep questions and feelings inside around your family.

CLIENT: It's infantilizing, heavy, demobilizing, paralyzing, sort of a leash just being pulled around or something, which is not what I want to feel like which I associate with a different time and place. [00:43:28]

THERAPIST: A different way you were in the world, too.

CLIENT: Yeah. It's pretty striking how quickly that seems to zoom back into these new spaces that I have not associated with that. It's frustrating. This was helpful, though.

THERAPIST: What were you thinking?

CLIENT: I think I always used to say my parents were always . . . my experience was always so much better because my thoughts and concerns were always placed center by my parents in the ways that my friends weren't. As an example, my friends whose parents would go to court over the dog. Their parents weren't thinking about their kids as much. I'm almost starting to see something like paradoxically opposite in this decision. Keep me out of everything. I'm seeming to have not as productive of an effect. That seems to have been almost like an act of robbing me of access. I don't know. It's a different way of looking at something I've always looked at. [00:45:09]

THERAPIST: All right. Thursday. 10:00 AM Thursday.

CLIENT: 10:00 AM Thursday. Thank you.

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