TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Hi.
CLIENT: Hi. How are you?
THERAPIST: Doing good.
CLIENT: Good. (pause) How's the elephant doing today? (ph?)
THERAPIST: Okay I hope but I couldn't tell you. (inaudible)
CLIENT: I thought it was important not to e-mail anymore for a little while. [00:01:34] (pause) Feeling intimate doesn't have to involve sex. (pause) (inaudible) a good thing...I think sex is pretty important. I'm reading out loud and (pause) being physically close and in vulnerable positions paced evenly. Why?
THERAPIST: I don't know.
CLIENT: I think eating together is really important. [00:03:56] Maybe because that was a big deal in my family? And it was a big source of effort for my mom like to cook fresh food every day and have everyone be there at the same time to eat it with no devices, mobile devices or before cell phones there were other things.
THERAPIST: Mm hm. (pause) [00:05:36]
CLIENT: I guess experiencing somebody with difficult emotions is also important to me. (pause) Have you read the Couch and the Tree?
THERAPIST: I've heard of that but I haven't.
CLIENT: Poor little guy. (inaudible) (pause) Are you going to cry? [00:07:04]
THERAPIST: I didn't do that.
CLIENT: It's important, maybe more important than all the other things. (pause) I'm sorry.
THERAPIST: For what?
CLIENT: Acting.
THERAPIST: Why?
CLIENT: Personal.
THERAPIST: Yeah...you want to know? (pause)
CLIENT: I do want to know. I do. (pause) I guess I have more to explain about why I want to know.
THERAPIST: Sure.
CLIENT: It gives me an idea of the environment in which you grew up, gives me an idea of where you are coming from when you turn from meditation and your rite thing doesn't sound Jewish and gives me an idea of where you were coming from in...your probably interreligious marriage or maybe not, maybe it and un-interreligious marriage. [00:09:27] I guess these are things that are important to me, in my life. (pause) [00:10:53] You're a sweetheart.
THERAPIST: Thank you. (inaudible)
CLIENT: Remember I talked about giving you a free pass for sex? He really kept it.
THERAPIST: Mm hm. (pause)
CLIENT: It's very nice. I know that I need to know about like the extent to which I want that to actually be, he doesn't really talk about that but we talked about possible reasons why I might be grieving and (pause) the ones that came up like in his opinion I think he was really good that he's perceptive more than I, I don't know, I sometimes it doesn't seem like he's paying attention. So I... [00:12:24]
THERAPIST: So you never imagined him that way as like intense meaning like he's in his head or...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: In his own world but in other ways kind of uncannily perceptive.
CLIENT: Yeah he's very perceptive and he doesn't interfere too much which is why I think he's not perceptive. When I ask him "Why do you think grieving?" he says, I don't want to repeat what he said, I'm going to say what seems right to me. The loss of childhood, the loss of being taken care of, the fact that I married someone whose not going to take care of me in those ways and I don't know if anybody marries anybody who's going to take care of them in the way they're used to but I didn't. That wasn't really apparent, it wasn't clear to me and it wasn't clear that it was important (inaudible) to me. [00:13:56] My parents in a sense, a lot with my parents, the loss of possibility to have sexual experiences with different people which is where the free pass came in. Then he thinks it's important that he's had sex with one other woman. (pause) The sort of mismatch between my fantasy and reality and this relationship.
THERAPIST: In what ways?
CLIENT: So that we can't really be (pause)...well that we can't act out my fantasies. (pause)
THERAPIST: Which ones?
CLIENT: All of them. Walking, eating, lying down next to each other.
THERAPIST: Oh, you mean this relationship?
CLIENT: Mm hm (inaudible)
THERAPIST: That's why I was confused.
CLIENT: Well its funny that...that cannot be because I'm feeling very hypersexual right now and I just been really wanting to have sex all the time in like new and exciting ways. So we talked a lot about different things we would like that maybe we hadn't visited or revisited in a while. (pause) [00:16:51] But no I'm not grieving (inaudible) between fantasy and reality I can just tell him it's not going to happen.
THERAPIST: Yeah that would, I guess part of why I act is why you think that, I understand.
CLIENT: My equanimity I think that was the scariest one.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: I don't know where it went but it was there, it was very good equanimity. (pause) I was also surprised that he picked up on that and described it to me and it was really nice to hear that. [00:18:11] It was like an unusual equanimity for somebody who's so emotional and I've always been so emotional but I've always been able to bounce back from being hit hard and also just sort of like keep everything in control and feel in control and like get myself to feel really happy.
THERAPIST: Mm hm. Yeah I heard lots of the good parts of both I think.
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) Now I feel this very scary existential depression sometimes where I can't figure out what's important. [00:19:43] (pause)
THERAPIST: (inaudible)
CLIENT: I know. [00:20:53]
THERAPIST: You put up this whole constellation of things related to grieving to deal with the loss of your family. (pause) Like other sexual (inaudible) possibilities. That tends to be how you're feeling for...me. (pause) The equanimity and the kind of existential dread...
CLIENT: Dread?
THERAPIST: Dread. (pause)
CLIENT: Yeah it kind of is like a constellation. (pause) [00:23:03] I don't like have an increased sex drive for Jeremy it's just sort of like (pause) for you and it like what Jeremy will do. Very well but...(pause)
THERAPIST: What are the sexual fantasies like?
CLIENT: Well what's interesting is that I haven't been able to cross a certain point of openness in my fantasies about you but somehow the sort of sweet and innocent sex with you like wanting it has turned into more oral sex with Jeremy and different kinds of really prolonged foreplay and different positions and just like more communicating and directing and more experimentation but I can't yet imagine giving you oral sex and I can't...it would just be too exciting to cross any threshold so...[00:25:56] I sort of just pause at penetration.
THERAPIST: Like the sexual tension and excitement is so intense?
CLIENT: Yeah, very intense.
THERAPIST: Kind of what you want right?
CLIENT: Yeah and you're kind of a little bit like on a pedestal and seems disrespectful or something.
THERAPIST: To me?
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause)
THERAPIST: So how does the fantasy fizz out?
CLIENT: No like to have fantasies that are (pause)...not self-conscious or something. Like you have to have a degree of comfort and not sexual tension to experiment and we don't have that and somehow like I don't do that in my mind either. [00:27:38]
THERAPIST: I see. It sounds like you have some anxiety about it?
CLIENT: Yeah. Well of course I do because it's not consensual.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: I don't have fantasies about doing things to you. I have fantasies about doing things with you and maybe they're there and I don't know about them.
THERAPIST: I see so it's not that I...sort of relate to the worry of would I want to do that...
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: Do I feel that way back? So there's a worry about kind of rejection in a way?
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) But like you're having sex with me in my fantasy. There are shades of gray with rejection, like clearly you haven't rejected me in the fantasy but...yeah I think I have a...I feel very strongly that I have a sense of what you like and what you want but not enough to create a whole sexual journey. It would require input from you or a more developed fantasy than this. [00:29:37] (pause)
THERAPIST: So the things about being able to have that to journey in fantasies with me that...(inaudible).
CLIENT: There are? (pause) They do?
THERAPIST: Yes absolutely. Like this is an important part of this constellation.
CLIENT: But are you referring to the sexual journey that I've already begun in my fantasy or the part of the journey I don't feel like I can continue or start? [00:31:23]
THERAPIST: I guess I'm thinking about like how the journey matters.
CLIENT: Yeah it's like the main part of the constellation if you think about intensity and the amount of time spent but I think the equanimity is the main part when you think about it in a different way. Like in terms of what really scares me and what I had experienced overcoming or passing through before and coming out on the other side in the law of equanimity is not (inaudible).
THERAPIST: Mm hm. Yeah.
CLIENT: Whereas the sexual fantasies...they can make things really painful and that's not going away but they're not going to kill me. [00:32:34]
THERAPIST: They're not as dangerous?
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: We deal with pain (inaudible) but not having the equanimity, what you had, really sicks you up.
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) I think about being close to your face. (pause) So anyway....[00:34:00] (pause) Your face and your hand. (pause) I wonder if you've been through this before? And how similar it is? [00:35:22]
THERAPIST: (inaudible) There's something going on this is a pretty (inaudible) but there's something going on about saying this in ways that also may be similar to what I've gone through or what you've gone through that seems very important. [00:37:06]
CLIENT: I think it would be sad to me if you had gone through this before with another patient and if it were really similar. I think I'm hoping to be...
THERAPIST: Of course it would. Yeah. That meant that like we were talking about (inaudible) or what you need (inaudible). (pause)
CLIENT: I like that. I think establishing points of saying this in other ways is important and is not sad.
THERAPIST: Mm hm. I realize that I thought I couldn't tell when you refer to (inaudible) you meant the patient or myself?
CLIENT: I think what I meant was with another patient but I thought a lot about whether you had gone through it yourself. [00:38:41] I guess I'm...I guess I assume you have. (pause) You didn't give me any practical advice.
THERAPIST: Is there anything?
CLIENT: Yeah I asked for it last time. No you gave me practical advice about how to do meditation right that might be the only thing. [00:40:09] That was a good one.
THERAPIST: I feel a little bad. Apparently I'm pretty crummy about practical advice.
CLIENT: I know. That's not what you're about.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: That's okay.
THERAPIST: Thank you. (pause) [00:41:15]
CLIENT: I'm going to leave now. Later. (pause) Bye.
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