TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in.

CLIENT: How was your break?

THERAPIST: Good, thank you.

CLIENT: You didn’t go skiing, right? You said you weren’t [INAUDIBLE].

THERAPIST: Yeah, no skiing. [00:01:01]

[LONG SILENCE] [00:01:59]

CLIENT: Can’t figure out where to start.

THERAPIST: Are you curious about where I go when I go away?

CLIENT: Yes, I was curious. I don’t want to be too nosy. I don’t know. [00:03:00]

THERAPIST: What is, what do you mean by nosy?

CLIENT: I mean, I wouldn’t mind, you know, talking about where you went or what you did, but then, you know, I have to be professional, so it’s not important or not important. It’s OK not to talk really bad.

THERAPIST: You have to be professional?

CLIENT: I guess we should be professional. I don’t know.

THERAPIST: What’s—what is being professional?

CLIENT: I guess politely inquiring how your vacation was and then not digging for details. I’m not digging, inquiring. [00:03:59]

THERAPIST: Well I have to be professional, however we define that. We can talk about that. Why do you have to be professional? You’re not—

CLIENT: If you’re professional, then I’m professional too. No? No? That’s what I thought. In any kind of relationship, I guess, we—that’s, isn’t that like one of the keys to a successful relationship, or not successful, but it’s one approach to make—figure out what the other person is—how he’s—how they’re reacting to you and you react similarly. But it does restrict you, and I do feel restricted. [00:04:59]

CLIENT: But I guess that’s how the world works. I don’t know that’s how adults are. I mean, I would love to chat about wherever you went, you know, if you were on a beach, what you read, and you know, but not asking makes me feel restricted and I guess restriction isn’t necessarily like the (inaudible at 00:05:30). You call it boundary, that might be more positive.

CLIENT: I don’t really respect that many boundaries anyways, so—

THERAPIST: What do you have in mind when you say that?

CLIENT: What, when—

THERAPIST: That you don’t respect many boundaries? [00:05:59]

CLIENT: Well first of all, I don’t understand them, then a problem with them and I, many boundaries I just kind of cross, so, especially like in relationships. I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Are you, are you aware that you here, are you aware of worrying about crossing boundaries here?

CLIENT: A little bit, not that much. Because mostly what you do is talk, so you know, if we were doing a bunch of other things then there will be, there would be more boundaries, so.

THERAPIST: Like what?

CLIENT: Oh, I guess like if we were depending on each other for things, then I might have to be careful about it, you know, my expectations and not being impatient and not expecting too much and making sure I don’t let you down with your expectations. [00:07:10]

CLIENT: So if we were like in a social scenario.

THERAPIST: Well I certainly hope you have some expectations of me.

CLIENT: I’m not sure what they should be, so I don’t know, indulge them. But I’m not saying, you know, like it’s hopeless, it’s not like that, obviously.

THERAPIST: [SNEEZES]. Excuse me.

CLIENT: Bless you.

THERAPIST: And I certainly hope you depend on me, at least in some ways.

CLIENT: Yeah. I depend on our sessions. [00:08:03]

CLIENT: It’s mutual, like what we create or what we share. You’re saying it’s OK to expect and depend on people. I do, like I don’t know. I guess I feel like maybe it came from a place of like depending too much and expecting too much. [00:08:59]

CLIENT: So it’s like maybe I then ventured onto force myself to try not to depend and then kind of finding that I have to find that middle, that balance of not leaning too much but at the same time expecting and being hopeful.

THERAPIST: Yeah, but it makes me think about whether you feel you’ve been cautious in here.

CLIENT: A little, but you have to be cautious every, with everyone, right?

THERAPIST: Well leaving that aside for a moment, because it seems like a hot issue, a sort of load that you can convert a lot of different ways, you certainly don’t feel that with all of your relationships. I guess that’s what I’m thinking about, that you don’t feel—there are certainly relationships you’ve talked about not feeling cautious, so that’s what I’m sort of thinking about. [00:09:58]

THERAPIST: It seems like here, but not in all relationships.

CLIENT: What do you mean? Like with Chris I don’t feel cautious?

THERAPIST: You’ve described several relationships where you feel like you’re not cautious at all and that you feel like, you feel too impulsive, you know. You’re saying things off the cuff or saying things that you feel clearly overstep boundaries, so I’m sort of just comparing that with here where I certainly don’t experience you that way.

CLIENT: Yeah, not all my relationships are like that, but yeah, I guess I was talking to a friend awhile ago, and I was kind of defending my position, you asked me last week about that girl that I had a fight with so it’s just like, but yeah, I want friendships like that where, you know, you can be a little, be yourself, or you know. Even may say things that you didn’t mean and they’ll bounce back, or they’ll understand. [00:11:02]

CLIENT: And this friend I was talking with, she was like, “Is that how it works? I’ve really learned the hard way.” So I was thinking of that, and that’s what I meant by knowing you have to be cautious. You can’t assume things, so. But I mean, but then you can make mistakes, and that’s fine. Where you think you are closed to someone after a certain point and then you do leg your guard down or you are less cautious and then they don’t like what you say, and then you’re like, “OK, I guess I’ll step back. I won’t, I guess we’re not as close as we thought, I thought we were, so.” [00:12:01]

CLIENT: People can misjudge distances, so I guess I’m trying to learn to be cautious the way that I guess I am here and I should, you know, take some of this level of professionalism to whatever relationships.

CLIENT: I guess I do, it’s just that in certain scenarios there’s so many other things going on that this kind of therapy or advice or whatever, you know I will call it, it just gets clouded, you know, like if I feel insecure or like all you know, the past comes like bearing down on me. [00:13:13]

CLIENT: Like reactions and impulses are all that I have to respond with instead of like this measured kind of professionalism that I’m able to manifest here some way. So like feeling like an outsider, feeling that intense feeling, feeling judged, feeling insecure, like yeah. Sometimes I just respond to those instincts. [00:14:07]

[SILENCE][00:15:00]

THERAPIST: What are you thinking about?

CLIENT: Just generally other things, being conscientious. Be like, you know, being in therapy or having these sessions kind of also in a sense help, because I don’t feel like I have to talk about painful stuff with, you know, others, like I felt the need to do constantly before therapy, so, before I was seeing you, so. [00:16:01]

THERAPIST: You don’t feel the need because you feel you have a place to do it?

CLIENT: Yeah, and it’s done in a productive way. It’s not like it used to be where it was just like, I was like, I felt like I was just in the quicksand of yucky stuff. You know, like emotions and fast (inaudible at 16:27) experiences like just like it was watching a horror show that like keeps messing with your head, but even when you go away it’s just kind of a submersion, but here it’s not more like, it has, it’s a narrative and you can keep it and analyze it and distance yourself from it somehow. So it’s much more structured and productive. [00:16:59]

CLIENT: And hence, helpful. Because yeah, last week a friend of mine, this guy I was helping with a PhD applications, I’ve known him for like over a year, and I’m a little upset with him because he’s taken so much of my time, and last week I was really busy and the snowstorm hit us like Wednesday or something, and that same day I was going to meet him and then I walked in the slush and everything to see him. He was like, “I have to tell you something.” I was like, “What is it?” And he’s like, and he told me that he’s gay, so I don’t know. I felt weird about it for a bit, for a few days, actually. [00:18:00]

CLIENT: I felt like a little betrayed or lied to because, you know, I lie all the time. I tell the biggest lies, but that doesn’t make it OK when someone else lies to me. I mean, I understand why he did what he did, but you know, still. Because then I felt like, “Why couldn’t he have told me?” Why didn’t he, you know, like I’ve done so much for him. I helped him so much, and I hope I haven’t come across as too judgmental, at least not in this area, and he has all these other friends he can tell this to and not me. So he was like, “Yeah, I was feeling very guilty about not telling you and all my friends were like, ‘You should really tell her.’“ I guess, and then there’s also this like residual like earlier I kind of had a crush on him for like a couple weeks or something. [00:19:05]

CLIENT: And I guess when I was like, I really told him that it was a silly thing that I said and then he didn’t say anything back, so now I’m like, “Ah, it wasn’t that he doesn’t find me attractive, because you know, he’s gay.” So there’s a bit of that. But I was trying to be sad about it. I was (inaudible at 00:19:41) trying to make myself cry, trying to like think in the sense that he didn’t tell me this and why don’t people like me enough, but I just couldn’t pursue with that negative thinking, personally. I don’t know why. [00:19:59]

CLIENT: I was trying to cry, but I couldn’t, I was talking to (inaudible at 00:20:03) about it, but like, you know, I was trying to embody that profound negative space, a profound sadness but I couldn’t and like, and he wasn’t really listening but he was listening, and then I was like, “You know, you wouldn’t understand.” And then I was like, “That’s silly,” and I didn’t feel bad intensely, but previously this was, that would be, this is what I do like all the time.

I’m like distance myself from everyone because I feel like I have this kind of superior understanding of the profoundly sad situation that they just don’t, so you know, I feel, I actually like myself and then, so. [00:21:03]

CLIENT: But I was very conscious of doing this, so then I couldn’t do it. And I was thinking why do I have that need to feel, to (inaudible at 00:21:21) in that way, you know? I have a cultural need for having an intense and profound connection, but that itself is like such a fantasy or such an ideal, and in reality, you know, like moments of connection don’t look like that, (inaudible at 00:21:59). [00:21:59]

CLIENT: So I guess I’m trying to be conscious of that and trying to train myself to live in those moments or enjoy them more rather than just like my ideal, whatever that may mean. And I guess it was an intense moment when my friend told me, you know, he was, he kept saying, “I can’t even look you in the eye right now,” and this and that. But I was kind of checked out.

CLIENT: We talked for like five and a half hours.

THERAPIST: About his being gay?

CLIENT: About his, you know, being in love with someone who doesn’t love him back and it all makes sense now, I think. I think of how he feels, how he seems checked out and preoccupied. [00:23:03]

CLIENT: And on the edge a lot of the time, but now, so, I’m like that’s what it is. I can understand that, you know. That’s what happens with, I guess it happens to everyone, it must, right? When, so you have this picture, this, you know, not picture, but you have like a desire for an intense connection, whatever that may be. [00:24:01]

CLIENT: And like we’re both connected, usual connection or sexual connection, or whatever, and when that moment actually presents itself, you get cold feet, you know, or you’re checked out and you’re too aware of the moment itself and you in it that you don’t actually achieve, you know, like connection. Do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: It’s contrived?

CLIENT: Why is it contrived?

THERAPIST: Well I’m asking, when you’re describing it, something, I guess I was thinking about what you were describing having this very negative space and not being able to deal with it, and thinking last week wanting to have the negative space and achieve the connection. So the working tribe came to my mind. [00:25:04]

THERAPIST: Because it sounded like you were trying to force yourself into that space, but it wasn’t happening.

CLIENT: No, that’s one thing. I’m talking about another, like when the moments do present themselves, like when my friend told me his big secret, it was a big moment, right? It was the kind of dramatic moment you write about, you know, like fictional moment. The coming out, you know, it’s, from all angles it’s like a perfect, you know, material for a story. You know, like I’ve known him for a year and a half, so it has all the materials of, you know, feeling afraid all that, you know. Like it was a big secret, and he consistently lied to me because he had to. [00:25:56]

CLIENT: You know, and now I’m trying to hook him up with women, and I say, “Get married, it will help you.” And he always had to say something, and that conveyed that he was straight, so I’m just saying like that moment was an intense moment when we could have had like profound emotional connection, and maybe he feels that we did, but I feel like my experience with that moment was that I was checked out, like I was too aware of the moment, you know, that (inaudible at 00:26:37).

CLIENT: You know like what I’m trying to say, like you’ve been presented with papers to your new house, like you’re signing, and you, that’s, you’ve pictured that so often like signing on the line, but you’re too aware of where the realtors put like the sticky thing instead of, I don’t know if that’s a good analogy. [00:27:10]

CLIENT: But I guess like even with intimacy, with good intimacy, that’s what happens to me. Not a lot, but yes it does happen.

THERAPIST: Where you check out.

CLIENT: Yeah, or I cringe, or, it doesn’t happen that much now. I mean, with Ari (sp?) that was the reason he literally threw me out, you know. His, he kept saying that I cringe and all that.

THERAPIST: Cringe when he touched you?

CLIENT: Well, not just touch, it was like much more than that, but I feel like, well now it’s been so long, and maybe it’s like psychologically I didn’t really want him to because he was still Chris’s friend in my head. He, I was doing everything and allowing myself, but with Chris, yeah, it happens. Not so much with (inaudible at 00:28:22), I don’t know, because I guess I am like genuinely attracted to him.

CLIENT: Yeah, I feel like I train myself to be in the moment much more now than I did before.

THERAPIST: Do you feel checked out in here, like when you’re quiet, is it checked out or is it something else? [00:29:01]

CLIENT: Not all the time. When I’m quiet I’m either trying to think like building connections in my head of one thing leading to the other, or I am desperately trying to think but nothing is coming to mind because for whatever reason, or I really don’t want to talk. Maybe the third scenario I’m checked out, but I don’t feel like checked out, like it might be more like I’m tired of talking or I need a prompt or something.

[SILENCE][00:30:02]

CLIENT: I feel like this is like totally new that I don’t any more want to say those words. [00:30:59]

CLIENT: You wouldn’t understand. I used to derive a lot of whatever feeling of isolation and weird superiority by saying these words, “You wouldn’t understand,” but I feel like now it’s like there’s not much there. I get more joy out of being understood and sharing and understanding, actually, more than finding this gem of information or emotion and like keeping it all to myself, you know. [00:31:59]

CLIENT: I still have that kind of thing. It’s not like fallen away completely. Holding to isolate, and in a negative like motivated by something negative. But that was like was slash is my fears of like you know, sitting in the same room with someone like a husband or a boyfriend or having any kind of connection.

THERAPIST: What does that mean not having any connection?

CLIENT: Yeah, what does it mean? But seriously, like it’s just like an image, and yet how important is it to put it in words because once I put it into words it’s really not that dreadful or depressing. [00:33:06]

CLIENT: Because I made it into a picture and that picture is like burned in my brain, and now I have to kind of unburn it, you know, toss it out and put it into words.

THERAPIST: And what’s the picture of?

CLIENT: Well like me and my mom and Chris living in the same apartment and like me thinking oh, how depressing, how boring, how like awful, no connection, so but now I feel like that isn’t the case, and sadly, that wasn’t the case. I wish I realized that, you know. It’s more like me doing my work, my mom doing her work, Chris doing his work. [00:34:00]

CLIENT: And sharing a sweet little apartment, you know, how nice that we were in our means. How nice that I was saving money. How nice that I was responsible and I knew both these guys’ whereabouts all the time. You know, they were always apologizing that I didn’t really see. People liked us, and (inaudible at 00:34:38), and I threw parties and cooked, so I’m not like sad about letting that go, because I have independence now. It’s very, very expensive independence, but I have that. [00:35:00]

CLIENT: I have that now, but I still like sometimes I feel that worried and if I’m not worried then I’m thinking, “Should I be worried?” Like if I’m sitting in the same room as Sorab (sp?) or sitting in the car I’m like there is that level of anxiety that “Oh God, the minutes are building up and we haven’t really talked.” I guess that comes more from the fact that I’m like, “Should I be with Chris right now?”

CLIENT: We would be having such profound conversations. But I’m like profoundness only comes once in a very long while.

THERAPIST: There are lots of ways to be profound, though. [00:36:01]

CLIENT: Yeah, like how?

THERAPIST: I don’t know. You can have a profound connection that doesn’t necessarily have to be around an intellectual idea.

CLIENT: What else would it be about?

THERAPIST: So many things.

CLIENT: Like what?

THERAPIST: People can have a profound emotional connection.

CLIENT: Like me and my mom?

THERAPIST: What comes to mind about that?

CLIENT: Well we have an understanding like yeah, that is a profound emotional connection. What else (inaudible at 00:36:37).

THERAPIST: I think there are so many ways to have a profound emotional connection. I was curious why that came to your mind.

CLIENT: There are no more of a, the many ways of having a profound connection.

THERAPIST: OK, let’s talk about it.

CLIENT: OK. Emotional. I don’t know your list.

THERAPIST: I don’t have a list. [00:37:02]

CLIENT: Oh.

THERAPIST: It sounds like you’d like me to.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Well it seems like the way your mother and you understand each other aren’t the only way, the kind of way the two of you understand each other.

CLIENT: That’s fair.

THERAPIST: Do you think we can have a profound emotional connection?

CLIENT: Sure. I don’t know. We have some profound psychological connection, I guess.

THERAPIST: What’s the distinction? [00:38:01]

CLIENT: I don’t know. Emotional I think of as like it comes from having shared life together, so all the moments of, you know, like worrying about each other, watching each other’s back, you know, like, yeah, sharing life.

THERAPIST: You were, when you were first saying that I was thinking well we’re not sharing our home lives for sure, but we share experiences together in here once a week.

CLIENT: Yeah, but only my experiences.

THERAPIST: Maybe. I understand why you’re saying that, but we’re having a shared experience as we’re talking about your experiences. [00:39:04]

CLIENT: I see.

THERAPIST: You’re sharing your experiences with me, but we’re having a shared experience around that.

CLIENT: Yeah. That is true.

THERAPIST: What I started to think about, you were talking about restrictions and boundaries and boundaries are a positive way of describing restrictions. [00:40:04]

THERAPIST: And then one question, is there, are there some things that are just restrictive that are not a boundary, they’re just restrictive? Or is it simply a matter of perspective? That is one thing I started thinking about. The other thing I started thinking about is that thinking about being connected in the context of having boundaries and what that looks like and what that means?

CLIENT: I don’t know what that means, being connected in the context of boundaries. I guess that’s what we have, right? I mean, there are boundaries here, professional boundaries.

THERAPIST: I would say that in all relationships, that’s true, that there’s always boundaries. The boundaries might be different, and I started to think about maybe sometimes the boundaries feel like they block the connection.

CLIENT: Yeah, but I feel like I’m at a phase now where I like boundaries. I completely (inaudible at 00:41:05) them earlier, and now I feel the need for them. [00:41:08]

CLIENT: Like with Chris, with other people, I feel weirdly the need not to share, you know? Or to share different things. I do sometimes feel the need to share a secret when someone doesn’t like have friends who don’t know I’m invading Sorab and have this need to like, you know. But then I have other urges too, like to share other things with them and like with other friends I have the urge not to tell them stuff at all. Like with Chris I feel like I have the urge to not lean on him and be strong and like be fabulous. [00:42:00]

CLIENT: In a like intellectual way or something. So connections and boundaries whereas earlier like I was just a mess, like I was like I had no backbone, I was just flopping about all over the place. So yeah, I think that’s what I used to think, but oh, how can we have a connection? There’s a boundary, but now I feel like ok, it’s a challenge. It’s like a race with hurdles now, so how do I, not necessarily like jump over the boundary, but try and have the connection, respecting the boundary. [00:43:14]

THERAPIST: And boundaries can also enable connections. Like if there are two people who are completely boundary-less, how can you be connected? You’re just an amorphous blob. I mean, not always. Sometimes boundaries do just separate people, but I’m not always so sure. In a sense almost like what you were saying, you weren’t saying quite this, but we were talking before about how, you know, it’s now can sort of shape, like painful things can be talked about in a productive way. It’s like the boundaries of this, sort of our experience together can enable that, which is a particular kind of connection. [00:43:59]

CLIENT: what do you mean?

THERAPIST: Well I thought one of the things you were saying is that, well you weren’t quite saying, but as that, you know, this relationship has, as all relationships, (inaudible at 00:44:15), but then it allows you to be connected to all different parts of yourself and to me, in a way that it was just kind of, it was almost like a repetitive re-traumatizing that was going on before that didn’t really feel like it was really connected to anything, it was just pain.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: It was connected to pain, but no meaning.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, so you know, the structure that is there that I think earlier, a year ago I think, yeah, exactly a year ago, I feel sitting right in that spot, and there was snow on the ground and stuff, and I feel it was February, but I felt, it was completely amorphous, you know, this idea of this session, that I could just say whatever. [00:45:05]

CLIENT: And it felt structure-less, but now I feel like there is some wonderful structure, like we’re building on stuff that we’ve already talked about and there is like a narrative, there are many narratives, so.

THERAPIST: You know what, on that note, let’s stop for today, but we’ll continue in the narrative on Wednesday.

CLIENT: Okay, thank you.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I need to, I’ll bring you a check next week.

THERAPIST: Okay, that’s fine.

CLIENT: Thank you.

THERAPIST: Okay, take care.

CLIENT: You too. Welcome back.

THERAPIST: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

END TRANSCRIPT