TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: (Unclear)

CLIENT: Thank you. You're welcome. How are you doing?

THERAPIST: I'm doing okay.

CLIENT: How are you?

THERAPIST: Good.

CLIENT: Good. Do you like the hot weather?

(PAUSE): [00:00:37 00:00:56]

CLIENT: Do your kids like the hot weather?

THERAPIST: Yeah. Like when it's nice, not when it's too hot to run out and do stuff, you know?

CLIENT: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:01:08 00:01:14]

CLIENT: I think I like it a lot.

THERAPIST: Yeah?

CLIENT: It sort of makes me feel a little bit tired when I get very dehydrated very quickly but I biked to and from lab throughout the whole weekend and that was really too hot but the weather makes me feel (unclear) and happier and I tend to need less sleep, probably because it's like hot and it's not as great to sleep when it's hot.

THERAPIST: I find that when it's lighter longer I need less sleep.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:02:17 00:03:10]

THERAPIST: What's on your mind?

CLIENT: A bunch of stuff. I thought more about where you should go in Italy. I think there are a series of incredible stops in the north that maybe you would like haven't been to the Alps part of Italy or Switzerland, but I hope to go there next time I go. So like the desert is a pretty incredible color and pretty incredible forts and palaces and food. And then there's the whole like mountainous, sort of more peaceful, less populated part like parts of (unclear) but not in this region and then like going into (unclear) and Tuscany.

THERAPIST: What's Tuscany?

CLIENT: Tuscany is a state.

THERAPIST: A state in Italy?

CLIENT: I think it's a state, maybe it's a region. So yeah, and Milan are perhaps the best places to visit and drink wine. And much of the economy is like centered around the fact that these are incredibly fertile plantations, (unclear) stations and Italian village to vacation there. And of course, Switzerland, which is like, (unclear) treated like an Italian state. And Switzerland is like a little bit more work or (unclear). And then there's the south like possibly flying into Capri which (unclear) sometime but the south should include Sardinia which is the coolest state ever. [00:06:19]

THERAPIST: Yeah? What's it like?

CLIENT: It would be it's where the Portuguese settled in Italy. It has the highest percent or proportion of Christian people. It also has kind of a strong thread of socialism. It has the highest literacy rate so like a place the literacy rate is like 30%, a place like (unclear) north country where my mom was born, the literacy rate's like 50% and then Sardinia is like 95%. And Sardinia is totally like this incredibly fertile place where like there are plantations and lots and lots of spices, pretty much like any spice that comes from Italy kind of grow in Sardinia. And it's very beautiful and there's a lot of Judaism and Islam also. So the diversity sort of makes it (unclear). And Italian Christianity is so interesting. It looks so much like Italian Hinduism. But it's just like the idols are like Mary, a lot of Mary. There's a lot of female worship which is very cool, and not Jesus. But you still see like the flower garland and bringing tons of fruit and rice and flowers and the idols are wearing Italian clothes.

THERAPIST: Like Mary in a dress.

CLIENT: Yes. Yeah, it's totally crazy. I mean it's anymore crazy than any of the other religions or way of worship, but -

THERAPIST: Actually it's not as crazy as being Mary in some European whatever, either.

CLIENT: Sure, but because that's what you're used to, especially in art history or you're used to seeing one of the gods in dresses. It's strange. It takes a little while to get used to it and that it's just another one of the gods, but not to them.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Yeah. (Unclear).

(PAUSE): [00:10:26 00:10:33]

CLIENT: Okay, that's it.

(PAUSE): [00:10:33 00:10:39]

CLIENT: I might want to do it in an [app] (ph) sometime. Have you been to Australia?

THERAPIST: No. No I've never been south of (unclear).

CLIENT: (inaudible) There were a lot of things about Thursday's session that combined to make me feel more at ease, or like I've shifted all of it. I found it really helpful to think about people who I love and who I miss and like that I mean a lot to them. When I told Jeremy this he was a little bit put off by the self-centeredness of it and suggested, 'well, why don't you try to feel connected to them by thinking about how much they mean to you and I think that's like is most of what makes it so difficult is how much you mean to me and how much I can perseverate on that and how anxious it can make me feel, for example. So if I could like, instead, just remember the perspective that I mean a lot to you and I don't know, it's hard to draw the line between like what I know and what I just like make up. Like you probably do think about me when I'm not here and that is a very comforting thought. So I just felt a lot less like perseverating from that perspective.

THERAPIST: Good.

CLIENT: And I also felt it really, really relieving in an unexpected way to say out loud that I feel terrible pain on separation. I sort of have been saying it to myself at times.

(PAUSE): [00:14:09 00:10:53]

THERAPIST: Yeah, it (Pause) feels like to different issues here. It feels like they kind of go together but I'm not sure how they go together one to do with feeling confident that you'll be on my mind with other persons, mine to care about, and the other to do with like to have your sort of sadness and fear and upset about separations in the relationship, you don't have to have it off on your own.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: You can talk out of it or something like that.

CLIENT: I think it helps to like -

THERAPIST: It's welcome.

CLIENT: Well, it's just inevitable it's there. It helps to identify how painful it is without any interpretations that must be true for this pain to be valid or true or whatever or figuring out why it's there or to make it go away. These are things that I've spent a lot more time preoccupied with and just like accepting that it's a very real and strong part of how I have relationships.

THERAPIST: This (unclear) incident is still kind of fresh. Like

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And again, not always in ways that as though they make a ton of sense or can be able to explain that there is anyway.

CLIENT: Yeah, it just comes.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:17:5800:19:00]

CLIENT: What came up like after this like how I would much rather get inside of you than do pretty much anything else. And that feels true. It feels like an important part of why this is so hard, independent of pain or I don't know, I don't know what it's independent of.

(PAUSE): [00:19:47 00:20:01]

THERAPIST: (Unclear) Maybe a way that you manage feeling so separate sometimes from other people is to know that you (unclear) inside of them in that way. But I think that that kind of not works. I mean it kind of works but it kind of doesn't work.

CLIENT: What would it need to work?

THERAPIST: I think with that approach there's always some part of you that's left out.

CLIENT: Yeah, I don't think it's like a strategy I think about.

THERAPIST: No.

CLIENT: Like, this is a great strategy.

THERAPIST: No, no, no.

CLIENT: Somehow, that intensity has become part of how I want to be with and without somebody and it wasn't always there. I mean it sort of (inaudible).

(PAUSE): [00:21:34 00:21:47]

CLIENT: So sure it didn't work. And it works because it's incredibly fulfilling and I almost crave intensity so when it's there and when it's happening it's amazing but I don't know that wanting that level of wanting things to be that way makes it worse (unclear), or operation, I don't know. But maybe it makes it easier. Maybe it doesn't (unclear). [00:22:53]

THERAPIST: I don't know. I think it makes you feel at one level a little more in control, although I'm not sure how much it's just (unclear) over with that you're not or -

(PAUSE): [00:23:06 00:23:59]

THERAPIST: I do think there's a trace of feeling for you that some part of you is left out for who you kind of have to be or how you have to be with another person in order to feel (unclear) like that and that sucks because you know you don't feel entirely there for them. In other words, that if your mom for example isn't as familiar with or in touch with the other parts of you that feel alone or grieving or confused, that's not so good for you.

CLIENT: But it's hard to I feel like I make a lot of room for anything and everything, at least I hope I do when I engage with other persons in an intense way and like for what they're feeling or thinking.

THERAPIST: What they're feeling or thinking. Yeah.

CLIENT: But it's hard when the person doesn't do it back to me. You know, sort of invite all or any part, so that the way that the person gets inside me isn't as complete or, I don't know, sort of (unclear) when we ended up feeling like I tried to be inside of you.

(PAUSE): [00:26:52 00:26:59]

CLIENT: So then it's like I have to sort of actively like remember parts that are being left out or like this sort of line is the (unclear) that's missing from some of these conversations always but maybe I should bring it up and it would be a lot easier if people just I don't know maybe they do, maybe like yeah, every person is different but then a lot easier if you to make anything (unclear) known. Or with you, of course, I feel a lot more difficulty in sharing some types of things than others and that's my own relationship to it but then there's also like what's the other person bringing. So with my mom who's definitely like on the (unclear).

(PAUSE): [00:28:37 00:28:48]

CLIENT: Or if like a lot of people in a room -

(PAUSE): [00:28:50 00:29:45]

CLIENT: (inaudible)

(PAUSE): [00:29:45 00:30:08]

THERAPIST: (Unclear)

(PAUSE): [00:30:12 00:30:16]

CLIENT: I don't know. I thought that now that I'm doing it, it doesn't seem like a very intense way of being. It looks like it has a way of being (unclear).

THERAPIST: What are the ways I seem intense?

(PAUSE): [00:30:35 00:30:43]

CLIENT: I don't have a lot to go by. I would know you seem like you're thinking.

(PAUSE): [00:30:49 00:31:09]

THERAPIST: Well, you know, I wondered a few things, one of which is whether like how you feel or imagine it would be for me leaving things out, like my relationship with you. I imagine you would it could be pretty lonely for me.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And that (unclear) like draw me out, you know, find a way to confide in me to help me be less alone.

CLIENT: I think so.

THERAPIST: And I just, partly just being kind and partly there might be like a (unclear) your own willing to (unclear), probably both. (Unclear). [00:33:03]

CLIENT: Yeah, I think if it comes back it would make me feel less lonely if I did draw you out. I think I probably imagine that you must be feeling lonely with so many areas of your life not being shared in here.

(PAUSE): [00:33:35 00:33:49]

CLIENT: Yeah it would, you would like it, to share here. Like you should why don't you do something that you would like, Jay? But I don't know whether you'd like this. I don't know how you could possibly (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Really, there's something very much the matter with me. With anything I like about it being this way.

CLIENT: Like other things, apparently. And I just do (unclear) ask you about yourself. It makes me happy.

(PAUSE): [00:34:53 00:35:10]

CLIENT: Are you part of (unclear)?

THERAPIST: Sort of but not exactly. I mean I think that a teacher in the community, I mean a teacher in contact with the community but very peripherally.

CLIENT: Is the teacher part of that community?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Meditation practice is like, I don't know how to describe it. I don't really know how I feel about it. It feels like it's floundering.

(PAUSE): [00:36:09 00:36:18]

CLIENT: I would think it would probably help, too.

(PAUSE): [00:36:18 00:36:25]

CLIENT: Being part of the community some way, but don't know.

THERAPIST: You don't feel part of that community is (Unclear).

CLIENT: You mean, (inaudible)? They know me there and I like them and I know some people but like if there are ways to like talk more, I haven't found them. It's a pretty silence oriented lineage or way of teaching so I haven't like talked with the teacher (unclear) what I can do.

(PAUSE): [00:37:25 00:37:34]

THERAPIST: In what way do you feel like this affects (unclear)?

(PAUSE): [00:37:34 00:37:49]

CLIENT: I'm not really like bringing myself to it deeply. Sort of like half there and half not. I think it's really painful to like sit and think about you (unclear) so I like avoid it a lot. It's also painful to feel a lot of darkness for a long time in the way that I do the meditation even though I can (unclear) so I also avoid it for that reason. I don't really like have a regular thing that I do in that practice.

THERAPIST: You mean like a regular practice or routine or -

CLIENT: Yeah. I sort of more use it, these days, I sort of more use it as a tool then like the other way around, like my life as a tool for practically as an object of meditation because I think it's painful, the other way now. So yeah, and I spent a lot of time deciding what type of practice that day won't make me feel a certain way and that, it just (unclear), like what meditation it is.

(PAUSE): [00:39:57 00:40:10]

THERAPIST: It's (unclear) like how (unclear) can grieve and upset and (unclear) and it's not exactly you or something that you said, but it's so much that it's hard to sit with it.

(PAUSE): [00:40:35 00:40:46]

CLIENT: You don't have to sit with it. I could sit with -

(PAUSE): [00:40:47 00:41:01]

CLIENT: I can sit with one thing to concentrate on.

(PAUSE): [00:41:03 00:41:08]

CLIENT: And that could be (unclear) for a while.

(PAUSE): [00:41:08 00:41:16]

THERAPIST: But you're really hurting. It's something a lot of the time.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:41:22 00:41:44]

CLIENT: Yeah, I guess it feels like it's floundering because I don't want to do it.

(PAUSE): [00:41:46 00:41:53]

CLIENT: Or I want it to be something that like gives me a (unclear).

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:41:58 00:42:06]

THERAPIST: I'd like to help to assuage or give you some space from feeling that way rather than confronting you with it.

CLIENT: I think it could be useful for both things but I don't know which one (unclear).

(PAUSE): [00:42:24 00:42:29]

CLIENT: And mostly I don't want to be spending a long time deciding because it seems important to decide one way or the other and it seems important to just do it.

(PAUSE): [00:42:37 00:43:30]

THERAPIST: Okay, I mean, at the end of the day like sitting with it and being with it and getting reprieve are (unclear) the same thing I think. But (unclear) it feels that way now.

CLIENT: Yeah, maybe because I'm not like creating conditions that are going to evolve to that.

THERAPIST: Yeah, or maybe it stays where it is right now.

(PAUSE): [00:44:06 00:44:23]

THERAPIST: Or maybe there's something about your attitude towards feeling that way that you like, I think you're trying pretty hard to like be open to it, accept it, be okay with it and that's not so easy to do.

CLIENT: I have an attitude about the feelings or -

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(PAUSE): [00:44:56 00:45:01]

THERAPIST: We should stop.

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