TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: All right. I have flowers today and no instructions about them. Well, that’s all good.

THERAPIST: Okay. [inaudible at 00:00:45].

CLIENT: You probably want me to water it at least although [inaudible at 00:00:47] aside. They insist on this absurdly huge wrapping because it’s below freezing.

THERAPIST: Thank you very much. That’s very nice.

CLIENT: You’re welcome.

THERAPIST: They’re very pretty.

CLIENT: They are really pretty. The other guys are like you know with the personality.

THERAPIST: Do you know what they are, the guillicotti (ph)?

CLIENT: I don’t know what they are. I’ll ask the next time I go. I also have money so it’s a great day.

THERAPIST: Thank you.

CLIENT: You said that I, we said that I had paid for five sessions from last year. And you on your bill had a $500 amount that I’m paying in January. [00:02:03]

THERAPIST: But I thought you had paid me in January. Did you not pay me in January?

CLIENT: No I haven’t paid you since July.

THERAPIST: A long time ago? Okay, all right then that was just a mistake. I thought you paid me that.

CLIENT: But I think I, I think I might owe you $200 but I don’t think so also because [laughs] if I only owe you for five sessions from last year, that should be $250, not $500.

THERAPIST: Right. The $500 from January, did you, were you thinking that was the sessions from last year?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Oh no that was just a mistake on my part. I thought you paid me in January but I must have made an error.

CLIENT: Okay. Do I owe you that much?

THERAPIST: Well yes, I counted it against your balance I guess. In other words I recorded it as a payment because I had missed it when I thought that you had paid me back in January.

CLIENT: Yes. But you hadn’t incorporated the five sessions that I owe you for last year? [00:03:22]

THERAPIST: I think I did in the bill.

CLIENT: Okay. When I said the bill looks right I don’t think I really looked at it that good apparently. But that’s what I’m paying you, $2,400.

THERAPIST: Okay. Thanks, yes, I’ll suffer through that one. [00:03:44]

CLIENT: Okay. Let me know sometime. I went skiing this weekend.

THERAPIST: Oh wow. Where did you go?

CLIENT: [inaudible at 00:04:11] []. Have you been there? [00:04:18]

THERAPIST: No, I have not been back to the skiing thing.

CLIENT: It’s pretty skiing thingy.

THERAPIST: They also have wineries and a show, which I went to once a while ago but I haven’t been to the ski thing. That maybe is two completely different things that just happened to be in the same area.

CLIENT: Well I imagine the mountain valley is a good place to have, to grow grapes for three months of the year. My only other skiing experience was in Portland last year.

THERAPIST: Oh wow. Yes, that’s a whole different thing.

CLIENT: Totally different. Yes, I was wistful for Portland. [00:05:30]

THERAPIST: Yes. Did you go to the top of Portland when you were there?

CLIENT: I didn’t go to the top of Portland.

THERAPIST: I mean skiing-wise if it’s your first ski trip it would be -

CLIENT: Yes, that wasn’t in the cards yesterday in terms of skiing, but it was raining the whole time we were there so it wasn’t a great let’s be outside for a long time except that I was outside for a long time when I was skiing but then I was stuck outside skiing. So I went to wherever the easy blue-colored runs started on Portland. It still felt really, really, really high. I was able to keep a lot of stability on my ski this weekend even though I had completely forgotten and had to relearn. [00:06:29]

[Pause]

I’ve been having tantrums, breaking down and crying every day since Monday I guess until Saturday when I completely blew up at Jeremy. It’s quite a luxury I realized to be in a relationship to have that outlet. [inaudible at 00:08:06] when you are single and live alone. It’s a very different kind of emotional management when you live alone. I love that about Jeremy. And I’ve gone skiing and then yesterday went hiking or on my woods walk with my friend Brenda (ph), which we try to do many weekends. [00:08:37]

Over the course of the blowout through the woods walk when I came back I’m feeling this really big shift. So I blew up at Jeremy for crowding me in the kitchen but it was -

THERAPIST: That’s what it was really about. [00:09:10]

CLIENT: why are you crowding me? And tears, tears, tears. And then which was not that unusual for me at least these days. But I think over the course of our relationship I’ve, I don’t know, I’ve averaged a random cry every three or four days for less. Jeremy could tell you the number. Yes, that’s when I look back and I wonder if I’ve had anything pent up, sometimes I think no I got a lot out in various ways and I think back to how I just cry. [00:10:12]

And not adult crying like here. I call the crying I do here adult cry because it’s a tear or two, maybe there’s some weeping involved. But that thing you said about a child having such intense emotions and not really being able to contain them is just child gets them to the adult for the other person, I think that’s my primary mode of crying for my whole life. So it’s hard now because it’s really easy to slip back into that at home with Jeremy. But I realize it when it’s happening. There’s something going on and I can’t express it so I’m just spilling it all over the room and seeing what you do with it. [00:11:41]

So what I was able to figure out in that moment or over the course of the next hour was that Jeremy hadn’t gone skiing with me and Jeremy was talking for days and days about whether he should buy a beard trimmer and he’s just talking about it and not doing anything. And he’s been talking for months, for four years or something about production and works on it all the time and really hasn’t finished anything.

And he’s bursting at the seams with passion and creativity and interest and he can’t figure out how to get to know what’s standing in his way to converting it into some shareable currency. And this is not a goal that I have imposed on him; this is a goal that Jeremy feels frustrated about for himself. [00:12:57]

THERAPIST: Let’s be clear.

CLIENT: As opposed to the other goals. But yes, but then the whole blowup was about another goal that I’ve imposed on him which is what are you doing? You’re not doing anything. You’re not buying the beard trimmer, you’re not going skiing, you’re talking about how you don’t want to go skiing because you want to work on music; that is awesome. And then you spend four hours making beef stew which I was very appreciative about but that’s the certain way it goes week after week after week. [00:13:46]

It’s like I can’t do this with you, I can’t do this social thing because I want to work on music. And then something happens and the music isn’t -

THERAPIST: Oh I see; the beef stew was in place of doing the music.

CLIENT: Yes. And it’s the best beef stew I’ve ever had and it’s really, really pretty and he cleaned up the entire kitchen afterwards so he did a great job making beef stew. But where’s the fucking track? So that was the extent of what I was frustrated about. And so I said I’m frustrated with you. I don’t want you to lay my frustrations on you. I am adjusting to them and I’m trying to deal with it. I’m very sorry that I blew up at you. [00:14:46]

So Jeremy says well are you frustrated a lot? I said yes. And he got very, very sad and wanted to know more. And that’s not so great because I’m not sure that your wife being frustrated at you is a reasonable reason to do anything or change anything in this realm of his life. What? [00:15:30]

THERAPIST: No, I didn’t really have anything.

CLIENT: You’re full of shit, but okay you don’t have anything to say. Okay so I’m frustrated at him for not finishing a track. What are you supposed to do? So anyway he asked me about, or he just wouldn’t he was feeling very sad -

THERAPIST: I’m just going to put my contact lens in here. Yes, he’s very sad.

CLIENT: that I am frustrated with him often. And I explained that my frustration is coming not so much from the facts or the fact that he hasn’t finished a track but that there’s a seeming lack of search or contemplative investigative insight driven process. He’s sort of not really meeting the challenges in a way in my opinion that’s going to lead to lasting change. [00:17:07]

And that’s a really complicated frustration because well I’m doing all these things and I’m going to yoga four times a week and meditating twice a day and I see Jay a million times a week and I talk about it all the time. Actually over the course of the next day I realize that that and how little room it leaves for my Ph.D. is actually what is incredibly hard for me to manage and contain.

THERAPIST: All the stuff you’re doing?

CLIENT: Yes and my relationship to the stuff. And I mean sure I’m frustrated at Jeremy for not finishing a track. I’ve been frustrated with Jeremy for not finishing stuff for nine years; that’s not new but it’s there, it’s real. And then I’m frustrated with him for not being like me in his relationship to his challenges. [00:18:34]

But it’s not sometimes he’ll read it as like he thinks I’m a super hardcore meditation and psychoanalysis proselytizer. And I think I probably am, I probably sound that way and I think there’s something genuine about it there but the way that I’m doing it to him is so counterproductive, very harmful I think. So in this blowup he says what do you want me to do? I said well for example in psychoanalysis, and he says just drop it Allison (ph), drop it. I’m never going to be in analysis; it’s just not for me. [00:19:29]

And I said okay, you don’t know that and you don’t know what your analysis would be like. It would be nothing like mine because you’re not like me. You’re going to have different stuff come up. Or no one knows what you’re going to have come up but it’s probably not going to look nothing like mine and I encourage you to be more neutral about it. I’m sorry I collared your opinion about it so much. [00:20:03]

But then he talks about how important meditation will be for him when he finally does it. I mean he said that a couple times. But I think there’s something about my obsessive, intense relationship with him right now that’s making him stay far away. So I think fine, I don’t care what you do, I don’t care what it is that leads you to insight but what’s very, very hard is for me to begin to see different ways of thinking about myself and have some sense that there is a new way of being possible. There’s a new way; there’s a way that I could never have known before. And to see you sort of fumbling along without too much of a hope or a vision or a sense of what’s true for yourself. [00:21:34]

Jeremy’s so respectful; he could’ve been I mean it was such a hurtful, it’s such a hurtful thing to hear and all he said was I’m very sad, Allison (ph). I feel like you had thrown many second arrows at me.

THERAPIST: Many what? [00:22:05]

CLIENT: Second arrows. The story about first and second arrows on an unenlightened person that’s hit with the first arrow and it’s incredibly painful, hurts a lot, an excruciating sensation throughout the body. And then immediately he impales himself with all these second arrows, why did I get hit in this place, I have to get food, my family -

THERAPIST: Like a [inaudible at 00:22:41]?

CLIENT: Yes, it’s a clean and dirty pain. So he said I feel like you’re hitting me with all these second arrows. And I think he’s right. I’m there’s so much clean pain already there and Jeremy’s whole relationship to himself has been so fraught with dirty pain for a long time. And I’m coming in and saying you’re not doing it right; you need to leave and change or you need to pursue something that’s different from what you’re doing. Where is your search? I don’t see you searching. I don’t see you doing anything. [00:23:30]

But I still have a good point. I tried to make it clear that while it might feel like I am throwing lots of second arrows at him there’s an intrinsic, there’s something in what I’m saying that suggests that I think that some of the first arrows can be changed or his relationship to the first arrows can be changed or actually some of the clean pain I think can go away. [00:24:22]

But honestly there’s so little clean pain left that most of what I was trying to say is there’s so much opportunity to change the way you’re relating to your challenges. And it’s going to be really hard but I think it’s possible and I think you can be a musician full-time. I think you could totally be meant to be a musician all day and all night, no other job. But not like this. [00:25:12]

[Pause]

THERAPIST: I guess it seems to me that, I’m not saying that you’re not right about any number of things that you’re thinking or saying to him, but it also seems to me like you may have a lot of trouble kind of bearing his passivity and sensitivity. It seems to me like when you’re kind of reactive in a way that I think you don’t want to be or like to be it’s a reaction to those things. [00:26:36]

CLIENT: Yes. There’s something very desperate about my approach to my own emotional life something very active and anxious and -

THERAPIST: You have a compulsive?

CLIENT: Yes, that’s almost, I don’t know if it’s a reaction to the fear of being defeated or feeling passive myself or my hating it in Jeremy. And it’s important to realize that this Saturday night thing is like a tip of a very, very long enlarged baggage-ladened iceberg. Or in school the conversations were so much more charged because it wasn’t are you going to be a musician or not; it was are you going to pass this semester? And it was you said you would do this and instead you’re making beef stew and now it’s 2:00 a.m. [00:27:55]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: So I think some of what I feel are triggers, old triggers.

THERAPIST: My impression is this is actually a relatively mild and kind of sort of less compacted version of what you guys have been doing for a long time? [00:28:24]

CLIENT: Yes. And I think what was hard about the way that Jeremy struggled through college is that his finally graduating wasn’t a result of some beautiful pain. I mean there’s tons of pain but pain that feels productive, insight may be the way I would describe what my life feels like. And maybe I have to feel that way about it for it to feel okay. Maybe there’s no other choice for me because I can’t bear to sort of stand by the way that he is. [00:29:20]

So there his graduating wasn’t like that at all. He was really lucky to find this incredibly perceptive and just hardworking and good academic coach, Gwen (ph), whose house he just did his work at. And she took over the job as mother slash girlfriend slash whatever. And so he paid to be yelled at or to be guided through all the things and he barely squeaked by. And some of the work was really, really, really outstanding; he got an A on his senior thesis and his defense was there’s some bright spots. [00:30:12]

THERAPIST: What did he study?

CLIENT: He studied how the visuals he studied visual vision, visual system in salamanders as a model for how light cues are processed by retinal ganglia cells as the first sort of light -

THERAPIST: [inaudible at 00:30:44] processing emitter.

CLIENT: My walk with Brenda (ph) was surprising because when I talked about this she had all this stuff to say which is very helpful to me. Briefly the two main things that she had to say were around comparing our narratives. Here I am in this new, I have this new relationship to pain and darkness and all these things and I just bounce from one thing to another and that’s really my whole life. And I feel very strongly about it and I have all this energy about it. [00:31:43]

And in some ways that’s characteristic. I mean she’s known me since the 9th grade and she said in some ways this journey is no different from 9th grade Allison (ph) in whatever you were doing then. But in some ways it’s starting to be a little different because actually the nature of the things that you’re doing are at times allowing a lot more space for steadiness and letting go, settling down with new and old pain. [00:32:39]

But still there’s a very large part of it that’s still these are my extracurricular activities or really I haven’t been doing any work so this is my life, this is what I do. And then there’s Jeremy who’s been dealing with this stuff for so long and it must be annoying as hell for me to come in. [00:33:08]

THERAPIST: I do think maybe one of the places in your life you feel is a little less like Jeremy is at times in relating stuff with me.

[Pause]

CLIENT: Like the sort of, yes like not driving the bus. Not knowing how to drive, not being able to drive, being driven.

THERAPIST: Sometimes underneath it you are passive and defeated and kind of wanting to be able to deal with it and feeling like you can’t and feeling just upset and frustrated and sad and kind of uncomprehending. The reason I bring it up is because I wonder if there’s clearly there’s a lot that goes into this between you and Jeremy. I’m not at all trying to reduce it to this but I do wonder if sort of one aspect of the blowup and for this is the way of okay you can take this bite of things because I don’t want to. [00:34:58]

CLIENT: What?

THERAPIST: The aspect of this that I’m wondering about among other aspects of why you got mad at him for this is because he is a convenient place to deposit these feelings you have. [00:35:30]

CLIENT: Because of for how long he’s been dealing with those feelings himself and how much he deals with them now?

THERAPIST: Sure. This is going to make you sound worse than I mean to but I think just to convey I mean he’s a perfect target.

CLIENT: Yes. He’s also much better at it than I am. At least this is something that Brenda (ph) noticed which is sometimes it comes up for me that I can’t just sit the fuck down. There’s so much fighting for me and my, with you. I’m always fighting with how the things you describe that you describe very well underneath, passive, upset, uncomprehending I feel. And for all the pain that it causes Jeremy in his life, his relationship with his struggles, he’s actually quite steady. Maybe a lot of it is suppressed and he won’t be steady if it starts flying out in different ways but he’s always sort of a little bit upset and doesn’t ever [00:37:04]

THERAPIST: He’s more accepting of having these kind of struggles in himself than you?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: He can say yes, this is really hard for me and it sucks and I feel defeated but whatever, I’m going to live my life and at least for a while that’s how it is. Whereas you’re always taking up arms -

CLIENT: I say no, no.

THERAPIST: No way. [00:37:32]

CLIENT: So Brenda’s (ph) reading of this is my relationship to my work is maybe your reading of it as my relationship to you.

THERAPIST: I see. Your work like your Ph.D. stuff?

CLIENT: Yes, like I’m not doing it and my whole life is going from coping thing to coping thing and I’m not, and I’m really frustrated that I’m not moving closer to finishing this paper. I think of course I’m not moving closer to finishing this paper because I’m doing all this other stuff. [00:38:09]

THERAPIST: Are you not in the office a bunch? My sense is that you’re in the lab a bunch too. I understand you’re not in there the 80 hours that some people (ph) probably are -

CLIENT: I’m in the office six to eight hours a day these days. There are times when I’m in the office a lot more. And then a lot of that time Joanne’s really having a very hard time. I think she needs to speak with someone else but she’s speaking with me a lot. So there’s a lot of time that’s spent processing and I didn’t realize this until last night after yes and then a lot of time is spent doing the things that are necessary to get the next thing finished. There’s no, right now there’s no, it’s just not a priority. [00:39:00]

So the shift that I’m feeling when I started out talking about is that I want to try to give myself a little bit more of a chance of finishing my Ph.D. in a way that I’m proud of. And I think that’s going to require being in the office a little more and just having a little bit different relationship to my non-office stuff. Usually I’ll start the day knowing when I’m going to leave because there’s meditation at 6:00 or boxing at 6:00 or yoga at 6:45 or something. And I think I can probably do without that aspect of planning. It’s going to be very painful because my body starts to hurt and get uncomfortable by then but I think I can incorporate brief workout breaks throughout the day. [00:40:05]

The other thing is it’s very hard to start the week off leaving you. And let’s just be clear that there’s all of Monday, all of Tuesday, all of Wednesday and all of Thursday between -

THERAPIST: Monday morning and Thursday, yes.

CLIENT: Monday morning and Thursday afternoon and that was not, somehow I didn’t notice. But basically the entire week is book-ended by seeing you. Friday doesn’t really count because Kelly’s (ph) not there on Fridays and somehow it’s always kind of a different day. So my entire week is collared or contained and that’s very intense, painful separation thing. And while I’m fine to walk around in a psychoanalytic haze for the years that I’m with you, I think it’s not necessary to have such a major I think what I’m saying is I think I’d like to start my week out in lab. So do you have other times? [00:41:39]

THERAPIST: Let me look.

CLIENT: It would be a big favor. I know it’s annoying.

THERAPIST: No, I don’t mind arranging it if I can. Let me look around and see what I got.

CLIENT: Okay. I might, I might prefer to come here in the middle of the day if I know that I can have my morning. I can get in as early as I can. [00:42:02]

THERAPIST: Okay. We should stop for now but let me see what I can do.

CLIENT: Okay. [00:42:39]

END TRANSCRIPT