TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Hey. (Thirty-two second pause, several long breaths) So Wednesday, where?

CLIENT: Yeah I, T-Mobile, I don't know. I'm sorry. Sorry (inaudible at 00:00:52) for nothing. Yeah. Should I call rather than text?

THERAPIST: Well I guess going forward I will respond.

CLIENT: Yeah, do, do. Let's assume that you will. [00:01:09]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Did you get a previous text of mine recently?

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: No on the twenty-third.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You did get one on the twenty-third?

THERAPIST: Yeah I

CLIENT: Because I think that's the only other one I sent to you from the new phone after it was replaced.

THERAPIST: Let's see.

CLIENT: And I guess gnositcally (ph?) I'd like to know whether it's something with the phone.

THERAPIST: At least from this number I got a text on the eighth and on the twenty-third

CLIENT: On the twenty-third. I have no idea what it could be, it shows up on my phone. Has that ever happened to you before?

THERAPIST: No, occasionally it happens if somebody texts me late at night then I'll (inaudible 00:01:54, voices overlapping)

CLIENT: Sure, sure, you receive it in your phone. Ok, I will talk to them but I apologize for that. [00:02:01] Yeah. So (pause eighteen seconds)

THERAPIST: Does it seem reasonable to you to split it? (inaudible at 00:02:28, file crackles) what I thought.

CLIENT: Okay. Yeah, I guess so. I mean (pause thirty-five seconds, client exhales several times) dealing with these kinds of issues is challenging for me, I think. [00:03:20] So I'm struggling with it a little bit. I think, I'm not negotiating now I'm just contextualizing (ph?).

THERAPIST: That's fine.

CLIENT: I think one of the things that I'm struggling with is that there were like three weeks in a row partly, kind of not your fault, but I didn't, like my phone was out of juice I think you texted once I think the night before and said that you were sick and I didn't read my messages.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I came in. And the week before I think there was a miscommunication, it was like this stretch where I came in repeatedly and you weren't here. And, you know, on the one hand it's not like I'm blaming you for it. On the other hand it was frustrating and that's what comes to mind when you raised the question of splitting. I think that's fair. I mean it's not like T-Mobile's going to (inaudible 00:04:37) the difference (therapist chuckles). [00:04:38] (Pause ten seconds) And I see the insurance isn't going to (inaudible 00:04:49) the difference. That's fair. That's fair. (Pause eleven seconds) I guess this brings up a more general issue, in some sense.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: (Sighs) Where I just pay through the nose, I mean this is, I'm even more faultless in this case, but I'll get frustrated and I'll feel like I'm, I'll get resistant and I'll just say like, ‘fuck you! I'm not, whatever, returning the library book'. I feel kind of screwed and my reaction is to sweep things aside and, you know, in the end I end up paying through the nose. There's a fine that I have to pay or there's a [00:05:51]

THERAPIST: Right, right. I think what you say covers quite a lot of ground.

CLIENT: Yeah. So that's what it brings to mind. (Pause eight seconds) I mean why should I have to pay seventy-five bucks because I sent a text and T-Mobile didn't deliver it?

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: (Pause six seconds) Plus I've been really frustrated with them in general, I don't know. Anyway this specific circumstance (inaudible at 00:06:33).

THERAPIST: (Pause eight seconds, client sighs) Well.

CLIENT: It's kind of bad actors behaving with impunity. And when I try to intervene with the, you know, limited agency that I have which is basically to say well fuck you I'm not dealing with this

THERAPIST: Uh-huh. [00:07:06]

CLIENT: You know. Ultimately I have no regrets.

THERAPIST: Okay. Blows up in your face.

CLIENT: Blows up in my face.

THERAPIST: (Pause fourteen seconds) I mean I (pause three seconds)

CLIENT: You're not the bad actor. I'm not (inaudible at 00:07:39, voices overlapping and file crackles). I mean on one hand I guess it's useful in our interaction, we can set this association, on the other hand that's kind of complicated.

THERAPIST: Like what I was saying, I was going to say there are not always bad, it's hard for me to say that without sounding defensive, but, you know, I'm thinking of other instances that, you know I guess Phil (sp?) would be a classic example there where he's disorganized, unreliable (ph?) in some ways but at least most of the time he's not sort of a bad actor. [00:08:18]

CLIENT: Definitely not bad.

THERAPIST: T-Mobile, right there with (inaudible at 00:08:21)

CLIENT: So you mean my resentful response was, in the case of Phil (sp?) not directed at a bad actor but only at frustration? Is that?

THERAPIST: Right. I guess my point is (pause ten seconds) you very clearly feel at some level like the other person is a bad actor and you're being unfairly treated. And I guess I'm wondering sort of why that?

CLIENT: I think of that actor as a red herring, as I think about it and kind of think about where I'm coming from. It's not, that's not really it, it's not about the, kind of, moral evaluation of the other party. It's about being disempowered.

THERAPIST: I see. [00:09:35]

CLIENT: So a little less exalted on my end, but a little bit more coherent I think in terms of the cause and effect. It's a kind of reflexive response to being disempowered. Reflexive response to being put in a situation where I'm suffering through the, you know, in a condition where I don't really have much agency, you know to affect my immediate environment. Other people have much more power and so my response is too assertive in this particular way. And it applies whether it's a good person or a bad person, whether they're acting in good faith or in bad faith, whatever faith they're acting in.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [00:10:35]

CLIENT: And I think that's a lot more evocative because in a lot of these situations, you know, people are either just kind of bumbling through as most people do, or have a mixture of motivations, kind of incentive structure both good actors and bad actors. At any rate it's about agency. It's not really about the fairness per se of any particular (inaudible at 00:11:13). What's really frustrating about this particular incident is that it's just like the weather.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: All of a sudden, you know, I'm seventy-five dollars less. And I guess

THERAPIST: Right. And there's nothing you can do about it. [00:11:38]

CLIENT: Nothing I can do about it. And I guess the way in which.

THERAPIST: Right but you did what you were supposed to do.

CLIENT: I did what I was supposed to do!

THERAPIST: And it cost you anyway.

CLIENT: That's right. And I guess one reason these previous episodes come up is that, you know what you paid was your time and yet when, again this is not a deal with particulars I'm just kind of trying to tease out.

THERAPIST: Sure. And yet when it was your time,

CLIENT: When it was my turn, my time just wasn't even accounted for.

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: (Pause twenty-two seconds) So I guess that's a bit tough. [00:12:43] (Pause fifteen seconds) At any rate, I had something specific that I wanted to talk about today.

THERAPIST: Yeah?

CLIENT: And that is running. I've noticed often in the past that, and I've mentioned this a couple of times, (pause four seconds, client sighs) there's a very direct mechanical relationship, somehow, that operates several different levels of distraction between my state of mind and my, there's a specific word for it that I'm flashing on right now, but you know in effect it's like my ability to produce, you know, to exert myself physically. In other words, if I would be running and I would have, something disturbing would cross my mind, I would feel ashamed of something, and I would just stop dead in my tracks. This, you know, happened quite a bit and it's very, very striking it's like (client makes a noise like punching something) like dead.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:14:23]

CLIENT: Just, you know, I'm running along and all of a sudden nothing.

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: It's like a sudden catastrophic decline in activation energy, literally (therapist chuckles). So the next level of distraction this seems to apply at is on just the ability to go running, to get out and go running. It's not only that if I happen to be doing it at any particular moment I'll just stop and have to collect myself before I can continue on the run, but if I'm feeling lousy or, I think what really sticks in my mind is point of interference. Is feeling like there's something that I should be doing that I'm not doing, that I have to do before I can go running. Then I won't go out at all. [00:15:29] In other words, you know, for two months really I've been working myself up to a level of conditioning where I was up to almost forty miles a week. And then about a week ago or a week and a half ago I just stopped dead in my tracks and I'm totally not sure why. I mean I had things that I was charged with doing that I felt obligated to do that I was kind of struggling with a little bit. But it's just like it disappeared, you know the framework in which this was a regular practice and regular in the sense of one foot following another, regular in the sense of something that I did that was part of the day. The next level of distraction in the sense of something that was part of a long term,

THERAPIST: Part of your life? [00:16:36]

CLIENT: a long term progress (ph?) that I could kind of see the trajectory that there's a kind of narrative to the process of getting in shape and losing weight and all of these things and it just stopped dead. You know it was like this other anxiety or, I don't even know how to describe it, this concern, this focus, this priority intervened. (Pause eight seconds) That feels, you know on the one hand literally this particular phenomenon is frustrating because it really does make me feel better, I really do enjoy it, I was really happy and excited to really the threshold of a high level of confidence again.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [00:17:43]

CLIENT: And to lose it for a week and half is not catastrophic, but it's frustrating. But beyond that it feels like a dynamic that is kind of pervasive and has a lot of analogs in all sorts of areas.

THERAPIST: I have a question.

CLIENT: Yeah?

THERAPIST: It seemed to me that you described two possibly different things that led you to stop. One is having a thought, something that crossed your mind as you're actually out running.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: In a way that couldn't be more literal, stops you in your tracks.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: And the other was, sort of happens not when you're out running, but where recently you had something that you had to do, something for work and somehow having that to do like having it hanging over your head led you to not run for a week and a half. [00:19:01]

CLIENT: Well, so I guess I'm trying to, my thought is that there's at least an analogy, if not a homology there. I guess what it is, you know the connection that I make is that I feel when I'm not really working well I feel ashamed. I feel there's this very strong sense of inadequacy

THERAPIST: I see

CLIENT: and of blame that's personalized, that's kind of personified. And so this phenomenon, as I imagine it or am proposing it, you know operates at a very concrete level, but also at several levels of abstraction removed in other words. You know it, I was just saying a moment ago, it comes out of nowhere, I forgot how I put it just now but.

THERAPIST: It crosses your mind? [00:20:09]

CLIENT: Yeah it just, it interferes not only with the activity itself but also with the kind of meta-activity, you know not only with the activity of the action of running but also with the activity of running and also beyond that with the claiming of that activity in my life.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: So at all of these three levels of distraction there's something about my reaction to, you know, a sense of unfulfilled obligation, or a sense of being disfavored, or judged.

THERAPIST: I see so that's something towards the thing that crosses your mind in the moment when you're actually out on the pavement.

CLIENT: There's something very disruptive about the sense of having been found wanting, or expecting to be found wanting, or finding myself wanting that disrupts this particular activity. And many others I assume, but this one is so concrete that maybe it's illustrative. [00:21:28]

THERAPIST: Hmm.

CLIENT: (Pause fifty-two seconds) I think paradoxically one of the kinds of activities that it interferes with is actually doing work. So there's a kind of recursion there.

THERAPIST: Right. [00:22:33]

CLIENT: (Pause six seconds) We talked a month or two ago about kind of the requirements of, you know writing and doing synthetic research and so on and so forth and it being difficult when I feel disrupted. Well one of the things that makes me feel disrupted is the sense that I'm not doing it, it's a very clear feedback with it.

THERAPIST: Right. (Pause ten seconds) Does it go together with he kind of disempowered feeling that you mentioned?

CLIENT: (Pause nineteen seconds) I guess (pause fourteen seconds, client sighs) maybe, I'm just reaching here a little bit but maybe there's an idea that it explains the disempowerment. [00:24:17] That because (pause six seconds), you know because I'm not delivering the way that I should be, that's why I'm disempowered. If I were delivering the way that I should be I would be, I would have agency. When I am delivering the way that I should be I do feel, sometimes excessively I think I have trouble controlling it, a very strong sense of agency that can operate.

THERAPIST: Sorry, so that disempowerment explains the feeling a lack of agency?

CLIENT: No, you know the, we're a little tangled up here I feel like we're losing out place (pause five seconds, client clears throat). So when I can't produce

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: I feel, I feel funny talking in these terms I'm not sure why I feel some discomfort, I feel ashamed.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:25:36]

CLIENT: And when I feel ashamed I, you know, it's difficult for me to be productive so there's that feedback loop.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: You know, the lack of productivity also makes me feel disempowered.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: And that disempowerment leads to some resentment. (Pause four seconds) And I think all of these feelings or states of mind interact with each other and it cuts both ways so it's hard to trace the cause, so if I feel disempowered I may be less productive and, I don't know what comes first is always hard to parse. At any rate, this metaphor which is not a metaphor it's actually, you know running makes me feel a lot better.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:26:50]

CLIENT: So this is actually material, has material relevance to my effort to construct my life on some more reliable footing.

THERAPIST: What stopped you in your tracks the other day?

CLIENT: Oh, what in particular?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: There's a piece that I accept, that I would deliver that's (inaudible at 00:27:31) for a few days. It's not catastrophic, but now I owe it. And it's expected. And, you know, I'm getting key hands in what to deliver. [00:27:48] (Pause sixteen seconds, client sighs) I mean there's another piece I guess in this particular case, which is that the people I've been working with are largely remote. And they're literally (inaudible at 00:28:27), literally. And, you know, even Phil (sp?), whatever, I mean I think our interaction was such that the word process was often remote. And for me that's extremely difficult in the sense that I fill that void with all sorts of anxieties that. It's interesting, today much more so than other days I feel the weight of this recording device.

THERAPIST: Huh. [00:29:14]

CLIENT: (Pause six seconds) It feels like somebody looking over my shoulder and I'm finding it difficult to parse my words natural.

THERAPIST: Huh. (Pause fifty seconds) I get that you are feeling self-conscious, and maybe ashamed of having, I guess, talking about the problems with producing, and with getting stuck, and with being kind of overtaken by this sort of passive helpless mode? [00:31:20] (Pause ten seconds) And I wonder (pause eight seconds) if some of it has to do with coming between you and the, I'm speculating but, making comparison with how you might see me as a guy of roughly the same age, who (pause seven seconds), you have this weight that's been, you know I don't know how you see me in terms of the kinds of issues you're talking about. [00:32:32] (Pause nine seconds) right now I wonder if you make comparisons or feel comparative in a way that makes you feel more self-conscious about some of these things?

CLIENT: (Pause one minute and ten seconds) I mean the fact of our peer relationship has occurred to me on other occasions. [00:34:09] In a very different way. In other words, you know, when you were late a couple of times I felt empathy, or I felt annoyed, I mean whether I felt sort of warmly or frustrated, the thought that was in my mind was, ‘well I can imagine myself doing that'. (inaudible at 00:34:38). Maybe it came up a couple of times with the bill, I thought to myself, ‘well God, that would be really frustrating if it was me', you know, it's relying on this from a fiscal point of view. On, and at least sometimes our interactions, you know, I would think, ‘Oh yeah, this is a peer relationship'.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: In terms of my self-consciousness I'm not aware of it. I mean I'm talking about it in a sense in which I was ashamed or in which that shame has apparently had some profound implications for my motor skills. [00:35:23] On (inaudible at 00:35:28) higher level functions. I'm not sure it's about you. It might be about the tape. In other words the self-consciousness, and it might be that there's self-consciousness, maybe this is the most likely scenario just that the self-consciousness exists, you know I feel self-conscious as a result of the things that I'm talking about. And it just gets populated by this obvious

THERAPIST: You have to take over.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, you know there's a mechanism that promotes self-consciousness in (inaudible 00:36:06), it's being objectified. The things that I'm talking about are literally being objectified and turning into a transcript. I think that's more (inaudible at 00:36:22). Yeah. And I guess what I'm struggling, I'm struggling for some kind of complex thought so, you know, I feel empathetic to myself. [00:36:38] It's actually complicated, this idea that there are all of these parts, you know there's the sense of shame, and there's the sense of agency, and there's the feeling of being productive, and there's the feeling of judgment, there are all of these sort of interlocking parts and what initiates the cascade of interactions in any given instance might be one or the other or all of them, it doesn't start in any one particular place. It's not like there's this kind of persistent trajectory from feeling disempowered to the rest of it, or from feeling ashamed to the rest of it, they all have come to inhabit the same space and when they interact, you know, the one provokes the other.

THERAPIST: Right the machine (inaudible 00:37:28, voices overlapping) together. The process can get interrupted at various points.

CLIENT: That's right.

THERAPIST: Leading to a similar-looking result. [00:37:39]

CLIENT: And maybe the most interesting thing to say about all this is that (pause four seconds), you now, I felt self-conscious or ashamed which interact with each other in an interesting way, you know our conversation (pause five seconds) in a way that kind of replicates everything that we were talking, I mean in other words if you think of our conversation like one of my runs then it kind of functions in the same way. Self-consciousness was just one more instance of this phenomenon. I stop dead in the conversation. (Pause twenty-four seconds) And this happens sometimes when I'm talking to Jennie (ph?). She'll be talking and then I'll have something of this sort will cross my mind and I'll completely lose the thread of the conversation, kind of forget that she's talking, and she'll say, ‘Are you there?' [00:39:14]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And I won't be.

THERAPIST: Well because something has upset you.

CLIENT: Something has upset me.

THERAPIST: And I gather in this conversation it was something about acknowledging the shame you kind of feel over this.

CLIENT: (Pause six seconds) No what upset me was the thought that I was being recorded and not able to articulate the thought very well.

THERAPIST: Oh. I wasn't aware of that. So you're saying it was feeling a little muddled or unclear in your articulation

CLIENT: Yep. [00:40:17]

THERAPIST: that made you think of other people listening.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: And (pause seven seconds) upset you.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: (Pause thirty-four seconds) This has kind of made you feel crummy about yourself? Something's not very clear?

CLIENT: No it didn't just make me feel XYZ, it (pause eighteen seconds). [00:41:40] No, no it just made me feel crummy about myself, I think it's just about feeling crummy about myself. (Pause ten seconds) Feeling ashamed and feeling crummy about myself I think are not quite the same thing.

THERAPIST: Ok?

CLIENT: (Pause twelve seconds) It made me feel that I had done something wrong, some specific thing. (Pause eleven seconds) Anyway.

THERAPIST: Like what?

CLIENT: Well in this case I had not articulated a thought very well.

THERAPIST: (Pause fifteen seconds) And what does that make you? Does that make you inarticulate? Does it make you unintelligent? Does it make you out of touch? [00:43:06]

CLIENT: (Pause seven seconds) So I'm going for the concrete, specific and you're going for the general. I guess it makes me, it feels funny, I mean maybe there's some sense that any particular instance can lead to a kind of global critique, so unintelligent I guess out of all of the insults you mentioned probably resonates the most.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: But I don't know.

THERAPIST: Yeah. We should, uh.

CLIENT: Okay. So I would like to ask you to think about whether doing one day a week at this point would be clinically and logistically better. I'm not sure that, you know it's the end of the therapeutic hour so we can think about this offline, but it's seeming to me that we're having to cancel a lot and it's making logistics just a little bit more complex. I'm not sure what your feelings on the propriety of doing one as opposed to two times a week, or do you prefer to do it more often?

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: Something to stick in your head, but it seems like by default we're ending up doing once a week anyway.

THERAPIST: Right. Why don't we stop for now, are we good for two times next week?

CLIENT: Two times next week and we can talk about it. Okay, see you then. Have a good weekend.

THERAPIST: Thanks you too.

END TRANSCRIPT