TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: There was a street sweeping day, so parking spots are gone.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: I wandered for a while trying to find my car and then I was so stressed about not being able to find the car, I was just kind of driving on auto pilot and thinking about being stressed and like started driving to work and got up to the exit before I realized what I've done. (Laughs) So I turned around, came back, and got stuck behind a school bus. (Laughs) It's kind of a miracle I'm only fifteen minutes late.
THERAPIST: All right.
CLIENT: I owe you 600 plus how much for the missed appointment Monday, the one.
THERAPIST: That would be 150.
CLIENT: OK.
THERAPIST: (Pause) And -
CLIENT: Can you spell your last name?
THERAPIST: Sure, and there's also a surplus because of the recording on how you would like to do with it. Do you want me to write you checks ever so often or?
CLIENT: I'm ok with just holding on to it and crediting it towards next year's deductible.
THERAPIST: Sure, that would be ok.
CLIENT: I've been trying to keep track of an extra what is it, 30 bucks a month or whatever, it would drive me nuts.
THERAPIST: Sure. You need a pen?
CLIENT: Yes I do. Thank you.
THERAPIST: Sure. Yeah, I have all this so it's easy for me to track.
CLIENT: Yeah, you have billing software and stuff.
THERAPIST: Exactly. It's got to make you think it's much easier than it should, but it does make them much easier.
CLIENT: Hopefully more reliable than a restaurant. I have a new checkbook and I can't tell if the top check is an actual check or it should work. [00:02:00]
THERAPIST: Okay. (inaudible)
CLIENT: So I noticed in a pattern, in the last couple of weeks of all things that I want to bring here and talk about, like the day before, the morning of, while I'm getting ready, but then I'll come in here and I'll just be silent.
I'll either have forgotten about the things that I meant to bring up or I'll feel like they are silly or there's this particular failure mode that I have a lot with my (inaudible), you look up stuff you want to talk about and I'll start. And then it's just too overwhelming to put it all in to words and I'll get really tired and just not want to face it.
Or sometimes I'll feel that there's too much backstory and that it would take too long to bring you up to speed with everything. It's all very and the thing that I want to talk about today falls into that category of, "Oh my God there's 12 years of backstory here, how can I possibly sum it up?"
Sorry, there's kind of a lot of moving parts and everything's complicated. I don't know where to start. Suggestions for how to organize my thoughts? I know that might be kind of asinine because I never told you what my thoughts are. (Laughs)
THERAPIST: Let's see. Well. (Pause from [00:03:30] to [00:03:57])
Yeah I think you're probably worried about talking about it or uncomfortable to talk about it and we can have a mini conversation about the best way to arrange your thoughts, but I think that would probably in this case, probably be avoiding. [00:04:15]
CLIENT: Sure and I don't want to have a long conversation, which is something new. I was just hoping things that you have observed that have helped other people actually start talking. (Pause)
THERAPIST: Matter of fact, if I tell you is pretty asinine, which start talking, don't worry about it.
CLIENT: (Laughs) Ok well, I'll just start with approximate causes and work backwards from there, instead of trying to start from the beginning, chronological working forward. So, I was online, browsing around and I ran across a profile of someone who used to be apartment-mates with my bad ex-boyfriend.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: His name is Ashley. I think I mentioned him last year.
THERAPIST: You did.
CLIENT: We started messaging and we're going to see each other on Saturday. And we kind of had this stupidly long processingly e-mail conversation about whether this was or was not a date and what is the definition of date and we're both ridiculously wordy human beings.
THERAPIST: (laughs)
CLIENT: Literally thousands of words spilled on the topic of, Is this a date or is it not and if it is, is it a good idea. Oh my goodness it was, but anyways. So, I knew this guy 12 years ago when I was a very different person and I don't particularly like the person I was then, so I'm kind of Part of me is wandering what the hell I was thinking when I messaged him.[00:06:09]
It was very much an impulse decision, but I did not think through. And in hindsight, why did I think this was going to be a good idea? He's very attractive, he's predominantly pretty. Aesthetically, he hits a bunch of my buttons. He's also very smart and very funny and his online demeanor We've been live journal friends, are you familiar with live journal?
THERAPIST: Not really.
CLIENT: Ok, so Live Journal is a blogging service that was invented in 1999, 2000ish, I've been on it since the beginning. And so has Ashley and so has a bunch of my friends in the university, hang around gate community and it's the way my friends and I use it, I don't want to be prescriptive about the way everyone uses it or be descriptive because I don't how to answer it.
The way my friends and I use it is very much about emotional processing and venting and the things you can't say in polite company, but you can go and put on your live journal under a filter, like password protected, only certain people can read it.
So, I have written a lot about my parents and processing all of the fallout from the way I was raised. I've written about relationships going bad. I've written a lot of stuff that makes me angry and I also write, used to write, not much anymore because I just don't have time for it. I used to write a lot about race and gender and politics and intersections thereof and how very angry it all made me.
But there's couple of pieces I want to talk about later and going back to Ashley, we've been live journal friends for 12 years and then I stopped using live journal awhile ago. [00:08:16] Although, he still has me friended on his journal. And after I messaged him, I went and read the last three years entries, which not all that many because he doesn't post that much, but anyway.
THERAPIST: I'm just going to shut this a little bit.
CLIENT: Sure. So it's not in your eyes.
THERAPIST: Something like that.
CLIENT: But anyways, so where I was going with all of this was, even though I haven't really seen him since Phil and I broke up. I feel like I know him because we've been reading each other's journals for so long.
And so he's tremendously smart and funny and I never really thought of him as someone I could potentially date until I saw his profile online. And I don't know, I'm now second guessing my decision to try to connect with him because there's many of people in this world who are attracted to me and this is opening up an enormous can of worms for me. With confronting who I was ten years ago. And how did I get from there to here. It's stirring up a lot of old memories that I would have preferred not to have stirred up. I don't know. (Pause from [00:09:39] to [00:10:13])
THERAPIST: Well, I imagine the worries are the same all around with you and with him and with me. That (Pause) will, in you looking at, thinking about who you were or at least how you imagine now how you were then.
CLIENT: Sure.
THERAPIST: That will project you to fall. (Pause) And that one way you try to manage that worry is through, sort of, considerations about how to look at yourself with structured things. Whether it's talking to me or how your definition or his definition (inaudible) a date coincided. (Laughter) Get out your head and think about things. There's nothing wrong with reassuring yourself and I'm not trying to say that's bad. I'm just saying I think it's a bit trying to reassure yourself. [00:12:03]
CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause)
THERAPIST: You're scared about putting out there more plainly thinks I think about who you were. You know, you alluded to, seemingly different.
(Pause from [00:12:37] to [00:14:00]) What's on your mind?
CLIENT: I don't know. I'm, just still trying to figure out why I got in touch with Ashley and if it's going to be a good idea. My motivations aren't really okay with me and it's a little unsettling. (Pause)
THERAPIST: I think he's a hottie. (Chuckles)
CLIENT: Not in the mainstream conventional sense of the word, but for me.
THERAPIST: To you.
CLIENT: There's a lot of hot people in the world, there's a lot of hot people online and there's lot's hot people who are friends of friends who set me up on dates with.
I guess one story I can tell and I don't know how true any of these stories I'm about to tell are. But one story I could tell is because I used to know him. And I know something about him and he knows a bunch of my friends. And we have our social circles overlap and we have friends in common. That lowers the risk versus complete stranger online. I know he's not going to be a complete nutcase, he's not going to be horribly offensive to me, and you know. I don't know.
THERAPIST: And you like him, I think.
CLIENT: Yes, I do and I like him!
THERAPIST: I trust you that you're attracted to him, well, there's that too. But I get the impression from the way you talk about him that you really like him.
CLIENT: Yes. [00:16:00] As much as you can like someone where your only attractions in the last eight years have been on the Internet. I don't know. Another story I could tell is that there's something pathological that I'm trying to relive my college years by dating all the people I wanted to date back then. But didn't because I was too crazy and too repressed then. All those horrible adjectives to describe the me, 12 years ago.
THERAPIST: And how is that pathological exactly? (Pause) I understand why you might want to do it.
CLIENT: I mean because time passes and try to go back and recreate the situation that has already passed, that kind of feels a little bit to me like willfully trying to ignore or deny reality.
THERAPIST: That would make a lot of sense, if that was what you we're trying to do. But as far as I can tell, you don't anything to do with the past.
CLIENT: The more I keep reconnecting with people who I know from my past. (Laughter) Great.
THERAPIST: Sorry about that. (Pause)
CLIENT: What I can remember ever wanting to be in a relationship with him then. Just appreciation of how hot he is. But I think when I knew him as Phil's roommate; he was terribly intimidating to me. I was 19, he is six years older than me, which is nothing at 30, but it's quite a big deal at 19. [00:18:18]
THERAPIST: What's attractive about him?
CLIENT: His sense of humor is just ever so lightly skewed from the mainstream, instead of he's just I don't know, the phrase aggressively weird is coming to me. And I think this is, that it's not quite fair, I think there too many connotations we hang on the word aggressive for that to be to really get across what I mean. But he's very un-self-consciously weird. And he's very enthusiastic about just about everything. He's one of those people who Carpe' Diem and break his leg. (Pause)
Completely unsurprisingly by now, physically, he's pretty anti-feminine. Tall and wiry and all that. Usually gets my attention. (Pause) He's smarter than me, but didn't study the same things I studied. I like spending time with people that are smarter than me, they're fascinating, wonderful people, but sometimes that pushes a bunch of my insecurity buttons and Ashley doesn't do that because, which is entirely different.[00:20:04]
THERAPIST: What does he do?
CLIENT: He studies linguistics. And did natural language processing software development for a while. And then he went to law school and now he does patent law. Which is a little questionable as a career choice as far as I'm concerned. (Laughs)
THERAPIST: Because it is, pay for a patent?
CLIENT: Yes. We have some ideology mismatch.
(Pause from [00:20:28] to [00:21:15])
Yeah we're meeting on Saturday to make barbeque because he is quite possibly the only other person in the area who won't turn up his nose at mustard based barbeque. His folks are from the South. (Pause)
There's more history, I don't know, there's always more history. I think I can keep talking about history for hours and not get to all of it. But he dated until 2009, a woman named Katie, with whom I have had a very contentious relationship ever since Katie and I have known each other. [00:22:10]
We met as freshman at school at a bar and Katie and I and just instant oil and water. We rubbed each other the wrong way from day one. Katie has, what I refer to, and tell me if this phrase doesn't make sense, a cultive personality around her.
THERAPIST: It guess, sort of get it.
CLIENT: Yeah, all these hangers on and groupies, who just want to be Katie because she's kind of social nexus and I always resented that always, always. And I mean, the resentment, I fully own that's my problem, not hers. I need to get over that. I have to some extent recently, but I really don't enjoy being around her and watching people hanging on her every word while she's you know, spiraling around in her little vortex of angst and drama.
THERAPIST: (inaudible) (Pause from [00:23:20] to [00:24:04]) You seem convinced that you're doing something wrong here.
CLIENT: Yes I do. Seem convinced that is. Possibly because I am. Possibly because I am confused. I don't know, I mentioned to a friend of mine, Lori, who I've also known since our freshman year up at school. And Lori and Katie have been best friends since freshman. They're really close and I'm really close to Lori and it's terribly frustrating to Lori that Katie and I never got along.
THERAPIST: Sure.
CLIENT: Anyway, for Lori's sake, Katie and I reached a detente a couple of years ago. Just try to stay out of each other's way now, but anyway.
And so I was talking to Lori and told her I had a date with Ashley and she said, "Well, that's an interesting choice." and I was like, "Why?" and I was like, "Is there something I should know, was there massive drama between him and Katie, like is there?" And she was like and she pointed out that I just seem to be dating or you know just sleeping with a lot of people we used to know.
Why I'm not meeting new people, instead of going back to the old fishing hole. I'm totally not a whore. (Pause from [00:25:24] to [00:26:13])
I also feel like, I think that it's just a factor of the particular social groups that I'm in. But it almost feels like there's something gauche about looking for people to date via dating websites. And it's shameful and you should form relationships with people you know. They should evolve organically out of your social circles.
It might just be the way geeks, as a generalization, were traumatized by mainstream rules for dating and relationships in high school and have decided to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That wouldn't surprise me at all, if that's what's going on. (Chuckle) But I don't know, I feel a little bit judged by, not all my friends for things like going online for the purpose of finding someone to go on a date with.
THERAPIST: (inaudible) threw off by social (inaudible)
(Pause from [00:27:24] to [00:28:20])
CLIENT: There's a faint desperation about it. (Pause) It can't be that terrible because I have come across many people who I know in real life online. And instantly blocked them because bad idea.
But I think, it might be that people are posturing one thing and their all in the position I'm in, anybody in my immediate social circle, who I was going to date, I've already dated. And I decided it's a bad idea, so now I have to look outside my offline social networks. But I don't know it's a little I can't tell if people are actually judging or if I'm just projecting my own insecurities, but I feel judged.
(Pause from [00:29:24] to [00:30:46])
THERAPIST: Yeah I guess it makes me think of you, sort of you creating a situation, of almost like at work. Where you wind up feeling like the people you are connected to and in a way are watching over you. By thinking all these bad things. I think I can see how unproductive and pathological you are. And really, the reason you set things up that way. You know what I mean, you getting, you sort of arrange it so that—I don't think it's the whole reason. But it feels like a fishbowl in a way. With people kind of doing. There's nothing wrong with you and there needs to be something, probably but clearly, you know, painful and difficult. But maybe also reassuring about things that way.
CLIENT: What do you mean? How?
THERAPIST: Well I'm not sure. Maybe because you don't understand. Maybe because you're pretty familiar with figurations.
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: We need to stop for now. Till Monday.
END TRANSCRIPT
