TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: I don't know where to start. There's this stupid family trip coming up, which I don't want to go on. And, I also keep having this recurring nightmare that I can hear what my co-workers are saying about me behind my back. Then I wake up believing that's what they actually saying that. It takes me like several minutes to realize no, that was dream and I'm waking up. It's really unpleasant.

THERAPIST: Yeah. (Pause) What is it that they're saying?

CLIENT: Oh, that I'm slow and I can't keep up. And they have to coddle me and break things down into bite sized pieces. Otherwise, I would never get anything done. It's really frustrating.

(Pause from [00:01:12] to [00:01:48]).

THERAPIST: And it's a recurring nightmare?

CLIENT: Yes. (Pause from [00:01:51] to [00:02:19])

THERAPIST: I have some thoughts but I'm not quite sure what to say.

CLIENT: (Laughter) I have several recurring nightmares. The one with my co-workers is just the one I had last night. There's the one, happily fading where I'm still in grad school and my thesis defense is tomorrow. And I'm not prepared and haven't done any experiments at all. I guess that's the classic anxiety dream that pretty much all grad students that I've ever talked to have, so. (Laughter) I'm not too worried about that one.

And then there's the recurring dream where I'm driving and I try to break and the breaks don't work. And the car goes flying out of control, ending up killing dozens of people. That one's really kind of crappy too.

(Pause from [00:03:09] to [00:03:34])

THERAPIST: I'm smiling, not at the dreams, which they were horrible (Laughter) if I hadn't – Like, interpret them therapist.

CLIENT: (Laughter)

THERAPIST: Here they are.

(Pause from [00:03:51] to [00:04:05])

Which again, I think is partly because they're just really shitty to think about. And that you have the idea that somehow I'd sort of lay it out. Almost be, like it'd be academic. You know like at some distance from the actual horribleness that they involve.

(Pause from [00:04:35] to [00:05:39]

I guess, (Pause) that's why I'm a bit hesitant to jump in and kind of interpret them. Because I think the sort of over-arching issue is more, is one (inaudible) or the leading issue is more (pause) I think, (pause) there's that sort of, (inaudible) I think you have more in the back of your mind than anywhere else. You can sort of hand that over for processing I should (inaudible). (Pause) Which I can understand why you would want to do that.

CLIENT: It's true. (Pause) So what do you want from me? Do you want me to just talk more now?

THERAPIST: Sure, whatever. Whatever's on your mind, (Chuckle) he said prompting an immediate sigh and probably roll of the eyes from her.

CLIENT: I don't know what's on my mind. I'd like to stop having the stupid horrible dreams. They make me feel crappy when I wake up. I don't know how to do that. I don't know if that's even a possible thing to do.

(Pause from [00:07:34] to [00:07:47])

THERAPIST: I mean, (Pause) there's good news and bad news there. It is possible.

CLIENT: Really?

THERAPIST: Yes. The bad news is, like the only way out is through, kind of thing. Generally if I, like dealing with, sorting out, coming to terms with, like, the thoughts and feelings that the dreams kind of embody. That that will happen.

(Pause from [00:08:40] to [00:08:50])

I mean to where it's sort of touchy, feely. Just by (inaudible) the dreams are trying to say. Which particularly are occurring is often times quite important. (Pause) And at whatever pace and sort of in conjunction with whatever else there is to talk about.

(Pause from [00:09:33] to [00:13:06])

CLIENT: I don't know why I'm so convinced that my co-workers all think horrible things about me.

(Pause from [00:13:10] to [00:13:22])

If they really thought such terrible things about me, it would have come up in my performance review right? I guess there were some unflattering things on my performance review. So the way my company does performance reviews is the managers go and solicit opinions about each employee from like everyone they have interacted with in the past six months.

So there were some specific criticisms from specific people. Like one guy, he is very senior. He's been with the company for like 20 years. He's really smart and knows a lot of stuff. His critique was that I focus too much on irrelevant details. And had trouble distinguishing the relevant from the irrelevant. I guess he was my go to person for all of, take out checklists for all of November and December. So he kind of got the brunt of my not knowing what was going on. I don't know. But it's not like I got put on a performance improvement plan or anything like that, so.

THERAPIST: And, I could be wrong on this, but it's not too hard to tell, and I may not have it, and you may not have it either. Knowing how you can hear things. It does make me wonder, how much that was like a, ‘Boy here's how you are really screwing up.' Or, ‘Hey, something you might want to think about is'. [00:15:18]

How much of it was meant as a criticism, and how much of it was meant in a more conflicted. (Pause)

CLIENT: I also find myself doing a lot of emotional work at work that is probably because I'm a woman. Like, so there are, the way our project is broken down. My functional group is three engineers. Me and Brian and Dave, my great overlap of names, (inaudible). (Laughter) And we work for Dave.

Like there are—so Brian and Dave and I work on the BPDE and we're the only ones in this office who are working on the BPDE. There is more people in our sister office who, we have weekly meetings. There were more people here who work on other functional units. But for the most part, it's the three of us on a day-to-day basis. We are faced with each other. (Sigh)

The very nature of the project is very different from what any of us were trained to do. Brian and Dave are both senior, Dave has probably six years' experience. Brian has 15. So, and this is a completely new paradigm for them also. And so, you know sometimes, you know, I'll be in their cube because I need to write this report and I need like ten minutes worth of input from one of them on the piece of the block that they own. And then it will turn in to this 30-minute conversation about how depressed they are. About the new tools and they don't know how to use the new tools, and it's not fair. Then they'll kind of look to me, with probably with much the same expression I have when I look to you to like explain this and make it better. It's like, you know, they're not having these conversations about their feelings with Dave. They are having them with me. [00:17:24] Which is really unfair and shitty and.

THERAPIST: Sure. One thing with me is my job doesn't (inaudible) but your gender.

CLIENT: (Chuckle) Yes. So I finally kept reassuring them both a lot. Which is just completely ridiculous.

THERAPIST: Why? I guess it's ridiculous that you are put in the situation and that you have to do that. But I'm not sure if you are saying that you're being ridiculous, that's what I meant.

CLIENT: No, the situation is ridiculous.

THERAPIST: Okay, okay.

CLIENT: And also, like I don't know that it's all going to work out okay and they're going to wrap up all the tools. Because I assume they can, because they have like years and years of experience in the industry. But this is a new tool set for them. And if they're like being pissy and refusing to work on it. Brian has even started being like, outright; aggressively passive aggressive if that makes any sense.

Like we had a team meeting yesterday. Brian was five minutes late. He walks in and Dave says, "You're late." And it's not just me and Brian and Dave in this meeting, we also have all of our macro people who I almost never interface with except a face with a name. So there were like eight people in the room. And Brian was like, "Well, I'm late because I was talking about this stupid 28A (inaudible) that I don't want to do but they you told me to do."

I was like, wow. That was not the level of maturity I expect from a 40-year old engineer. That was bad. (Pause) And it's really frustrating. And it's inhibiting to me, from going and asking Brian and Dave for anything because every time I ask for anything, anything at all. Whether it's a, a bit of advice on some work I'm doing, or status from them for a report I need to roll off core. Whatever, it turns in to this half hour long, like -

THERAPIST: Like (inaudible)

CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause from [00:19:47] to [00:19:56]) And I don't feel like this is the kind of thing I can bring to my manager and say you know, "Dave this is the thing that's going on."

(Pause from [00:20:03] to [00:20:57])

THERAPIST: So, one way that I can imagine it's done this way, really to the dream. Is there's this dynamic here with them where like, somebody hands stuff off to somebody else to add stuff. Like, here's the bag of crap. And, I guess I wonder, part of problem is, that in this fantasy is then the other person has it. You know like, and that the dream may be partly about (Pause) You know, if they have it, what about like, I mean trying to find the right—yeah, kind of what's going on.

Like you're talking to me about the way they're being both annoying and appropriate and also getting in the way really of you doing your job. In a way that is very difficult for you to do something about. And that happened because they handed the bag of crap over to you. That you're now, like, I don't know what you'd call it. Sort of, in a way, sort of pushing it back at them. I don't think that's unreasonable. That just like that's maybe one thing, one worries can happen when they hand it over.

I wonder if that's also, like that's what happening in the dream. Is they're sort of pushing it back at you. They're saying these bad things about you. (Pause) I mean it seems to me that there are ways to—still not entirely clear, as to how that would be working. But I wonder if that points towards. I would suggest for them, that you are handing stuff over to them, maybe in a way like you are handing it over to me. I know you're not doing it, I don't think you are doing it, in the way you are like talking to them about stuff. It doesn't seem like that. But,

(Pause from [00:23:41] to [00:23:59]) maybe you are a little bit. I don't know. (Pause)

CLIENT: I don't feel like I've been contributing at all at work for the last, I don't know, two months. Like, we have, we have this deadline coming up at the end of March. Where we are supposed to be, the term is timing clean. So we prompt up the number of timing prompts that we have that are failing whatever goal we set. In this case, you know, we have a cycle time goal.

THERAPIST: All right, excuse me.

CLIENT: Sure. (Pause) And so when we took over the project from Sunnyvale, Brian and I, Brian and I both work on the BP. It's one giant module. We had 50 something timing prompts. And now we're down to nine, and I didn't solve any of them.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: You know, I still have experiments and I've been hacking at it and trying to fix them, but nothing I've done has been successful. I mean, it's not like I've been sitting there with my thumb up my ass not doing anything. But I have been doing things that didn't help with them.

THERAPIST: Right, you've been feeling pretty ineffective.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Not like you haven't worked. But it hasn't mattered. That's how it feels.

CLIENT: Yes. And so, I don't know. It feels really crappy. And Dave has been making noises about—BDPE is three big tiles. The BP of DE0 and DE1. So Brian and I are on the BP, and Dave is on DE1. This guy in the other office has the DE0. And Dave has been making noises about transferring ownership of that to me.

THERAPIST: The DE0?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just so that the whole thing is in one physical location. Also, Brian seems to be doing just fine with the BP without my help. And that's a little bit terrifying to me. Because if Brian weren't making progress on the BP there's no way we would meet our goals for the sync at the end of the month.

(Pause from [00:26:16] to [00:26:27])

Dave keeps telling me that you know, when he first started his career, it was a year before he felt like he really knew what he was doing and could contribute. And then, all I can think when he says that is that it's been nine months. My year is almost up and I'm still not contributing. Like, what's wrong with me?

(Pause from [00:26:45] to [00:27:58])

THERAPIST: I guess (inaudible) I'm not yet sure how it fits together. But what you're saying now seems in a similar vein to what we were talking about. Like for now it's okay, the responsibility isn't quite on you. You're still only at nine months. And you're working with Brian. But you know, the deadlines are looming. Like this is going to get pushed back on you at some point too. Trying to think of like a, I don't know if this is right. I'm sure, probably; I think it's kind of like a capacitor, right.

CLIENT: (Laughter) Right. (Pause from [00:28:49] to [00:29:39])

THERAPIST: Actually. (Pause) Another way of looking at the problem. Maybe in this formulation, sort of, where the problem is, is really not with you. Like, it's sort of easy to assume that. But maybe that's not where the problem is at all. Maybe the problem is with the other person in your fantasy. I mean the real other people here, are screwing up. But I mean that you have this idea, that if you hand something over, or if somebody else is helping you or responsible. Eventually the shit's going to come back to you.

Maybe the problem there isn't that you're handing off, maybe the problem is that you feel that inevitably, that you'll have inevitably it will come back to you. You can't leave something in somebody else's hands. But you can't sort of rely on somebody to help you carry it, or help deal with it, or deal with some part of it. That it's always going to come back on you.

Part of—there are a few reasons I like that. One of them is, my first association when you told me that dream, is it sounds like people taking care of a baby right? [00:31:07]

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: Breaking things down, being coddled I think you said. Breaking things down in to bite sized pieces and not really to do with anything. And you immediately implicated your parents. (Laughter) That made me think about that. But, this is one thing they were really horrible at with you. Is (Pause) making you feel responsible in a bad way for their having to treat you like a child. Which you were.

You know in the same way that I think you feel like people at work are like mightily restraining themselves from being pissed off or really critical of you because you've only been there nine months. But if they really could just let themselves go a little bit. You know and weren't trying to hold it all in, they would be laying in to you all the time. Which is what you dream about.

The problem there in a way is with your fantasy of the other person.

CLIENT: Maybe. What you just said just brought to mind two anecdotes about my parents. One was, you know my dad used to tell me and my sisters that we were so spoiled you know. Because we had food that was not spicy and whatever food we wanted. When he was growing up, when he was little, when he was four—and this is dad's story and I have no idea if it's true because dad is known to lie and exaggerate about all kinds of things. But when dad was four, he had this terrible stomach upset or colic or something. I guess four is too old for colic really, but he called it colic. [00:33:26]

THERAPIST: Right, way too old for colic.

CLIENT: Yeah but that's what he called it.

THERAPIST: I, I—

CLIENT: Yeah. Where he couldn't eat anything except milk and milk was very expensive. All of his parents and aunts and he said older sisters, but he doesn't have any older sisters. He has sisters but they're both younger than him. So I don't know, maybe he meant cousins, whatever. But they all, you know, they yelled at him and told him he was being selfish and greedy and stealing food from the family. It's like, he was four. (Pause) Yeah. (Pause)

And the other one is, you know a couple of years ago. I was well in to adulthood at that point. This conversation with my dad, where he just got really sad and wistful about how I didn't follow his religion. And what did he do wrong. He's a failure as a parent. I was like; you never raised me with any religion. I don't know anything about your religion. You didn't teach me anything.

Like there was nothing for me to follow but a bunch of dietary rules and don't wear tank tops. Which you know, frankly that's not enough to hang a religion on. And he was like, well you never wanted to learn, you never asked me to teach you. I was like, ‘I was a child, it wasn't my responsibility. You were the adult, if you wanted me to follow your religion it was on you.' And I actually told him that, possibly a little bit less with the aggressive hand gestures. [00:35:05]

But, you know, I did tell him. That was his responsibility not mine. I was a child. And he was like, ‘well, you know I didn't have much of a childhood, so how could I have been expected to know.' You're a fucking pediatrician. You deal with children all day every day. You haven't learned something about childhood development at this point. Like—(sigh) it was really kind of amazing how he tried to put the blame on me for his failures at parenting. Because I do consider that a pretty huge failure. Religion is important to you, if you want your children to have it; it's the parent's responsibility to teach it.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: Especially if you are living in a culture where your religion is a minority religion.

THERAPIST: What, what was his religion?

CLIENT: Muslim.

THERAPIST: Muslim.

CLIENT: We never went to mosque. Because my mom thought the Asian women were all stuck up and snobbish and so she would refuse to go. And dad didn't take us to mosque with him because taking care of the children was the woman's work. You don't have children on the men's side of the mosque because the women are supposed to take care of them.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: (Pause) So. They were too cheap to pay for the Muslim equivalent of Sunday School. (Pause) And then they put me in Catholic school. I mean, what the hell did they think was going to happen with that?

(Pause from [00:36:57] to [00:37:12])

THERAPIST: And even if there were ways that they are, he in particular, legitimately didn't know some things. I mean some things are sort of hard to believe that he didn't know. It just sounds kind of (inaudible) something else. But I can imagine there were things he just didn't know. Or maybe more like he didn't have models for. And for that and other reasons, like a lot of, I can imagine might have been very difficult for him. More confusing.

That still doesn't in any way make it your fault or your responsibility. (Pause) Like, even if nobody made it clear to him how to provide a religious upbringing for your kid. That's a totally separate thing from like therefore, you should have been able to teach him to do it. We should stop.

CLIENT: Okay, see you Monday.

THERAPIST: On Monday.

END TRANSCRIPT