TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: The concert was amazing.

THERAPIST: Oh, good. That's great.

CLIENT: I completely screwed up my travel arrangements though.

THERAPIST: Oh, no.

CLIENT: I foolishly did not look at a map at any point while I was booking travel. Instead I went and I googled for what's the nearest airport to the venue. The concert was [...] (background noise at 00:00:25). Google told me this airport was closest. I tried to book a flight into that one and, of course, it being a tiny, rinky-dink, one-runway airport, there was nothing. I went into orbit and looked up the same place. There was nothing and said, "Okay. Give me any airport within 100 miles," and the cheapest flight was into Philadelphia. I was like okay, sure. It turns out that I actually wanted to fly into Harrisburg, but... [00:00:58]

THERAPIST: That's 99.7 miles away.

CLIENT: It was actually from the airport to the hotel where I was staying was a 260 mile drive.

THERAPIST: Oh, my God.

CLIENT: Yes; whereas if I had flown into the correct place, it would have been a 90 mile drive.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: Yeah. So that was the thing. But I had plenty of time probably. I made it to the concert and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare the next day, but I kind of felt like an idiot. (pause)

THERAPIST: Sorry to hear about that.

CLIENT: But it was definitely worth it. The concert was amazing. It was great visit. She brought a bunch of her family from Paris. It was nice getting to meet her family.

THERAPIST: What was the venue like? [00:01:57]

CLIENT: It's a restaurant that was in an old brewery that got shut down before prohibition and just sat there unused until like 1980-something and got renovated. It's a three-story, enormous building in the middle of the state, and so the concert was on the third floor. On the first floor there is a dinner party/murder mystery thing going on. The theme was murder in Neverland and people were costumed for that. The basement was rented out for a toga party. It was a pretty cool place.

THERAPIST: Quite a night. Cool. [00:02:40]

CLIENT: Yeah. That was fun. Now I'm back and I got very little done today because I had a dentist appointment at 8:00 AM. I came home and sulked and felt sorry for myself afterwards. (chuckles) I haven't been to the dentist in like three years because the last time I went the hygienist was terrible and ended up cutting up my mouth pretty badly. I had five deep cuts that took two weeks to heal. And so after that I just was grumbly and didn't want to make a new appointment. They were totally unresponsive when I tried to file a complaint. Then time went on and I didn't want to make an appointment and didn't want to make an appointment; and then it got to be long enough that I was afraid that when I did finally make an appointment it would be horrible and painful and I was afraid of what they would discover because it had been so long and oh, no. Then it just turned into this horrible anxiety-inducing nightmare. Dave left in disappointment. He was told he needed a root canal that was pretty terrible and I realized as bad as it will be if I go in after not seeing the dentist for three years, if I wait longer it can only get worse. (both laugh) No serious problems, but it hurt quite a bit. So, yeah, I sulked and felt sorry for myself for most of the rest of the morning.

THERAPIST: [...] (inaudible at 00:04:19)

CLIENT: Yeah, at least it's over for another six months. No root canals, thank goodness. (laughs) But, yeah, I kind of got nothing productive accomplished today. About an hour before I came here I realized how much work I have to do this week and started to panic. Between now and Sunday I need to put in 16 hours on my job and I need to cook for Thanksgiving, which is going to be a big chunk of time. There are a couple of projects around the house that I want to do. I want to clear out. We have four, big, huge, rubber totes of crap that we've been carrying around from apartment to apartment that I wanted to clear out. I need to call and deal with my IRA and get it transferred. I promised myself I'm going to deal with that this week. Protestants are not in the office so there's no excuse not to get on the phone and call during business hours. [00:05:40]

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: So, yeah, that's a lot to do. I was checking my to-do list and kind of flailing. (pause) Then there's Thanksgiving and I've got all kinds of feelings about it.

THERAPIST: What are those?

CLIENT: (chuckles) Usually I host a big open-door, everyone-is-invited Thanksgiving and we've had years when people we did not know all came because someone at church told them that we were having Thanksgiving dinner and everyone was welcome. And it's usually a really good time, but it's also a whole lot of work. The last month at work has been really, really stressful and I didn't want to put any more pressure on myself than necessary, so we're just having Thanksgiving me and Dave and our best friends, Lucas and Gwen, who I've probably mentioned before. They're a couple we met at our church seven years ago and the four of us just instantly became best friends. We've done a lot of holidays over the years. They always come for Thanksgiving dinner. The last five years we've gone to their place for Christmas. So it's just going to be the four of us instead of the usual crowd of 30 people coming in and out over seven or eight hours. [00:07:10] I'm feeling a little bit sad about not being able to do the big Thanksgiving dinner. We're not doing a turkey either. Roasting a turkey is just too much work. (chuckles) We're doing Cornish game hens because they're small, easy to handle, and quick to cook. I know it's the right call and I know it would have just been a disaster if I'd tried to do everything, but I'm still sad about it. There is another friend of mine who I've been friends with for less long I haven't known her for as long as I've known Lucas and Gwen. She's also 15 years older than me and she's been hosting a big waifs-and-strays Thanksgiving dinner herself for the last 18 years. Last year I definitely felt like I was in competition with her for guests. I don't know. [00:08:14] She was on Twitter earlier today messaging me in public because she wasn't private-messaging me. She was directing messages to me over the public Twitter feed so everyone could see it telling me that I should come to her Thanksgiving this year because I wasn't holding mine. I know she doesn't see it as a competition because she and her family have been doing this for 18 years and she's only known me for three years; but I kind of felt a little bit like it was a "you've waived your white flag of surrender and now I will be the gracious victor over you." She lives with her husband and her boyfriend. Both her husband and her boyfriend are phenomenal cooks as well, so they've got three cooks; whereas Dave doesn't cook. He's a terrible cook. He's only a barely competent sous chef, so their Thanksgivings are always more elaborate than mine. I feel very competitive about it. (laughs) [00:09:16]

I realize this is all me, but she does not see this as a competition at all. She has some pretty severe food allergies where she's not willing to eat food that someone else cooks unless she can watch it being prepared because the wrong thing can literally kill her and that's totally understandable. I'm a little bit jealous, but there are all these cool people who go to hers and not mine because they've known her longer than they've known me. I don't like feeling jealous. It's a little bit ugly, but there it is. (pause) [00:10:39]

THERAPIST: You do have a lot of feelings about Thanksgiving.

CLIENT: Yes, I do. (pause)

THERAPIST: [...] (inaudible at 00:11:05) how nice it was to host [...].

CLIENT: (pause) I'm really hoping next year I'll be able to do a big Thanksgiving again. It's so much fun.

THERAPIST: What do you like?

CLIENT: I really kind of get into the competitive and performative aspects of cooking. (laughing) Also I like throwing parties. I like extending hospitality to people. It's a lot of fun.

THERAPIST: What do you get into about the performative, you said the "competitive and performative" parts.

CLIENT: I really, really like getting complemented on my cooking and especially comparisons like, "This is so much better than my mother's cornbread." [00:12:20]

THERAPIST: (laughs)

CLIENT: I kind of have an over-developed competitive instinct. So any time there is a chance for comparison or to show off...

THERAPIST: I think it's pretty clear a lot of it comes from your history, but I think sometimes you're not quite sure of who you are if you're not winning.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that's valid.

THERAPIST: [Or like what you were.] (inaudible at 00:13:09) I guess I'm not highly critical of competitions or competitiveness per se, but...

CLIENT: It can be taken to pathological extremes.

THERAPIST: Where there's an aspect of the competition which, I think, feels to you like it's about your survival or your sort of value in some kind of way. Clearly I don't mean to lose that. It's nice to have people tell you you're good at something. [...] (inaudible at 00:14:11)

CLIENT: Earlier today I was on Twitter chatting with people trying to finalize my menu, asking people's opinions. I posted the final set of dishes and my frien, was like, "That sounds really awesome. Here's what we're going to do." Then she posted her list of dishes, which is three times as long as mine because she has three times as many cooks. Then all of the attention that was focused on me went to her and I got really, really angry angry enough that I had to get up and walk away from the computer for a bit because I was just like, "How dare she?" I know from her perspective it wasn't about trying to steal attention from me, but that's how it felt and it was really kind of an icky feeling.

THERAPIST: Sure. [00:15:11]

CLIENT: (pause) Also the pork orgy that she described sounded disgusting and I don't understand why people were so excited about it.

THERAPIST: You don't like pork or it just didn't sound...?

CLIENT: That particular dish I've actually tasted. It's disgusting. It's a flattened chicken breast wrapped in sausage, wrapped in slices of ham, wrapped in a woven mat of bacon and then baked; and it's gross. It's really gross.

THERAPIST: I'm a vegetarian so... (both laugh) [00:15:58]

CLIENT: That explains the appalled look on your face.

THERAPIST: I'm not [...] (inaudible at 00:16:19)

CLIENT: The thing is I like each of the components just fine. [...] (inaudible at 00:16:40) Another thing I like about preparing meals for a large group is the technical prowess it takes. I don't know if this is common, but in my circle of friends if I have more than half-dozen people over there are going to be all kinds of conflicting dietary requirements; and I kind of pride myself on being able to make something that can feed the vegetarians and the people who have gluten-free diets and the people who keep kosher. [00:17:23]

THERAPIST: I would say that's quite a feat.

CLIENT: I have a database (laughs) of everyone who has ever eaten at my house and what their hard requirements are and what their food preferences are. It's not just an altruistic wanting to take care of my friends. There's also a component of wanting to show off like, "Look at what I can do. I can make this vegan, gluten-free dessert taste amazing and you won't even know dairy is missing." (pause) I've been working for months to perfect my gluten-free samosa recipe. It's still not there yet, but I'm very much looking forward to when I can debut it. [00:18:20]

THERAPIST: Gluten-free samosas. So what's the wrapping?

CLIENT: I'm experimenting with a mixture of chickpea flower and gluten-free mix.

THERAPIST: How close is it to being ready for prime time?

CLIENT: Not at all. I've had numerous failed experiments. That's how the scientific method works. You scratch off the things that don't work until you find something that does. (both laugh)

THERAPIST: Has Dave appreciated the failures?

CLIENT: Yes. (long pause) [00:20:14]

THERAPIST: What else comes to mind?

CLIENT: Contemplating the horror of the pork orgy. (pause)

THERAPIST: Could it maybe be just a little fun to contemplate how horrifying it is? (laughs)

CLIENT: Well I was thinking about the bacon mat in particular which I don't know. It seems like bacon is a very popular thing for people in my social circle to like.

THERAPIST: It's a bacon thing, right?

CLIENT: Yeah. Like there are bacon lollipops which, by the way, are disgusting. I have one set of friends who made bacon ice cream at the last party they hosted. I don't know. It's like a faddish thing and I don't understand it and it's just kind of gross, especially the woven bacon mat where you weave strips of bacon together like literally weaving them. They don't get crispy when you cook them if they're woven together because they're overlapping, and so you've just got soggy pieces of warm bacon fat. It's just... I don't understand. I kind of have this kind of crotchety kids-get-off-my-lawn reaction to it. You're just doing it because it's cool and it doesn't even taste good; but everyone is going to pretend it's good because it's the fad and no one is willing to say, "No, actually woven bacon just doesn't taste good. It's gross." I feel this way about a lot of fads, to the point where sometimes if a thing I like becomes faddish I'll stop doing it until it stops being the fad. [00:22:31]

THERAPIST: Like what?

CLIENT: (pause) The only thing I can think of is bacon right now. (both laugh) There are these two hors d'oeuvres that I really like, Devils on a Horse and Angels on Horseback, which are, respectively, dates wrapped in bacon and oysters wrapped in bacon. And once bacon became super faddish, I just stopped making them for parties because... yeah. [00:23:15] For a while pomegranates were the foody-fad. A couple of recipes in my usual party-hosting repertoire I retired for a while. People were putting pomegranates on all kinds of things that it didn't make sense to put pomegranates on, like pomegranates in apple cider. What? No. Those flavors don't go together. (pause) [00:25:17]

THERAPIST: My impression is that you talk about food because you like to cook. It's something you know a lot about and it's sort of performative. I guess at the moment for me [...]. (inaudible at 00:26:01) (pause) What are your thoughts? [00:26:54]

CLIENT: The musician I went to see on Saturday, has a new song called Beets in my Salad, which is something of a joke song, beets, beets. Part of the song is kind of frivolous and funny, but part of it is very serious about food scarcity, the food chain, where food comes from and processed food. It has kind of deep points. I was just thinking of that and thinking about how lucky I am that I have the time and money to choose what kind of food I buy to feed myself and my friends. I was thinking about how I need to work in a trip to town to go to the grocery store into my schedule because they have really phenomenally good produce, much better quality than the one in my neighborhood. (long pause) [00:29:30]

THERAPIST: Did what I said about the performative aspect of what you were talking about contribute to you having less anxiety?

CLIENT: No, I don't think so. I think I just ran out of steam.

THERAPIST: (both chuckle) I see. Are there other things coming to mind at all? Are your thoughts blank?

CLIENT: Just a bunch of random half-formed thoughts centering around the topic of food and conversations I've had about food with friends of mine.

THERAPIST: What kind of thoughts?

CLIENT: Like there is this woman I met at a com (ph?) two years ago. We don't know each other very well, but I'm completely in love with her work. She's a poet and she writes amazing things and she's absolutely gorgeous. She's living in Canada. We've been saying to each other at coms or over Twitter or over Facebook that we really need to get together and cook together because we both blog about things that we cook and our styles of cooking are similar but different enough that we probably have a lot that we could learn from each other. Unfortunately, there is the geography to contend with. It is pretty far away. (pause) [00:31:37]

THERAPIST: That's too bad. It would be nice to cook with her. (pause) [00:32:12]

CLIENT: I have a lot of really amazing people in my life. I'm not quite sure how it happened because I don't think I'm all that interesting or fun to be around.

THERAPIST: That's wonderful that you have [...]. (inaudible at 00:32:28)

CLIENT: It confuses me.

THERAPIST: I guess so. (pause) [00:33:46]

CLIENT: My family told my family I wasn't going to be coming for Christmas and I got this voice mail from my dad. I sent an e-mail and he was like, "Mom told me you sent an e-mail saying you might not be able to come for Christmas. I hope you can make it at least for a couple of days." I was like, "Where is this ‘might' coming from? I said I definitely was not coming. I was very sorry. I would miss them, but it wasn't going to happen. See you in May." I was very clear. I did not leave any room. I did not say why. I did not give them a chance to argue. I was just like, "Not happening. See you in May." [00:34:22]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: "I'll miss you and love you. Bye-bye." I don't know where this "might" came from.

THERAPIST: Yes. It does seem like your dad didn't pay close attention to were coming from, did he?

CLIENT: Either dad didn't pay close attention or he never read the e-mail and mom conveyed the message to him and she just...

[...] (crosstalk at 00:34:48)

Yes. Except in telephone it's usually not deliberate, the distortions. My mom does that. She pretends to be this great communicator and that she interprets between members of the family who can't understand each other, but she deliberately distorts. Actually, I can't say for sure that she does it deliberately because I don't know what her motives are. She might just be that dumb, but there is a pattern of distortions entering in. It's really frustrating. (pause) [00:35:37] I was on the phone or on chat with various family members most of the afternoon today because it's like none of them being Christian, Christmas and Christmas gifts are a very huge thing for my sisters and my mother. There is always lots of stress and angst this time of year because by [...] (background noise at 00:36:02) and they have to have wish lists.

THERAPIST: I think you mentioned your mother's note to you about the wish list. [00:36:13]

CLIENT: It's just this huge source of stress every year; then on my end, there's the buying gifts for them in addition to producing wish lists. It's just so over drama. There were lots of phone calls like, "Well I'm getting this for this person so don't you get it." "No, I saw it on sale. I saw it in the Black Friday sale advertisements in my newspaper, so you can't get it." "No. I was getting it." It's a mess. And it's all about the illusion of love and the illusion of relationship because, from my perspective, if you know someone well enough you can pick a gift for them without a wish list. Demanding someone produce things is just... And my wish list hasn't changed in the last ten years. I'm asked for wish lists and it's always the same thing. "I like jewelry, flavored teas and coffees. Here is a list of my current favorite scents from this particular perfume retailer that I like; or you could get me a gift certificate. Here are the three charities that I donate to." And those haven't changed in ten years either, so the fact that they need to ask again every year is just (pause)... [00:37:48] So that, in juxtaposition with my relationships and friendships here and especially looking at the friends of mine who are parents – the lady, who I was talking about earlier this hour, her daughter is 17 and is going off to college and they have the kind of parent-child relationship I wished I could have had with my parents. It's just... (sighs) It's really upsetting to be jealous of a 17 year old. [00:38:17]

THERAPIST: How so?

CLIENT: (sighs) Because I wish I had that kind of closeness with my family.

THERAPIST: No, I'm pretty clear about the jealousy, I think. That makes all the sense in the world to me. I'm wondering why you feel bad about it. Do you know what I mean?

CLIENT: Because jealousy is a bad emotion, or at least in my head it gets classified as one of those things that aren't healthy to indulge.

THERAPIST: It points towards how you feel in other words, not just jealous. Obviously, it points towards the fact that you're jealous, but [...] (inaudible at 00:39:09). It points to it in a pretty raw way. I guess where I'm sort of stuck is why wouldn't you be jealous of her? In which case, why does it feel so bad about being jealous of her? Not the cause of the jealousy, but yeah. [00:39:50]

CLIENT: I think it's just sort of a knee-jerk reaction on my part that jealousy is bad and I'm bad for feeling jealous. It's really draining for me hearing all of these messages around this time of year about the importance of family and family is so special. At the dentist's office this morning the hygienist is like, "Are you going to get to see your family for Christmas?" I'm seeing the family who matters to me. I'm going to spend the Holiday with my husband and our best friends, who are like family, but I'm pretty sure that's not what she meant. (sighs) [00:40:38]

THERAPIST: What do you see with her and her daughter?

CLIENT: They like each other. That's a big one. She has a great deal of respect for her daughter, even though her daughter's interests are worlds apart from her own. She is very much an introvert and does not like large crowds and does not particularly like being seen and looked at. And her daughter is a performer. She's in musical theater and wants to be a teacher, front and center of a lecture hall. Personalities are miles apart, but she has a great deal of respect for that and tries very hard to encourage her and provide whatever support she can, even when that means that she is way out of her depth and has to ask for advice and resources from her friends. [00:41:52] Which is not to say they have the perfect relationship. There are a couple of times I've been at their house when there's been yelling over dishes, for example, but (laughs) I suppose that's the case for all parents of teenagers. (pause) There are parent friends of mine who have a daughter who just turned four. She (chuckles) is a very demanding child. She needs quite a bit of attention and is very unhappy if she's left alone. She'll climb all over her parents and pull their hair and insist that they play with her. When they are playing with her she'll be like, "No. You're doing it wrong. Those aren't the rules." She's a little bit of a nightmare, but I was just thinking by the time I was four I was terrified of my father. I would never have demanded that he come play with me now and I certainly wouldn't have told him that he was breaking the rules. [00:43:36] They were over at our house a couple of weeks ago for a movie night and we were all standing around in the kitchen getting snacks and the baby, Abby, was like, "Daddy, no, you're not supposed to move. Stand right here. You're the bridge for my car." Whatever imagination game she was playing. I would never have been able to do that. It was just a little sad and wistful feeling.

THERAPIST: It would have been nice to have a bridge for your car.

CLIENT: (laughs)

THERAPIST: We should stop for now.

END TRANSCRIPT