TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: I get forgetting the construction under the bridge.
THERAPIST: Oh by the fire station?
CLIENT: Yeah. The weather is pretty ugly. Sorry I'm late. (pause) So I had voice lessons and piano lessons last night and they were both just really…I don't know, almost really challenging. My piano instructor, who has also been my choir director at church for like seven years and is a friend and a wonderful person just made me improvise for the entire lesson which I did not like at all as you can well imagine.
THERAPIST: Improvising for an entire session? That actually sounds vaguely familiar. [1:15] (laughs)
CLIENT: I kept saying "Can't I just do (inaudible) exercises? Can't you like watch and critique me playing one of the practice pieces I've been working on? Could I practice still?"
THERAPIST: You'd think right?
CLIENT: She'd go "This is good for you," but it was very hard and I did not like it at all. (pause) [2:25]
THERAPIST: I'm sorry, do you mind?
CLIENT: No I'm just…(pause) feel sad over the fact that it's very hard for me to be creative and just kind of let go and let…just improvise. [3:38] (pause) Blah…
THERAPIST: You said "blah?"
CLIENT: Yeah. [4:44] Voice is also difficult but for different reasons. My (inaudible) instructor keeps telling me the same thing, getting frustrated when I keep making the same mistake over and over again and it feels really terrible and I don't know.
THERAPIST: There's a particular mistake you've been making?
CLIENT: Yes. And it's not something that I have any conscious control over either. I guess the theory is that I got bad instruction or was told something wrong or just was trying to overcompensate because of someone telling me that I sounded bad when I was very young and I developed this terrible, bad habit of raising my voice box when I try to sing high notes and your absolutely not supposed to do that. I don't do it consciously and I try every time I sing for Elizabeth, I'm thinking the entire time of keeping that down and keeping it low and long and it just…every time I try to go above a D or so it jumps up and sounds terrible. [6:15] I don't know the mechanics of how to not do that and it's really frustrating. (pause) [7:31]
THERAPIST: So…I don't know anything about singing. So the problem is that when you sing a higher note you're not supposed to raise your voice box?
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: What's that?
CLIENT: The…this thing.
THERAPIST: Okay and somebody told you early on you were or…?
CLIENT: I have no idea…
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Why I do this. Because it's apparently strange. I had terrible, terrible music instructors throughout elementary school including the choir director that told me to not sing during Friday Mass in catholic school so I believe that music teacher told me something stupid or wrong or that, you know, in my child mind someone said I sounded bad and I decided that there was a way to fix it by… I don't know. [9:07] Some random theory I had when I was ten or whatever.
THERAPIST: Mm hm. And which you now can't drop?
CLIENT: Yes.
THERAPIST: And which would require you to sort of relax a bit?
CLIENT: Yep.
THERAPIST: And sort of let go a little?
CLIENT: Yes. There's a thing that my piano teacher keeps telling me that my (inaudible) would be better if I would relax my hands more and not keep them so tight.
THERAPIST: Hmm. (pause) [10:24]
CLIENT: Perhaps also I'm seeing patterns where none exist because they've been bringing forth to me, patterns out of everything but…I also just overthought that the more (inaudible) the more ticklish I am and…I have a bit of a problem in my sex life. I'll be really tense and then every touch feels like tickling no matter what my partner intended it to feel like and it's just (inaudible) several occasions where we just have to stop and call it off because I was wound up so much that everything was painfully ticklish. I think it's a theme that I'm entirely too tense and it's hard to let go. (pause)
THERAPIST: I can imagine you're also (inaudible) about the ways that…at times like difficult here to just sort of say what's on your mind.
CLIENT: Right. The more I've become consciously aware of it, I'm tensing up and seizing up and it's harder to relax.
THERAPIST: Uh huh. Probably in part because you really start to feel like you're doing something wrong. [12:04] (pause) There's a similar context it seems to me to voice, piano, sex, therapy...
CLIENT: All contexts where there's no right answer.
THERAPIST: That's true.
CLIENT: Everything is open ended, there are many right answers. There's no certainty.
THERAPIST: All things you want to be doing and you enjoy because you want to be doing them. Also with music (inaudible), it's probably different some place like the (inaudible) where you want to be but there's not all the stuff that you're talking about or at least not in the same way.
CLIENT: Right. There are certainly lots of variables and a lot of discretion on the part of the printer but there's a very clear goal. The goal is to get a good impression to them, it's all inks, not biting into a page, not damaging the type, you know it's the imprinting terminology; they call it the "perfect kiss" because the type is just barely kissing the page not slamming into it. You can achieve that in a number of different ways but like it's a combinatorial problem right? There's a finite number of variables and each one has a finite number of values like (inaudible) an infinity of different things you can do. [14:14] (pause) Combinatorial problems are easy you subtract (inaudible) and use your best judgment as to which ones might work and which ones probably won't and then you test the one that might and you can set up an experiment. It's the scientific method.
THERAPIST: There's something else actually that each of these contexts that there was another person immediately involved.
CLIENT: Right. Although I still feel…
THERAPIST: It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
CLIENT: Well I still feel tense and nervous and self-conscious even when I'm playing piano by myself. (over talking) Yeah. And I do the closing up thing even when I'm singing at my home, like singing in the shower or whatever. (pause) [15:31] Its tough.
THERAPIST: I guess learned something about everything today that I didn't anticipate at least and (pause) makes you tense. I'm sure that for the point of the story we are more elaborate at that point.
CLIENT: Right. (pause) [16:50] [18:10]
THERAPIST: I'm trying to think through like, the situation can feel like, then you get bad treatment which I know…
CLIENT: What do you get?
THERAPIST: You get bad treatment. What I have in mind is so, you know, did your piano teacher (pause) then make things incredibly difficult and anxious and painful by encouraging you to improvise or your voice teacher getting frustrated making you feel…clearly not what your voice teacher is intending and I know (inaudible). You look back like…
CLIENT: It's really embarrassing. [19:40]
THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)
CLIENT: I really hate being tickled. When I was a kid that was one of the things bullies would do, they would hold me down and tickle me until I was shrieking so hard I literally started hyperventilating and couldn't breathe and that was like a routine thing so…like all of my lovers know "Don't ever deliberately tickle me," it's off the table, that's a "this relationship is over kind of thing" for me. But like accidental tickling happens and then I freeze up and then they feel bad and then try to be more cautious which when we're both tense there's this horrible shame cycle because I feel bad that I'm so oversensitive and they feel bad for triggering this terrible reaction from me and it's awful and embarrassing and…yeah. (pause)
THERAPIST: They will accidentally tickle you by brushing against you or…?
CLIENT: Yeah. [21:17]
THERAPIST: Are you very ticklish?
CLIENT: Mm hm.
THERAPIST: All over?
CLIENT: Yep. (pause) [22:30] [23:44]
THERAPIST: I guess…with you being quiet I guess we need to…I guess sitting here with you being kind of tense…
CLIENT: Yep.
THERAPIST: And anxious.
CLIENT: Yep. (pause) I can even feel my back and neck tensing up, over the course of the last twenty minutes or so, talking about it it's just making me more tense.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (inaudible)
CLIENT: Yeah sometimes. [25:02] (pause)
THERAPIST: Are you worried or…? I gather that really they aren't all together clear?
CLIENT: No.
THERAPIST: I mean we've said some things about…
CLIENT: How come I'm a nut case? (inaudible) for everything.
THERAPIST: Well it's not very specific.
CLIENT: True.
THERAPIST: Also questionable but…(chuckles) I don't mind that I guess but…(pause) I'm smiling because my thought was that the problem is you overthink things but when you say you're a nut case it makes me (inaudible) a nut case, like something that's sort of a shell.
CLIENT: Hmm. [26:30]
THERAPIST: I'm aware that I also like "is this (inaudible) way too crazy?" (chuckles) (pause) I have to say that I'm getting the feeling that it's very much right to me like I've tried to kind of…like a shell is created and then there's a kind of reserve, protectiveness…
CLIENT: Mm hm. [27:53]
THERAPIST: In a way that feels or kind of in a general way feels crazy but it's quite a bit more particular then that I think.
CLIENT: Mm hm. Have you heard of a program called "Odyssey of the Mind?"
THERAPIST: Like it's ringing a bell but that's…
CLIENT: It's a competition for middle school and high school kids. It's one of those things that the smart kids in my high school did along with (inaudible) eighteen and all that crap.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But "Odyssey of the Mind" has a distinct creativity component in a way that math bowl doesn't and so part of the competition is like there's…you do improv comedy as part of your competition, you write a play and perform a play as part of the competition. You write so there's literature and music and acting and improv and all of that. I don't know why that was what the smart kids did but the theater kids or the creative kids, whatever my high school was weird but I was expected to be on the team because I was one of the smart kids and I utterly bombed the audition for the team, of course we had competitive auditions because my high school was just like that.
THERAPIST: Yeah. [29:31]
CLIENT: We had competitive auditions for the debate team also. It was (inaudible) if you ask me but anyway…well maybe not. I guess most high schools have tryouts for things like basketball and football but anyway…I completely bombed the tryout because they gave us a bunch of improv exercises like "Here are a bunch of props, we've got the kids in a circle, we're going to go around the circle like eight times and each time it's your turn you have to grab a prop and perform thirty minutes," not thirty minutes, thirty second thing that you just invented and I couldn't do it! I couldn't do it and my parents were really mad at me for not making the team. I don't know, my parents pretty much squashed any creative ideas starting when I was very young. Any kind of imaginary game they would make fun of me and tell me not to and you know…"Why don't you go play with your microscope or your chemistry set? Why don't you go ride your bike to the creek and write down what you saw?" They didn't like my reading either because I read a lot of fiction, a lot of science fiction and my parents were probably the only parents in the world who would use the threat of taking away my library card as punishment. [31:02] And then they got mad at me when I didn't make the improv. Gee, never would've predicted that.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But at the same time I'm saying all of this there's a voice in my head saying "To the bush fire. At some point you have to stop blaming your parents for your failures." I just like Tyra, that's what my parents call me.
THERAPIST: You did, yeah.
CLIENT: Yeah. I don't think I ever told you this story…My dad named me when my mom was under anesthesia from the C-section, my mom hates my name,. I guess they do not like (inaudible) so…they fall back to my middle name.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Which do you prefer?
CLIENT: I prefer (inaudible)
THERAPIST: (inaudible) to call you.
CLIENT: (laughter) [32:20] Throughout elementary and middle school my teachers also called me my middle name because my parents told them to call me that. It wasn't until high school (inaudible). I'm tired of having to explain to every teacher about my name and what it meant previously. "No really call me this other name but you also can't pronounce or know how to spell." I guess thinking about middle school that's what everybody called me.
THERAPIST: (inaudible). We should stop. Why don't we talk about a time next week?
CLIENT: Yeah I assume you aren't working on the fourth?
THERAPIST: No.
CLIENT: The third?
THERAPIST: I am in on the third. At this point I don't think I have anything else (inaudible).
CLIENT: I'm working from home on Monday next week so I can come in any time on Monday except 12 to 2, two friends of mine are getting married Monday which is why I'm working from home so I can go.
THERAPIST: Okay. Alright. I will see if there's anything I know about, I will look and get with you.
CLIENT: Alright.
END TRANSCRIPT
