TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

(background talking)

THERAPIST: I had a small favor to ask you.

CLIENT: Sure.

THERAPIST: Do you happen to still have that letter from your insurance company? I think I managed to copy the number down wrong and then shred the letter.

CLIENT: Oops. I do have it. I can scan it and send it to you tonight.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: Or I can bring it. I'm going to see you tomorrow.

THERAPIST: Any which way is fine. You can just e-mail me the number, you don't have to scan it or give it to me tomorrow. I'll call them tomorrow.

CLIENT: (sighs)

THERAPIST: Thanks.

CLIENT: No problem.

THERAPIST: Good morning.

CLIENT: Morning. I think I'm overscheduled. You're smirking?

THERAPIST: I am I guess, you just…brought up before and you used to have quite highly scheduled (ph).

CLIENT: Yeah I don't know what to do about it because when I don't have enough things going on I feel bad and miserable like nobody loves me and then I get depressed but there's a very, very narrow window of like enough to be happening without tripping over into so much that I'm stressed and anxious every time I pop open my calendar. [1:20] I think I've tripped over that line, in fact gone (inaudible whisper), to the end zone.

THERAPIST: It's also possible there is no window.

CLIENT: Really?

THERAPIST: Sure, you're saying there is and so I'm thinking maybe there is but you know …a happy medium but maybe not. It could be sort of…at least sort of…it could be sort of an effect of your depression is that the number of things you need to be doing to make yourself happy is nothing that makes you feel tired and anxious for having so much to do.

CLIENT: It's very possible that's the case because I've never actually ever managed to hit the window of enough to be happy but not so much that I'm stressed, I've just been taking on faith that it's there and aiming for it.

THERAPIST: I guess probably the reason I'm saying this is because it occurs to me that you probably blame yourself for not quite being able to hit the window?

CLIENT: Yep! [2:38]

THERAPIST: So I'm saying that maybe that actually doesn't happen because you're not good enough at this, because there's not a window.

CLIENT: That seems awfully maladaptive doesn't it though? For in my brain?

THERAPIST: Yours and the rest of ours.

CLIENT: I mean, it doesn't surprise me that my brain is setting things up so that there is no when condition where I get to not feel stressed and anxious over something.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: That kind of makes it mental.

THERAPIST: Or just responds that way because it's so scary that the situation is impossible.

CLIENT: Yeah I was talking to Dave last night about Ashley and Dave's response was "You know, maybe you should start dating someone else that would have time…" to continually repeat the same conversation over and over about the mismatch between me and Ashley and my reaction to that wasn't even about the suggestion it was just complete shutdown at the thought of trying to schedule and plan with another person and oh my god the logistics would be a nightmare. [4:12] It made me realize maybe my calendar is a little absurd right now, maybe I have too much going on. (pause) I should definitely not date any more introverts. (pause)

THERAPIST: (inaudible)

CLIENT: Yes I realize that that's not exactly an enforceable statement.

THERAPIST: I didn't mean it that way, just a declaration. (pause) [5:25]

CLIENT: That could explain to me about so much. They can convinced me that I was an introvert and that's completely wrong and they convinced me that I can't hear pitch. It started when I was very young, "You're tone deaf, you can't hear pitch, don't try to sing, your bad at music…" and then I had a couple of really bad music teachers and the epically bad choir director when I was going to church growing up…and so I just grew up thinking that I can't hear pitch but yesterday I had a piano lesson and he had me doing sight reading exercise from a piece that I had never heard before and I hit a wrong key at one point and it sounded completely terrible and you know I immediately stopped and corrected myself and found the chord that sounded right. He interrupted me and said "You can hear pitch just fine." He is also my choir director, he's been my choir director for five years and he's also a friend and he has heard me go on at length about how I'm completely tone deaf and I can't sing or I can't hear pitch and he obviously doesn't believe me because he recruited me for the church choir. (laughter) But he stopped me and said "You can hear pitch just fine, you heard that was wrong and you corrected yourself on a piece you've never heard before. There's nothing wrong with your ear." It was just…(pause) it was terrible talking to (inaudible) where I kept saying "no really I'm completely tone deaf," that was completely belied by my actions and it was very unpleasant realizing that I believed this thing that was completely untrue. [7:29] (sighs)

THERAPIST: Uh huh. (pause) [8:40] [9:45]

CLIENT: (sighs) [11:01]

THERAPIST: I guess you started to remind me a little of…what you were saying last week, writing creative projects and getting stuck?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And with that and what we were just talking about now which is not exactly the same but it seems to me the same ballpark as believing what you were told about not being good at things like that.

CLIENT: Maybe.

THERAPIST: Um… (pause) Who knows, I mean about what I'm going to say next which is what you were just saying is that you, it's upsetting to think about how you believed that…

CLIENT: Yep.

THERAPIST: Which in a way you can only say if you don't really anymore or if you are considering not anymore?

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: But then you go quiet which makes me wonder if you kind of get yourself out of a dilemma of being upset by not believing it by starting to believe it again which means you don't really have anything to say because you're not really good at this sort of thing. (pause) As you've been told.

CLIENT: Right. (pause) [13:08] Its really tiring. So another thing that's been on my mind, Cricket and I jointly hosted a party Sunday night. The idea was that it would be a barbeque competition and all of our friends from very southern states would be able to bring barbeque from their home state and we'd see which one was the best but none of our friends who are also southerners were actually able to come…Yeah the third person who was going to cohost with us and was super excited about this is the person who is sleeping with Cricket's rapist now so…

THERAPIST: Oh…

CLIENT: So she was no longer invited. It was really terrible and…

THERAPIST: I seen that (inaudible) pretty recently which is…

CLIENT: Yeah…well this woman was one of the people Emmett slept with before he raped Cricket and just had this month long pattern of like repeatedly violating their relationship boundaries with other people so you know one of their agreements was he doesn't, neither of them would sleep with anyone new without checking in with the other person first, no unprotected sex with another one, like he was very at risk for everything when she did not know, no having sex with people unless you've seen their STD testing results that have to be less than a year old and yeah…the woman has high risk HPV which she didn't disclose and he didn't ask to see test results so like…there's lots of badness there.

THERAPIST: Yeah…

CLIENT: But anyway the party planning kind of fell apart because Cricket's been a mess so we made pulled pork and grilled brats and hung out but it was really fun. A bunch of people showed up in spite of the lack of preparation. [15:11] This included a professional musician and a friend of Cricket's. Suge was in town, she was playing a gig Saturday and she had Sunday off because for some reason she booked her flight back home for Monday so she came over and she was not (inaudible) house concert because it was her day off but there were a bunch of people at the party who were musicians of varying degrees of skill and professionalness. Like three people had brought their guitars with them including her so…

THERAPIST: Does she know you're interested in (inaudible)?

CLIENT: Yep.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: Suge is awesome. I'm kind of jealous that Cricket gets to be friends with her whereas I'm just a fan but you know, whatever. But yeah there was just an impromptu jam session where she starting playing her guitar and then the guys started playing and then you know for a while they were doing a sing a long and a bunch of us were singing along, myself included, to you know songs that three of them had written and songs people they knew had written and songs everyone in the room could reasonably be expected to know, a couple Ani DiFranco hits because that's the kind of crowd that was at the party. Not to stereotype my friends or anything. (laughter) Then they just started improving and making things up and it looked like a lot of fun and I wished I could join in but I don't have the skill or experience of playing a musical instrument and right now at least I'm wildly uncomfortable with improvising at the piano or with voice. I guess voice counts as an instrument…I think I brought that up last week, how improvising is really painful for me.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: But they looked like they were having lots of fun and I really wanted to join in. [17:13] (pause) [18:19] It makes me sad though, if my parents knew what my week to week life is like, they would vehemently object. (pause) For a bunch of reasons, I think first because the idea that they would feel they have a right to tell their 33 year old adult child how to live her life, kind of disgusting and gross but also like I want them to be happy and to the extent that that's within my power I want to be able to make them happy but not as much as I want to make me happy. [19:52] (pause) And also I know this is a pointless question, I try not to spend too much time dwelling on it but I can't help but sometimes wonder how my life would be better if my parents were better people? Which is a pointless hypothetical, there's no way to test that (inaudible) and anyway…even if you could magically make them better people and give them an infant to raise and see how that child turns out differently from me that doesn't help me, not without a time machine which you know there's no…it's not useful to contemplate that question but it still is sometimes a thing I wonder about and fantasize about. Then I get mad at myself for wasting time fantasizing about something that is so pointless. (pause) [21:10] [22:29] There's another concert tonight that's happening because I donated $200 to a Kickstarter fund, did I tell you about that? Yeah? So Mark was playing at Cricket's house because she has a great house for house concerts and I don't and Mark is an amazing human being, he is a really talented musician and a talented writer, really smart, really good looking, just…yeah. It's kind of, I don't know, the whole situation is poking a bunch of my anxiety and inferiority complex buttons because I have nothing to bring to the table except cash money and that's all of the terrible self-talk about how "None of these people really like you, they only tolerate you because you have the money and you're willing to spend it on them."

THERAPIST: Uh huh.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I don't like that. Worrying you like this (inaudible)?

CLIENT: Yeah. [23:57] (pause)

THERAPIST: I get that feeling you've been a little bit with me of… (pause) like mixed feelings about some of these things, giving me the half where I'm supposed to be reassuring like "Of course it's useful to think about how things would have been different if your parents were different," because then you know you can look at what we missed or what made you sad or what was their fault and not your fault or…you know?

CLIENT: I definitely have mixed feelings about that. None of what you said occurred to me, it was just 100% negative in my mind.

THERAPIST: I see, okay.

CLIENT: (laugher)

THERAPIST: It sounded a little bit like reassurance bating. I don't mean that critically, I'm concerned that it sounds critical when I say it like that but that's not how it felt but that part was questioned and it seems like it's not helpful to you. [25:45] (pause)

CLIENT: No I definitely wasn't thinking anything along the lines of "Your friends love you, they wouldn't…they're not nearly so crass as to tolerate someone they don't like for money." I also (inaudible).

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: If I was baiting for anything it might have been advice on how to stop believing that?

THERAPIST: I see. (pause) That suggests you have some suspicions that that may not be true.

CLIENT: Mm hmm and Mark isn't really a friend. We've met at a couple of conventions but we don't have a close relationship. So like the fact that he's only showing up because I paid him to, like that's fine, its semi-professional…

THERAPIST: Right, yeah.

CLIENT: Kind of thing but…with people I do, you know, go to parties with and spend time with…it's always been in the back of my mind. [27:14]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I do have friends where I don't buy their work, you know, a city manager and his wife a church secretary, there's no possible blurring of the lines in our friendship and I still sometimes feel like terribly insecure that they don't really like me that they're just tolerating my presence for like bizarre, non-sensical, inexplicable reasons of their own. In many ways my rational brain knows that this "No, they're just tolerating you because you buy their books or jewelry or music or whatever…" does this make sense for you? Or just a fake leaf and I would seize on any kind of possible reason.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: But this particular smoke screen does have an interaction with all of my stuff about not feeling creative and not feeling I'm smart enough to be a creative person and that interaction is more complicated than when I feel the same like "Oh these people don't like me they're just tolerating me," and in other context…

THERAPIST: Also that you don't have enough interesting things to say in therapy?

CLIENT: (chuckles) Maybe.

THERAPIST: (chuckles) [28:48]

CLIENT: Yeah…Yeah I definitely feel like my angst is boring sometimes.

THERAPIST: I'm only here and taking interest because I'm getting paid and otherwise…?

CLIENT: Yep.

THERAPIST: I've certainly become uninterested or don't like you or anything along those lines? (pause) I guess I'm saying it in a way to deflect but it's a serious thing. (pause)

CLIENT: Yeah… (sighs, pause) [29:56]

THERAPIST: I guess it's your sort of thinking that your kind of screwed either way on this one in that either this is true, which is bad, which you often believed and that's the side your often on or it isn't in which case your parents really did a number on you and that's pretty awful too.

CLIENT: Yep!

THERAPIST: I think also there's a possibility, a very sad possibility, you get the feeling your life could be a whole lot different had they not done that.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: It's sort of heartbreaking.

CLIENT: Yep…I think where I'm at now I would say enraging more than heartbreaking.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: But…[31:07] And it doesn't help to think that they didn't mean to screw me up for life, they really thought they were doing what was best for me and that doesn't give me any comfort at all.

THERAPIST: Mm hmm. (pause)

CLIENT: And it doesn't help that they're miserable too.

THERAPIST: Mm hmm.

CLIENT: That's something a couple of friends of mine have said, "You should at least be happy you're not as miserable as your parents are, they hate themselves and they hate each other and they hate their lives and at least you're not that." It's really not helpful to think about (chuckles), I mean it's helpful in the sense that…it's easier to have compassion knowing where they're coming from and it's easier to be epically okay with just lying to them about everything about my life just to give them, I call them affection flavored emotion pellets, kind of like cheese flavored food product.

THERAPIST: I see. [32:36]

CLIENT: It's not really affection, it's not really intimacy, it's not really love, but it satisfies them and they can't tell the difference so yeah understanding where they're coming from makes it easier for me to not feel like a slime ball doing that. But it doesn't actually make me feel better about my life or where I am with myself or anything if that makes sense.

THERAPIST: Right. Yeah… (pause)

CLIENT: I don't know if I've mentioned this analogy to you, I came up with it a while ago but my parents really want the semblance of you know love and affection and familial loyalty and as long as I present to them an API, like the webserver API, they send requests for you know affection or intimacy or love and I just send affection flavored emotion pellets to them. And they're happy and I don't have to deal with their displeasure or they're judgment and I don't have to take any of the risk of being emotionally engaged with them and like really my life is a gazillion times better than it was before I realized that sincerity didn't (inaudible).

THERAPIST: The only thing that strikes me is that…

CLIENT: It does make me feel alienated from them, which is not necessarily a bad thing but…

THERAPIST: It seems to be somehow like how related to your; I think pretty persistent worry that that's what everybody else is doing to you.

CLIENT: Mm hmm. [34:28]

THERAPIST: (inaudible)

CLIENT: Yep because if I'm doing it why isn't everybody else doing it? It makes life so much easier. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Mm hmm. And…I think feeling like people are giving you something more genuine in a way is good in itself but in a way is terribly sad.

CLIENT: How is it sad? Sorry I didn't quite (inaudible).

THERAPIST: In the same way that your parents have ever been wrong about you is terribly sad.

CLIENT: Mm hmm. I see.

THERAPIST: Just that you, yeah, you are different, you can have something different from people, this is just not what you had.

CLIENT: Yeah… [35:43]

THERAPIST: Its time.

CLIENT: I will see you tomorrow.

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