TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Are you okay?

CLIENT: (Coughing) Yeah, just need to take a couple seconds to recollect. (Pause) Okay. Oh, I'm sorry, I got water on your floor.

THERAPIST: Don't worry about it. (Pause)

CLIENT: Thank you for all this week. I've just been... I feel like I am constantly now at the mercy of other people who don't really care about much... about your own personal life.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And having an employer basically, it's on, it it's not on, it's on, and so I'm like, can I just go through your e-mail? Can I just find out when the thing is? [0:00:59] (Exhaling) It's been a really freaking hard week. I am... as you know it was tax free weekend.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And so I worked all day Saturday and all day Sunday, some pretty long hours, which was pretty rough on me. And then long days on Monday and Tuesday. So I just feel like right now I just... I'm still not getting back to normal?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So I'm just sort of in a state of hyper-exhaustion. So (exhaling)... but I... (Pause) I'm trying to collect both my thoughts here. [0:01:54] The... it's just been, like I said, kind of hell on me.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I talk of it. I was very excited, because I had some friends who had been kind of near me. But one of them is turning out to be a little bit more of a burden than a help right now. So... and not really sure babysitting Joshua (sp?) is going to be easy for me right now. He's always been sort of a na�ve guy. He came out... he just finished his PhD down at UNC, and he's always been kind of na�ve. But he's... how do I explain this? Trying to explain to him the way that things work in Providence has been really hard, because...

THERAPIST: What's he doing up here? Is he postdoc?

CLIENT: He's a postdoc over at Harvard. [0:02:53] And, although he's making 50K, I had explained to him... he's like, well, I still need to save money. And I'm like, oh, yeah...

THERAPIST: (Chuckling)

CLIENT: (Chuckling) That's not making big bucks up here.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: That's just above food stamps, basically. And then he was checking out all these places that, in Kentucky, are not especially that far away? But I guess there's this propaganda about the... I mean, yes, there's a fantastic public transit system. There really is. But he's like, have you heard of these places? I'm like, I kind of heard of... I might have heard of them. But I'm like, do you have a car, because it might be easier just to sell the car and stay in the city. And he's like, no, I don't have a car. I heard there's public transportation. I'm like, oh, well, let me explain to you. And then I did the... it's been a lot of babysitting. I feel really bad. But at the same time I feel like I need to let somebody else know, because it's very easy. I mean, I never thought it was a [bat trap] (ph) of... he grew up in Kentucky. [0:03:59] I met him at Virginia Tech, and he was still... he was mostly na�ve through that. But trying to explain to him that, at least for a little bit, find yourself a sublet in Hanover. Just one month sublet, so you can figure out the lay of the land. And he's like, oh, can I stay in your house? I'm like, no, that's going to become problematic. It's... I don't think he understands that also the way that apartments are, that there is... I mean, staying on my couch is not as easy as you would... for a night, maybe. Two nights, that's okay.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: That kind of thing. But then the way things are cut up, there's no ability for me to get to the bathroom back and forth without walking in where he is. These... you know what northeastern non-tract home apartment type things are.

THERAPIST: Right. Yeah.

CLIENT: They're not apartment homes like I (ph) had in Kentucky.

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: I wish that... the closet that I... any of the closets I had while I was living in Kentucky...

THERAPIST: (Crosstalk) 5,000 square foot, two bedroom apartment in Kentucky (chuckling). [0:03:59]

CLIENT: Apartment. Yeah. We have many of these. Yeah, so... luckily he doesn't actually have a car...

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:05:07) parking space here.

CLIENT: Yeah, and actually that's one of the things I really loved about Kentucky, was the fact that property was very cheap. And, of our friends who are like-minded, I am super excited about... it sounds weird, but Everett, who got the 11,000 square foot home that he just got... I'm actually very excited for him. He knew what he was getting into, that was what he wanted. I don't know if I mentioned that his company was bought out. Yeah, it's very big (inaudible at 0:05:38). Battlenet (sp?) is basically any cloud experience use, if anything's not Microsoft, is almost... has... uses Battlenet technology, the technology that he did. I really feel like I mentored him, because he has no degree. [0:05:53] He was a hacker that was just a buddy of Mike's back when we were all undergrads. And I told... he was sitting in a classroom, and I sort of got him into this... I sort of mentored him into living this quote, unquote straight life. And so I couldn't... I am just as happy for him as I would ever be for myself. It sounds cheesy, and it sounds not genuine, but it really is, first of all. So... and not really truly sour grapes, but I also couldn't upkeep the house (laughing).

THERAPIST: (Chuckling)

CLIENT: I bet she can't either. But I am really happy about... but Joshua is one of those kids who, he lived a very sheltered life. And I am really worried that he's going to become a burden to me, a big burden. So I decided what I'm just going to do is I'm going to put together a package and mail it down to him of things he needs to know. I'm going to send him a blank card and things about how to get a Zip card membership and so he knows to get his license renewed before that and a bunch of other stuff, and a decent subway map, and just mail the stuff down to him and being like, these are the numbers you need to call. [0:06:55] You do not need to call me to find... or do not need to e-mail me, so that I can... it's not that I'm trying to say goodbye in any way. I just... I honestly thought by this point in our lives that he would have figured it out. But it's... yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: At the same time though I have to be really careful because he and I have a very longstanding friendship. He's one of the few people that still believes in... he still, I believe, worships me as being the most smart person he's ever met, which is why he calls me up to ask me questions about things I have no knowledge about whatsoever. Yeah, things like differential torque on Audis, (inaudible at 0:07:40). He still thinks I know everything. So it's flattering but...

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I'm glad that he's going to Harvard for his postdoc, but at the same time I'm trying to be really careful without sounding really mean about what he's getting himself into...

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Because it's a hard world up here. [0:08:00] It is not... I mean, not that UNC isn't hard. But the easygoing lifestyle isn't quite the same thing. It's a very different place, and it's a lot more expensive. So, I mean, we live... when we lived in Orlando, we could buy... we could rent four or five apartments for what we pay for our tiny little place here. But it's sort of a getting used to thing, trying to set boundaries appropriately, that kind of thing. It's hard, though, like I say, because he's one of the people that remembers me back when I was brilliant and still thinks... treats me and thinks of me that way. So we'll see. But yeah, just that, work. I have a ton of work to put in, too. I'm teaching some iBooks Author type stuff to my (crosstalk).

THERAPIST: Are you less brilliant now?

CLIENT: Yeah. I think I am. [0:09:04] My ability to... I guess probably... (Pause) My ability to take in information, retain it, and immediately go to the next step is not nearly as good as it used to be. I can't have... right now, for example, I can't have my attention divided at all. I can use my iPad, or I can watch television. I cannot do both. I can probably tell you what the name of the show is in the background, but I am not able to split my attention at all. And I just... I sat through a Linux meeting in which I, although I had to be there, realized that I had to just sort of... I couldn't give it the attention that I need to. [0:10:05] And so I sort of (chuckling)... sort of set screen capture on for the whole thing just in case, so I can go back later to it. It's something that... I mean, yes, it was presented horribly. But it used to be that I could find a way to make it engaging to me. I've been struggling with picking up... I've always had trouble with languages, but I'm really struggling with Latin. I did not realize... I really thought that I had an advantage to it, but I do not have an advantage to it because there are not a lot of letters but just a few letters that are very different. The symbol is pronounced very differently and needs a completely different thing. And, because it isn't all of them, it's only, like, five, is... my having to stop and reprocess is getting harder. [0:11:01] But I feel like I'm less brilliant than I used to be.

THERAPIST: [That's a lot to leave] (ph).

CLIENT: Yeah. I have moments... basically it's all about priming for me. If I can shove off all the other things I have to pay attention to, I can usually still seem pretty darn astoundingly intelligent. But (pause) having those perfect situations don't... aren't as practical in adulthood that it is in college life. There really are other things that are competing with your attention. And so (exhaling) it is hard. [0:11:55] (Pause) But I think that at least what I'm teaching on Monday hopefully will really make me at least feel better about myself, I hope. And it's nothing that extremely hard work won't get me past. So I am teaching my fellow colleagues a class that hopefully with... that I'm designing right now because I haven't had time otherwise (chuckling), about basically how to add in new levels of functionality to iBooks, for teaching people who want to use iBooks Author to program and make widgets and make things that are, not preprogrammed, but go to this next level of this. So being able to do touch interact... to give you an idea since you're a math person, imagine if you will something where... if you're doing something with... you can set a permissible sense of row swapping. And if you pull to the wrong side it would turn red versus pull to the right side and turn blue.

THERAPIST: I see, yeah.

CLIENT: That kind of stuff, or something very... something where you could pull along. You could see what... when you're changing a variable, you can immediately see (crosstalk)...

THERAPIST: (Crosstalk) yeah. Wow.

CLIENT: That kind of stuff. [0:13:06] But the row swapping is easier than you think. You just think of all the permutations, make some of them red, some of them blue, and same. That one's a lot easier, because the other one, they have to be sent out to... and this is actually what I'm thinking about for this, is (inaudible at 0:13:18) and having it dump back what the information is, which is different. But being able to teach this next level of this. And to me it's really important because I used to do this kind of stuff on a corporate level for Microsoft all the time. And then I sort of had my life fall apart. And I sort of on purpose made it seem like I was doing it for personal reasons but not the same personal reasons of taking time off from that. And I really miss being on that more global level.

THERAPIST: What did you used to do?

CLIENT: This is kind of stuff, where I would teach these classes...

THERAPIST: I see. [0:13:56]

CLIENT: These kind of innovative things to get everyone's skills up on stuff, stuff that would be unusual, new technology, that kind of thing. And I miss doing that. So we'll see. (Pause) But yeah, so, like I said, it... I go through these periods of thinking... the terror isn't actually that I can't do it. It's that I don't have the physical reserve to do it. So... and I hate that. I hate having that feeling of being afraid of not being physically able to do it, not that I can't...

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But... (Pause) I just feel like I am... although I do not work many physical hours compared to other people, I do feel like I exhaust it and just don't have enough hours in a day, and... I don't know. [0:15:05] Lately I've been feeling really bad about myself a lot. And so I just... I'm trying to find something to feel good about myself about. I feel like (pause) I've been letting, not just people, but creatures in my life around me down because of my incompetence of one thing or another. I finally got a chance to take my turtles to the vet. And I really should be doing it every year, and I haven't. And I've been feeling really bad about it. So I decided that it was worth it not to not be able to sleep at night thinking I'm not taking care of my pets. So I have this excursion to do that on Wednesday? [0:15:55] Yeah, it had to be Wednesday, do that. So (pause) it is expensive and hard to find turtle doctors, believe it or not. (Laughing) I know.

THERAPIST: (Chuckling) Okay. [Too much of a stretch] (ph).

CLIENT: Yeah, so... (Pause) But I guess I'm just looking for something to feel good about myself about. I don't necessarily think that I'm all bad. I just feel like I... it's... (Pause) I guess that I was just trying to say is it's kind of hard when you're just sort of struggling and...

THERAPIST: Is it possible some of this is displacement? [0:16:55] I mean, you're talking about taking care of your friend from Kentucky.

CLIENT: That I don't necessarily feel bad about so much. I mean, I feel bad about it in terms of exhaust... I don't feel bad about the fact that I can't take care of him. I just need... I mean, he's about my age, maybe a year younger. So that's more of a... I need to... I feel like I need to do that because I felt alone, and I want to make sure that he has a good chance of it. Plus, it will... it could come back to pay back for me. But...

THERAPIST: I guess what I mean is (pause), I would imagine you're not feeling very much taken care of, especially in light of the amount of work and amount of stress and amount of physical pain and exhaustion you've been having to deal with. [0:18:00] And I know that you've got to take care of, for example, the turtles, but I wonder if some of the charge on that is also a charge of, somebody somewhere has got to be taken care of, having something to do with your not feeling so much that way yourself.

CLIENT: Actually this is one of those things where it's actually more guilt about having to be taken care of. At least lately I have had to be taken care of a lot.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: So it's sort of an inverse thing.

THERAPIST: Yeah. No, I can sense it's kind of the opposite (inaudible at 0:18:32) where you feel really bad about how much you have to be taken care of, and so focusing on other people who need to be taken care of in part assuages that.

CLIENT: Exactly. It is... I also feel really bad about the overall sum cost of taking care of me, because it looks like we may have broken even by the extra hours that I worked, because of the cost. [0:19:04] We had to rent a car so that I could get back and forth and back and forth to work. Usually I would... the only time we have to do it is Sunday because I have to be at work before the buses start running out in Salem. So that's not... that's one rent a week, but since this was lots of back and forth we rented something from Enterprise. And so there was that plus gas plus some other things that just needed to be taken care of because of that and just... and it makes me feel bad, because I feel like, on some level, that the amount of money that I need for that additional amount of time was totally spent on expenses for keeping me able to keep going.

THERAPIST: (Crosstalk), yeah. [0:19:50]

CLIENT: I don't... I should probably preface this. I mean, I know you already know this. I don't really believe in reflexology. I don't believe that it's that point in my foot to my spleen or anything like that. However, I did discover that when I was working in Kentucky long hours in heels... that I found that going to these places and paying to have someone rub my feet for an hour did a lot to making... from my overall wellbeing in chronic pain. I don't believe any of it, though.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I believe that there's... rubbing the areas that are swollen and that are painful do make me feel better.

THERAPIST: (Chuckling)

CLIENT: So what I did was I arranged to do something like that basically that Saturday night in between the two, up in Cheshire.

THERAPIST: I see. Right.

CLIENT: So there's an expense with that, and (pause) I think it was absolutely 100% important to do because it... I went in kind of delirious and not feeling very well...

THERAPIST: Oh gosh.

CLIENT: I get... sometimes when I'm in a lot of chronic pain I get almost punch drunk from it? Not really punch drunk, I don't know how to explain it. I get kind of spacey from the pain. And I just don't notice things. [0:20:59] And, I mean, it has to be really bad. And this was a combination of losing my voice due to having to raise my voice and being on my feet and being in pain and then also being abused quite a bit by a few people, that I definitely was... just having one major thing taken away made it... made me able to go home, get some sleep, and go back to work the next day.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So... which is kind of important for me to keep going. So there's just... like I said, sometimes I just feel like Sisyphus, that's part of the thing. I don't really... and not even just monetarily, but in life I don't feel like I'm really getting anywhere sometimes.

THERAPIST: Yeah. (Pause)

CLIENT: (Coughing) And I don't mean career advancement or anything like that. I mean...

THERAPIST: Personal [kind of] (ph).

CLIENT: Yeah. [0:20:59]

THERAPIST: Yeah. As I recall, Sisyphus is working pretty hard, too. [0:22:05]

CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) Yep. (Pause) And so basically I've been sort of artificially... and I don't live my life on line, but I am artificially propping myself up with little projects to try and make... it's more about completing the project less than the public attention from said project, because I really don't' give a damn about people I've never met before, really (chuckling).

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: It's more of a, okay, so I sat down, and I wrote this, or I sat down, and I produced this little video, or I did this. And it makes me feel a little bit better, because I can actually say, okay, well, this is what I did. [0:22:57] I did something. And I... it's funny, because over the years I look back at things I write and go, holy crap, I actually write pretty darn well. But, when I sit down and write it, it's terrible. And so it's like, I have sort of this... it takes... I write very well, but it takes a long time to do it. I can't just pound it out. But I feel in some ways maybe again it's part of the struggle to feel really worthwhile. Same thing with the Latin.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: It's... yes, I'm struggling really hard with it. But it is... I think that if it were easy that it wouldn't be nearly as... these little fake projects to do something wouldn't necessarily be as fulfilling. So... (Pause) [0:23:59] But...

THERAPIST: [These are the kind of things that] (ph) give you more that sense of involving yourself.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Personally (ph) meaningful.

CLIENT: Yeah, doing something.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Something other than sleeping and wasting away. Even, I mean, on some level just getting laundry done is somewhat of an incentive. I get a lot of pride out of what I have in my house. Semi-clean, it's never fully clean. But straightened enough that it doesn't feel distracting. I have a really hard time right now lately with focus. I don't know if I can emphasize that enough. It's actually something that I (pause) dislike greatly. I used to make the joke that I have attention surplus disorder, because, when there was something that was really important, I would basically make sure... I mean, I would not... I wanted to make sure I could dive into every detail and really understand it before I would let anything else in. [0:25:11]

And so the fact that I can have conversations, walk away, and not even... not just bullet points but that I just talk to. And I am really finding... I mean, part of it is I've identified that I need to make sure that I don't try and multitask technology. I knew that already. I mean, everyone at work makes fun of me because I don't carry my phone while on my job, unless it's something important. I never carry my personal technology with me. I leave it in my locker. But, I mean, it is too tempting. There's lots of... there's a million different reasons why I don't. But the other reason why is because it is already... during certain circumstances in life I just feel like I can't pay attention to the phone and pay attention to somebody else in reality. [0:26:05] I just can't.

THERAPIST: Right. And that sounds like also that it would be hard to always kind of make the right decision about that, that it might be easy to get sucked into paying attention to the phone instead of paying attention to the person...

CLIENT: Oh, totally.

THERAPIST: Which I imagine is also another feature of this same stuff.

CLIENT: Yeah. I have always abhorred when people did it to me. I understand there are certain situations where you kind of need to. But even then lately I have been having more and more difficulty... it's not that I've been having trouble pulling away from it. I mean, I can definitely pull away from it. But I have really hard time managing both at the same time if I have to. So I just try not to.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:26:54]

CLIENT: And it... (Pause) In some ways, I mean, I'm losing out on a lot. But I'm not really sure if having it... (Pause) I don't know. It's... (Pause) (Exhaling) It's frustrating for me. It's really frustrating. So now I'm trying to keep... if I'm doing something particular like that but trying to make it this instrumental technology... like, if I am watching a TV show about X and I need to look up something referential to that, I will do that specifically referential to the show or to the whatever I'm doing. If I'm at a restaurant and I'm curious about what this and that, I may look up something there. But I don't want to be one of those people that spends all their time on the phone because, not only do I find it obnoxious, but I don't really feel like I'm really getting that much out of the experience either. [0:28:03] And I know this a very common phenomenon that lots of people feel themselves. I just don't ever want to... I didn't want.. I've not experienced the pitfall per se yet, but, boy, I don't want to get there.

THERAPIST: Yeah. But also, I mean, you don't sort of trust yourself not to in the way that you probably would have years ago.

CLIENT: Yeah. Oh, I could have easily balanced things out before. But also at the same time I also had a rigid sense of manners and politeness on some level as well still. And I still have them, and people think it's funny and kind of old fashioned about it. I don't take calls at the table. I'm sorry, I just can't do that. Or a lot of public places, just can't. But it just... yeah. [0:28:58] (Pause) So... but it's always such a weird thing being a person who teaches and is part of a very high technology company, having to have a certain amount of downtime away from technology. So... (Pause) And it's very hard because my feelings are not with the general public opinion. And therefore I sort of have to hedge ever expressing my feelings about that kind of stuff. My favorite one in terms of that is, people ask me if I have Twitter. And I'm like, I can't keep myself to 140 characters. It just doesn't happen.

THERAPIST: (Chuckling)

CLIENT: That's the only... in a sense it's technically true. It's sidestepping the thing of...

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: The fact that I find oversharing to be way too invasive. I don't really have anything to say about my day or whatever, too. [0:29:58] But it's just... (Pause) Yeah. (Pause) (Exhaling) I guess (inaudible at 0:30:09) the big theme of the day is I'm just not feeling real great about myself right now.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And I'm just... (Pause) I don't distinctly feel like I want to... that I'm worthless or anything like that. I just [wish I hadn't] (ph) had a bad run of things.

THERAPIST: Yeah, [I understand that] (ph) you're feeling, as you said, guilty about being very stuck on care and being taken care of and resources. And also you're not doing enough that feels substantive and meaningful.

CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) [0:30:59] I don't feel like I am manufacturing the criticism in my life. However I really need to figure out a way to filter it out in a way that is less... (Pause) Finding a way to basically handle situations like that, where I feel like I have to scramble to justify my existence with... or justify my whatever with people in a way that is non-confrontational but not my total obsequious nature at my job either. So apparently it was a big shocker when I told a customer they were unkind to me. They were shocked that I actually did that. They said that that was actually worse than me actually saying other bad words.

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: This lady wanted to know my schedule, and she wanted... she was, I mean, really abusive to me, really. Other people on the floor, from across the floor, heard her. [0:31:57]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And then she wanted to know my schedule and this and that. I said, well, Microsoft doesn't disclose it to people. And she's like, well, can you tell us? And I said, ma'am, you've been exceptionally unkind to me, and I don't really want to get in... put myself in position where I'm exclusively catering to you.

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: And she was shocked, because she was. I mean, she was a bully and a jerk. And (pause) I deal with that a lot. I deal with a lot of people. I don't understand why it is, but I have a lot of people in my life, people I barely know, who for some reason have to feel like they need to pass comment on my life on some level. And I just need to be able to filter that out better, because I by nature think that somebody is well-meaning. And therefore I'm like... (Pause) Yeah, I ought to pause and take into consideration what they're saying. But it's not even that. Sometime people aren't even freaking well-meaning. [0:32:59] They're just saying shit just to make... just to...

THERAPIST: Yeah, sounds [fun stuff] (ph).

CLIENT: Yeah. Or just to be judgmental. It's just... (Pause) And I don't really carry necessarily the individual things with me all the time. I don't really remember much about any one given thing. I do carry with me when my doctors give me crap, if only because in theory they're supposed to be right. But... or my in-laws. I don't believe it, but, you're told anything long enough it's... I mean (pause), if doing certain types of behaviors, telling somebody over and over again didn't eventually work to break them, then they wouldn't do that in the military to prisoners and things like that. [0:33:59] After a certain while, even though you think that you're resisting against it, you're still on some level... (Pause) It still could... you'd carry it around with you. It's really hard not to, especially when you are the special situation in so many situations. The situation where it's not... it is not this, it is this. When the...

I told you many times about my in-laws. They run various different kinds of diagnoses to... as a way of controlling me. I know I'm not bipolar. I grew up with a very good friend of mine who did. I know what that looks like. But at the same time it definitely keeps me in check for showing any enthusiasm. It makes me so flat, level as much as I can, I can't get animated about anything. [0:35:00] I'm a passionate individual about certain things. But it doesn't keep me up at night. I don't give things away. I don't have that kind of problem. I just get passionate, excited about certain things. That's just who I am. But, boy, like I said, it does definitely keep me in check. It also keeps you from being sullen. I can't be mopey either.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: I have to be extremely even-keeled or else that. If I anything, I have to be... I have to watch my behavior all the time because I just don't want to hear it, because I hear it a lot. And you know what? They're not even in my life right now. And I still... (Pause) I still get it. I don't think they have any idea how effective they are at this. [0:35:54] I don't know if they should ever know because...

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Half the comments they've made, they've probably forgotten. (Pause) Or they've been said to me, so that they came by another source, such that they didn't... [their plausible deniability] (ph). That's definitely a good one. (Pause) But I don't know. (Pause) (Exhaling) [0:37:00] And so basically I just still do the Sisyphean thing of, well, it's better to at least be more or less having net of zero than end up going backwards, I guess. And that is something where, at least right now, I am almost not going backwards financially.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: My health is sinusoidal, but I think that if we evened it all out it'd probably be close to being zero. But I don't know. (Pause) So I feel like I have to be just grateful, damn it, that at least things are not bad as they could be. They could be a lot worse. (Pause) [0:37:59] It's hard to practice gratitude, though, when I feel like my life is really crummy. But I'm kind of hating myself for the fact that I'm not more grateful about what I do have and (pause) focusing on that. (Pause) But that's pretty much... [that's what's been] (ph) on my mind, I guess. [0:38:57]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. (Pause)

CLIENT: Just kind of sick of internalizing everything. (Pause) I really want to get better. (Pause)

THERAPIST: Well, [I think there are lots of] (ph) reasons. [0:39:55] But it seems to me that part of what's been so hard to manage with your illness and other things, related things, is having to change or be really flexible with your expectations for yourself and what you can do...

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And accomplish and (pause) take care of.

CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause)

THERAPIST: And maybe (pause) there's part of you that's still not very good at that. [0:40:58] (Pause)

CLIENT: I say that I am, but...

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: There's a difference between... and I'm sure if they gave me some sort of polygraph test, I could totally pass it, at least most of the time. But I don't really believe it. That's the biggest reason I get so angry about so many things, so many inputs around me about hope and things like that, is it's kind of bullshit. It's [more than] (ph) bullshit. And I think that it is... (Pause) The sooner I get okay with reduced expectations the better.

THERAPIST: Uh-huh. I think part of what makes it hard is quite understandably you're very much in love with the person you used to be. [0:41:56]

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't think I have... I mean, yes, I sound like I have it on a pedestal, but I don't think I remember it is being in any way significantly different than what it really was.

THERAPIST: Yeah. I'm not saying you're romanticizing it, (crosstalk).

CLIENT: No, I mean, if it is, it's 20% tops. (Pause) But yeah. It is...

THERAPIST: I think...

CLIENT: I miss my old life.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And I feel like... I deal constantly with... dealing constantly with actions and consequences. And I feel like this set of consequences really was not due to my own actions.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. (Pause) [0:42:55]

CLIENT: (Teary) It's also extremely distressing and humbling to realize my body's trying to kill itself.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

CLIENT: And (pause), I mean, I can see all kind of many different things to change the words for this, but I have widespread problems with my immune system. Widespread. My body's rejecting my own blood. And that's really (pause), on a level, really distressing.

THERAPIST: Uh-huh.

CLIENT: Really distressing. (Pause) [0:43:59]

THERAPIST: We should stop.

CLIENT: Sounds good. I will be back on Tuesday.

THERAPIST: Okay. See you then.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Take care.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: [How about I get the door] (ph) (crosstalk)?

CLIENT: That would be great.

THERAPIST: Bye bye, Debra (sp?).

END TRANSCRIPT