TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: I haven’t checked with insurance yet.

(Pause): [00:00:10 00:00:19]

CLIENT: So I had my last appointment with Dr. Hoffsteder yesterday. She was very nice to me.

THERAPIST: Good.

CLIENT: She said she didn’t see the point in finding another psychiatrist at present. She was like, what would that person do? I said I didn’t know either. But –

THERAPIST: Un huh.

CLIENT: So yeah. So. That’s sort of a relief for me.

THERAPIST: Uh huh.

(Pause): [00:00:40 00:01:01]

CLIENT: So yesterday at the end of the session you were talking about the time you sent me to the hospital – one of the times you sent me to the hospital and you said that I was very angry about it. And I feel like I remember being very, very angry in that moment but I also still sort of feel that way, like it’s sort of like having to go to a party I don’t really want to go to and I know that I will enjoy myself in the end and I know that it will be fine but I still just really don’t want to go. That’s like most days. Or that’s what it feels like right now anyway.

(Pause): [00:02:05 00:02:11]

THERAPIST: You’d still mostly rather be dead?

CLIENT: Yeah. In balance, like you know, I feel like I’m enjoying being alive and things are fine but all of that – but it just doesn’t seem worth it.

(Pause): [00:02:31 00:02:35]

CLIENT: You know which is different from like being actively suicidal. I just –

(Pause): [00:02:44 00:03:09]

CLIENT: You know, when I am happy mostly, I don’t think about that. But when I do think about it even when I’m happy (unclear) what has to be done. (Pause): [00:03:24 [00:03:33]

THERAPIST: It’s like it didn’t occur to me that that was like an option for so long and now that it has become an option, now I just can’t get that out of my head and turn back into ‘well that’s just the way things are.’

(Pause): [00:03:47 00:04:12]

CLIENT: It’s like I can see a different way my life could have gone that I would have preferred that.

(Pause): [00:04:19 00:04:31]

THERAPIST: If you kill yourself.

CLIENT: Yeah. Except –

(Pause): [00:04:34 00:04:43]

CLIENT: You know I wouldn’t have preferred the things this does to other people which is why I didn’t kill myself, but just like taking me into consideration, except I can’t just take me into consideration, ever. I don’t know. That’s not how people work. It’s never just me.

(Pause): [00:05:12 [00:05:27]

THERAPIST: Well I think essentially what you’re trying to do at the moment in telling me about this is put aside how you worry it could maybe feel or how I might react and say what you actually wanted for yourself.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:05:52 00:06:02]

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean I really wanted to say that.

THERAPIST: Uh huh.

(Pause): [00:06:07 00:06:44]

CLIENT: Like so many of the individual things are good and I just – it just doesn’t seem worth it. Because it’s hard. (Crying)

(Pause): [00:07:02 00:07:16]

CLIENT: I went out for drinks with acquaintances from college, which went way better than it had any right to. (Laughs) Yeah, it was really fun actually. We went to a little bar and restaurant in the square. It was awesome and I hadn’t been there. Like it’s weird meeting people that you knew in college and realize oh, like times changes other people, too, in nice ways and they’re both like people that are very nice but who I didn’t have a lot of use for. Just like nice people that were kind of on the periphery of my group and I just didn’t get to know them really well. And they seem a lot more interesting now. So that’s good. Yeah. Yeah. One of them was like just starting out as a litigator and is really excited about it and really loves it and was like you know, sort of geeking out about being a lawyer which I found hilarious and the other one is, she just finished her dissertation and is starting her internship in clinical psychology and so like she was talking about – she like works with – she’s working with kids and they both seem really happy and were easy to talk to.

(Pause): [00:09:10 00:09:22]

CLIENT: Yeah, it’s sort of like I set up these go and be social things and dreaded them severely and they all turned out to be pretty good. Maybe now it’ll help me dread the next one less. (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:09:45 00:10:39]

CLIENT: (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:10:41 00:11:12]

CLIENT: And I’m not entirely clear why.

(Pause): [00:11:12 00:11:36]

CLIENT: I’m feeling very tired (unclear) which I don’t have much patience with. I had a (unclear) for breakfast because I woke up and we didn’t have anything to eat which is fine and then the milk had gone bad so I couldn’t make anything so I said I’m getting out of here. Like, that’s it. I didn’t put the spoiled milk back in the fridge this time, but I almost did. (Laughs)

(Pause): [00:12:17 00:12:44]

CLIENT: It’s nice to be in a financial position where I can afford to do that.

(Pause): [00:12:47 00:13:48]

CLIENT: I can’t tell – I’m not sure whether it’s that I’m unhappy with various people in my life or if it’s like even though I’m pretty happy with all of the people in my life like they don’t, they don’t have –

(Pause): [00:14:16 00:14:47]

CLIENT: I was reading T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets” which I had a high school teacher, which was a teacher actually at the boy’s school that was affiliated with us. I had him only as a senior and he was like one of the best teachers I ever had except for the fact that the older I get the more I’m like, no – that’s really not okay. You should figure out a way around this. He was just like really late. He would take like three months to grade papers, at least. Just nothing was never on time, nothing. Like he never got anything back to you. So at like my high school graduation he said, “congratulations, you’re a wonderful student and I don’t usually do this but I have a gift for you, but I left it at home.” And was like, ‘I’ll send it to you,’ and I was like, ‘okay.’ Five years later (laughs) at St. Margaret’ graduation like I’d been teaching there a year and am leaving he was like here you go and gave me the “Four Quartets” and Virginia Woolf’s “The Waves,” which are two of the most opaque works of literature I can conceive of. I actually didn’t finish “The Waves.” I didn’t like Virginia Woolf that much. But I really like these.

THERAPIST: I don’t know (unclear). I know like, “The Wasteland” and all that stuff. It’s sort of like it’ later than “The Wasteland,” like one of his last big works. He talks about a lot of the same things as “The Wasteland.” As far as I can tell he has a lot of religious stuff and a lot of metaphysical stuff at that time a lot. And sort of deliberately not looking at scholarship or tried to trying to crack it. Just reading it. It’s very beautiful.

(Pause): [00:17:14 00:18:04]

CLIENT: Yeah, a couple of passages in there I’ve seen or heard at a church service set to music for religious context like you know, he’s definitely talking about religion. I don’t know exactly what he was saying, but I do like composers who take something that sounds nice and say, this sounds good even if it doesn’t exactly mean what they think it means, but you know.

(Pause): [00:18:45 00:19:53]

CLIENT: I don’t usually have the patience for poetry.

(Pause): [00:19:54 00:20:03]

CLIENT: Or actually the patience for poetry that’s unfamiliar.

(Pause): [00:20:05 00:20:17]

CLIENT: But I feel that there’s not that much else to demand like absorbed concentration for me.

(Pause): [00:20:34 00:20:58]

THERAPIST: I think it’s really quite sad I think to do with (Pause) how out of step things are. I’m thinking of the spoiled milk which you curiously own but micro-flexively put back. You know? I find something very poignant about that.

CLIENT: Oh. Do other people not do that?

THERAPIST: Not that. Like the trope of spoiled milk in particular, you know? Like you having to hold onto things that are supposed to be like not (unclear) good, but (unclear). You know, are kind of gross and awful. And pretending you’re glad, which you are, of course, to be in a (unclear) position in which you’re staying at home and not having anything but spoiled milk. But as a way in which that situation seemed more resonant than the one of having been unable to go out. Like, in reality this morning you could go out which is great. But it sounds like the more familiar – it either felt more familiar would be the one where you had to stay home and not have to go out. And then there’s the (unclear) kind of absurdly out of step getting back to you.

CLIENT: (Laughs) Yeah, it is a little ridiculous.

THERAPIST: And on top of that, it gives you the stuff that is incredibly opaque and difficult. I’m sure that like in the sense of it it’s all okay, but it’s all off.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think he gave them to me because I just loved the opaque and difficult stuff. The class I took from him was a class on Paradise Lost and I like loved it, loved it.

(Pause): [00:23:55 00:24:12]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you’re right but you don’t like Virginia Woolf and yet the guy (unclear) something for you to not have gotten in that piece of reading or was that in that one period, I don’t know.

CLIENT: I read them once through and then kind of put them down. I haven’t really read them again until now. So essentially, no, I didn’t get to them until now.

THERAPIST: Oh.

(Pause): [00:24:34 00:25:00]

THERAPIST: It sounds a bit disturbing to me for (unclear) the things to me that just kind of don’t really make sense but they kind of sound nice and then they become part of worship.

CLIENT: Yeah. I feel like that is sort of sniping at people in church music who – I mean my experience with people in church music is that none of them are as smart as they think they are and they’re all kind of assholes but it’s not based on a huge variety of people but enough to sense a pattern.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: (Cross talk).

CLIENT: (Unclear) loved T.S. Eliot and didn’t really know anything. (Laughs)

THERAPIST: Okay. All right.

CLIENT: (Laughing) So yeah it is a little bit problematic.

THERAPIST: I guess I admit that I clearly do not appreciate the kind of cultural overtones, but I don’t know, but can imagine that something sounding nice and being part of a worship of all things, really actually doesn’t make any sense. (Pause) (inaudible) however, provided for you is striking, but again, I mean (unclear) together (inaudible).

CLIENT: I mean I feel like in some ways this things sounding nice but not actually meaning what we want them to mean in our (unclear) having difficult things in our notice – that’s a lot. There’s a lot of that in going to church. I don’t believe what other people believe and I’m never going to. I did get to the point where I don’t call myself religious, go to church and am part of that community. I just (unclear) that it’s not going to be about believing the same things as other people for me. It’s not going to be hearing things that make sense to me. In maybe one in four sermons I feel like actually speaks to me. Two and four – well, that’s nice but not really relevant to my situation. (Unclear) usually think that they’re just wrong. (Pause) But like, in a sense, being in a religious community is really important to me and this is sort of as good as it’s ever going to get.

(Pause): [00:29:04 00:29:20]

CLIENT: Which is depressing but less depressing than not being part of anything at all. And also less depressing than not thinking about it very much. Believing what other people believe because we believe in them is pretty depressing to me.

(Pause): [00:29:49 00:30:13]

CLIENT: I’m having a really hard time today.

(Pause): [00:30:14 00:30:47]

THERAPIST: I wonder if (unclear) too quickly at least at the beginning about not really wishing or preferring to get –

CLIENT: Maybe. I don’t know what to say about it.

(Pause): [00:31:10 00:31:28]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I don’t know if, what else (unclear) to say. I guess I do wonder if you could be talking about and missed the point somewhat, about how you’re actually feeling in that, that’s kind of really where it’s at.

(Pause): [00:32:02 00:32:14]

THERAPIST: Kinda scary to stay with?

CLIENT: Yeah. Definitely.

(Pause): [00:32:20 00:32:31] CLIENT: Yeah, it’s sort of like sensitive here, all of these other things are important.

(Pause): [00:32:35 00:33:09]

CLIENT: Yeah, it is hard to return to (unclear). (Whispering) (inaudible).

(Pause): [00:33:39 00:34:10]

CLIENT: I don’t know what to do about it. (Unclear) The only thing I can think to do about it is (unclear) that’s the way I feel, then (unclear) and sort of put it aside and keep on doing all these other things and concerning myself with all these other things (unclear) sort of hope that the momentum will carry thing. Which works pretty well, actually.

(Pause): [00:34:50 00:35:21]

CLIENT: Yes, I would prefer not to be alive than the sort of angry that I am.

THERAPIST: I think you also assume that I think you must be seeing something wrong or that you’re wrong about that or something like that.

CLIENT: How do you mean?

THERAPIST: That I – this is sort of a hunch, more than anything, so I’m pretty tentative about it, but if you say that you’d rather be dead, that I would think, oh you know, she must be wrongheaded about that or it’s just because she’s not seeing things clearly or –

CLIENT: Yeah, I think that’s right. Not like I feel like either you really get it or you have a lot of patience for it, but maybe more the latter.

(Pause): [00:36:49 00:37:06]

THERAPIST: Well, but I guess it also means that however patiently I may be putting up with it as opposed to thinking maybe you’re right, maybe you would rather die.

(Pause): [00:37:30 00:37:35]

THERAPIST: And it really might hurt you that much.

(Pause): [00:37:37 00:37:56]

CLIENT: I guess it’s more like regardless of how sympathetic to that you are or how much you actually understand that or how much you share that your commitment has to be to keeping me alive.

(Pause): [00:38:20 00:38:48]

THERAPIST: Which sometimes demonstrates a belief that being alive is better.

CLIENT: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:38:54 00:39:04]

CLIENT: Or at least a commitment to the idea. I feel a believe is (unclear).

THERAPIST: Yeah. Sure. I think I take your point.

(Pause): [00:39:09 00:39:30]

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean, since you bring it up it feels sort of lonely to me.

THERAPIST: Uh huh.

CLIENT: (Whispers) (inaudible).

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(Pause): [00:39:38 00:40:00]

CLIENT: (Crying)

(Pause): [00:40:00 00:42:48]

THERAPIST: We’ll stop now.

CLIENT: Yeah, I know.

THERAPIST: Will I see you tomorrow?

CLIENT: Yes.

END TRANSCRIPT