TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Let’s see. What is preferable for you?
CLIENT: Probably seven thirty would be slightly better for me. But it also it doesn’t really matter.
THERAPIST: Let’s see. Well actually I don’t have any seven thirty.
CLIENT: Okay.
(long pause)
CLIENT: I hope you’re feeling better.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
(long pause)
CLIENT: [It’s the middle of the week so there’s small children everywhere.] But I just realized that she can crawl when you’re trying to change her diaper. So, that’s a fun stage. [00:01:25]
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: Yeah. Last night Frank got home before Madison (ph) did, but just a few minutes. And when he got home Sharon (ph) had just decided that she really, really did not want to be awake anymore. So she was screaming and there was sort of nothing I could do. But the way that I get the kids to take a bath and brush their teeth and get everything done is that like, “Ok, well if you guys get done with that before your parents get home then we can read more books.”
THERAPIST: Mm.
CLIENT: So I was trying to read a book to them while Sharon (ph) was crying. And so he came in and I gave Sharon to her. And she was like, “Noooo,” and wanted to come back to me. And so it was nice and also I felt really bad. [00:02:30]
(long pause)
CLIENT: I had a talk with Candace and Pete. (inaudible at 00:03:15).
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: Pete is a lobbyist for a labor union.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: And just at some point in the conversation it sort of came up that, we all pretty much agreed that we had to be doing work that we believed in in some way.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: And just Pete is a lobbyist and Candace is a campus minister and I’m a nanny. (pause) I really don’t I mean, I feel like there are probably a fair amount of people in all of those jobs who don’t really believe in what they’re doing. (laughs)
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: But, I don’t know, it’s just (pause) [I had a nice time taking to Pete.] (ph) He’s slightly less cynical and despairing about the country. [00:04:39]
THERAPIST: Hm.
CLIENT: Because he seems neither terribly idealistic nor terribly cynical. Like it doesn’t seem like It seems like he knows that (inaudible at 00:05:04).
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: But (inaudible).
(long pause)
CLIENT: We were talking about the campaign. I said something to the effect of, you know, it was a very effective of campaign and I feel that the administration has kind of not really lived up to that. And it was one of those where he both wanted to defend Obama and also clearly had heard that a whole lot before. (laughs) [00:06:15]
THERAPIST: Uh huh. Yeah. (pause)
CLIENT: It was one of those, I started the evening by saying, “I really don’t like to talk about “ Like I really don’t like talking about politics. I just almost always avoid it. And so we got to the bar, it was like a German beer garden so there are these giant pitchers of beer, like a pitcher of beer each. And he kind of sat down and he said, “So, why don’t you like talking about politics.” (laughs) And I was like, “Shit.”
THERAPIST: Uh huh. (pause)
CLIENT: So I’ll be reading through my Facebook feed and kind of like, you know, tab out all the articles that I sort of want to read and then kind of look at them and see like how tired I am, and then I just through and read them. And one of my friends from William & Mary, he’s a Bible scholar but he’s a quite conservative religious person as far as my friends go. [00:07:53]
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: And sometimes there’s very interesting awful (ph) stuff to talk about and sometimes quarrel (ph). He posted an article in the New York Post about anxiety and he kind of quoted a good section of it. It seems like the point of the article is to argue that anxiety was not just something that we can’t get rid of but it’s something we shouldn’t actually try to get rid of, because it is good for us in some ways.
And I kind of read it through and like, “Oh, I need to read this.” And then about ten minutes in I’m like, “You know what, Tanya. You can just You know what you think about this. You can just sit out of this one.” (laughs)
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: You don’t have to read what this person has to say.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: So I didn’t. (pause) It’s not very easy to do that. Like to just not engage with something that you know is going to piss you off. (pause) I continue to be scared about what will happen (inaudible at 00:09:28).
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
(long pause)
CLIENT: Some days it feels less [like that.] (ph) It feels like I’m getting used to the idea and that [it’s always something that I would survive and be fine.] (ph) (pause) James has been away since Wednesday and I think yesterday, I think probably by yesterday he was up to like eighty hours of work, he said. (laughs) [00:10:48]
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: Yeah. He’s starting to get pretty tired but, you know, I think it’s good for him.
THERAPIST: You think it’s good for him?
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:11:04)
CLIENT: That’s how he works. There was a while ago where I got very grumpy with Kevin because Kevin says that for the lab’s safety that he needs two people in the lab because they’re going to be working with chemicals. And since James was the only one who would routinely be there at three o’clock in the morning, he didn’t like that very much. (laughs)
But I mean I think he agreed that it was probably a good idea and all that. So he just worked in the lab until everyone else went home and came home and wrote until three o’clock in the morning. (laughs)
THERAPIST: Uh huh. (pause)
CLIENT: It’s like it seems like he’s really missed that intensity. [00:12:17]
THERAPIST: Hm.
CLIENT: You know, I guess he’ll do this for a couple of weeks and then he’ll just crash and be useless for a week.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: And, yeah, it seems like he really misses that. I do not miss that.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: I think it just wasn’t good for me -
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: like when I had to do that. I think my work suffered overall, I think. It’s a different kind of work than James’ and you just can’t write that good of a paper in twenty-four hours.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: I mean, you know, a paper being like at least eight pages, whatever.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)
CLIENT: And yet most of the humanities people I know that’s sort of how they work also. [00:13:25]
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: I mean, definitely at William & Mary the culture was everyone was trying to write, would be trying to write all their papers in the last two weeks of the semester, I think. Put it off, put it off, put it off, put it off, and then, you know, pure terror fueling you.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)
CLIENT: It doesn’t really work for me. I mean, I’ve done it more often than not -
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: but it was bad, yeah. (pause) And so when I talk to him, James is starting to get grumpy and tired, but I also think he’s really happy. [00:14:39]
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: So that’s good.
(long pause)
THERAPIST: There was a very good Yesterday there was a question that you brought up on the issue about, I forget what day it was, I think that you brought it up on Monday, and that there was another side of it in which you feel like you’re kind of sitting this one out. And, among other things, feeling some relief from that.
CLIENT: Yeah. There are a lot of good things. Like my (inaudible at 00:15:46). (pause) Yeah. (pause) I do feel sort of like I started this week tired.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: And that it’s not really good.
THERAPIST: Mm. (pause)
CLIENT: But, you know, this version of a hectic schedule is not that comparable to -
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: you know, my twenty three year old self’s version of a hectic schedule. [00:16:54]
(long pause)
CLIENT: You know, and I wonder how much of the depression just has to do with just getting really tired and overworked.
THERAPIST: Hm.
CLIENT: You know, clearly not all of it because I did nothing for several months and was still pretty sad.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: But, I don’t know, I don’t think it helps. [00:18:08]
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
(long pause)
CLIENT: I’m a little worried that James is going to come home and I will want to see him and talk to him and do things together -
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: and like, “Hooray, my husband’s home.” And James is just going to I mean, well I know James is going to come and he’s just going to sleep for a week. (laughs) [00:19:10]
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: I’m worried about my ability to take that. (pause)
THERAPIST: [To deal with it] (ph), do you mean like it will be contagious or do you mean like to deal with him doing that?
CLIENT: Oh, I mean to deal with him doing that.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: I guess what I said doesn’t actually mean that at all. (laughs) (pause) Yeah, it’s funny when he’s not here I kind of, I have a much harder time living like a real person. Like sort of, I was just eating pizza the last two nights. Like I got pizza and I’ve just been eating it. [00:20:21]
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: I’ll probably have that for dinner tonight also.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: It’s just, yeah, I’ve also been quite tired and that combination means I’m just much more slothful than usual. Which, you know, the bar for it is pretty high. I’m usually fairly slothful as it is, you know. (pause)
THERAPIST: Well, I know that (pause) Maybe both certainly in your life and what you talk about in here, you’ve been working every bit as hard over the last year as you have been working for the last week. [00:21:32]
CLIENT: Do you think that? (pause) I sort of don’t.
THERAPIST: There seems to be a lot of work to deal with. I mean to keep yourself going, to keep from killing yourself. Well I guess it seems like it might be hard work (inaudible at 00:22:12).
CLIENT: I know that you’ve said that and other people say that, and it’s sort of something I tell myself to feel better about feeling like I just don’t really do anything. But I’m not totally sure I believe it. You know, so it’s part of like, well because it assuages my guilt it can’t possibly be that true. Or like, I don’t know. I just feel like, you know, I don’t have much to show for it other than not being dead.
I keep pointing to that as like, “That’s pretty great.” And, you know, “I continue not to be dead. Go me!” But it feels like a sort of low standard to have for life. [00:23:14]
THERAPIST: Mm.
(long pause)
CLIENT: So, yeah, it’s one of those where I think you’re probably right but I don’t actually believe you.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
(long pause) [00:24:15]
CLIENT: I used to get a lot of shit for being lazy as a kid. I’m sure you’re shocked to hear that. Yeah. I would just read books just all day. Yeah. I’d start the book and keep reading until I finished it. Sometimes it was a picture book and sometimes it was four hundred pages. But I did every day.
So I didn’t do my homework ever, at all, until I hit high school, basically. I mean I got terrible grades in middle school and I didn’t get into the high school I wanted to.
THERAPIST: [What school was that?] (ph)
CLIENT: What?
THERAPIST: [What school was that?] (ph)
CLIENT: Yeah, I wanted to go to the school my sister was at, St. Barbara’s.
THERAPIST: Mm.
CLIENT: And I didn’t do it.
(long pause) [00:25:32]
CLIENT: I got a D in English one semester. This was with the same teacher who like five years later, because Jason went through that same school and then Jason had the same teacher. He told him that I was the only person who had ever turned in a grammatically, you know, a paper that was perfect in grammar and spelling, that it didn’t have any errors. And I got a D because I just never did anything. (laughs)
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: It was like my homework would be months late. The school is pretty good in terms of like educational philosophy in some ways. I mean terrible in many ways, but I learned some Anyway, so they had this thing, basically, in middle school and lower (ph) school they just wanted to get kids to like read as much as possible, like anything. [00:26:37]
So they had a thing where you’re supposed to write down all the books you’ve read and you would get prizes or whatever.
THERAPIST: Mm hm.
CLIENT: And we had to write a certain number down. And I’m pretty sure I failed that because I didn’t have time in my head to keep track of the books I was reading.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Like I was reading a different book every day. How could I possibly write that down?
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So -
THERAPIST: Everybody knew (inaudible 00:27:01).
CLIENT: Yeah. Which I just did with Dr. Bob (ph) for two months.
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: But it kind of sucks because it’s hard. (laughs) (pause) I guess that’s pretty sad then too. (pause) Yeah. Pop told me I was lazy and I believed it. You know, the evidence is right there. Like I had like months of dirty dishes in my room. Like we would just run out of stuff on the shelves and then someone would go into my room and there it all would be. Maybe the running out of stuff on the shelves was an exaggeration, but stuff would like around for a long time. [00:28:34]
THERAPIST: Mm hm. (pause) Well (pause) I (pause) I would wonder, I’m trying to find the words, but I wonder if what you may be talking about is kind of if you want things for yourself, or if you want to do things that are [interesting for you] (ph), you’re going to have to really do them on the sly. And in such a way that you wind up being sort of shamed for it. [00:30:04]
So like with reading, it’s just ironic, isn’t it? The whole point of the schools endeavor was to try to get kids to read. And you were like, I wouldn’t say “the queen,” but I would say “the princess” of like reading books.
CLIENT: Yeah. I mean the school did sort of give me a pass on that because every single teacher was constantly having to take books away from me, because I would be reading under my desk in their class. So they got that I was reading but, yes. (laughs)
THERAPIST: Right, but you did everything you could, I think, not to get any credit. I mean, you could have spent probably, what, ten percent, fifteen percent of the time you were spending reading and done your homework instead and gotten A’s all the way through probably.
CLIENT: Mm.
THERAPIST: I guess my point is that you really had to make it, maybe you really had to make it look like you really weren’t getting anything Like you weren’t doing what you were supposed to do and there was sort of, it was more like you couldn’t really be doing anything to sustain (ph) yourself unless it sort of involved, you know, like you’ve also been kind of shamed about getting credit. [00:31:38]
CLIENT: What do you mean?
THERAPIST: Including your room too. Like, they sort of go up there and (pause) If you were going to allow yourself to nurture yourself you had to do it sort of under the radar. And in a way that made it appear as though you were just a (inaudible at 00:32:06). And -
CLIENT: So like with school, what would be the nurturing myself?
THERAPIST: Well, you read all the time, which you loved.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And that was exactly what they wanted you to do. And I’m sure it was also in part and unrelated to what your homework was a lot of time. I mean I’m sure had (inaudible at 00:32:32). But a lot of homework that kids who went to middle school, as I’ve seen it is, is reading books, reading packets. You know? Researching this. Like studying grammar sort of involves the kind of things you really liked to do anyway.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And really good at doing.
CLIENT: Hm.
THERAPIST: And I guess some of that food stuff sounds so (inaudible at 00:33:09). And I imagine Margot (ph) had you keep a food journal because she was worried that you weren’t eating enough or something.
CLIENT: Oh, it was -
THERAPIST: Or maybe I’m [completely wrong]. (ph)
CLIENT: No, it was part of the, basically I was just like tracking a whole bunch of factors with my mood to see how they affected it.
THERAPIST: I see. Okay. So that was wrong.
CLIENT: And she eventually suggested some dietary changes.
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: Mostly like, “Well, maybe you should give up gluten.”
THERAPIST: I see. It was stuff like that.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Okay. I had the impression she was, because you sort of talked in terms of losing your appetite.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: I assumed it related to that and that, you know, what was uncomfortable about that is like hard to talk to her or to show her how you were nurtured and took care of yourself. [00:34:12]
CLIENT: Yeah. What I remember most about that period of losing my appetite is that I felt like I was eating just fine, but James got pretty worried -
THERAPIST: Uh huh.
CLIENT: and I was sort of saying, “No, like when I’m hungry, look, I’d eat.” But he knew this meal that I’m having and -
THERAPIST: I see. But yeah, about that, sort of if you think about it was, what you talked to me about working hard, it was making you feel way too guilty to think of yourself doing that.
CLIENT: Hm.
THERAPIST: Like again you can’t It was very uncomfortable to think about taking credit.
CLIENT: Hm.
THERAPIST: Or to like own the work that you’ve been doing. [00:35:15]
CLIENT: Yeah. I guess part of it is like the things that I feel like I need to do to take care of myself -
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: aren’t the same things as people are telling me to do to take care of myself. So I feel like what I really wanted to do was just read books all the time. But it wasn’t actually clear to me that that was what the school really wanted me to do too. Like it became clear when I was teaching and was talking to one of the English teachers from that school who was like a mentor. So I just thought that like, you know, like my Dad, jokingly -
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: and one of the things that he said often enough, that was not a very good joke, like when I would be reading or when I was, you know, in a situation where I should have been doing something else, like at the dinner table or at a party he was like, “Tanya, books are bad for you.” (laughs) He’d be like, “They rot your brain.” Actually I think that’s TV. But there’s definitely like a “books are bad for you” line. [00:36:32]
You know, every time somebody caught me with a book in school I got in trouble because I was always supposed to be doing something else. (pause) And so like, you know, with food, I didn’t tell Bernie (ph) that I wasn’t going to make any dietary changes because I just can’t even think about it without feeling so ashamed. Like I can’t. I can’t keep track of what I eat in that way and not feel shamed about it, because I don’t feel like I’m eating the right things. (pause)
You know, so I was just like really, I’m sure, an infuriatingly picky eater as a child. So I wouldn’t want to eat anything that we were having at dinner. So I would just take snacks up to my room, but they were not things that were good for me necessarily. (pause) [00:38:05]
So, yeah, I guess I feel like I need to (pause) Yeah, I feel like if I don’t hide the things that I’m doing to take care of myself, somebody will tell me that they’re the wrong things and take them away.
(long pause)
“Books are bad for you.” Not a very well thought out line. (laughs) Ahhhh. [00:39:05]
(long pause) [00:40:51]
THERAPIST: [What I’m thinking about is] (ph) there being kind of two levels at which then it’s dangerous if I make a comment like, “Maybe you really have been working super hard over the last year.” I mean, [it wasn’t that, but whatever] (ph) (inaudible at 00:41:02)
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And you’ve often found it much more onerous, I suspect, than feeling bad and doing (inaudible at 00:41:24) work. In some ways, (inaudible). One of them is kind of floating that as a possible view of what happened in the last year, which I guess cuts you a bit of a break, I think.
CLIENT: Mm hm. Yeah.
THERAPIST: And also in terms of your having got something from me, where if you say like, [“Well. if that’s the case, alright.”] You know? And you shouldn’t have that. [00:42:13]
CLIENT: Mm. Yeah, that makes sense.
THERAPIST: Or I’ll take it away.
CLIENT: Yeah.
(long pause) [00:43:21]
CLIENT: Also, you know, I don’t have much of a frame of reference. I can’t think of I can’t think of a semester in which I was in school working hard and not depressed. Like I can’t think of any one, so I don’t know what it means to say that I don’t know what it would mean to say that I’m working as hard as Daniel (ph).
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: You know? Like I can imagine what it would feel like for me to work eighty hours.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But -
THERAPIST: But always on top of being depressed?
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) And also I feel like it kind of leaves me dangerously close to this Olympics (ph) of suffering thing. And, yeah, I (sigh) I don’t want to be in the business of comparing how hard things are to me to how hard things are to other people. I realize that. [00:44:53]
(long pause)
THERAPIST: Well, I think I have some idea what you mean by that, but (pause) I think like you had just said it was more along that you don’t have any perspective of how it is for anybody else. “I don’t want to think about how it is for anybody else, because [that would be the Olympics of suffering].” Whereas, there’s a difference to me between to think about it for the sake of competiveness and thinking about for the sake of perspective. [00:46:04]
CLIENT: Hm.
THERAPIST: I mean, I wonder if the danger there is more that you might feel some relief and that you so much want to be better.
CLIENT: Hm.
THERAPIST: And like get the gold.
CLIENT: Hm. (pause) That makes sense.
(long pause)
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: We need to stop now.
CLIENT: Okay. Thank you.
END TRANSCRIPT
