TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Hello.
CLIENT: So, I did get sick. It was really bad, like just throwing up is the worst. So the current plan is not to get James sick. Apparently you remain contagious for several days after you feel better so – I am doing my best.
CLIENT: Couples counseling today didn’t go that well. Stuff that was important to talk about, but I didn’t really feel better at the end of the session. It was sort of grimly funny to me that I spend so much thought and energy and anxiety about wanting to take care of James and trying to do that and which he doesn’t feel like I take care of him.
THERAPIST: Hmm.
CLIENT: You know that’s what I do, you know, I can’t do it for him and it really frustrates me. I couldn’t sleep last night again because I basically was up all night on Friday throwing up and then just slept much of the day and all night on Saturday and then all night on Sunday, and like last night I just couldn’t sleep. So I just feel so worn out. I think James gets anxious and frustrated with me when he feels like I sort of throw up my hands and give up about something, and say, well – I just can’t do that. I feel like I just give up provisionally. Well, I give up for now, and the next day the problem is still there, and I’m still there and so I sort of try to tackle it again. [00:04:15]
(Long pause)
CLIENT: It’s weird how I’m trying to frame it anyway, because I’m still not giving up. I mean well, I’ll just give up for the night, I just give up right now
(The therapist says something – inaudible) 00:05:14]
CLIENT: I don’t know. It’s hard to say well, things will probably get better or I probably do have the resources or this probably will be okay. What if I am just so short and it’s not and so it ends up with me just kind of taking everything inside me, that’s saying no, this is a disaster and I say, well, I just don’t think that’s real, or I know that’s not real and I can’t trust that. It’s hard and I feel weird about it. (The client is crying softly) [00:06:23]
CLIENT: It’s like all my intuitions are wrong, so – (client crying softly) So I finally watched Glengarry Glen Ross the other day, funny that was what came to mind. Which I’ve never seen before. Have you seen it? Oh, you should see it! I really liked seeing it. I think I like Mamet’s short plays better though. It’s both like, brilliant and also just horrible, you know just horrible people, but it’s so beautifully written. Yeah, it’s really good. I think I was thinking that while I was walking, he’s good at long walks. I don’t think I would watch it again though. I did rewind to see the scene with Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin, he’s like very young at the time, sort of at the peak of his hot person, career, has this great monologue at the opening that was written for him, for the movie. It wasn’t in the original play. Where he’s like the trainer coming in to tell these like these real estate salesmen that they need to step it up and well, we’re changing up the monthly promotional contest, like first prize is a new car, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is, your fired! It’s worth the watching like that one five minute scene, actually you don’t really even need to watch the rest of the movie. (Laughing) all of the cultural references that I was missing are in that scene anyways. A large part of wanting to see it was like, everybody sort of refers back to it and I didn’t know what they were talking about. [00:10:12].
(Long pause)
CLIENT: But I’m good, yeah. I’ve been sort of yarn, of like to do with, but I’m good, I’m taking apart a couple of hats and a couple of sweaters that I made that I don’t ever wear. I’m going to use the yarn also, so I feel better about not to have so many things in my closet that aren’t useful. That actually is something I feel good about. I was pretty sick.
THERAPIST: Yep. [00:12:34]
CLIENT: Yeah. There were about 12 hours where you think you’re going to die and then 12 hours where you just don’t want to move and then you’re better.
(Long pause)
CLIENT: It feels like, I know it isn’t actually the way it it, but it feels like I can just wake up at any day and just have to move or I could wake up any day and have James leave me. Not even like those are irrational worse case fears, within the spectrum of possibility, I don’t really know what to do with that. I can’t fix it. [00:14:54]
CLIENT: For like his job, I can talk with him about it and I do talk with him about it and ask him how it’s going, I can’t – I feel like the more, real part of taking care of James right now is not putting on him how anxious it makes me that he doesn’t have a job yet. I’m not anxious that he’s not going to find a job, I’m just anxious because I’ve been waiting to find out what we’re going to do for the last six months.
THERAPIST: Your anxious not knowing.
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. I feel like James has sort of said, okay, it’s just around the corner, for at least the last six months. Basically April is when he started talking about flying or talking about flying like this is something that I need to be doing very, very soon or like in the near future. He works from home, I’ve seen him working, he works all the fucking time. It’s not like he’s not doing his part and it’s not like I, but a part of him, sort of saying repeatedly doesn’t trust me because he trusts me and I almost died or I almost killed myself and I am sort of like, well, that’s just something you have to get over, like I’ll talk to you about it, but talking is in my mind at least is like a lot of it is helping him get to the point where he decides whether or not he is going to trust me again. I don’t know. We’re both working pretty hard in there. [00:18:17]
THERAPIST: Yeah, I had an impression you know, it’s a lot of times, a bit like out and out problem thing and you better really do it right or your fired. (Laughing)
CLIENT: But I also feel like a sort of emotional movement that is his, and like I can’t make him do that. It’s nothing that’s fun to be the one waiting while he decides whether he’s going to leave me. I don’t know that it’s that dire, but I told him that it was.
THERAPIST: excruciating.
CLIENT: It’s pretty tough.
THERAPIST: I guess in a way I think maybe you’re talking about two sort of like ways of dealing with all the insecurity, I guess if that’s what’s going to happen with the two of you, well any which, you do work really hard, trying to take care of him and it’s incredibly frustrating to be like, okay, you’re not doing or you’re not too well enough or something, whatever the hell it is, and then another in which like this, you sort of sit and wait and it’s excruciating and it feels like that most of the things that matter are on the line and there’s nothing you can do. [00:20:52].
CLIENT: Yeah, so I have had enough of trying to sort of quiet my own mind, and I’m really bad at that. It’s pretty chaotic.
(Long pause)
CLIENT: We have (inaudible) [00:22:29] I could be angry at myself because I do everything wrong sort of sit with the idea that normally there is not much that I can be doing or that – but I don’t even know if that’s true. I don’t –
(Long pause)
CLIENT: I haven’t been cooking, because I have been sick, I am contagious. It’s like this, sort of hilarious, I step back at it and I get very confused because do I feel guilty about not cooking or do I feel guilty about not being able to stay out of the kitchen. Like which should win (laughing) I think they both win. I haven’t cried.
CLIENT: It sort of feels like my house was destroyed in an earthquake and I have been sort of figuring out how to rebuild and had all the equipment and all this stuff and I couldn’t start because there was some problem with zoning rights or some bullshit thing. That’s really not fair to James. [00:27:09]
CLIENT: Yeah, I feel like I said that and I immediately want to take it back because it’s not fair to James and also it is sort of implying that I haven’t already done the building which is not true, but –
THERAPIST: Okay, let me make sure I’m clear on the idea though. So the earthquake is the depression and you’re re-building things with him, essentially re-building your life and –
CLIENT: Yeah, but also like figuring out my career path, and choices and like –
THERAPIST: So it’s re-building your life for everything?
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And James is I’m gunning for it? Yes, okay. (Laughing in the background) Or he is gunning for it?
CLIENT: Yeah, so like I was talking to a man at church last night, or after church and he had sort of worked for the government for awhile in electrical engineering I think and not doing that anymore but I started thinking well, you know I’m working as a nanny and kind of looking out for the next thing, and I told him about languages and he said oh you should apply for this grant from the government to study a language that is important to national security and they require that you would be gone or 12-24 months and then you work for them for a couple of years. If I were single, that is something I would at least look into, like I would love to live abroad for a couple of years. I was like, no, that’s not going to happen to James and that is a really good tradeoff for my point of my view, I am much happier being with James than I would be living abroad. I am not missing making those choices, and well, I am sort of missing being able to make those choices. [00:30:00]
CLIENT: Maybe I am just fretting about the choices because I don’t want to be fretting about James wanting to leave me. There’s a John Milton poem and I feel like I may have mentioned it in here before, but the fun and the punch line is they also serve who only stand and root. I like that one.
(Crying softly in the background) [00:32:42]
THERAPIST: One aspect of this that almost then feels like you have to try to re-build things in spite of James?
CLIENT: You mean like James is supporting me in some way or that I need to try to re-build things sort of around him?
THERAPIST: Somebody’s getting in the way.
CLIENT: I don’t know.
CLIENT: It does for the feeling. James is demanding that I change or sort of stand on my own feet or be okay in some ways and then it’s making it more difficult for that to happen, or making it more difficult to happen. [00:36:20]
(Long pause)
THERAPIST: Well, I wonder if the other thing that I am thinking is that you find where he is coming from at least the part you mention, completely ridiculous.
CLIENT: How do you mean?
THERAPIST: Well, I guess to think light of it before and you know today, it’s like his whole thing about, at least as you’re hearing it and telling me about it, well, I can’t trust you because you might have killed yourself for being so depressed and you can’t promise me that’s not going to happen again.
CLIENT: Yeah, I do find that some little bit ridiculous.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But I mean like, but I also get it – is the thing, like I really, really get it, but Billie (sp?) come on, like stop being traumatized. [00:38:24]
CLIENT: Yeah, I am sort of trying to focus on the, I get it part, I want to talk with him about it and like just come on, like – yeah. You know if you want me to take care of you, controlling the way I do things is not the way to make that happen. I was pretty angry at him about that spell, like we were driving, getting into the car to drive back from seeing family at Christmas and he spent like 20 minutes packing the trunk and he wouldn’t let anybody else help and he was, he had a system and he was getting really angry and frustrated because it wasn’t fitting perfectly, but no one else can help him pack the trunk. This is not one of those things that your special science skills make easier for you to do. (Laughing) [00:39:59]
CLIENT: If things bounce around a little bit, I promise we will all be alive, it will be okay. He’s been sort of like hyper vigilant about stuff like that, that you know it was like, I think he was really irritated with me for getting sick. Yes, maybe I could have prevented it myself from catching the stomach flu from the kids that I work with, but that would have involved not cooking their dinner and that would involve me not doing my job and that was the tradeoff that I decided on when I took this job.
THERAPIST: Right, was the unprofessional hazard.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Ok, well it sounds like at least for you, there’s some way it feels like him always have to be taken incredibly seriously. Like with the trunk. I mean I get, I can see part of what you’re saying, that example, it’s like it’s ridiculous. [00:41:21]
CLIENT: Yeah, it sort of feels like he just really wants things to be done right. Done right in a sort of narrow sense, that doesn’t really take into account everyone’s feelings at the end of it. Or like the speed at which this happens or you know.
(Long pause)
CLIENT: I think a lot of these things like come down to, he just doesn’t trust me. Trusting me to pick up my own prescriptions is not on the same scale as trusting me to not have to be hospitalized again. You know even that, I feel like it’s sort of framing the problem in the wrong light. Yeah, it’s not a slippery slope. I can pack the trunk. (Laughing) [00:43:17]
THERAPIST: This all gets to feel like quite oppressive.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And also maybe the part of what’s tricky here is, clearly (inaudible) [00:43:45] is just very worried about what’s going to happen with him and that wants to sort of, you know, help him however e needs and taking seriously in whatever way you can and not dismiss how worried he is or that sort of thing. So I think he feels guilty for finding him ridiculous.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Though you do. (Laughing) [00:44:12]
THERAPIST: Well, it’s time.
END TRANSCRIPT
