TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: …[inaudible at 00:00:00] in the company.

CLIENT: Pretty wide company any way.

THERAPIST: Yes, that’s true.

CLIENT: So I thought you might enjoy this. So I haven’t been sleeping terribly well and I had a dream the other night that Sharon (ph) was, I was trying to get Sharon (ph) to nap on my chest and I wanted to fall asleep also but I dreamed that I couldn’t sleep because Sharon (ph) kept waking up and wouldn’t sleep.

THERAPIST: You mean in a real way?

CLIENT: I was dreaming but I thought I was awake. I was saying God if I don’t get sleep tonight going to work’s going to suck tomorrow. But in my dream I wasn’t asleep because Sharon (ph) wouldn’t go to sleep. [00:01:04]

THERAPIST: Okay. So, the other night you were asleep and you’re worried while you’re asleep about not getting to sleep or not sleeping well. And the dream that you have about it is that you’re with Sharon (ph) and trying to get her to sleep on you and she keeps waking up which keeps you from falling asleep?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: But the dream was after I’d already woken up so I had actually woken up several times that night.

THERAPIST: Right, so that your dream fit, I guess what is striking is in a way the dream fit very closely to the circumstance you were in of being worried about getting sleep or being able to sleep well, but in another way it was different because you were at work in the dream and in real life but [inaudible at 00:02:07].

CLIENT: Yes, so that was the dream.

THERAPIST: Do you have any associations to the dream? [00:02:17]

CLIENT: I guess if I have to think this hard about it probably not. The other thing it makes me think about is that I had this dream where I feel like I I woke up the next day and said wow I really did not sleep at all last night. Then I realized at least part of the time that I thought I didn’t sleep at all I was actually asleep. I don’t know.

Part of the reason that Sharon (ph) has so much trouble sleeping is that Monica doesn’t really, doesn’t do sleep training. She just sleeps with her and that sort of makes my life harder but I also totally see why she does it because it’s really nice to sleep with a baby. It’s a really nice thing. [00:03:37]

So, yes, I guess I just sort of had a lot of this both like this is really nice and also this is really frustrating because I need you to take a nap, I need you to, you need to do this thing and I need to help you but I can’t. [00:04:03]

[Pause]

THERAPIST: Yes, I mean I have some associations but I don’t really know what to make of them yet. I mean, [inaudible at 00:04:45] even when you actually are sleeping it’s not really not restful, like there’s some part of you that can’t sleep.

CLIENT: Yes, I feel like I’ve been less anxious during the day and more anxious, having more anxious dreams. I sort of keep a diary card so my mood and my anxiety and all that. And I’d say oh, I guess I wasn’t really anxious today at all but I worry a lot when I’m asleep. It’s just not good. I do feel like I’m more tired the next day when I am worried. [00:05:37]

THERAPIST: The only sense I have, and this is [inaudible at 00:05:42] but these days any ways on Fridays the woman who comes before you is a woman who has a little baby and who comes after you is pregnant.

CLIENT: Oh I didn’t know that.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay. You didn’t know that. At first I thought that was relevant but [inaudible at 00:05:57].

CLIENT: Yes, I didn’t know. The woman that comes before me is pretty great in just sort of the culture of you don’t really talk to each other when you pass in the therapist’s office and she just talks to me. [Laughs]

THERAPIST: And that’s okay? [00:06:18]

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Good.

CLIENT: Yes. No it’s really nice.

THERAPIST: No, she’s very nice. I just wanted to make sure it was all right.

CLIENT: Yes, no it’s good because there’s certainly a kinship that I feel with the people that I see but I also feel like giving people space is one of the ways that you take care of them. I’ve been sort of, I don’t know, asking a lot of that from James. I’ve just been really sad and I just don’t want to talk to anybody. And so, yes, he’s been giving me a lot of space and I think that’s been okay. [Pause] [00:07:33]

Yes, things are tough. [Pause] I’m going to a conference tomorrow. It’s not very well timed in terms of my mood and I’m just not very excited about it. [Pause] There’s five people going from my church, or five people who are turning (ph) going to my church and priests. And I only know one of the people, she goes to the 6:00 service with me, and I really don’t like her so we’ll see how that goes. [00:09:46]

The church attracts a lot of weird people, which I think is a really good thing. It’s really good and I’m sort of really getting to be at peace with sometimes people are weird in social ways that make me not like them and that’s okay. It’s been a sort of a recent thing to realize that if I don’t like somebody maybe it’s because they’re doing something. [Laughing] Maybe it’s not just because I’m a terrible person. [00:10:39]

THERAPIST: So that’s good.

CLIENT: Yes, I guess. I don’t know. This woman is, she’s very earnest, very lovely and has a tendency to be sort of I think she has an MDiv from Brown so she really, really wants to talk to me about her degree and about the professors and pal around about Hebrew and stuff. And so I have to both deal with I’m really grieving that, I don’t really want to talk about it. And also the impulse to stomp on her a little bit, to be like I’m really glad you made it through intermediate Hebrew but I’m sort of 10 years in, so, I don’t know, don’t patronize me, which in itself I feel like turns into me trying to out-patronize her. And that doesn’t bring out the best in me and I just want to walk away from that, I don’t like being that person. [00:11:58]

[Pause]

THERAPIST: Yes, and maybe there’s a way in which it feels like she’s being incredibly insensitive and you really want to slam her, even if she couldn’t know how insensitive she’s being. You still feel that way and [00:12:49]

CLIENT: Yes, I think the last time she sort of went off on it I sort of said yes, I’m not in that field anymore and just left it at that. [Pause] I don’t want it to really I just want to talk about how sad I am but I don’t know what to say about it. Just been really sad. [Pause] Every day it’s like a mountain. [00:14:28]

THERAPIST: Maybe there are ways that you’re talking about it. I mean in the dream, you appear to be anxious at night and there’s a, in a way, a part of you that worries about not getting enough sleep. The other part’s just crying, crying, crying. And sort of the [inaudible at 00:14:56] you’re upset I think because she kind of broke something that you’re really set, one of the things you’re really set about. [00:15:07]

CLIENT: Yes. [Pause] I worry about James in this. It feels like, it feels like it’d be very easy for me to hurt him a lot in this volley (ph). I don’t know. I just want to die. I feel like I don’t have a lot of margin for error, if that makes sense, by claiming (ph) to not to know how much I want to give up. And I’m not sure I can do that. [00:17:17]

[Pause]

THERAPIST: You mean not let him know or not give up or both?

CLIENT: Both. [Pause] I feel like there’s this trap where the way that I could not let him know how bad things are for me is to just shut him out but that’s also the problem. And, yes, [pause] I don’t know. [Pause] Talking is really exhausting today. I don’t know why. [00:19:33]

THERAPIST: I know the tongue [inaudible at 00:19:40] it would be sort of reason to worry or be concerned about what to let him know about and what not to let him know about. I know that’s there but I think being so sad also just always feels like it’s going to cause a drastic problem. [00:20:25]

CLIENT: Yes. Yes. The outfit might be different but the worries, kind of the same worries. Yes.

[Pause]

THERAPIST: I know you, I think, trust me quite a lot around that but also that it still hurts hearing it. [00:21:10]

CLIENT: You mean telling you about it?

THERAPIST: Just talk about it, yes and being set back.

CLIENT: Yes. In some ways, I don’t know, I feel I’m at the point where it’s less scary to talk about it than it is not to talk about it because if I don’t talk about it here it makes it tough to be alone with it, yes. [00:21:49]

THERAPIST: That’s pretty overwhelming.

CLIENT: Yes, and that would be the end, not being able to deal.

THERAPIST: Yes, sure. [00:22:12]

[Pause]

CLIENT: I’m eating a lot of chocolate this week, which is really I don’t really like chocolate that much. It’s not a comfort food for me in general. But I went to the store with the kids because they were out of milk and I wasn’t, that’s not really my job and I wasn’t going to bother. But then I realized that that would mean that I couldn’t have any tea for the rest of the day so I said [laughing] okay, we’re going. [00:23:39]

THERAPIST: You’re going to have to go to the store for that.

CLIENT: And then, Cadbury Crème Eggs are about my favorite things in the world so I got some for the kids and me. [Laughing]

THERAPIST: That seems like you’re hanging in there.

CLIENT: Feel like I faring better. I’m tired because I’m trying not to buy most chocolate because of ethical issues because most chocolate is produced by slaves, and mostly children. And I’m sort of said yes, this is going to get me through the day. [00:24:40]

[Pause]

Yes, I feel like I’m getting better at sort of taking care of myself and things like that. I’m not sure how much it helps; it certainly doesn’t hurt. [00:25:55]

THERAPIST: I can sort of imagine that it takes some of the edge off the present [inaudible at 00:26:27] aspect rather like feeling much. [00:26:29]

CLIENT: Yes. Taking the edge off is better. I don’t feel quite so desperate with it. It doesn’t help that the payroll department screwed up. This is the second or third time they done it and so James didn’t get paid today. So we had to sort of shuffle some things and we ended up having to borrow some money from my parents so we could pay the rent. Yes, we’re living pretty close to the bone financially and that’s just exhausting in its own way. [00:27:42]

I, the church I go to, it’s so funny. I sat in [inaudible at 00:27:55] woman that I she’s in the pew next to me last week. And it was a service for the directors or just installment so it’s a lot of people who don’t ordinarily go to the same service as the special service. And so she’s talking to me and she asked where do you live? And I said the Square, north of the Commons. And she said oh yes, I live in the building right next to you. And she said it’s kind of yes, I guess you sort of have to know somebody to get into the building. Apparently it’s this quaint, upscale place [laughing] so I’m thinking I am not at all who you think I am. [00:28:38]

She was sort of describing her beautiful two-bedroom apartment with a view out and she said yes, the ceilings are just wonderful. They’re 10or 12-foot ceilings in this lovely old apartment but it’s basically the size of a shoebox. And, I don’t know, it’s just weird feeling like I live sort of between social classes in some ways. In that sense I get to think about class a lot. [00:29:26]

[Pause]

She was just shocked and appalled that they were going to keep raising their rents and said she may have to move out. I just don’t have any energy to be that upset about that any more. The rents are really high; that’s just how that’s Andover. I’ve lived here for almost a year and a half, which is about as long as I’ve lived anywhere for 10 years. Oh wow, you move every year. [00:30:45]

THERAPIST: Sure. [inaudible at 00:30:50] that crossed me is how oppressive so much of this feels financially with the rents and living so close to the bone financially. And I don’t know there’s something about the way it seems to be a lot of feeling when you mentioned that child slaves harvesting, whatever. [00:31:12]

CLIENT: It’s just like -

THERAPIST: I guess I had this thing go ahead.

CLIENT: It’s just I don’t know I really just want to be able to eat things that I like without worrying about what it’s doing around the world. But I can’t, I can’t not know that this is going on. And so my choices are buy it or don’t buy it.

THERAPIST: Even so there’s either something about the horribleness of what’s going on that hits pretty hard. It is horrible I’m not saying otherwise, but there’s something that also seems pretty resolute about that. [00:32:13]

CLIENT: I think that it’s something about this sort of horribleness that’s behind very mundane things. You think chocolate it’s this nice treat. Well, yes, and it costs a couple of dollars to you and it’s picked by small children who have disfiguring scars from the machetes that they use to cut it. I always sort of want those reports to be an exaggeration but they really don’t seem to be. It really seems like all efforts to reform that industry have been strenuously resisted. I don’t know. [00:33:12]

[Pause]

This is why I don’t follow the news. Lately it’s just overwhelming. [Pause] I think I remember reading in high school that I think it was John Keats refused to eat sugar because it was produced by slaves and sort of thinking what a quixotic decision that was. It did nothing at all to the slave trade [laughing] and also thinking what else are you going to do? It might have been William Blake. It was one of the romantic poets. And it wasn’t one of the ones that, it wasn’t Byron who just went off and got himself killed fighting for independence somewhere that he didn’t really know much about or understand. He just sort of lived at home and didn’t eat sugar. [00:36:26]

[Pause crying]

When it gets really bad like this I always sort of hope that, I guess I always sort of hope that the pain would not, won’t be enough to just sort of take me away, carry me away. I [won’t be] (ph) here at the end of it and it’s just harassment (ph). It just keeps coming. I feel like, it seems like I’m supposed to feel good about being resilient but I really don’t. It sucks. [00:39:45]

THERAPIST: Yes, you just want it to stop. [00:40:02].

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: That really [inaudible] makes me think about somebody holding you up so you can get hit again. [00:40:46]

CLIENT: Yes. Yes. [Pause] Where is it? So I’m cold as well as crying. [Pause] Yes, I’m a little bit anxious about not saying much but I just don’t have the energy to care very much. [00:44:27]

[Pause]

THERAPIST: Well also, I mean I’d imagine you’re feeling like no energy (ph) is nice in a way. Really what’s that got to do about how you’re feeling?

CLIENT: [inaudible at 00:45:15].

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: Yes, yes. Yes, it sort of feels like my intellectual sense of what we’re doing here, enterprises, is pretty divorced right now of my emotional sense of what this accomplishes. I don’t know. Not talking is worse. Not being here is worse. [00:46:10] [Pause]

THERAPIST: We should stop.

CLIENT: Just make me feel better.

THERAPIST: Thank you. Take care. [00:47:12]

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