TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: So I’m having sort of a tough morning, and it’s not that clear why. I’m tired of it. (pause) But I’m feeling pretty bad about myself (ph), not very hopeful, not very secure. But here we are.
(pause) [00:01:02]
James is grumpy this morning because basically nobody in the streets where we park shovel their spaces. And so he’s just like, he’s just been doing a lot of shoveling, and I have to some degree. But also, he’ll get out and shovel several spaces at once, with the hope that maybe we’ll fit into one of them. Saw one person had a traffic cone. I explained to him what that meant, and he didn’t like it very much. (laughter)
(pause 01:46 – 02:03)
We went through a rough time on Saturday night. We usually go over to Franco’s (sp?), and [have some pizza and play some games] (ph). You know, it’s usually a little bit hard for me. It’s hard enough for me on Sunday that James really noticed. I don’t really know what to do there. You know?
THERAPIST: Um-hum.
(pause 02:30 – 02:46)
CLIENT: Anyway, I just feel very lonely when I’m with James and Franco. (pause) I don’t know whether that’s because I feel like he and James can sort of – in some ways, they have a lot more shared interests than I have with either of them right now, and so they usually are the ones talking for most of the time. (pause) [00:03:45]
It feels to me like Franco has just been very closed off in the past year or so, and James said that he sort of closed off to both of us, and not just me. I believe him, mostly, but (pause) I don’t know. Then he was like, “It’s fine not to be able to really talk to people that you don’t know very well.” I’m like, “I’ve known Franco for ten years now. He’s one of my best friends.”
THERAPIST: Yeah. (inaudible at 00:04:34) the outside.
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, and so it feels like we’re having this – like, this series of very polite conversations that are friendly, but to me, it just feels very dull (ph). (pause) And to James, it feels like I am becoming distressed when he’s talking with other people, like with his friends. He sees it in Franco when he’s talking Franco. I think he sort of extends it to when he’s talking with his other friends, but I said, “I really think it’s just Franco.” [00:05:32]
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But, I don’t know. (pause 00:05:37 – 00:06:06) (inaudible)
THERAPIST: One way to sort of describe it with Franco, and also with you and James, with his other friend, I am also imagining maybe you had missed talking to me Friday. (pause) Like…
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, part of being… When something happens on Saturday, it’s a long time before I can talk to you about it. (laughter)
(pause)
THERAPIST: And you’ve been feeling ways that aren’t easy to talk to me about, but are easier to be talking to me about. [00:07:02]
CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah.
(pause 00:07:09 – 00:07:27)
THERAPIST: And I come at it like, in a way, that it also feels like keeping (ph) you out. I know that – they say that I’m fairly accessible, actually, but still, I would think deciding whether to call me and when, brings up – I don’t think it’s something you feel like you can do casually. You know what I mean, in that sense?
CLIENT: Um-hum.
(pause) [00:08:01]
THERAPIST: I could imagine it feels like I’m keeping you out.
CLIENT: Mmm. (pause) I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Yeah? (pause 00:08:17 – 00:08:32)
I guess it could be one of those times where I’m looking for the negative part of this when that’s not mostly where you’re at.
CLIENT: Yeah, it sort of feels like I sort of can’t tell. Hopefully, (inaudible at 00:08:52). It’s certainly not something that I’m dwelling on – for, like, the answer, just coming back to (inaudible) (pause 00:09:07 – 00:09:45)
When something comes up, and I wish I could talk to you, it doesn’t ever feel like I’m frustrated or upset with you for not be accessible. It’s not what it feels like. (pause) It, you know, circumstances (ph).
THERAPIST: Um-hum. (pause) Yeah, that’s sort of been my impression.
(pause 00:10:23 – 00:11:43)
CLIENT: Today is one of the days where (pause) it’s just hard to talk, like the process of figuring out what I’m thinking and feeling enough to say it out loud is sort of daunting. (laughter)
THERAPIST: Um-hum.
CLIENT: Yeah, it’s not that things are particularly bad. You know, they’re not great, but it’s more just a—
THERAPIST: Some days, it’s hard to talk like that—
CLIENT: Yeah. (pause 00:12:24 – 00:12:43)
I ran through a couple of papers that I’d written as an (inaudible) student yesterday because a passage that I had worked on for a paper came up in church yesterday. It’s one of my favorites. It’s Deuteronomy 30:11-14. It was interesting to me, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t like it’s the best paper I’ve ever written. I had a lot of fun doing it, but it’s fine. But it says a lot about me. (laughter) And a lot about what I was concerned with personally, at the time, and maybe a little bit about – it was on that passage from Deuteronomy and a passage from Romans where Paul basically reinterprets the passage to mean something totally different. The passage is like— [00:13:56]
THERAPIST: Paul in the gospel just reinterprets the passage from Deuteronomy?
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, it’s like, “For this commandment that I’m giving to you is not too difficult for you, and it’s not too far off. It’s not up in the heavens that we should say who will go up again for us, or cross the sea.” He would say, “Who will go across the sea and get it for us?” You know, the commandment is very near to you in your mind and in your heart to do it. So, physically—
THERAPIST: I’m sorry, that’s Deuteronomy?
CLIENT: That’s Deuteronomy, and it’s like Moses on his deathbed saying like, “It’s going to be okay that I’m dying. Israel is going to survive in a relationship with God, now that I’m dead because you, like, have this Torah, and you really can do it, I promise, so there’s no excuse not to.”
THERAPIST: That’s right.
CLIENT: And then, for Paul, it’s all about salvation through faith, so Romans is the big part where he’s working out what that means. So he uses this passage and completely upends the meaning to make it be about Jesus, which is sort of like classic Paul, and also like classic Jewish sectarian writing of the time period. [00:15:11]
THERAPIST: (crosstalk), you mean?
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. So I talked about Paul, and I talked a little bit about some passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls community and how they sort of used the phrase, “the offering of the lips,” not as a replacement for the temple offering. It’s something that’s not just as good as the temple offering, but better than the temple offering, is liturgical prayer.
THERAPIST: Ah, okay.
CLIENT: Sorry, yeah. I’m like, it could be a lot of things. (laughter) So, it’s like all this stuff that I find fun, but I’m reading through it, and it’s like, “Yeah, I know the languages, and I’m talking about them in interesting ways.” But I can really see the way that I was concerned with how Judaism and Christianity are (ph) related, and the ways in which I was concerned with the idea of people needing a mediator with God, and the way that I sort of very firmly believed that all of my spiritual problems can be solved through just better acts (ph) of Jesus. [00:16:31 ] (laughter) It was sort of solutary (ph). I caught a typo; it was embarrassing. (laughter) It wasn’t as good as I sort of remembered it being, so that was also probably good for me. (laughter) But, I don’t know. You know, it was fun, but also it made me really sad, but not necessarily a bad way. I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Um-hum.
(pause 00:17:17 – 00:17:53)
CLIENT: It sort of made me wonder, “Does everybody else see that, too?” (pause) I mean, I’m certain that’s the way other people write. A lot of – maybe, even most – academic work is that sort of working out what you care about.
THERAPIST: [Searchers be searched] (ph) sort of thing.
CLIENT: (laughter) I don’t know; it made me feel very sort of exposed. Yeah. Luckily, nobody’s read this paper, (laughter) except the professor of the class.
THERAPIST: I imagine most papers (inaudible at 00:18:49)
CLIENT: Oh, yeah.
THERAPIST: Um-hum.
(pause 00:18:54 – 00:19:35)
THERAPIST: What strikes me about it is (pause) I imagine what was striking to you, looking at it again, was that you hadn’t thought about it as being reflective of you in the ways that it was. I mean, I get the sense when you talk about what you were writing at the time, you’re sort of working very hard, as I imagine you often do when you’re writing papers like that, to kind of grapple with the issues that you’re manifestly grappling with.
CLIENT: Um-hum.
THERAPIST: And that this other stuff was sneaking in there. I’m not saying it was different; it was just sort of more characteristic of you, or more personal than you felt like it was at the time.
CLIENT: Yeah, I guess it feels less to me like stuff was sneaking in. It doesn’t feel like stuff was particularly messing up my interpretation, so much as the topic choice was sort of manifestly personal in a way that I hadn’t really realized. [00:20:42]
THERAPIST: If we try to boil this down, it was stuff you were interested in and were sort of grappling with personally, which didn’t take anything away from how you were grappling with it in the paper. It was just more indicative than you thought.
CLIENT: Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like it doesn’t take anything from it. I don’t know, actually. I don’t think I’m far enough away from it to really tell that. (chuckles)
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Yeah. You know, it’s the theology (ph) department – I’m pretty sure they’re okay with that. At least, I’m pretty sure that particular professor would at least be pretty understanding of that, but I don’t know. (pause 00:21:27 – 21:57)
I miss it.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
(pause 00:21:59 – 00:23:08)
CLIENT: I do sometimes find it frustrating that all this work is, you know, (inaudible), not that like – you know, much of it’s not that good. Some pieces, though, are pretty good. I think it’s sort of both true of this paper and just stuff that I have. (pause 00:23:44 – 24:18)
(inaudible) It just feels like I’ve spent four years of graduate school, four years of undergrad, working very hard to develop this very specific skill set, and then it’s just gone. I don’t use it. There’s a thing on Buzzfeed going around. It’s like the ten coolest dead languages; I’ve studied seven of them. (laughter) And they didn’t even have [] (ph) on there. (laughter) (pause) I don’t know. (pause 00:25:14 – 00:27:07)
Yeah, it’s (inaudible) that all that’s been wiped out. (pause 00:27:09 – 00:27:41)
Um-hum. I don’t know what I have to offer.
THERAPIST: Hmm.
(pause 00:27:46 – 00:28:53) (sniffle) (pause 00:28:53 – 00:29:59)
THERAPIST: I (inaudible) it’s hard to be upset about it, or miss it, that you feel more like you should be working [on a particular thing] (ph).
CLIENT: Yeah, it sort of feels like I’m just spinning my wheels, and I feel like there’s nothing stopping me from working on the next thing. I really should be doing that, and I’m not. (pause) Yeah. (pause 00:30:34 – 00:31:08)
Yeah, it frustrated me (inaudible). (pause 00:31:10 – 00:32:03)
THERAPIST: It reminds me of what you were saying about the writing from grad school, where it’s like maybe at the moment, while you are sort of focused and frustrated about the work you feel you should be doing (pause) – trying to get started with the next thing or thinking or talking about what the next thing is going to be and how it’s going to work and what it’s going to look like, but (pause) at that time, you felt like you were sort of disconnected from what the work meant to you and what did that bring to you.
CLIENT: Mmm.
THERAPIST: And looking back, I was kind of (inaudible at 00:33:08) at that, but I wonder if that’s also (pause) [in some fashion] (ph) was difficult. Now, I mean, some of it comes through, maybe, when we kind of (inaudible) this, particularly you feel the loss of all the work that you did (inaudible at 00:33:46), that you left it behind, and so you kind of want to pick it up, but it’s a lot of time, energy, and effort and also something that, at times, you really engaged with and enjoyed, I think.
CLIENT: (inaudible)
THERAPIST: Yeah. I guess part of what I was talking about is, then, ten minutes later, you’re like, “See, something told me that I could go onto the next thing, but I’m not sure what it is.” (chuckles)
CLIENT: Hmm.
THERAPIST: You know, “Because I’m just focused on the work, and I don’t see why I can’t just keep moving forward.”
CLIENT: Um-hum. Hmm. (pause 00:34:30 – 00:35:24)
Yeah. (pause) I can’t go back in the same way. (pause) Yeah, I think (sniff), I mean, I could theoretically reapply to Brown and probably start back up, but that would be such a bad idea. I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Does is sound like that’s the sort of thing—?
CLIENT: I don’t know.
THERAPIST: Okay. What I had in mind is a little more like – this isn’t quite right, but – (inaudible at 00:36:16). If somebody really important to you dies, and then you try to go back to work a couple of days later—
CLIENT: Um-hum, yeah. That’s what it feels like. But I’ve never had anybody important to me die.
THERAPIST: Somehow I (inaudible) anyway.
(pause 00:36:39 – 00:37:03)
CLIENT: Hmm. (pause 00:37:03 – 00:37:44)
Yep. (crying, sniffling) (pause 00:37:51 – 00:38:16)
I’ve never (inaudible) anybody. (crying, sniffling)
(pause 00:38:27 – 00:39:34)
THERAPIST: It seems like there are moments you felt a little more open to talking (ph) and ones when you feel a little more shut down.
CLIENT: Mmm. Yeah. (crying) This is something that it really hurts a lot to talk about.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: (sniff) (pause 00:40:00 – 00:40:23)
(inaudible) I’ve convinced myself I’m actually talking about something else when I start talking.
(pause 00:40:33 – 00:40:56)
THERAPIST: Is that when it hurts too much?
CLIENT: (crying) (pause 00:41:00 – 00:41:34) And it doesn’t really go away.
THERAPIST: Um-hum.
CLIENT: (crying 00:41:39 – 00:42:29) Yeah, you know, and I can’t not keep thinking about it because I have to think about jobs. What I’m going to do if James moves. What I’m going to do if James stays. I have to be over that, but it just hurts so much.
THERAPIST: Yeah. CLIENT: I can’t find (inaudible at 00:43:03). Like, I can’t find…
THERAPIST: (inaudible) as much as anything else? Anything you came here to learn that felt like your own?
CLIENT: What’s that?
THERAPIST: With your studies, as much as anything else in your life, kind of felt like your own thing.
CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. It felt like I had something important to do, that I was really good at. I really loved it.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
(pause 00:43:41 – 00:44:06)
CLIENT: And I can’t figure out a way to (sniff) get people to pay me to do something else that I’m really good at, or that I love.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause) [You should stay] (ph).
CLIENT: (crying)
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