TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: So I talked to my dad the other day. We talked for almost an hour, actually. I feel like 85% of the time, our phone conversations are sort of like – he’ll call to check in very briefly when he is on the way to do something, and then one or the other of us will be like, “Well, gotta go.” Like, “Good to talk to you.” Then, very occasionally, we sort of hit the point where both of us actually want to talk, and then it goes from there. [00:00:55]

I was telling him about this conference that I went to, and talked to the (inaudible) people and (inaudible) that. It was good. (pause) I asked him – I don’t remember how this came up, but he was sort of telling me about something. I think we were talking about, like you have to do a psychological evaluation at some point, like right before you get ordained (inaudible at 00:01:42), or something like that, like when you’re already in seminary, basically. He said that he sort of (inaudible at 00:01:59) that, and I’m like, “Gone back to talk to the guy and talk about what he was going to do, and especially to talk about stuff about Mom,” I think, at this point, he was ordained the year that I was born, so I think he met Mom in seminary, and I think they probably got married like his second year in seminary, or something like that. So I asked him, “Did you know before you married Mom, the scope of the issues with her?” And he’s like, “No.” (laughter) [00:02:43]

I think I sort of threw him. I said, “You might not want to answer this.” He said he would be up for talking about it, but probably not over the phone. I think he was worried that c you know, in some ways I was asking because I feel like I was asking because of what’s been going on with me and James. But I think he was worried that I would draw parallels too strongly and too firmly, and he was very clear. He was like, “You know, the stuff that is happening with you and James is very, very different from what things were with your mom.” (pause 00:03:35 – 00:04:00)

Yeah. I don’t know that much about the early days of my parents’ marriage. I’m very curious about it. (pause 00:04:20 – 00:04:58)

He said once like, “At some point, there’s competition. If you thought I was angry with you growing up, you should have seen me at X time.” I don’t exactly remember when X time was, but sometime before I was born. I was like, “Really?” and he’s like “Well, maybe.” (laughter) I think it was sort of a – he made the joke, and then he immediately felt like maybe that wasn’t a good joke. (laughter) I was like, “Yep, not that good of a joke.” Still a little prickly there. Give it another decade maybe. [00:05:48]

So James was the captain of the volleyball team in college, and it was a very close-knit community with a lot of deliberately cultivated traditions. And so one of the things that they say is, “It’s never too soon to make a joke about something.” (laughter) Which, you know, like – I don’t know, I sort of feel like volleyball, too, embodies all that is terrible and also good about college kids. But they actually sort of lived up to it. The year after James graduated, when the coach and one of the other students died in a car crash, somebody made a joke about Isaac dying, like, while they were in the hospital after Isaac died. It was pretty terrible, but I think it was also what everybody wanted. I think it helped them. (pause) [00:07:10]

So every time I get like, “Is it really appropriate for me to make a joke about this?” I remember Isaac Hall’s (ph) thing, “It’s never too soon.” (laughter) (pause)

Another friend of James’s named Isaac – (inaudible at 00:07:57) Victor, because he works with him in the same lab, just managed to make the compound that he’s been trying to make for, not only his entire doctoral degree, but like four students before him have spent their entire careers on it. Yeah, Victor was pretty pleased.

THERAPIST: Wow, an alchemy project.

CLIENT: Pretty much. I mean, he said he thought of the idea, and he’s like, “Yep, about 25 years ago is when I first thought of this idea,” so that was nice.

(pause 00:08:40 – 00:09:58)

THERAPIST: I’m just thinking that somewhere in there between your deciding it was too soon for your dad to make that joke and remembering the volleyball team is how much you want to be able to handle stuff like that in that way.

CLIENT: Um-hum.

THERAPIST: Even when you can’t. (pause) Like there’s some secondary question about sturdiness (ph).

CLIENT: Mmm, yeah.

THERAPIST: And it’s really important. [00:10:52]

CLIENT: Yeah. So I’ve been watching “Friends” because of the movie coming up, which I’d kind of like to see that. I don’t think it’s going to be that good. Anyway, I’m re-watching this show, and it’s a really great show. There’s one episode near the beginning that just every time I watch it, I think, “Ah, I really wish he didn’t deal with this.” Like, he’s talking—

THERAPIST: I’m sorry; I don’t know anything about—

CLIENT: Okay, it’s a good show, but there’s an episode near the beginning where one of the main characters – his sister was murdered like a year ago, and we find out later out in the season that his parents think he was the one who killed his sister because he has type 4 epilepsy and was in the middle of an episode and sort of catatonic when they came home, and he had blood all over him. [00:11:55]

Anyway, and so he’s taking antidepressants because he’s sad because his sister died, and he decides to, abruptly and on his own volition, decides he doesn’t want to do this anymore and decides to go off them and has a very bad reaction to dropping antidepressants cold turkey. They never tell us what they are – probably because they’re not being very specific and didn’t want to actually do research – but including nausea and weird behavior and also hallucinations. At the end of the episode, he decides to go back on them. The way that it’s framed is that he’s trying to – that he’s taking antidepressants and continuing to do it because he’s trying to avoid dealing with all the unexplained stuff about his sister’s death, as well as all the (inaudible 00:12:59), so it seems like a copout.

And that just makes me so mad (laughter) in many ways. I think the larger point is to talk about his parents who were like, “Well, you know, you should take medication instead of actually grieving because we don’t want to deal with your grief because it’s inconvenient,” and that sort of (inaudible at 00:13:25). But it’s like, “No, medication withdrawal is a real thing.” It can be tough and scary, and it’s not a moral weakness not to want to hallucinate your dead sister. (laughter) I don’t know; I tried to talk to James about it, and he sort of listened, but he also was saying like, “Well, maybe you just don’t really understand what he was trying to do with this,” like, “Let me explain the theme of the show to you.” (laughter) And I’m like, “I got it.” [00:14:06]

THERAPIST: (crosstalk)

CLIENT: (laughter) Yeah, I love when he does that. (laughter) Yeah, so that was so funny. “No, no, I understand what he’s doing here,” and I think that the points that he is making (inaudible at 00:14:29), I think he makes rather well. The problem is that the things that he’s saying have unintended – that what he’s writing says things that he didn’t mean it to say. Everything that you write says something that you didn’t mean it to say, but it’s incumbent on you to pay some attention to some of the things that it might say, and do your research. [00:14:59]

THERAPIST: I followed (ph) the point about this implication of a kind of moral failing or weakness of character related to the effect of the withdrawal seemed unintended, in contrast to the kind of difficult and intended point about his parents saying, “No, don’t grieve now. It’s inconvenient for us to [just end them].”

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean, I think he also did intend to say that the character was a weak character. I think he was trying to say that the character is somebody who doesn’t want to face what’s in front of him, and is sort of hiding from this truth. I just think it’s a really unfortunate choice of ways to say that. [00:16:05]

But, I guess I sort of started telling you, it’s not that big of deal, but it just gets me, and I don’t want it to get me, but it just does. I don’t want it to bother – I mean, I don’t take medication. (laughter) It’s something like this is sort of an academic point for me right now, but [at moments] (ph) it’s very frustrating to me that I don’t take medication because it’s very frustrating to me that I’ve spent a year or two trying to find some things that would help, and it doesn’t help. Um, yeah. Um… [00:17:00] (pause)

I have sort of like this constellation of sensitivity that it’s hard to be okay with. I’m getting more okay with it, but (pause) yeah. (pause) The other thing I find very frustrating about the episode is that his mom is like, “You know, lots of people take antidepressants. What has it been? It’s only been like six months; you just have to give it a little more time to work.” I’m like, “Six months? Really?” (laughter) Who is this guy’s psychiatrist, because you should fire him. That’s not how it works. (laughter) [00:18:10] And the whole way that they write about it is so – you can tell that the writers don’t have any actual experience with this.

THERAPIST: Kind of remarkable.

CLIENT: Yeah, it’s really surprising to me, or you can tell that – either they don’t have any actual experience, or they don’t care enough to write things accurately because they talk about these very extreme withdrawal symptoms.

THERAPIST: (crosstalk)

CLIENT: I’m like, “I get that that’s sort of a plot point, but there aren’t that many standard antidepressants that have those withdrawal symptoms, in part, because they wouldn’t be prescribed so widely if they were so—” I don’t know. It’s just – it gets under my skin.

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause 00:19:13 – 00:20:02)

Well, I think it’s because with yourself, you can become (ph) the same way. Isn’t it the same thing to – you’re kind of mad at yourself, or feel like it is a moral failing of yours, if it is too soon for your dad to make the joke?

CLIENT: Hmm. (pause) It’s like the same thing as what? I lost the comparison.

THERAPIST: Sure, sure. The same thing as the (pause) – you felt like it was unfair of the writers to present this guy as having a moral failing for not being able to deal with his withdrawal symptoms from the medication. You’re mad at them for essentially saying he was weak. As you—? [00:21:23]

CLIENT: No, that’s exactly right. Yeah.

THERAPIST: And I guess it seemed to me similar when you were talking about the thing with your dad because you reached right for the volleyball team in a, I think, at bottom (ph), kind of admiring way.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: At least on this point.

CLIENT: No, no. It is sort of admiring, but even as I say it, I’m like, “That’s kind of weird.” (laughter) No, I think you’re right. [00:22:02]

THERAPIST: But I guess, to me, what the volleyball team brings out, is that it’s really important to those guys to feel like – at least, a big piece of it was – whatever happens, this is a sign that we can deal with it.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yep.

THERAPIST: If we can be funny about it, if we can joke about it, then it means we’re kind of handling it, or we can handle it. We’re not falling apart.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. (pause) I feel like, with James, when I talk about things that hurt me like that, (pause) I feel like—

THERAPIST: The show? [00:22:59]

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah, like the show and just other places where I’m sensitive. I feel like somewhere things break down because I want to be saying, “This hurts me,” and what he hears is, “They shouldn’t be doing it this way because this hurts me,” or like, “It’s wrong for people to do this because it hurts me.” And sometimes I think that it is, and sometimes, just people get hurt – you just get hurt; that’s how it is. (pause) But I don’t, I don’t know. Yeah, [I’m good] (ph).

(pause 00:24:08 – 00:25:08)

THERAPIST: It made me think a little bit yesterday here, where you were saying it’s hard to talk. You wanted to say you weren’t feeling that great, that it’s kind of hard to put your thoughts together or something, and my hunch is that that’s difficult or gets under your skin in a similar way. It makes you feel like you’re not as together.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: In a way. [00:25:56]

CLIENT: I think the thing with not being able to articulate things and not being able to talk is also like I feel like it’s on me to be able to explain myself so that people can help. So if I can’t say it, then it’s somehow my fault that things are hurtful to me.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: I don’t know. I guess, I just feel like it’s particularly a thing here, but it’s also just in my life. I feel like it’s really important that I be able to be clear about what I say, that I be able to use my words. I don’t know.

THERAPIST: I think that’s actually the same thing. [00:27:01]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I think so, maybe from a little bit of a different angle. (pause) It seems like wanting to ward off a slightly different kind of vulnerability to the other person. Maybe it’s not that you have to be sort of together and able to handle X, Y, or Z, but it’s definitely on you, no matter how upset you are, to be clear and articulate so that you’re not putting that on them, or you’re not putting yourself in their hands in a kind of semi-coherent way.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause 00:28:20 – 00:28:56) Yep. Yeah, (inaudible). If I could just protect myself better, then I wouldn’t get hurt so much, and to think that like, “Nope, not going to happen.” (laughter)

(pause 00:29:15 – 00:29:47)

THERAPIST: I’m not sure you actually get hurt more when you’re presentable in explaining yourself less well to somebody.

CLIENT: Hmm.

THERAPIST: Or (pause) more open, in a way, about something getting under your skin. I get that it’s scarier, and I get that in certain circumstances, that could be worse. [00:30:41] When it’s somebody you don’t know very well, or you… I guess, to me, the clearer thing seems to be that it really puts you in danger of getting hurt worse, especially if the person gives some indication that they don’t want to deal with it, like they don’t want to deal with you with it, or something like that. I mean, it seems closer to the risk of – I can’t (ph) imagine you’re driving somebody away.

CLIENT: Mmm.

THERAPIST: But, I guess, for example, I’m thinking, like between you and me, I’m not aware that, in general, the times when you’re having a more difficult time explaining yourself, it really… It could go this way, just continue to be what happens, where then either I don’t get something, or you wind up explaining something in a way where I’m on totally a different page, and I say something that hurts, or you feel really misunderstood. That happens sometimes with you, but not, I don’t think, what needs (ph) to happen. [00:32:07]

CLIENT: Um-hum. Yeah.

THERAPIST: You can get really upset with yourself for feeling like you’re not being clear or frustrated when you can’t something across. That, I know, but…

CLIENT: Yeah, no. I think – I don’t know. I think one of the things – feeling like I have to be able to explain myself is – it seems sort of ridiculous to me that anyone would try to understand me if I make it harder for them. I feel like if I can’t explain things well, then people aren’t going to take an extra step toward me to figure it out and [see what happened] (ph).

THERAPIST: I see. Um-hum.

CLIENT: But, no, I hear you. [00:33:07]

THERAPIST: And also, I guess, with your dad, at least at this stage anyway, he sort of picked it up in his (inaudible) for you was, “Maybe it’s too soon to make that joke.” Again, if you say to him, “Look how things are,” I can’t imagine his knowing that puts you in more danger. You know what I mean?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: As I say, I get your point. I do; I think that your assumption is the other person won’t take the step towards you to help.

CLIENT: Yeah. [00:33:57]

THERAPIST: Or, in a way, to try to keep you safe.

(pause 00:34:01 – 00:34:32)

CLIENT: Yeah. That’s sort of what you were saying before the last thing. It’s something that I know, but it’s hard to remember.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(pause 00:34:55 – 00:36:15)

CLIENT: [Outside the people have] (ph) me really distracted, actually. I don’t know. I just usually can’t hear people outside.

THERAPIST: I guess what I’m wondering is, and not that you would know, which is why I ask the question, which is I wonder if there was something in what you heard happened or what they said, like the (inaudible 00:36:48) interaction, or something—

CLIENT: Mmm.

THERAPIST: that caught your attention.

CLIENT: I don’t think so. I think I kept expecting them to not be continuing to talk out there, and then they just kept going. Yeah, I just have a hard time, and so I felt like I was losing the thread of what you were saying and then getting frustrated with myself, and there’s just too much going on to actually, like…

THERAPIST: Okay.

(pause 00:37:33 – 00:38:34)

CLIENT: I think with Papa (ph) also, it feels to me like he… (pause) It feels to me like he was kind of stunned by, or is kind of stunned by my telling him, like, “But the way you were when I was a kid is still a big deal for me.” It felt like what he was doing there was trying to downplay it and then being like, “No, I don’t actually want to downplay it,” but I’m like, “It’s going back and forth,” and it’s sort of like, “Yeah, good, because, no, you shouldn’t.” (laughter) [00:39:23]

THERAPIST: You mean downplay it in sort of an expensive (ph) way?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s like, “If you thought I had destructive anger at this period, it wasn’t a big deal. There was this other period when things were worse for me.” Fine, but I wasn’t there for that other period. (pause 00:39:51 – 00:40:27)

And now I’m back to thinking about antidepressants.

THERAPIST: Um-hum.

CLIENT: I just wish it didn’t hurt.

THERAPIST: Um-hum. (pause) And yet, I think I was wrong, in a way, in what I said about your father in that, while it’s true, in a way, that knowing that what he said might hurt you might make it more likely he wouldn’t say something like that again, it couldn’t have worked that well because he did say it in the first place, already knowing – and even catching himself afterward – that it was going to hurt you. You already told him. [00:41:35]

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like (inaudible), it’s like, “Well, if I can sort of repeat this way in which I hurt you in a way that doesn’t hurt you, then maybe that will make the first time that I hurt you go away.” (laughter) But that doesn’t really work; I just get hurt more.

THERAPIST: I’m not sure I’d give him that much credit right there in that example. I mean, in that (inaudible 00:42:20), it felt a bit defensive what he said, like, “Oh, it really wasn’t that big a deal. When I was really angry, it was this other time.”

CLIENT: Um-hum.

THERAPIST: “So, really, you don’t have that much to be upset about. It could’ve been much worse.”

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) Yeah, I sort of…

THERAPIST: And, I kind of got it wrong. Maybe not each way, but maybe putting it more on you for not being able to trust him, in a way, when actually, yeah, (inaudible at 00:43:13), in the present. That doesn’t work out so well all the time.

CLIENT: Hmm. (pause) Hmm.

THERAPIST: We should [talk tomorrow] (ph).

CLIENT: Okay.

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