TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: Work has me really down. Just the last couple of weeks I've struggled and struggled with meeting goals and I'm not meeting goals and it's a huge problem and my boss has assigned more resources to (unclear) and he's stepped up the frequency of his e-mail thing, you know have you tried x, y, z? And all that I haven't either because it hasn't occurred to me or because I tried it once and it didn't work and I got frustrated and felt stupid and couldn't bring myself to like pushing until I got it to work. I clearly can't say that to my boss, but it just makes me look incompetent and/or lazy.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: And it's really upsetting and I don't know how to get past this because just like I dread going to work every day because by making no progress kind of sucks and is shitty and, yeah.
(Pause): [00:01:36 00:02:12]
CLIENT: For the last two days at work I actually had my cell phone out on the table, on the desk between the edge of the desk and the keyboard where anyone could see it and was just reading Internet all day, on the cell phone so that no one could tell that I was wasn't doing anything all day. And that was clearly a bad choice and it was clearly wrong of me but, yeah.
(Pause): [00:02:35 00:03:00]
CLIENT: I almost wish I worked in one of those high tech, no high security facilities where you're not allowed to have personal devices because then you have no temptation.
(Pause): [00:03:16 00:03:28]
THERAPIST: Is there a practical way you can leave it in the glove box in your car?
CLIENT: I could do that. I mean, I've tried things like leaving it in my backpack and just fish it out. Maybe leaving it in the car it would be less (unclear).
(Pause): [00:03:48 00:06:40]
THERAPIS It can be hard to stick with talking about it because you feel frustrated, so embarrassed and ashamed and you know, I, like your boss I'm sitting here watching and I guess you're getting just the sort of thing your boss would do which would be to make a suggestion that is pretty close to things you've thought of. And then, I'm not saying it was well meant, but it makes you feel worse.
CLIENT: Yep. Like I really hate the feeling of having someone make a suggestion that I should have thought of already and it makes me feel stupid and ashamed.
(Pause): [00:07:48 00:08:25]
THERAPIST: Yeah, it's like you feel like I'm humiliating and cheating you.
(Pause): [00:08:35 00:09:08]
THERAPIST: I suspect you have the idea in a way that we both see it like that and I sort of step back and think about where I'm coming from. Everything feels as though I'm every bit as critical, disappointed in you, clear about your egregious failings as you are, or your boss is, for that matter. And like we're both sitting here keenly aware of those things.
(Pause): [00:09:53 00:11:17]
THERAPIST: And that, I would say it like the air is sort of so thick, I think for you, with those sorts of judgments and those sorts of like almost I don't think insights, but like I imagine there's a kind of like (unclear) in a way with all those sort of very critical, but demeaning, disappointed sorts of judgment that there's not really room for much else in either of our minds as it feels to you.
(Pause): [00:12:11 00:13:57]
THERAPIST: (inaudible).
CLIENT: (Sigh) I'm supposed to begin with the annual staff retreat for my fraternity and since I got brought on staff recently I was invited. It was really stressful and terrible. So, it (unclear) the Girl Scout Camp in Michigan, and the scout camp gives us a rec center to use and like people just (unclear). There were like 50 of us and some people who are anti-camping because they are indulging in nominative performances of femininity and, 'ooh, camping is gross,' and, 'what about my nails?' and all that bullshit tend to get a hotel just outside of the boundaries of the campground only two and a half hours a day and just drive in every morning for the workshops only and drive back out. I had attended the camp and even brought a tent in case there was like a field or something where we could do tent camping. But I got there and it was just, it was so alienating, like everyone knew everyone except me. I was the stranger and they were like when I got in Friday after work, the room had divided itself up into like women who were wearing Victoria's Secret pajamas and talking about makeup and skin care products and movies and like men who were shouting, very loudly discussing and very argumentative, in a basically male way, like video games and technology and a couple of them were saying things that were completely wrong and incorrect about technology, but like there were a few women hanging around that group and every time they tried to interrupt, or even, not interrupt but join the conversation in any way, they got (unclear) shouted down and shut down and it was just this horrible, horrible, icky gender dynamic. I'm like, in a group that big, obviously, there were some people outside the two main groups, so I tried introducing myself and the first person I introduced myself to I went up and said you know, 'hi, I'm (unclear), and (unclear), my home chapter is Chi Omega, and he just looks at me and says, 'I'm in the Navy and I'm a Republican and I'm in (unclear) in this very challenging kind of way. I guess because Chi Omega has a reputation for being pretty far left in terms of politics of the student members but like, yeah, it was just -
THERAPIST: So the national fraternity, and these are people from various chapters at various schools -
CLIENT: Yes.
THERAPIST: And -
CLIENT: We're all alumni.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Each branch was from like 23 to there was some guy in his '70s there. Yeah. There were people this was for Region 1, which is the northeast THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Maybe parts of Ohio. Yeah, Ohio but not west Ohio, was the only region there.
THERAPIST: I guess that's part of the country. Okay. I was just -
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Gotcha.
CLIENT: So, yeah, there were people from pretty far off, but not that far off. It was the northeast, basically. But yeah, it was terrible and all night (unclear) the mean group on the campsite. I couldn't deal with it so I fled to the hotel and got a room. And that was pretty miserable, too, because it wasn't actually a hotel. It was this horrible, shabby, rundown motel and the room smelled like mildew and the bathroom was filthy and there were like these awful, cheesy, like Americana-type placards and like bad kitschy art all over both the rooms and the office and there was like a 5' tall plushy Uncle Sam and like you know, 'Give your problems to God, he'll be up all night anyway.' And like cheesy crap like that that like I really don't expect to see in this part of the country, like that's very strongly associated for me with the deep south. But anyway, it was very unpleasant. And there was no WiFi. No. But I had a tiny bit of service on my phone so I (unclear) both my country (unclear) on the phone saying, 'this is horrible, I want to come home.' I feel so alienated and miserable,' and then phone service cut off which given that I was already feeling like isolated and alienated, like I'm sure you can imagine how I felt.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Yeah. It was terrible. And Saturday was a little bit better because I got there late. I woke up late and so I got there just in time for the workshops to start. I missed breakfast and the socializing bit of it. And once the workshops got going, like it was much easier to track with people because we were talking about the things we had in common. We were talking about fraternity, about the challenges of being on staff. I had a lot to learn about being a new staff member. They had a lot to teach me and there was also like we're all in this because we care about the fraternity and we care about the students. Those are pretty big, important things to have in common. So it felt better, but it just started off on completely the (unclear) foot. Yeah, my boss, I guess, like this is a job a volunteer job but the person who will be supervising me in my work for (unclear) is really just like her. She's grumpy and arrogant and just really thoughtless and tactless and like casually cruel to people. And she has a clique. She has a cultist personality people who absolutely adore her. But, my sense of things from just like listening closely to what other people said is that she's a difficult person to work with and a difficult person to get along with and has caused problems for the region before. So, I don't know what I 'm going to do having to work closely with her over the next year.
(Pause): [00:20:46 00:23:11]
THERAPIST: I don't know, for some reason what's sort of striking me about like your description of the early part of the weekend and its horrors, is -
CLIENT: I feel it's a little melodramatic to call them horrors they'd be more like unpleasantries.
THERAPIST: Okay. (Laughs) At least a good part of the (inaudible). What's striking about it is that time remember, we had been talking about -
(Pause): [00:23:55 00:24:06]
THERAPIST: Some feeling of you're actually having a bit more space (Pause) like to really have your own reactions to people there, to (unclear) to have some contact, although limited with people close to you -
(Pause): [00:24:46 00:25:26]
THERAPIST: maybe not quite the same feeling of your (unclear) exposed and criticized and kind of passive and helpless. (Unclear) you can do in your opinion, is a little more space where (Pause): [00:25:35 00:25:58]
CLIENT: I feel pretty crappy for leaving for the hotel. That was an admission of defeat on my part.
(Pause): [00:26:11 00:26:23]
CLIENT: It wasn't just the social stuff. There was also one shower for 50 people like that was a little upsetting. And I was on my menstrual cycle and like I use reusable products I don't (unclear) disposables. Just the bathroom is not set up to be able to deal with that in a good way and I think, either problem alone I would have been able to, I would have been willing to figure out a way to make it work, both of them, like yeah.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
(Pause): [00:26:54 00:27:26]
CLIENT: Like I was giving up.
(Pause): [00:27:31 00:29:04]
THERAPIST: Something I'm beginning to I wonder about is -
(Pause): [00:29:05 00:29:12],
CLIENT: the extent to which you experience me as well, as a kind of like representative of the particular type of kind of (unclear) stereotype gender-derivative culture.
THERAPIST: What do you mean?
CLIENT: Then it can make it I wonder how much worries or wariness about where I may be coming from or how I may react along those lines make it difficult for you to talk. You know if you feel like you're sitting in the room here with someone who (Pause) maybe won't say, but maybe will think, or maybe says things that reflect some of what you describe about the -
THERAPIST: Right.
(Pause): [00:30:36 00:30:46]
CLIENT: Does that mean, as kind of bullies are concerned for me? You know in whatever context?
(Pause): [00:30:54 00:31:04]
CLIENT: You know, my last therapist who was a better match on demographic grounds and was really not the greatest on not reproducing terrible cultural norms in the room, so like I don't know, I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a certain wariness.
THERAPIST: Sure.
CLIENT: Like when I take stuff back and look at it logically, you haven't said like a fraction of the problematic shit (unclear) said to me. So, yeah.
THERAPIST: Yeah, and again I think there are two parts there. One is to kind of step back kind of appraisal.
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: Which is important in its own way, but I think -
(Pause): [00:31:54 00:32:03]
THERAPIST: I get a piece that's important, too, like the feeling of a kind of wariness and impending kind of like misunderstanding or bias on my part towards you. I guess I'm thinking about this taking it together with what you were saying before in terms, again, of like it's somewhat difficult to talk or think in here which is, to me, like that kind of ratcheting down but in some ways similar experience of that in the two scenarios that you're talking about the one at work and the one over the weekend.
CLIENT: I'm not seeing the similarity. Sorry.
THERAPIST: That's all right. The simile I have in mind is the extent to which you feel oppressed.
CLIENT: Right. The situation at work is entirely my own doing for me about my job. Like, the situation at work like there have been like particular conversations especially with the managers, the other group, the macro-group that I felt were gendered. But for the most part like within my team, that hasn't been pinging for me.
THERAPIST: Yeah. No, I let's see. So what I am oriented to is the moment or today as we've been talking, are the ways that have you're experiencing some amalgam of me and being in this room and what you're talking about outside.
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: That get in the way of you're being able to think and talk more freely.
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: And in the first instance the air talking about work, it seems like I said, in here and in combination what you were talking about with work was so thick with your feeling so kind of exposed and kind of criticized and sort of passive and helpless, and was like no space.
CLIENT: Right.
THERAPIST: It's not so easy to think and talk under those conditions, really, I don't think.
CLIENT: Yep.
THERAPIST: And in the second instance, it seemed, there was more room but a kind of similar feeling of alienation and oppression and danger, wariness, something on that spectrum there. Yeah. So I'm not at all disagreeing that the situations are quite different and your roles in them are quite different. I guess I'm just trying to explain.
CLIENT: Okay. Right. (Cross talk)
THERAPIST: And the reason maybe I'm (unclear), the reason I'm more interested in that way is because I think something that causes you a lot of trouble like out there in your life is a kind of shutting down with difficulty continuing to be able to think and feel. Like if at work, it's more obvious.
CLIENT: Yep.
THERAPIST: But maybe in some kind of, certain situations it can be fairly evident too. And so I'm interested in looking at how that stuff comes up here as a way of making it easier to deal with out there.
CLIENT: Okay. Thank you for laying it out.
THERAPIST: Sure.
CLIENT: There's a lot that hadn't been clear to me before.
THERAPIST: I see.
(Pause): [00:37:30 00:37:59]
THERAPIST: Maybe we should stop.
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
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