TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
CLIENT: Hi.
THERAPIST: Hey.
CLIENT: I'm not doing so well. Yeah. [Pause.] Extremely sad. [Pause.] I'm getting ready for a job conference in a couple of days. Going to go, hopefully, have interviews.
THERAPIST: What is this?
[1:17]
CLIENT: It's...there's a teacher placement agency called [inaudible 01:24]. They have conferences, you know, both regional and kind of national. So this is for the national one, and that's coming up on the 15th. How I need to [inaudible 01:54] school. I'm not really entirely sure what I should be doing. [Pause.] I'm hoping for the best.
THERAPIST: Huh?
CLIENT: I'm hoping for the best. [Pause.] To me, I feel like I have teaching experience. I have a Master's Degree. I'm really good. Like I'm a really really good teacher.
THERAPIST: That's pretty easy to believe.
CLIENT: But it doesn't mean very much.
THERAPIST: Well, in one sense I completely...like I completely agree that in one sense it doesn't mean very much, [inaudible 03:24].
CLIENT: Yeah. I don't know.
THERAPIST: Your point, I gather, is it doesn't really mean a damn bit of difference in any field.
CLIENT: Yeah. And like when it doesn't make very much difference in terms of what my chances are.
THERAPIST: Of?
CLIENT: Of getting a job.
THERAPIST: Okay. I see. I wasn't sure whether you meant surviving getting a job.
CLIENT: Yeah. [Pause.] I don't know about that.
[04:08]
CLIENT: Then I have to see if the schools, if they want to hire me. [Pause.] I'm unsure also where I'm going to be applying or where I should be applying. And I don't...do I basically just apply to the area? Do I go everywhere? I don't know. [Pause.]
[06:41]
CLIENT: My friend, Candace, was just visiting.
THERAPIST: It must be quite difficult to know how to think about or orient to work when you've been having such a disastrous time of it. [Pause.]
CLIENT: Yeah. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: I imagine it leaves you a kind of a loss to have to constantly think about work or a lot of anything.
CLIENT: Yeah, I don't know what to do. [Pause.]
[08:16]
THERAPIST: You don't really know what to do or how to talk about it.
CLIENT: Yeah. [Pause.] I don't know what to say. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: Don't make a [inaudible 10:10] but you look now and, of course you have it from other times recently, almost like a kind of a holding to yourself.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: I don't mean to make you feel subconscious, but I could imagine in the case, something about how you're feeling maybe, instead of what you want. [Pause.]
CLIENT: Uh huh. [Pause.]
[10:48]
THERAPIST: Because this mostly is what you've been doing?
CLIENT: Yeah. And I'm just barely [inaudible 13:20].
THERAPIST: Yeah. And you feel like; like catatonically [inaudible 13:32]?
CLIENT: Something like that. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: You didn't quite shut down. [Pause.]
CLIENT: I just felt sad. [Pause.] I don't know how to function. [Pause.]
[15:27]
THERAPIST: Feel it in like a very physical way?
CLIENT: I guess. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: Where? [Pause.]
CLIENT: [inaudible 16:11]. I don't know. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: Do you feel it any differently here than like at home? [Pause.]
CLIENT: I guess about the same. Very tired. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: To me there's something quite important about how difficult it is to sort of put any words to it.
CLIENT: Apparently difficult. [Pause.]
[19:26]
THERAPIST: In fact, actually when you said those, it was actually kind of difficult to be feeling it and kind of clearly in touch with it and talking about anything at all.
CLIENT: Yeah. [Pause.] Or maybe I just don't have anything to say yet. [Pause.]
[22:10]
THERAPIST: I guess there are things that occur to me to ask. When you describe, you use the word "sad." That doesn't sound like it's clear; that goes with the sense of a loss, or a longing, or being upset by something.
CLIENT: I know.
THERAPIST: Or being beat.
CLIENT: I do feel beat. [Pause.]
[25:18]
THERAPIST: Beat, more like worn down, or beat; more like not...like you don't have any fight in you? [Pause.]
CLIENT: I just feel like I've been repeatedly punched in the jaw. Like beat up. Just tired. [Pause.]
THERAPIST: I think...I suppose it has seemed to me at times like your depression is slipping in to sort of this...kick the shit out of you in every possible way. And defeats everything you try to do.
CLIENT: I just [inaudible 28:01]. [Pause.]
[28:01]
THERAPIST: How it happened? [Pause.]
CLIENT: [inaudible 29:48]
THERAPIST: Well, I know one idea that I had about it, that I kind of got at the moment is like it makes me think, in a way, a certain kind of demonic obsession in which the more you pay attention to the depression as such and kind of do something about it, the angrier and more vengeful the demon gets. [Pause.] And the more you have people around trying to make contact with the part of you that is hurting so terribly and so sad and so troubled by what's going on, the angrier it even gets. [Pause.] And the next question for me is why? Why would you be so dead set against feeling better; against [inaudible 34:43] what's really going on and again, what it's really like. And I'm not sure, but probably had something to do with some kind of very profound like loss that you feel and that sort of...having people be closer actually makes you feel more so. [Pause.]
CLIENT: Okay.
[36:17]
THERAPIST: One example of the first part that's coming to my mind is from a couple of weeks ago three weeks ago maybe now. It was that Tuesday when you, I think must be when you and I met and you had ECT, and then you kind of decided after that that you really needed to be in the hospital. When we had talked, you were hopeful that the ECT would help you feel better and then it didn't. Do you remember at all?
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Okay. Yeah, I mean I'm pretty sure I have my facts straight on it because I remember thinking at the time you had said to me that day as well when you'd done it before, it seemed like the ECT was helping. Not stupendously, but it was making a difference you thought.
CLIENT: Yeah, now I remember that.
THERAPIST: Yeah, and then you're feeling really crummy that morning. Your were like I'm going to have ECT and I had asked does it tend to help right away or does it take a while, and I think you referred to their being kind of lift usually fairly soon after. We didn't talk until a day or later, a day or maybe two later, maybe three because you were back in the hospital, but if I recall, you made it clear that you didn't feel any better. You couldn't have if, you know, the decision was made talking to a doctor there that you really needed to be back in the hospital and that was the best thing. And I remember thinking at the time, gosh, it's almost like you kind of had to show yourself it wasn't working or for the depression it could be stronger. I know it probably sounds a little crazy thing to say, but it was almost like, you know, you were starting to lean on a little bit and you started to appreciate getting some help on this. And it's almost like you kind of had to make a point, thus showing yourself, that it wasn't going to work. It wasn't going to help. It was that day, you know; I mean, it doesn't, in a way, mean that it doesn't help at all or can help, but I think, in a way, it may be kind of determined to show that it wasn't going to be stronger than the depression.
CLIENT: That makes sense. [Pause.]
[40:54]
THERAPIST: [inaudible 41:50] I mean the "why" question, I'm more speculative about. Like I wonder things like historically is there way that sort of being depressed growing up was one of the truest things you can do. You know, like... [Pause.] You know in other ways you sort of complying and trying to be or like find, at least not to make noise, or maybe [inaudible 42:33] sort of, I don't know, maybe felt like pretty [inaudible 42:41] in the machinery there and feeling pretty powerless and, you know; I wonder if being depressed is one of the ways you can kind of be honest and also show that; and also in a way be very powerful that nobody is going to take that away.
CLIENT: That's for sure. Yeah.
THERAPIST: We're going to stop in a minute, but I was just checking with you about the [inaudible 43:34] whatever. More or less, about the same?
CLIENT: About the same. I made it through it.
THERAPIST: Started out pretty hard? Yes?
CLIENT: Yeah. I'm struggling.
THERAPIST: When did Candace leave?
CLIENT: I'm sorry?
THERAPIST: When did Candace leave?
CLIENT: Yesterday.
[43:55]
THERAPIST: You went in today?
CLIENT: Um, in around like [inaudible 44:05].
THERAPIST: Was it bad for you? Were things bad last night [inaudible 44:09]?
CLIENT: No, they weren't so bad.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: That's fine.
THERAPIST: Okay. Well I'll call you [inaudible 44:28].
CLIENT: Okay.
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