TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: We've decided or discovered that we are on tomorrow as usual.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I just, like I really had a memory of -

THERAPIST: Me canceling?

CLIENT: Yeah. Because it was before Thanksgiving.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And then I was like oh God, it's Thanksgiving really soon, except no.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I'm sorry. So, one of the things we talked about yesterday was, what I was thinking about, is I guess where I worked, like working things. I'm trying to like, I have the last time I sent out resumes, outside of Cambridge, I think was maybe… it was probably two jobs ago. [0:01:20.8]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: Actually, no, I would be three jobs ago probably. And, like I haven't interviewed at an outside place since I'd do it in college.

THERAPIST: Which was like 1980 or something?

CLIENT: Ninety-five. Oh, no, I did another job interview, I forgot that. I interviewed at Exeter and accidentally had like a day-long interview with them for a job.

THERAPIST: A teaching job?

CLIENT: No, working IT.

THERAPIST: Oh, all right.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was surprising, like I didn't expect to be surprised, a really long interview. I don't drive, but they were sort of like oh, you could carpool with people. It's interesting, they were very the people I talked to were very encouraging and like oh yeah, no, that's no problem, you could totally get rides various places and blah-blah-blah-blah, because it was in Exeter. I look at it as a pain. [0:02:44.2]

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I did get a call back for I wasn't sure if it was a second round or an offer, but I was in the middle of having a neural virus and -

THERAPIST: Having what?

CLIENT: A neural virus, where you're just vomiting for a couple of days.

THERAPIST: Oh.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay, forget I said something.

CLIENT: It's highly it's one of those like highly contagious, spreads around like wildfire, especially in colleges, or hotels or other things.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: It took my whole apartment. We all just -

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: It was yeah, it felt really bad, except at any rate, they called in the midst of that, and I, I think failed to communicate what was happening and then they didn't call back and I think I called back and someone was hired. But yeah, since then, I don't think I've interviewed elsewhere, which I don't know, like I mean, I have reasons for some of them, like some of not interviewing out of Cambridge, but some of my job changes. And if I realized that the methods that I would get from working for Cambridge for like eight years and then like you get benefits jumps, I think I would have been more deliberate about possibly like intentional about staying, because in retrospect I was like wow, I should have paid attention to my benefits package, and like that's really great, but I don't know, like during sort of .com bubble times, when everyone was getting a job in IT, if you kind of looked at a computer, it did have this moment of several of my friends lived in Berkeley, including a roommate, and had this little sort of drama of like do I want to do that, do I not want to do that, and then actually, I really didn't feel like working for a startup and startup IT even more so, plus the underlying with these startups. So I feel good about not jumping cross country, although certainly there were local startups that I could have jumped into. Avoiding the .com bus was really good. [0:06:01.6]

But yeah, I haven't I don't know. I haven't looked outside very much, I guess partially because it's been so easy to get hired within Cambridge, like applying for a new internal Cambridge, like there's a lot at Cambridge and if you're already an employee, they look at your resume first, and it's like there's no interruption in anything, which is pretty amazing. And I've gotten new internal Cambridge jobs mostly within like two to three months of looking. So, it was partially out of laziness, I've been well, but I could just go I could get a job, like I'm not supposed to work in my current job and not have to like, you know, I don't know, like worry about a new commute or blah-blah-blah, like continuing to work at Cambridge has been really easy and convenient and a variety of things, although for me it was more like, I felt like the two big things that were important for me Cambridge -wise was my first actually full-time other job. I was offered a job in the freshman dean's office that paid nothing and the freshman dean basically said, you can't take this job because you have students loans and debt, I could help you get another job, which worked.

THERAPIST: That's pretty cool. [0:08:05.0]

CLIENT: Yeah, it was really great. It was a little overwhelming, but then they got a job, because looking for a job with no job experience.

THERAPIST: Right, it's hard.

CLIENT: Yeah, it was -

THERAPIST: A disaster.

CLIENT: It wasn't a disaster, it just was really difficult. And I actually did jump from that job to working at a help desk. It also happened mostly because I was familiar with Cambridge already, because I didn't have any IT background. But conveniently, due to this around the time of the .com bubble and no one wanted to work for a help desk, they were like fuck you, I can just go make more money somewhere else.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: So that made it possible to get that job.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: It's like oh shoot, I'm like yeah, that was, you know. [0:09:07.8]

THERAPIST: So, -

CLIENT: Mm-hmm?

THERAPIST: What I recall yesterday, we were talking about you applying for jobs outside of Cambridge, like the topic came up, as I recall, because you were, it seemed to me, kind of surprisingly, like you're talking about it as though it was next to impossible to do, and it sounded suspicious to me after a while, and I wondered like hmm, what's your stake in seeing it this way because again, it seemed to me, kind of clear that you had a stake in seeing it as being harder than I guess I imagined it would be.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And so I said and I think that came up because… [0:10:16.0]

CLIENT: The discussion of Rachel Maddow.

THERAPIST: Yeah. And I think it related to the question of… Not very closely but somewhere along the lines of, you know, how you kind of wound up stuck in this situation at work that you've been stuck in for a while and I have the idea that there are sort of unconscious ways that you are drawn to it, or that keep you in it, but that doesn't necessarily mean you like it exactly but there's something.

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean sort of where I was meandering that if that like there are these two jobs that I feel like yeah, that was like, you know, I got them those two jobs would have been difficult to get, if I just sort of, you know, cold off the street. [0:11:33.1]

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: But after that, you know, office job experience, help desk experience, one could go elsewhere.

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: And I don't know, like I think like I have a lot of mixed feelings about still working for Harvard, because I meant to only have a first job with them. And then I was like oh, okay, well I've got this help desk job, so that's like -

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And after the help desk job, I was looking for other things, I was applying elsewhere. But, the Cambridge jobs that I have had, I've also mostly stayed until the last two I stayed until I was miserable, like really, really past what was I don't want to say necessary, like I don't totally know why I stayed in those jobs that long, except that like my parents have definitely sort of got in my head, just like, you cannot leave a job until you have another one lined up immediately, which I don't think is unreasonable, but it's really hard to even like it's hard to sort of conceive of. Something makes it hard to think about looking for a new job while having a job, and I wasn't aware of that, you know, in terms of finding a new job, this would be like more likely. But, I also sometimes feel like I feel like I've been here too long, like it's safe, it's easy, it's something that I've done before. [0:14:02.2]

THERAPIST: Do you have a kind of lingering feeling in these jobs situations that it's your fault?

CLIENT: Oh, yeah, in the last two, definitely. This one, (sighs).

THERAPIST: I mean, I hope not, but…

CLIENT: Yeah, no, I have.

THERAPIST: Sometimes you were different or if you were (crosstalk).

CLIENT: Well, I mean my other jobs, I left because I was getting sexually harassed by a coworker who also was a big slacker, and part of me did feel like I don't know, I felt like I should have done more to not have to work with him and not also have to leave my job, if that makes sense.

THERAPIST: I'm sorry, say that again. [0:15:15.2]

CLIENT: The coworker who was sexually harassing me, one of the big things that I felt at the time, and I still feel sometimes when I think about it, is and then basically, why wasn't he fired?

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: You know, why did I ended up leaving instead of him and he's still there in that same job. And, so I think like, you know, is there more I could have done to get him out, to have made my work situation better, I guess. I mean, the other thing he did, which was smart for him, he trashed talked me to my coworkers, about how I was paranoid and, you know, a bitch and blah-blah-blah-blah, so that anything so that [0:16:18.9]

THERAPIST: (crosstalk).

CLIENT: At that point, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And I had been like I don't want to discuss this work.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: This difficulty with like my coworker, I didn't want to go to my manager.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: So a lot of that, I sort of just feel like… I guess I'm mostly, it's like I just, I don't understand why he wasn't fired, like or moved. Like, my manager agreed he was sexually harassing me, my manager agreed that he was doing substandard work, and that he was avoiding it, and nothing happened. You know, I bugged him a lot, I've interviewed with HR, for that department, I brought it up. And I had actually talked with an HR person one other time, just about women in IT. And I don't know, I just, I, I just feel like he should have been fired or moved to not working with me/women. I don't know, like I don't it's not that I feel responsible for that, but I keep on thinking was there something I didn't do, like could I have done something differently. [0:18:12.8]

And you know, I could have I mean, I could think of a few things, but I don't think they actually would have helped. Like I never wrote a log of each time he was being creepy, which means it would have been every day. Like if you were trying to report my sexual harassment, it would have been like these are a list of the times when he did these inappropriate behaviors, but… I started to and then I just felt really depressed, because it was basically, you know, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., staring at my breasts periodically, and that didn't make me feel good, and it wasn't really helpful.

And the economics department, that job I left after having a mediated labor dispute. God, I don't know about that job, like that job to me was a lot of things, but I never wanted the mediated dispute part, or rather after I found out, we found out that that other department didn't care, what the mediator said we should do, there wasn't a lot like anyone could do for something like that, but in some ways, I think about like all the crazy office politics that were going on in that department, and sort of my complete lack of interest in it. Or, may not lack of interest, I just didn't I didn't really see how it would apply to my job, like if another secretary felt threatened by me, like I felt like well, I mean, I have my faculties, she has hers, she'll probably be snippy in the break room. And I didn't see that leading to that person accusing me of theft. So…

THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:20:52.8]

CLIENT: I don't know, or like having someone in the office next to me, like report when I was coming and going, and reporting on whether or not my quality was appropriate or not. And like I don't know that anything else could have been done, like except I could have maybe talked to the dean about the weirdness of that as well, but I didn't. And I don't know, like at this current job, I feel like there was a time when they had a new director in for like six months to a year.

THERAPIST: Are you feeling a bit defensive? You sound a little defensive.

CLIENT: (sighs)

THERAPIST: Perhaps I said something that makes you a little defensive.

CLIENT: No, it's I, I feel really defensive about those two job situations, like sexual harassment by a coworker and mediating job. Especially the sexually harassing coworker, whenever I sort of talk about that to someone, like casually or not casually, the person sort of usually immediately is just going to go, did you report him, did you do this, did you do this, did you do this. I'm like ah! I really just wanted to say I had a sexually harassing coworker and nothing happened and…

THERAPIST: Hmm. [0:22:45.7]

CLIENT: Yeah. Like at the very least, I think I've always at the very least, the very common reply is well, did you report him, and then, well why wasn't he fired. And then it's not uncommon for people to sort of say, well did you do these things.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Which I always feel like it's sort of, if you had done those things, he would have been fired.

THERAPIST: In the absence of my saying something more supportive, like that's really awful or I can't believe nobody did anything about what happened or that must have been really terrible. You know, I never supported it, you got worried? [0:23:46.7]

CLIENT: Sort of, like I'm usually feeling defensive about that, like and also um, (sighs) this party I went to on Saturday, this is where my friend, Paula, who works in HR and she has a mutual coworker.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: And so her two of her coworkers sort of because they're in HR, -

THERAPIST: I see, (inaudible).

CLIENT: Yeah, and I was just kind of like ahhhh. So that's all that stuff and then sort of, I think where they were going was more like a rant about crappy management and bad HR people, but it more felt like I don't know, not interrogation but like I was also somehow complicit or involved in my managers being grumpy. [0:25:02.3]

THERAPIST: Well, which which is not quite in those terms exactly, but sort of like what I'm saying. I'm not saying I think it's your fault that your managers are crappy, but I'm saying that I could imagine it feels a little like that to you, which is, it seems to me, there's something going on with sort of how it kind of has it in certain ways but clearly not in others, and you're reluctant to make changes or take action of certain kinds, again, building on another there's something going on with that, and that sort of relates to you being stuck in this situation. I don't know if I'm not aware that I'm just sort of going to excuse anybody else's behavior, but I guess I could imagine it feels a little like I'm kind of putting it, in some way, in part on you. [0:26:40.9]

CLIENT: No it (sounds frustrated)

THERAPIST: Ah-huh?

CLIENT: I don't feel like you're excusing my coworker's behavior. I think that my knee-jerk reaction is just I don't know, to defend my sort of defend myself from my weaknesses a little bit. Like, I don't feel like you said anything that puts me, like to blame, but I do sometimes feel that way.

THERAPIST: Including with me or just in general?

CLIENT: In general, yeah, which… [0:27:47.4]

THERAPIST: Usually one thing that's characteristic of a lot of this is how you feel, I think pretty reflexively, defensive, when you're the one who's been wronged. And there's a sort of, I don't know, a more realistic aspect to that, which is that often, you have not been well received when you are expressing your, you know, opinion or whatever, about how you've been wronged, but there's, I think pretty clearly some way, that that also comes from you. Whether that's the result of having had that kind of thing happen to you or something else, I don't know, but it seems to happen where you're treated badly and then kind of feel very weary or defensive of your point of view about what happened. [0:29:11.8]

CLIENT: Yeah, I I guess I don't feel like… I'll actually use the workplace for an example right now. Like, going to HR for instance, to me feels like they're sort of because I go in with a complaint about someone, that their first response will be to try to minimize the situation.

THERAPIST: Right. [0:30:15.5]

CLIENT: And in minimizing, like part of the minimizing is like what I'm saying, what I'm perceiving didn't really happen that way.

THERAPIST: One might expect that would be more enraging, not more intimidating. I don't sort of hear any indication of your anger about all of these things, which kind of strikes me. Anticipating that the people who are supposed to be there to do something about things like this, anticipating that they won't listen either, which tends to have a kind of dampening effect on you. It could have the opposite effect, you know? [0:31:28.5]

CLIENT: No. I guess I'm not I don't know, I'm not seeing where you're going.

THERAPIST: Okay. You're describing it in quite practical terms, which makes sense to me.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: Some things about why you react the way that you do, why you react defensively when you're been wronged in one of these sort of situations in the workplace. And I guess what I'm saying is while I think your descriptions are accurate, I think they leave out some pretty important kind of dimensions of what's going on inside of you as these things unfold, and which practical considerations don't well explain. So, for example, somebody treats you badly at work, you know, sort of this what you're telling me is well, okay, so yeah, I'm on the defensive because 500 times, I've gone to HR, they do nothing. And, you know, so I already feel defensive when I walk in the door of HR, and I already anticipate I'm not going to be listened to and nothing's going to happen. And it sounds like maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but I feel like you're feeling defeated before you even speak up. [0:33:24.8]

I suspect that there's something more fundamental than just having had that experience repeatedly with HR at Cambridge, though I know you have and I know it's been incredibly difficult, that makes you feel defeated when you walk in the door. Something along the lines of some kind of lack of faith or believe, like a conviction in your own views and in the sort of importance of people taking them seriously.

CLIENT: Yeah, at a sort of basic level. It's very rare that I think someone will have my back in an argument. [0:34:28.0]

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: And in disparagement, I'm sort of thinking like… yeah, like just an argument, like I think that sucked and they think it was awesome, just something. And like there will sort of be like really simplistic, it doesn't really matter, I like eggs, you don't, but if it's something more important, especially something emotional where I think that whoever is around me will be supportive, will, I don't know, like come to my defense, come to my aid. I don't there's not many people that I think like oh yeah, they would totally do that. And I guess I feel like, so if they're not going to, like if people aren't if someone's not going to help me out, like be my friend, you know, out of like sort of love and affection, then what's next is well maybe we'll agree because it sounds I mean it's not an argument about how I feeling or what happened. [0:36:15.7]

THERAPIST: It's a pretty dramatic betrayal you're describing having happened so many times.

CLIENT: I mean I think, I don't know.

THERAPIST: I think you're right. I just think it's -

CLIENT: Yeah, I mean, so the thing that I think about that, you know, what was dramatic with the part of the betrayal and I really hate thinking about is when I was in high school and one of my friends who I had known since I was a little kid, went around saying that I work at Cambridge, like they hired me because I was black.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: Et cetera, et cetera, and like, (A) she was a friend, so [0:37:21.0]

THERAPIST: She was a pretty close friend if I remember right.

CLIENT: Yeah, she'd been one of my best friends for years and she also had always she had been picked on, like since we were little kids, constantly, and so I had been there for her getting picked on. I had like defended her a lot, you know, made sure that if I was picking someone for a team, that I picked her or I I don't know. Part of our friendship was as much as (sighs) like as much as I could, given that like we were kids. I tried to support her and like she was my friend, so I was like oh yeah of course, you know, like I'll have your back, I'll do whatever, like…

THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:38:22.4]

CLIENT: And so I mean at that time, we weren't getting along super well, like at that moment, I think, because we were teenagers. We'd been sort of, I don't know, been in a couple of like you know, used to always, myself and a couple of our other mutual friends.

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: If there was group work, someone to always try to get her into the group, because getting picked last sucks. And I think I had one or two experiences of doing that the year before and having her just not like, not do the work, not participate, and having and when you're done, like wow, I made a really bad choice here. Or her being like super arrogant and we were all not as smart as her. But we were still friends and I just, I never thought that a friend would do that, like especially one I'd known that long. So that really hurt. [0:39:46.6]

And then, not having friends like say no or argue with her, that hurt a lot like, you know, we were both in the school newspaper, which is also a very big social whatever, and she one time I came into the room and she was telling, you know, like a big chunk of the staff, we would all meet and we'd hang out.

THERAPIST: Oh, sure.

CLIENT: And she was sort of finishing saying that, and I came in and they sort of just looked at me and no one said anything and I left, and no one really brought it up. (chokes up) Or said anything about it to me, and like our other mutual friends didn't take it seriously. Their response was basically well, you know, she's having a really hard time, she's just upset and her parents are divorced. There was a lot of stuff going on in her life. So, pretty much everyone said I shouldn't be so upset, like she didn't mean it that way, blah-blah-blah-blah. And then like my other closest friends, like all my like my closest friends were also friends with her, so… And I felt like they all just took her side. [0:41:46.6]

And then, sort of the other big one was I used to do like a bunch of friends of mine, we'd get together at my house or at my cousin's house, and go trick or treating, and we did that for years, you know?

THERAPIST: In high school?

CLIENT: Oh, yeah.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. But high school at that point, you just sort of, you would go to a few friends' houses, everyone you know, and then like eat candy or whatever. So, people were coming to my house, I hadn't invited her, and she, my best other my friend Zoe, so both of them came up to the door and they had like they were wearing just regular clothes, and had like a bag on her head, and said what's happening, and the sort of reveal, ta-da was they had their costume was each other and I was really upset that they'd invite her along when they knew I didn't want to. And that same friend, another time later, the two of us were going to go somewhere and -

THERAPIST: You and Zoe? [0:42:58.0]

CLIENT: Yeah, me and Zoe, and she invited Emma as well, and I got upset and I just started to say like I really don't want to go if she goes. Well, and she her response was to just laugh at me, that I shouldn't be mean, and that if I was going to be mean then I shouldn't come along. I mean eventually, I wrote her a letter sort of saying -

THERAPIST: Emma or Zoe?

CLIENT: To Zoe, I wrote a letter to Zoe, even though she lives five, ten minutes away if I'm walking. I walked over, it was a long letter, and like delivered it to her, and then she gave one back to me. I was telling her what had happened. But I mean it helped but I don't know, like I've never trusted her after that. It was super hard. I don't know that I ever have since then.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh. [0:44:08.8]

CLIENT: Not that she's not still a close friend.

THERAPIST: She lives in Philadelphia with her boyfriend and like had a fire.

CLIENT: Yeah. It's just, it sucks, I've known her forever but -

THERAPIST: Absolutely.

CLIENT: And I sometimes do want to talk to her about it.

THERAPIST: Yeah, sure.

CLIENT: But I don't.

THERAPIST: I'm sure you also really know.

CLIENT: Yeah. I really don't want to hear her defend Emma again.

THERAPIST: Yeah. (inaudible).

CLIENT: Yeah. It was also like (sighs) that year was also sort of (sniffles) the last two years of high school were also basically when I discovered that a lot of people in my high school, they just didn't think of me as like they're my friend. [0:45:20.2]

THERAPIST: Oh.

CLIENT: So… ah… in ways that I just, I didn't expect, and it was sort of the first encounter with people I knew really well, people -

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: And just saying really horrible things and not getting why I was upset.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And that, like that experience with Emma and Zoe was kind of the pinnacle event.

THERAPIST: We need to stop for now.

CLIENT: (blows nose).

THERAPIST: I'm interested in a couple of things that you said

CLIENT: I'll see you tomorrow.

THERAPIST: Okay.

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