TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: Sorry I’m late.

THERAPIST: It’s okay.

CLIENT: How are you doing?

THERAPIST: Good, thank you.

CLIENT: Good. Well. A lot of things have happened. How can I say this? I kind of had a conversation with my mother and she kind of took it the wrong way because I kind of just expressed my feelings of like what I’ve been going through in my treatment and just how I feel about certain situations. And it was to the point where, you know, my mother got even more depressed, you know. Basically thought that I called her a bad mother. And pretty much, you know, took it that I was really angry at her.

[01:04]

And you know I think it was all part of her game to like, you know, put the sympathy back on her to make an excuse that, oh, why did I do this, why did I do that. That wasn’t really my goal. My goal was just to get it out there, you know. Was again my cry for help just to let them know how I feel, what I was going through, and just to basically be able to have a conversation with them with how I am mentally right now and what I’m thinking and was going through. And she got very upset. You know, I can’t believe you’re saying this. You know, that really hurt me. And I was like listen, that wasn’t meant to hurt you. I go but there’s just…and I called her out on certain situations when I told her I got a job, the first thing she did was turn it in to a negative. When I told my parents I got a ring, they got upset that I didn’t involve them in it.

When a lot of positive stuff had happened in my life, they automatically go to the negative and I told them that there was too much negativity going on in that household and I just can’t live with that. I can’t deal with it. And I think it may be sunk in. I don’t know. But they are starting to get it. I mean my mother is constantly negative. There’s just a negative vibe in that house at all times.

[02:44]

And you know even now like we’re asking for a guest list from my parents and she won’t even talk to my dad about it. You know, I had to have a separate conversation with my dad; a separate conversation with my mom about their expectations. The expectations of it are we want a small wedding. We want 150 people maximum. Well, they have 150 people in their family and they’re not used to being told no. And this is a struggle that I’m dealing with a lot because there are a lot of things that they just won’t give up.

I mean the wedding alone is going…we let them pay for some. My fiancé’s mother is going to pay for some and you know, we’re trying to keep my mom and my dad out of it. But eventually they’re going to possibly contribute.

But, like I had the conversation with my dad, I go this is our estimate of what it’s going to cost. Well let me know; I’ll give you some money. I go, I want you to know just because you give me money doesn’t mean your list expands. It doesn’t. And I don’t know if he took that the right way, took that the wrong, but you know, just the hardest part is getting just a prelist from them.

[04:14]

You know, because I had a conversation with my dad about who he could invite. He wants to invite all his cousins. And I said that’s not happening. He said why not. I go then who does mom invite? And he just…it’s a constant struggle which frustrates me because I’m trying to do it in a civil conversational way because I know when it comes down to his sister, and she’s on the list, is I’m going to tell him how I feel and I’m going to, you know, put up a good case as to why I don’t want her there. Because every time my mother mentions my dad’s sister, she gets set off. She becomes very angry, very negative, and very mean. And it’s not what I want at my wedding. It’s not what I want in a joyous place.

My fiancé and I have had this conversation where we want to celebrate with people that actually want to celebrate with us. As far as my aunt goes, she could give a shit less if she’s there or not.

For me, personally, it would mean a lot more to me if she wasn’t there. It would mean a lot more to me if I could invite some of my other aunts and uncles who mean lot more to me than her who I know would actually have a good time and would actually, you know, be positive in the environment.

[05:52]

The whole situation that I’m looking for is I know if my aunt and her family are there it’s going to automatically be negative. There’s always; there’s just a connection with them and negativity and all I can picture is my mother saying, “Can you believe this what they did here?” “Can you believe that one, what he did there?” And then all the other family members, “Can you believe he did this?” “Can you believe he did that?” And it’s just escalating out of control where it takes away from the meaning of the ceremony and what we’re actually celebrating.

And I haven’t gotten that far yet, but that’s ultimately my goal in explaining to my father my I don’t want his sister there. And, you know, my sister and my fiancé and my mother keep saying you’re really going to put this on your father to make a choice. And I said well ultimately he doesn’t have a choice. They go, well what do you mean? I go I’m the one sending the invitations. I just won’t send her one. I won’t send her family anything. I’ll lie to them and tell them I did and then just not do it. And they’re like why are you going to stir the pot like that. I go because I want what I want now. This is my life. You guys keep telling me have what you want. Well every time I tell you what I want, it ends up becoming what you want. And I don’t want what you want anymore.

That’s where my emotions are starting to lean towards moving away from it more. It’s starting to lean towards I got to do what I got to do for me for me to be happy, for me to be positive. There’s just so much positiveness going on in my life right now that it’s kind of foreign to me because I don’t really know how to be around the positivity. You know, I’m just so used to a negative environment and everybody hating this one and hating that one and can you believe this and that, that it’s like foreign to me and I don’t really fully understand what’s going on.

[08:21]

I mean eventually, yeah, I’d like to, but I mean it’s still all foreign. It’s still very new to me. It’s still, you know, processing in my mind. And it is a difficult situation because the stress level is very high because I’m freaking out just thinking of, you know, when I’m going to approach my dad on it. But I can’t approach my dad on it until my mother and he have a conversation about the guest list. And what irritates me the most is we gave them a deadline where we needed it last Sunday. They didn’t have it. And every time I talk to my mother, she goes you’re going to make a big fight before we sell your grandmother’s house. I said in my mind I’m going this is what constantly I’ve been dealing with is excuses. And I confronted my mother with this too.

I go you guys have an excuse for everything. You keep telling me you’re going to do this, you’re going to do that. But then on the other hand, I keep hearing this excuse of the well, I can’t do it because of this. Why do you want to do this while this is still going on? Why do we have to do this because of this? And it’s connecting in my head of the outs that I used to have; the procrastination that I used to have of not following up on things. And it’s very irritable. You know, it pisses me off because I was like that.

[10:03]

And you know I confronted them. I go you guys have got to stop talking and start acting more. I go because I’m going to start acting. I’m already in the process of acting. You know, I want to make changes. I need to make changes. You guys keep saying you want to make changes and want to do these changes, but I have yet to see you make any attempt to change, to move forward, to put yourself in a better life. And they haven’t. They haven’t. And it frustrates the hell out of me. You know, it’s to the point where I don’t even want to be around them.

You know, I’ve kind of distanced myself from them a lot now just because the frustration level and just the nonsense; I can’t. I don’t have the patience for it anymore. I don’t want to be around it. I don’t want to hear about what my Aunt did. I don’t care. I don’t want to hear about my cousin who picked a place to get married. I don’t care. I’ve already told them I’m not going to his wedding. Then they go how are you going to do this? You’re going to stir the pot where like my other cousin’s getting married in the summer; we’re all going to be together. I’m planning on getting married in July. And my other cousin’s planning on getting married in October. They’re like how are you going to do this? I go easily. Easily. You just got to do it. You can’t have excuses; you’ve just got to attack it. And that’s what I’m looking forward to.

[11:37]

I’m looking forward to just moving forward, you know. I mean I don’t want to dwell on the past. There’s nothing I can change about it. But in the here and now and moving forward I can control everything that goes on now. And unfortunately, my aunt and her family are not in my future. They’re not anywhere in the near future. They’re not anywhere down the road in the future.

You know, when my grandmother passed away on June 7th, my aunt and her family passed away with her. And that’s the way I feel. I want to eliminate every memory I have of my grandmother and every memory I have of my aunt because they are just so bad and so hurtful that I don’t even want to think about them. I want to move on from them. I want to think that I’ve, you know, I stuck it out, I’ve toughened it out, I’ve made it this far. Now let’s see how much further we can go with this change in my life.

And, you know, it’s difficult for my mom and my dad to hear because I think, you know, they see me actually acting and they don’t know what to do because it’s out of their control. Where before, they could control me just going and putting on a happy face. And it’s sad because I see my brothers and my sister doing that. They’re the only ones that keep going when they don’t want to go and I don’t know what their excuse is. I’m running out of excuses. You know, I actually ran out of excuses to just put on a happy face.

[13:25]

There is no more happy face. The happy face I have is going to be genuine. It’s not going to be fake one. And conveying that to my mother; she just gets really upset because I think they know that they’re losing their power, they’re losing their control over me, and it’s hard for them to see that because they did before have a lot…a big grasp on and influence on what I did. You know, where my life was going, what I chose to do.

If this were five years ago and I was getting married, I guarantee you my parents would get what they wanted because I would just welt and do whatever they wanted. I mean I used to dream about, you know, having a big wedding; 500, 600 people because I knew that’s what they wanted. They wanted to show everything off. But the more and more that it came down to it, the more and more me and my fiancé talked about it, the more and more I didn’t want it. I didn’t want this big extravagant thing that costs thousands of dollars for no need. I didn’t want it.

To be honest with you, I don’t even want 150 people. I’d rather less. But I know I have to make some sacrifices, which I’m willing to make. I mean I still think 150 people is a lot of people. But that’s just my opinion. You know, it is difficult in communicating with them because when they don’t hear what they want to hear, then they get upset. And then the negativity starts coming in. Well you can’t do this. No, you have to do this. I’m just at a cross road where I’m just like okay; well, I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to tell you.

[15:36]

And this is what hurt my mother, I think, the most was I told her I wanted her and my dad to be part of this process. However, if they tried to take control of it, I’d shut them out. And for the most part, they kind of get that because we went and looked at a venue on Sunday and they were fine. But moving forward, we still have a lot more elements of this wedding to complete before it’s final. I don’t know how much influence they are going to try to have. I know the place we told them we already booked it. So they really didn’t have a choice. And this is…and I know it sucks but I feel this is the best approach to take with them is to just go do things on my own and then tell them after. Because even when I do that, they get upset with me. They can’t be happy for me. They want to have that influence on my decision and what’s going to happen; how they’re going to display the ceremony.

It’s not happening anymore and I feel more confident in myself when I do it. I feel a lot more; I feel better about myself about my self-esteem knowing that I was able to make a difficult decision, you know, with my fiancé on our own with nobody else’s approval. Whereas in the past, I’d be going back and forth and back and forth and being torn this way, and torn this way, and I didn’t know what to think.

[17:19]

Now I know what I’m thinking about. I know what I want and it’s just making my decision process a lot easier. And I can truly feel it in my soul. I feel a lot better about myself. You know, knowing that I made a good decision. I made the decision that she and I wanted; not what my mom and dad wanted. Not what everybody else wanted. It’s a decision that she and I have. We talked about it. We made it together. And that’s just an awesome feeling for me because I’ve never really had that before. I was never really; well this is beautiful, you know. I can’t believe you did this on your own. It was, “Well why did you do that?” “Do you really want to do this?” I’ve heard nothing but bad things about this. And it just gets flipped. It gets flipped and that’s when I tend to get angry and tend to lose it because I just…I want them to be proud of me for who I am; not of what I’m displaying. And this is where I feel like it’s becoming my life is fake. Because they want a…well, not my mother; well my mother does too.

My mother wants to display that me and my siblings are angels. We do no wrong. However, my little brothers have trouble with the law. My older brother, myself, have had troubles with drugs. And my sister is dealing with heavy depression. So we’re from far perfect. But she continues to talk about my dad’s sister’s kids who all have problems with drugs, who all have problems with the law. And she just keeps telling us how bad they are, how bad they are, when she won’t even accept the fact that her own kids have the same issues.

[19:25]

Have the same issues; we each, you know, my little brother got in trouble with the law. I had a drug habit. My older brother had a drug habit. My cousins have drug habits. They have alcoholism that runs in the family. I mean it’s just…to be honest with you, on my dad’s side of the family, drugs and alcohol are heavily involved. It’s not just me; it’s all my cousins. We’ve all had our problems with drugs. It’s just a family fact. But my mother gets upset when people talk about us.

THERAPIST: You know, I have two thoughts about what you often sort of do in here, what we talk about. One is sort of just telling me what’s going on in your life and how you’re feeling about it. Sometimes I feel like you’re trying to convince me, like make a case, like as if I’m not…believe you or can’t really describe it, but there’s sort of a way you communicate. It’s like that you’re trying to convince me of something.

CLIENT: Like of what?

THERAPIST: I don’t know. It’s like you’re presenting a justification for how you’re feeling. Because if I wouldn’t feel that you were justified.

CLIENT: Okay, I didn’t see it like that.

THERAPIST: Really? That’s sometimes how I feel. Like, you know.

[20:48]

CLIENT: Okay, well that’s good to know because that’s part of my communication. Well, speaking then, an incident happened this weekend where me and my fiancé, she went out on Friday night and got drunk. And as I told you before, I used to have a lot of anger issues with her getting drunk. Well, I feel like she tells me when I bring it up to her and tell her how concerned I am, how, you know, I think she needs to work on it and do this stuff. We had an argument, you know, last night that she thinks that I’m like attacking her; just like the way I talk to her. And I was confused, just like now. Like my tone of voice or whatever I use, a word choice I use; I don’t know. Because it was sincere. It was genuine. I care about her. I was genuinely very worried about her safety. And every time I feel like I bring it up, it gets me in hot water.

I understand that it’s a sensitive topic for her because I know she’s in denial of it. She keeps telling me that…well, I don’t know if she’s in denial of it, but I know there’s something bothering her majorly and I tell here, I go there’s only certain people this behavior comes out. And she asked me to list the people. And I listed the four people who every time she hangs out with she gets blacked out drunk. And she was like, okay. And I just told her how concerned I was because she has other friends where her friends do the same behavior she does and she can’t stand them. And I’m trying to ask questions. I’m trying to figure out why is it that with these friends you can be okay and have like a drink or two drinks and shut it down, and then when you’re with these people, it’s just like there’s nothing that can stop you? You have a mission. You have an agenda. And that’s to drink every bit of alcohol that’s around you.

[23:20]

And she felt like I was attacking her when really I was just expressing my concern. I was expressing how I felt because I know how much of a problem this is. I know how with her mother…at her brother’s wedding she got heavily intoxicated and does things that, you know, are not appropriate. You know, she’s constantly fighting with her mother or whatever when she gets drunk and it’s just; she gets to the point where she falls over and just blacks out and I don’t know; I can’t let it go. I don’t get enraged anymore. I just get really concerned because I know there is something bothering her and I know she won’t tell me what it is. But when I, you know, and then she tells me; she goes all you do is pick out the negatives in me. You can’t see how much work I’ve done, yada, yada, yada.

And to be honest with you, she’s come a long way with her drinking where she doesn’t drink all the time with everybody. But with these four people she hangs out with, I feel like she has an excuse every time. I feel like she just no matter what, every time she’s with them, she’s going to get hammered. When there’s wine involved, she’s going to get hammered. And I don’t think she’s…this is just my personal opinion. I don’t think she’s putting in enough time nor enough effort to prevent that from happening. I think she just sees them as they’re comfort and she just goes balls to the walls.

[25:19]

I mean I told her I understand what you’re going through as a recovering drug addict. I go when something used to bother me, I became heavily dependent upon my drugs; heavily dependent upon alcohol, cigarettes, tobacco, whatever it was. I know what you’re going through. I go but you’re…when you get stressed out or whatever is going on right now, I go I know you’re…I know something’s bothering you because you get blacked out. You become dependent on the booze because there’s something there that you haven’t addressed or you won’t address and you just keep it in. And it worries me. It worries me a lot.

I mean she is in treatment for herself, you know, with her own person, but she keeps telling me that with her work schedule she’s thinking about cancelling and doing all this stuff and keeps making her appointments for once a month – this, that, and the other thing. And in my head, it’s going back to like my mother. My mother has severe anger, depression and her children, her primary care keep telling her to find somebody to talk about these issues. And boom. There’s an excuse for it to not go. And I see that with her.

I see her making excuses to not go. To just sit there and continue this behavior; letting things bother her and bother her and bother her until she goes out with these friends again, and then boom; she’s blacked out again. I mean she was really good for a little bit, but in the last two months, she’s been blacked out five or six times. It’s taking every bit of strength that I have to not get enraged; to not get super pissed off, to not attack her.

And when she told me today that she felt like I was attacking her and you know judging her, you know I feel bad. I really do. I feel bad because for me, that was not the intention. The whole intention was to let her know how I was feeling. Let her know the concern I have. And then it turns; it gets turned on me that, you know, I’m abusing her mentally again and she just feels attacked. She feels like I just keep hurting her and she straight up told me that she didn’t feel like she had any support from me.

[28:28]

And that hurt me a ton when she told me that because here I am thinking that I’m a good support person being there for her; just having an open conversation with my concerns about her when she’s with certain friends, and here she goes and you know, turns it around on me like it’s my fault.

THERAPIST: Did you feel like that’s what she was saying; that it’s your fault?

CLIENT: Well I have a feeling that she was telling me like here I go; here you go again constantly yelling at me, constantly putting me down. You know. I mean she thinks I don’t see the positives in her. I see all the positives in her.

THERAPIST: Do you know what she’s talking about when she says that? I mean does it just seem like she is misinterpreting everything? Do you know what she’s referring to?

CLIENT: I know what she’s talking about because every time she used to get blacked out drunk, I told you I used to get very enraged and we used to get in vicious fights where I would abuse her mentally all the time and tell her she needs to cut the shit. She needs to see somebody and that she’s an alcoholic and until she comes to the realization that she’s an alcoholic, she’ll always be an alcoholic.

You know, I’ve said stuff like that to her in the past. And now I don’t do it. I don’t get upset with her, you know. I just; I hold it all in. I’ve found ways to control my anger with those situations. However, whenever she’s with those people, I prepare myself because I know the worst is coming home. I really do and I don’t want that.

I bring it up to her again because I am genuinely very concerned about our wedding. If we have open bar and all her friends who she gets blacked out with are going to be at the wedding; that scares me to…[Therapist sneezes.] Bless you.

THERAPIST: What scares you about them getting drunk?

[30:46]

CLIENT: Because she gets so drunk where her eyes are like this.

THERAPIST: Are you afraid she’s going to get drunk too?

CLIENT: Huh?

THERAPIST: Are you afraid her friends are going to get drunk or she’s going to get drunk?

CLIENT: Oh, I know her friends are going to get drunk. I don’t care about them. I care about her. But when she gets drunk, she gets so drunk where she just…her eyes are wide open, her pupils are so dilated that she looks possessed. She looks sick. She drinks herself that much and she’s constantly stumbling and falling over and slurs her words. And instead of stopping and going to bed, she reaches for the bottle even more. And then wakes up the next morning and tells me she hates doing that. She doesn’t want to do it. But two weeks later, we’re back at it.

It’s just a recurring theme. I know it very well because I used to say the same thing about marijuana. Oh it’s fine; I’ll only smoke until what I have left. And then I smoke what I have left and then when I don’t have for a little bit, I [inaudible – 31:59]. And I want more and more and more of it. And that’s what I think she is going through. I can’t say it, but from my perspective it is. I mean it doesn’t help the fact that she has another bad week of work and they want to all get together and boom; it’s that type of situation.

I feel that she also, you know, it’s like my parents in a way too where she has a chance to better her life, better her opportunities and she has excuses to not. She makes up the excuses and then I guess she does to me what I apparently what I’ve been doing to you is trying to justify her reasons by telling me, well we’ve got this coming up and that coming up. I don’t want to do it because I don’t want to lose vacation time. I have this here and I have this amount of money coming in. And it’s to the point where I don’t even want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it.

[33:15]

And I told her this last week. I said listen; if you’re happy being miserable, that’s fine. I’ll keep my mouth shut and you can do what you’ve got to do, I go. But I wanted to tell her. When you have a bad day at work and you’re coming home crying and want to quit, I don’t want to hear it. Because you chose this life. You’ve chosen to stay in this situation that’s not healthy. You’ve chosen to not move on from where you are. But I can’t. I can’t because she’ll feel like she doesn’t have that support system. And I don’t want to be that. I want to be her support system. I want to be the person who we make decisions together.

But on the flip side, if she can’t take any criticism from me just from the conversation, it’s hard for me to even open my mouth.

THERAPIST: Well you do get impatient with people who are challenged by changing.

CLIENT: I do. I do because I had that problem for a while. I was very hesitant towards changing. I was very hesitant about moving forward and actually getting going with my life because I was; I was in a comfort zone where I was just content with what I was doing, where I was working, what I was making. Until I got that kick in the rear end to finally, okay, now you have to change. That’s how I’ve constantly felt. I feel like, you know, something; the only person that’s going to get you to motivate and do something is yourself. If you can’t motivate yourself, no one is going to motivate you.

That’s kind of the philosophy I’ve been living by these last couple of months; this last whole year. You know, just doing the treatment is just saying to myself if you want something, you have to go get it. It’s not going to be given to you anymore. And that’s…I know it’s hard because I, you know, I’m a very opinionated person, but that’s the message I’m trying to convey to her is if you really wanted to leave your position at work, you could. If you really wanted to get help with your drinking, you could. If you really wanted to be in a happier place, you could. But you have to do it.

[36:05]

THERAPIST: You don’t like things you can’t control.

CLIENT: Who me? No. I don’t. I’m the same way. I’m just like everybody else.

THERAPIST: Well you’re very frustrated that you can’t make your girlfriend do things, even if it’s in her best interest. You get very frustrated.

CLIENT: I’m frustrated but I don’t express it anymore. I just hold all this inside because I am saddened by it because when someone goes to work and they’re coming home crying because of their job, that’s not a good job for you. If you’re crying and frustrated and upset over work because people get making personal attacks on you, even though it’s at your company and you take them as personal attacks, you know, you need to make a decision.

I mean I understand I’m impatient, but I’m not living your life. You know. Again, I’ve lived through it. I’ve lived through the miserableness. I’ve lived through just keeping my mouth shut and trying to get through it. And for me it didn’t work. Maybe for her it works. I don’t know. You know, I’ve tried everything I could in my resources to help her to try to move forward. She’s turned down every one of them.

So it’s to the point now where I don’t even try to help. Do I want to? Yes. Do I? No. Because there are so many resources that I’ve exposed her to that she’s just kicked to the curb and has not even looked at them.

[37:51]

THERAPIST: Well whether you express it or not, you still feel frustrated and that’s something that we need to work on because it doesn’t seem like it serves you.

CLIENT: No. No I guess you’re right. I am frustrated because I just feel like well; here’s where my frustration is. The whole time I was going through my issues at the same company we worked at, she kept telling me to leave, and leave, and leave. And I wouldn’t do it. Until one day when I got called in, they were going to do this and I finally said alright, “F” this. I’m leaving.

Once I left, it was like the kick in the pants that I needed to stop moving forward.

For her, I don’t know what that kick in the pants is to get her to move forward because I get frustrated because everybody tells me to do all this stuff and eventually I’ll cave in and do it. But when I ask one simple request from them, I can’t get it. And that’s where the frustration, I think, sinks in. It’s like I’m not asking her to get a new job; I’m just asking her to explore her options. I’m not asking her to stop drinking completely like she says I am; I’m just asking her to figure out why she does this with these certain people. That’s all I want. I just want to give resources to help her be a better person because I know she’s struggling with everything right now inside.

THERAPIST: I’m sorry…I need to…we’re also going to need to stop in a moment and I wanted to ask about scheduling. But yeah, I mean the bottom line is these all sound really reasonable things, but they may not happen. And so the question is…

CLIENT: I know.

THERAPIST: But then the question is…but I’m not saying that. It’s sort of a reality check. I’m saying that in terms of like I want to help you deal with the feelings that you have because they’ve got to go somewhere. And so it’s hard to know what to do with them. So I do want to help you with that.

I did want to ask about scheduling too because I had sent you an e-mail – I don’t really like to communicate those things over e-mail. Are you okay with that? Do you have any questions about that? I do usually stick pretty closely to my cancellation policy.

CLIENT: Yeah, that’s fine. I just forgot about it because I forgot that I had Back to School Night. And I just remembered when I went on e-mail. So that was my fault.

THERAPIST: Well I want…I always want things to feel fair. I mean my schedule fills up pretty quickly so if I hold that time for you, I can’t do it anything.

CLIENT: No, I know.

[40:29]

THERAPIST: So, but I…and this is not to sort of you know scold you or anything, I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page and everything is fair.

CLIENT: Nope, yep, we are. We are. It’s just like I said, I signed those forms a long time ago and I…

THERAPIST: I understand.

CLIENT: It just…I forgot about it. That was totally on me and I apologize.

THERAPIST: No, not at all. I just…I know how much since you’ve suffered unfairness and so I certainly wouldn’t want that to come in to our relationship.

CLIENT: No. And I appreciate that. Thank you.

THERAPIST: We are going to need to stop.

CLIENT: Okay. Alrighty.

THERAPIST: So I will see you next week.

CLIENT: Alright, thank you. Good to see you.

THERAPIST: Okay, good luck with everything. Good to see you too.

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