TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

[00:02:39]

THERAPIST: Hi, come on in.

CLIENT: I was thinking about how it sort of feels like if I were to…I’m thinking [inaudible – 03:05] because I’ve been marking papers and explaining to far too many students how they…how structured their paper is and this way it looks…actually making an argument. So…[pause.]. Not to mention pointing out which words are verbs and which words are nouns. So even if there were writing and it sucked somehow, it’s one of those journals we start for school about what happened this week. [inaudible – 03:45]. How on earth do you actually know what the right thing to do is? [Pause.]

Remember last week when I was talking about how Laura had written to, had asked Kathleen if she could come to visit, which he came to visit the Law School, and how I just sort of knew that whatever was meant to go on with this, at some point we had to find something that sort of transgressed what we should have done. And, well, and Kathleen wrote to ask if we would have Laura for the night. Somehow we knew, one way or another, we’d end up having Laura for that Wednesday night. And sure enough after Kathleen had, you know, his mother to basically say this is our business and if Laura wants to, then she’ll ask if she can make these arrangements on her own.

[00:04:53]

Sure enough, not long after that Laura did write to ask, to say that, because of her flights and the arrangements with her flights that would be basically, could she stay the night. And [pause]…Kathleen and I talked about it. We both agreed that it would be hard to…it would be hard; she has to choose the worst week to have somebody staying the night then. But in the end, Kathleen asked me out, but I wasn’t sure if I had said no. I wasn’t; no, I don’t want to have somebody staying the night then. I was really not sure that I would feel good about it afterwards, basically.

Sitting there, I was thinking about it and I thought, no I don’t like Laura. Yes this is a really bad time. I’m supposed to be getting all of that marking done yesterday and I didn’t. And I knew pretty well that that was going to happen; that it was too much marking for the timeframe I had set. And it’s a busy week and I don’t want anybody to stay the night. I don’t like Laura. But [pause]…at the same time, this family; she does need a place. And if Kathleen wanted to say yes, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t tell that I…I wasn’t sure if…that I would feel good about it. I said no afterwards.

[00:07:18]

And so I said, basically, I left it at [pause]…I asked Kathleen to think about it and I left it up to him and I said that he wanted to say yes. And so he said yes. And but it’s where I want it to end to…another very classic…he said that in regards to Laura, I just want to let you know that it’s a really busy time and we’re not going to be able to be with the best or most hospitable hosts, basically. And…I’m obviously paraphrasing. And she wrote back that just, “Fine, I’ll find another place.” And [pause]…so that’s where it went. I was out of the picture then. But it’s where it went in to that really classic fit…the thing he has with Laura pattern where Kathleen had to call it off. Then she said how at first, she said, “No, no, it’s all fine, you’re too busy. I’ll stay someplace else.” And then Kathleen said, Laura, tell me what’s going on. And Laura says that she felt like she wasn’t really wanted and it wasn’t a very gracious invitation and [pause] basically asked for Kathleen to rephrase it so that it sounded like he was more enthusiastic about it.

[00:09:54]

That’s what I think sort of did get me. That’s when I did sort of feel like I don’t know what I was thinking. I know Laura. Why did I think that this was going to, you know, we’ve just…we thought that…I’m still not sure, you know. So looking back, I think I would have said the same thing. I still don’t think that it would have felt alright for me to say no we can’t have Laura. [Pause.]

And it’s not even like I’m feeling that type of nagging anxiety or worry. It’s more just like I was saying last year that…not last year, last week, that intense frustration; that here we are again. I am feeling anxiety about Kathleen and Paul’s visit over the weekend. Not about the visit as a whole. I’m feeling anxious, specifically, about the thought of Kathleen holding Atlas. Very specifically about that. Everything else I’m sort of, well, Kathleen is going to be frustrating and difficult, but there’s going to be Paul there and there’s going to be Kathleen and you know, I feel more in charge of my own turf. But I really specifically feel very anxious about that.

[00:12:22]

With Laura it’s just this, you know, if there’s something I’m feeling insecure about it’s all I need to handle [pause]…how I’m going to handle seeing her. Am I going to be able to handle things without showing my irritation? Am I going to lose my cool? Because I definitely just, even before she’s here, sort of well just literally threw up my hands.

It’s [pause]…you know, I was just thinking yesterday about how I feel kind of burnt out before the term is quite finished. I still have this load of marking to do. I still have my…I have to do, unexpectedly, have to do a review session during reading week. I have to, and then there is going to be final exams and marking the final exams. But I’m already feeling kind of, basically, just low energy burnt out. And that’s not something that typically happens with me. I’ll get tired towards the end of the semester, but I usually am quite organized and capable through the end of it more or less. But this past year, this semester and the previous one, I was feeling not…I was thinking back and basically I feel like I got…I feel like my energy got zapped through this family stuff. Like it just took more out of me than I really had to give it. And I think this here we are again feeling, it’s just, you know [pause]…

[00:15:49]

First of all, there’s this…repetition is draining. Even if I know that personal life makes some forward motion on this, that it’s still is draining to feel I’m going to end up in the same place again. It’s just [pause]…surrender, even though, yes, there are, I see categories in life with home and work and this and that, you know, I’m the same person handling these things and if something is taken out of me over here, well it’s going to affect how I function over here. And…

THERAPIST: I’m not sure I follow how Laura ended up deciding to stay with you after she said, “Fine, fine, never mind.”

CLIENT: [Pause.] Basically, Kathleen asked her how the…what it would take to get her to say how she actually felt about it and that it wasn’t gracious enough invitation, basically. It wasn’t. She invited herself. But…and Kathleen reiterated that it was…he thought it was fine for her to stay but it just…it’s just a fact that we have other stuff on our plate. I’m not sure I would have done the same thing.

[00:18:03]

Yeah, I’m not at all sure I would have done the same thing. But it’s…but that part, that’s really their relationship and I know that Kathleen is feeling very badly about Laura. She knows that she’s unhappy and [pause]…and I agree. She is unhappy. She is unhappy and [inaudible – 18:58]. I think she’s making some very poor decisions and I certainly can’t fault him for wanting to be there for her even though I think that she’s taking it out in a very juvenile [inaudible – 19:30] way. [Pause.]

It’s all…it’s a very awkward and bad situation with Laura and Kathleen. I keep remembering the…several months back towards the beginning of the year when one of the first times that Laura really acted out this year. Kathleen mentioned to Kathleen that he was concerned about Laura; concerned that she wasn’t happy…wasn’t happy in her new job, wasn’t happy personally. And that…and she [inaudible – 20:35] Laura was probably unhappy, which obviously, she was. And now the occasional thing like this where it’s very difficult. There’s a sort of blurry line [inaudible – 20:55] last week where it’s hard to see where Laura and were Kathleen are each sort of acting…Kathleen writes to Kathleen to say that can’t we invite Laura. Kathleen writes back, Laura is making her own travel arrangements if she wants to.

[00:21:20]

And then immediately afterwards, Laura writes and asks if she can stay and it’s very…and all for different reasons. But it’s very strange whatever is going on there. [Pause.]

I remember when Kathleen had…Kathleen called his father to let him know that this…we’ve seen before sometimes Paul really isn’t in the loop on any of this. He was very surprised because apparently Kathleen had asked him to send that e-mail to Kathleen so that it wouldn’t look like she was interfering. After she sent that note, he didn’t think that was the right thing to do and they shouldn’t do that. So she e-mailed Kathleen herself. [Pause.]

THERAPIST: What are you thinking about?

CLIENT: I’m thinking back to that just sort of ended back up at the visit with…over the weekend after [inaudible – 23:30]. About what I was saying, I had a feeling, not before that. Anxiety has sort of got me lodged with Kathleen holding out and [pause]…sort of connected back to something else. They’re planning this sort of family vacation in Hilton Head and asked us to come. And they said that if Kathleen said no we couldn’t. And Kathleen replied that it would be like if she took Genevieve for a week so that we could have some time on our own. I mean, obviously, the answer is no. But [pause]…

[00:24:52]

Sort of made me think again about the issue of that feeling of invasiveness, how…and I question that sometimes to what am I afraid of? [Pause.] When I was thinking about this all last night, I was obviously way over tired. Sometimes when I think about things at night I get sort of story ideas. Not original story ideas but things connected to sort of story patterns, I guess. I supposed very Bedleheim-esq, but [pause]…

The person I had a talk with was…I was sort of thinking back to that first night at home when I came out and I realized that I woke up and Genevieve wasn’t there and I was looking for her and I couldn’t find her. And the person I saw was Kathleen, [inaudible – 26:20]. I was thinking about letting, I need to hold Genevieve or take Genevieve for a week and…sure it sort of connected with was that sort of Rapunzel in the tower and sort of Mother Goth [inaudible – 26:36] wants to take somebody else’s child. And that’s sort of the fear that I get that’s kind of am I going to get all of this back? If I let her hold her, if I let her…if I were to let her take…I wouldn’t let anybody take her for a week, but certainly not at this age anyway. But I don’t know. [Pause.] Would I get her back? [Pause.]

On one had I’m tempted to say of course it’s an irrational fear. But on the other hand, I don’t know that it’s, I mean, yes; it is an irrational fear. But on the other hand I think it’s pretty rational in another sense that I think that that, the grasping desire is there on the other side. I think that my worry that I wouldn’t get Genevieve back, physically, back. You know she’s holding her own. She’s on a visit. Yes I will. But I think that there is a sense in that [pause]…Kathleen does want to possess Genevieve in a way that…and that part of it is well it’s gotten…it does have some kind of reason in it.

[00:28:40]

THERAPIST: You know, I started to think about it. It’s kind of a looser sensation. But I started thinking about when I think it was when you moved back to Cleveland the second time and felt like this sort of child-like clueless happy-go-lucky innocence was lost and you were sort of forced in to this world of these kids that just felt terrible and feeling kind of communized by these ways in which – not that your sister was colonizing you per se, but I’m sure there’s perfectionism and all these other things that felt so foreign to you. I think you were being taken over. [Pause.]

CLIENT: It’s funny. I sort of caught on to that reading. That’s where I started to read the Odyssey. It sort of comes to me. I have these sort of reading lesson story ideas that get attached to things. [Pause.] Wonder whether the part of the concern about that sort of decisiveness is [pause]…

Do I worry about Genevieve being taken away physically, or do I worry about this sort of infiltration or colonization of ideas of Kathleen trying to push, the sorts of things she’s trying to push in to…the kind of influence she’s trying to push over me for how the way we run things. I worry about that getting in to Genevieve.

THERAPIST: Taking over her mind.

CLIENT: Yeah. I worry that, you know, about when I see it going, Patricia, Kathleen, Laura, Genevieve? I think yes. I think I do worry about that. [Pause.] I think I do [inaudible – 31:36] you know it’s obviously a bad example or pattern. It’s just I can’t…I certainly can’t prove it as a way of…I don’t think any of them are particularly happy as people and I feel like this might bother you as a parent. [inaudible – 31:53] do what’s best for the child. And [pause]…that’s not how I want things to turn out. [Pause.]

[00:32:23]

Of course I don’t think that it’s likely that, I think that just growing up daily in a house that’s…that is mine. That is mine and Kathleen’s and that we are building together and that it is our way of doing things is…I don’t think it’s…I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think we’re going to end up with Laura-esq child. But it’s not…that’s not like [pause.]

But there’s this [pause]…there’s this kind of [pause]…still that fear, still that fear about them holding Genevieve.

On the other hand, there’s this frustration that’s growing without, well, it doesn’t seem like it can do anything. It does still keep happening. We still do end up with this pattern of missing proposals, the same tantrums, the same [pause]…discussions back and forth that I find so draining.

I feel like…I feel like my job is now; I feel like my job is to figure out a way to deal with it that’s not so draining, whipping me. [Pause.] Here I do think that we’re getting better. Not perfect, but better, about saying no about things; about being steady and what we think is right and what our principles are. But you know, I’m in the mindset of marking papers. Forgive me. It’s like quit marking these papers. You know I started out by, you know, reading them very meticulously and through. And that was necessary. But that’s I didn’t need to figure out the shape of what this set of papers looked like; get a sense of what the range was. But to get them done, I have to pick up speed and I can’t…if I were to spend the same amount of time on every single one, they’d be getting them back next January.

[00:35:19]

That’s not possible. I feel like something, I guess, a kind of technique or skill that you have to learn with this or it’s just going to be impossible to keep up with. [Pause.]

I imagine that to some extent that will just happen by doing it, but [pause]…practical things get learned by being practiced, I would think. [inaudible – 36:39] if we could just get ourselves in to a set pattern and it, to some extent, it’ll work itself out. But then I come back to that question. How do I know what the right thing is? I guess that’s just another sign of that sort of perfectionism. Maybe it’s alright to do it with things trial by error; make mistakes and figure things out. But [pause]…

Funny, I looked at Genevieve and she doesn’t mind making, I mean, she’ll pull herself up. The first two times she pulled herself just standing; she pulled up, ground toppled over, shrieked because, oh, I was up and now I’m down and then picked herself up and did it again. But literally, it was all sunshine again because, probably because her brain is very small and she didn’t even remember she’d fallen down. But [pause]…then she doesn’t; they watch kids and they don’t have that same kind of hang up of pulling themselves up to standing perfectly the first time around. Getting themselves down by bending their knees and making sure they sit down precisely the first time around.

[00:38:32]

THERAPIST: They do it, too, with an openness to that new experience and not a set of predetermined fears or expectations or…

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: They don’t begin by saying, “Oh, I think something bad is going to happen.”

CLIENT: Yeah. [Pause.] Just definitely [inaudible – 39:15] like that. You start to see it coming, I guess. There’s that, you know, [pause] now that Laura’s asked to come, well inevitably we’re going to have some kind of argument or phone call of some kind about where she’s going…I know she’s going to come overnight and where she’s going to stay and what’s going to happen. [Pause.] And to some extent there was no voiding. There’s no…we didn’t know that she was going to be asking about coming to spend the night. That wasn’t the original plan, but [pause.]

[00:40:52]

Then there’s the, you know there’s the, well, what how do you deal with it then? So yeah. It is going to happen, but how did you deal with it when it comes? Do you just [pause]…? And I still think that…I’m still not sure that, you know, I would have said no to Laura the first time around or asked Kathleen to say no. But in any case, but then, what would have happened if we had said, okay, do you want us to help you find another place to stay? If you decided you don’t want to stay here, should be, you know, we have friends we could…Piya might be, might have a spare room or something like that. [Pause.]

If we were to just sort of [pause]…just not, not…

THERAPIST: Not engaged her around this dance she’s trying to engage you in and just take what she’s saying at face value. It doesn’t seem like she’s welcome. Okay, well where else can we find you to go?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Because in a sense, she’s not…I mean she’s not…I mean on a deep sense she’s not, but in a practical sense that was sort of what was explicitly conveyed. This was not a good time. So it’s not…I imagine you feel some guilt around the deeper feelings about her never being welcome. But there is also the explicit statement about giving sort of the timing and so forth, actually, this is not the best time.

CLIENT: Yeah. Exactly.

THERAPIST: And so to take her up on that rather than engaging with her around her sense of being, her sense of feeling the entitlement to have entry in to your life and your home at any given moment. Put that aside.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah. [Pause.] It does sort of feel, basically, like she just…she wanted us to beg.

THERAPIST: She wanted to engage you in this kind of…and there’s not much you can do about Kathleen engaging with her around that, except for talking with her. But if he does want to engage with her around that, then so be it. But you certainly don’t.

But we do need to stop for today. So I’ll see you at our regular time next week.

CLIENT: Yes. Thank you.

THERAPIST: Great, yes. Take care.

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