TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: How are you doing?

THERAPIST: Hey, good. I’ll plug my phone in again, if that’s all right.

CLIENT: Sure.

THERAPIST: All right.

CLIENT: So, I will accept your offer or not offer but proposal, for how to deal with the thousand dollar deductible, that if it’s okay with you, and for as long as it remains okay with you, doing like a hundred dollars a month more would be fantastic. [0:01:11.3]

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I think it might have something that might a lead that might be able to provide me with some money, so I might be able to start paying it off, even in larger sums than a hundred dollars a month, but we’ll see how that goes. For the meantime, if that’s still something you’re okay with.

THERAPIST: That’s good with me.

CLIENT: Great, that’s I really appreciate that.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah, sure.

CLIENT: And then, the e-mail that I sent you, with those two dates.

THERAPIST: Yeah, right.

CLIENT: If you have those. I can pull them up again too.

THERAPIST: Just the next two Thursdays, right?

CLIENT: I suppose so, yeah. I have to just look again real quick.

THERAPIST: Now, what’s your story? Are you out the entire day? [0:02:12.4]

CLIENT: No, actually just for the evenings.

THERAPIST: Oh, just for the evenings.

CLIENT: I don’t know what I didn’t even really think about rescheduling. I think I just wanted to get that out there in the e-mail, but yeah, so Thursday, April 4th, and then Thursday, April 11th. There are two law school things and speaking a panel at Providence College is one of them, about the law school admissions process, that one of my professors puts on every year. And then there’s a reception thing for the school of law, and there is scholarship money. So it’s not like a regular thing. It just happened to be that there were two in a row. I think for both of those weeks, as far as I can see, I’m pretty flexible.

THERAPIST: Oh, is that right, okay. Let’s see, I am looking at my schedule here. I just want to make sure. What time do you need to make it out to that place? [0:03:19.2]

CLIENT: This Thursday coming up, for the 4th, I think this thing starts at like four o’clock or something, so kind of later in the day would be kind of shot. On the 11th, I think it starts… I feel like just those evenings. On the 11th, it’s later, but it would conflict with this. Something a little earlier might work, if you had availability around those times. I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Like on the 11th, would 3:30 work?

CLIENT: Yeah, it should. Yeah. So I have to be there at like 5:15. [0:04:29.0]

THERAPIST: Does that give you enough time?

CLIENT: So, 3:30 to -

THERAPIST: To 4:20. Does an hour give you enough?

CLIENT: That would be more than fine, so let me just write that down.

THERAPIST: All right.

CLIENT: So, on the 11th, we’ll say 3:30.

THERAPIST: Three-thirty on the 11th, okay, good.

CLIENT: Cool. I think it would have to be quite a bit earlier for the other one, or a different day.

THERAPIST: I don’t know if this is even possible right now, but I’ll actually know more by the next time we meet, but is 10:00 a.m. on Thursday a possibility?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, it would be, okay

CLIENT: Yeah, I just wouldn’t go to my other job that night, that would be fine.

THERAPIST: Yeah?

CLIENT: Yeah. Is that tentative? [0:05:33.4]

THERAPIST: That’s tentative, yeah. Yeah, that’s tentative. So, what I’ll do is, you know what, I might be able to know as early as tomorrow.

CLIENT: Yeah, it’s 4:00 to 6:30 on the 4th.

THERAPIST: Okay, so I’ll let you know as soon as I hear. If I don’t hear anything or if I don’t hear anything until Monday, I’ll just wait until we meet.

CLIENT: All right.

THERAPIST: Otherwise -

CLIENT: I’ll make that one.

THERAPIST: The other one is good though, the 3:30.

CLIENT: Lovely, cool, yeah, I’m glad. I didn’t want to get too much of a disruption. [0:06:33.5]

THERAPIST: All right. Let me grab a tissue.

CLIENT: So I had an e-mail, this is this like just sort of cannibalized my day, this thing. I got an e-mail yesterday, I think. Yeah, it would have been yesterday, I got an e-mail from Marcus, my sister’s fiancé, and she’s getting married in August. My dad started that whole thing, I’m going to have to explain this to you. I don’t talk to him too much. He came over last summer, I think, and I met him, he was here for a little while, you know, it was uneventful, it was two summers ago, and we’ve kind of stayed in touch as sporadically, as I did with my sister, just kind of keeping up appearances with your sister’s fiancé, small talk and stuff, every couple of weeks, reply to each other on e-mail. But he sent and my dad has been, as I understand it, I intentionally try not to get too into this stuff. My dad is footing the bill for a lot of the wedding that my sister is having, and he’s paying a considerable amount of money, which I think what he’s already spent recently, is like customary for weddings or something, which, I don’t know. [0:08:36.9]

THERAPIST: The bride’s family.

CLIENT: Right? Is that it? Yeah, I don’t know. All of it just seems sort of irrelevant. I don’t know, like father, or sister and stuff, they seem, you know, really just that in name or something. The expense, because it’s in Edinburgh. Everything in Edinburgh is going to be expensive, this is, you know, it’s Scotland. She’s having this huge church and stuff, so I think it’s probably pretty expensive, I would imagine.

THERAPIST: Hmm.

CLIENT: Which I hope my father will be more than happy to pay for or something. And I know that there had been a couple things where, you know, he sort of committed to paying a lot, or at least as he put it, a significant amount of money for this. And then, he puts a significant amount of money down and then as time passed, I think, Marcus and I don’t know if Reese, but Marcus started unilaterally making some changes, like to the programs, which was then incurring most costs and stuff, and my dad was finding out. He’d get like a phone call or something from the hotel. The last time I was up at my dad’s, he mentioned it, and he kind of said it in the tone, like he felt a little bothered or he didn’t like the fact that they were making changes that would incur costs on him, like insulting him or something, you know? [0:10:27.3]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: And he particularly said that Marcus was like pissing him off a little bit. And yesterday I got an e-mail from Marcus and we hadn’t talked in weeks, and he was like, have you heard from your dad recently, because Reese and I don’t seem able to get in touch with him or something. And I assumed it was about something to do with the wedding obviously, and my dad had even mentioned that Marcus was sort of very sort of bluntly like asking my dad if he had paid things by certain deadlines. And my dad, you can just tell he felt like… And then just from the position that like, just from my knowledge of my dad, I just sort of like expect him to react kind of angrily. I just see him getting very angry, you know what I mean, and it makes me like even nervous to hear about it, you know? [0:11:34.8]

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: Just in a way I would never talk to my dad, just because it’s just sort of like the law of physics and he would just like flip out, you know, it’s just not going to be productive or something. I remember when he was telling me that and I was just like oh, God, this has the potential to get kind of sticky, you know?

THERAPIST: Marcus was telling you this?

CLIENT: No, when my dad was telling me last week, and I hadn’t even spoken to Marcus. A lot of times, when my dad tells me this stuff, I just figure it’s all in his head, you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: What would piss my dad off might not piss anybody else off, you know what I mean? So I got the e-mail from Marcus yesterday and he’s like so I figured he was trying to get in touch with my dad, to like get my dad to pay something or whatever. I had spoken to my dad that morning. I’ve been speaking to him regularly. I knew that he wasn’t like off the grid or anything. So immediately, I just sort of like could tell that there was some dynamic here, and I felt like I didn’t want to get into it. But I didn’t say anything to my dad yesterday about it and then I e-mailed Marcus and I was like yeah, I’ll pass it along to my dad, I’ll let him know that you’re trying to get in touch with him. [0:12:55.9]

I woke up this morning when the alarm went off, and I just looked at my phone, when I was turning it off, and I had a little e-mail thing. So, I was still like 90 percent asleep, but I looked at it, and it was from Marcus, and he had written me a really long e-mail. To be honest with you, I read it, I glanced over it when I was sleeping, and I just haven’t even looked at it since. He was saying stuff like, you know, we really appreciate your dad paying for this wedding and stuff, but there’s some things we need to talk with him about and he’s not getting in touch with us. He was saying, you know, he told us a little while ago, that he was waiting for some checks from some of his clients, to pay stuff, but now he’s not getting in touch with us, he deactivated his Facebook account, which I guess was like the main way they communicated. Then he was saying that I mean he was saying too, that Reese couldn’t get in touch with him either. He was saying Reese … And I could tell, he was doing this in a way like, he was trying to talk about it with me, to try to like get some of the stress off of my sister. He was like Reese was in tears the other morning, because now she doesn’t know, not only if your dad is going to follow through and pay for this and he said he would, or even if it’s coming or if you’re coming or anything. And something about, like I don’t know if there’s a history or something, of your dad not following through on things and he’s like he told your sister that he was doing stuff. And then that’s like all I read of that sentence, but I can just tell where it was going or something. Interestingly, he probably knows a lot more about that than I do, you know? Just from I’m sure he talked with Reese about it, and Reese probably tells him a lot more than I even know about that, you know? I just got super upset. I couldn’t fall back asleep, I didn’t have to get up. It shocked me and I’ve just been in like a haze all day about it. [0:15:49.7]

THERAPIST: What do you feel?

CLIENT: I don’t know. Like, I felt like super anxious all day. I felt like, like if I guess if I’d known what was in that e-mail, I just wouldn’t even have read it or something. I feel like I got like a touched something I shouldn’t have touched and I got zapped with electricity. I saw something I don’t want to see or something. I haven’t even been consciously thinking about it all day, but I’ve been all over the place, and like really anxious, in ways well, I don’t know about anxious, but getting really hung up on some things that really haven’t been that big of a thing for a while, like checking of things. [0:16:54.1]

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah?

CLIENT: Yeah. Sawyer and (inaudible). Even this used to happen a lot, even like walking down a street or something, thinking I’m like knocking people over and stuff, and looking behind me and everything. Just stuff that feels very familiar but like not like from a different time or something, you know?

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Well, one being tied to the other in some ways.

CLIENT: Yeah, I don’t know. When I think about it, like a couple of times, I went outside to sit down and have a cigarette and I was like, I’m going to like… After I read the e-mail the first time, I didn’t think to myself straight up, I’m just not going to read this. I kind of got out of bed and I was like oh, you know, I was half asleep, I should probably go back and read that again and then reply again. A couple of times I said, like oh, I’m going to go out and sit down and have a cigarette and look at this, you know? [0:18:04.0]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Because it seemed important. But I just didn’t and then I realized, when I actually went to do it and I didn’t really, I genuinely didn’t want to.

THERAPIST: You didn’t want to.

CLIENT: Like at all, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I wasn’t busy today. I could have.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. Something went electric about it, huh?

CLIENT: Yeah. It was really, really, really, really uncomfortable. I feel like young or something, I don’t even know.

THERAPIST: Young, yeah.

CLIENT: I feel like, like I feel stuff, just this general feeling, that I feel or something, a lot more or something, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Like hazy, like I have like two percent of my brain is actually intact. My concentration is just floating around or something, I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. [0:19:05.0]

CLIENT: It’s really weird though.

THERAPIST: Well, it seems like it’s really tapping into something deep inside of you.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah.

THERAPIST: This e-mail. It’s Marcus.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: What Marcus is sort of seeing in your father and Reese being crying, and sort of this way of seeing your father.

CLIENT: Yeah. In a way, it feels like a bigger, or it feels similar to the way that I felt, in some ways, after that conversation I had with my mom, after the money thing. But my mom kind of disclosed some stuff to me, like it wasn’t surprising to me, you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: About things that were happening around me. I just didn’t really have the particulars, in my knowledge, but that didn’t surprise me per se, but were like impactful with respect to actually being aware of them or something, you know? [0:20:24.8]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: It was similar in that sense in a way, like of course Reese probably cried a lot, you know what I mean? Something about like I would never in my life have probably said that I didn’t think that was the case, if someone asked me. I feel like with that conversation with Marcus, and the information contained in that e-mail, and similarly, like with that conversation with my mom, like some filter or something, that doesn’t bring certain things explicitly into my view, that are going on around me, sort of was this like sacrifice or something. You know what I mean? With my mom, when she told me about and she said very simple, like not huge things, when we had that conversation a little while ago. This is when I went and she gave me the check, and when she gave it to me, she was like, I don’t want to she didn’t say anything but she was just like, there’s a lot of things that I didn’t tell you about things that transpired between me and your dad. She was alluding to them. She was recognizing their existence almost, you know what I mean? And then, that’s like bringing things into reality that I feel like I’ve lived my whole life with them being like very clearly on like the other side of some wall or something, you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. [0:22:31.8]

CLIENT: I don’t even know what they were, but like literally even just acknowledging that, I felt like I was walking into completely different territory or something. And the same thing with this e-mail, and this feeling that I knew in many ways, that my dad did a lot of bad things to my mom. Like it was just weird hearing her say it and yeah, having that be something that goes on, like with my mom looking at me. I was talking about it, like some you know what I mean? In the same way with this e-mail, even more so, with the respect, like this is happening right now, you know what I mean? My mom was bringing into reality, things in the past, but this is something that’s happening right now, and it’s just not it just feels really, really, really, really, like not what I feel like I typically do. I don’t know to interact with it, I don’t know how to engage with it. I talked to my dad today and I was just like, “Marcus sent me an e-mail, I think they’re trying to get in touch with you.” [0:23:51.1]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: That’s all I said. I could have, even without reading the e-mail.

THERAPIST: You got the gist.

CLIENT: I’m sorry?

THERAPIST: I mean, you had the gist enough to say more.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I intentionally kept certain things out. I said to myself, I can’t just not tell my dad that Marcus was asking for him, I mean I have to see Marcus, you know what I mean? Like if he was just some random person, that’s probably what I would have done, you know what I mean? I intentionally didn’t say anything about like when he said Reese is really upset, he was asking about money. I remember when I was about to call my dad, I thought about it exactly along the terms of the way we talk about it, and I was trying to figure out a way to keep everything cool. That’s a silly phrase but it really captured the moment. [0:24:56.3]

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I just took each thing, I was like is this going to keep things from flipping out, like is this, you know? Yeah, I don’t know, just something about the discrepancy between how certain I have always felt that I knew that bad stuff was going on. Like the difference between or the fact that that is there, but then how different it feels, literally being brought into it or something.

THERAPIST: Yeah. It’s no longer on the other side, or it’s sort of like this e-mail was lobbed over that wall and right in your lap.

CLIENT: Yeah. But also too, it really I mean, I think when I say stuff, like I know that bad things have happened. Like in saying that, I feel like I’m saying that it wouldn’t surprise me as much as it did today, when I talked to my mom, if I actually heard about those things, because I know that they happened. You know what I mean? I know they’re there, I’m comfortable with them, I acknowledge them. But then, like with that conversation with my mom and then today, I was just like that’s not doing it, all that work. There’s a huge difference for some reason.

THERAPIST: That’s not doing all that work? [0:26:37.0]

CLIENT: Like when I say that I know that my dad has done bad things to my mom, that I acknowledge it and stuff, I’m comfortable with it. I’m not.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah, I see, yeah.

CLIENT: In a way it’s true but in a way it’s not, because I think then, that this wouldn’t be such a thing. But something about that formulation, the prior one, allows me to have that and then exist in my family or something. But these things just like, in the same way I removed them from what I thought, about with my dad, like there’s I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I don’t know what to say to Marcus and all I have in mind when I think about how to deal with it, is I need to find a way to handle this but not, you know, make things too weird with my dad. That’s what is really the determining factor. You know? [0:28:04.4]

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. In some way, you keep it kind of cool.

CLIENT: Yeah. The thing I used to tell myself before, like I know that these things have happened, that’s a lot more conducive to things being cool for some reason, than actually getting like actually hearing it from my mom or actually reading that e-mail. Like they’re just very you’d think they’re just the same thing, but the fact that one causes so much more turmoil, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I don’t know.

THERAPIST: One thing I think of is that it brings up this kind of other side of how you can kind of look at your father, and in a real stark way. It’s almost like you feel kind of, almost aligned as well, like we’ve got to keep this out. Something between your dad and, you know, it’s as if you and your dad have the same kind of gut instinct, gut reaction to it. This can’t be this is too much to be thinking about and in contact with. This is too disturbing a piece of information, this is too big of a thing to be dropped on my lap. Too much for you, too much for your dad, you know?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. [0:29:51.6]

THERAPIST: Just aware of the fact that he’s not reading these e-mails.

CLIENT: Yeah, and he’s not telling you this stuff.

THERAPIST: He’s not responding, he’s not able to. Something about it is so unsettling I guess, to I mean obviously in different ways, but in some ways you both have that, kind of like it’s a very unsettling thing to respond to.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I anticipate, that why I wouldn’t bring it I mean, it’s almost unsettling to me because I don’t know what to do with it.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Because I know it’s unsettling to my dad.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: That’s why it’s unsettling.

THERAPIST: Because it’s related to it would be unsettling to your dad.

CLIENT: Yeah. I wouldn’t want him to know even, that I read that e-mail.

THERAPIST: That you know about that.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. [0:30:51.4]

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: I don’t want to tell him. I wouldn’t even want him to know. I wouldn’t even want to forward the e-mail to him, letting him know that I read it. You know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And it’s weird, when I think about, like when I was reading that e-mail, even though I was half asleep, when I think back to it, it’s was years ago or something, but like what comes to mind, like that feeling of me feeling young. That’s the only way I can think of it, like a way that I used to feel, a way that I don’t feel as much anymore. Or just like a quantitative, like massive increase of things that I feel much lesser today or something, like he’s checking some things, you know what I mean? [0:31:59.6]

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: But when I looked at the e-mail and I think back to it, what pops into my head is just like an image of me being super young, being seven or eight or something, like in my old house.

THERAPIST: What else was there?

CLIENT: Where my mom and dad lived.

THERAPIST: Anything associated with that, that’s associative?

CLIENT: What I what comes what I think, it’s a little like a one hundredth of a second clip that plays in my head, like when I think about stuff I read in that e-mail, it’s like me looking back on me when I was eight or nine, and that type of shit is what was going on around me, and I didn’t see but the eight or nine year-old doesn’t see it. You know what I mean? The same way with the thing with my mom. Like it’s a different narrative, if you will, than the one that I remember. It really clashes with that. You know? And that’s like what’s scary about it, I think, is like filling in those that’s immediately where my mind went when I read those things. It was just like me in my house, with my mom and my dad, and Reese crying was immediately projected onto like my mother or something, or just people being really upset and bad things. You know what I mean? [0:34:01.3]

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.

CLIENT: And that’s just like super, super different.

THERAPIST: It’s super different?

CLIENT: Like, I had this one image, it’s me, young in my house.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And I read this e-mail and then it’s just like enter tons of bad shit.

THERAPIST: Okay, yeah.

CLIENT: That wasn’t and maybe I would have said that I’m totally aware it was there, but it was behind closed doors or something. Maybe as such, it wasn’t there in a way, do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Now, I see it happening around me and you know? [0:35:03.3]

THERAPIST: Yeah, you’re being included now, in discussions. Somebody is sending you stuff that you know. You’re not in that position of people talking in other rooms about it.

CLIENT: But it’s scary because it’s like that’s like, that is what happened, that image. That happened when I was reading the e-mail, do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, ah-huh, ah-huh.

CLIENT: What’s scary is that it’s not so much just what I see in that image, but in the realization that what I seem to have remembered is wrong. You know? That my images just completely blacked that stuff out, while paradoxically saying that I’m super aware of it or something.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay, okay. [0:36:07.8]

CLIENT: So, you know like in Fight Club, have you seen Fight Club?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know, like at the end of the movie, when he starts to realize what’s going on with Brad Pitt, and there’s these flashbacks to all of these scenes, where he thought it played out one way.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Brad Pitt did. He’s like doing what Brad Pitt’s doing and it’s terrifying them. That’s what I feel like looking at it, this like reality being flipped on its head.

THERAPIST: I see, yeah.

CLIENT: Do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: I just don’t know what to do with it.

THERAPIST: Well, I suppose you are, you know. It seems to me like you’re talking about how you’re deeply impacted by this, in such deep ways, deeply impacted. In a way it sounds like it’s kind of moving the ground under your feet, to such an extent that it’s hard. It’s almost like hold on tight, everything’s moving around. Deeply, in a deeply, kind of unsettling way. It has the like something is about to be flipped around or twisted around or turned around, like in the same way you’re describing Edward Norton realizing this about the Brad Pitt character. [0:37:49.7]

CLIENT: Yeah. When I think about those two different scenarios, I think about, like the one that I thought about this morning and the one that it is different from. One of them, like in just the way I see each of them is one of them is one where I feel in control. The other one is one I just don’t feel like I’m in control. That’s my reaction to that, do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. Well, there have when you look at something very different, in a different way, unsettling about your dad.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Deeply, deeply unsettling about it.

CLIENT: I don’t know what to do with that information because I feel like it’s either that or my dad, like he’d pretend that that’s not there and I can continue to talk to my dad. [0:38:50.5]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Or read it and acknowledge it, I guess.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know what I mean? It’s like a lethal blow to my dad, it’s like yeah.

THERAPIST: A lethal blow.

CLIENT: It’s wondering about my dad and you know, having to react to that or something, I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. Well, they’re seeing something in your dad. They’re seeing this really upsetting they’re having this really upsetting thing unfold and they’re bringing it to your lap, putting it on your lap. [0:39:52.8]

CLIENT: It makes me feel weak and tiny. I felt like before I read that e-mail, before I got that information, I felt better. I felt more confident. I felt stronger and more mature, more adult or something, I don’t know. And now I feel vandalized or something. I’m being pulled which way by you know, like I’m back in the house with my mom and dad or something. You know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah. You feel like you’re pulled in -

CLIENT: All day, I was just reacting to what I thought my dad was thinking or something.

THERAPIST: What did you…?

CLIENT: Yeah, what am I going to do I read that? No, I don’t read that, because if I read that then what’s that going to mean for my dad? Do I share something with my dad? No, I don’t. Why? Because my dad’s going to flip out. I’m scared that my dad’s going to flip out and I’m scared when I go to Scotland now, there’s clearly all this tension going on, that it’s going to bubble over again. I’m doing what I feel like I used to do, which is like I reset by taking a look at my parents or something, you know? And it feels like a regression, like getting sucked back into something that I feel like I’ve removed myself from to some extent. [0:42:04.6]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I feel like I just talked a lot. I didn’t think I had that much to say, to be honest.

THERAPIST: It seems like just the tip of the iceberg.

CLIENT: I’d imagine.

THERAPIST: Were you surprised though, that you talked so much?

CLIENT: Well, because all day in my head it was like I got his e-mail, I just don’t want to read it. I was uncomfortable. That’s about the extent to which I got into it with myself today, but it was like those three words over and over again, nonstop, but it never really went beyond that.

THERAPIST: What three words?

CLIENT: Not like those three words, but I got an e-mail, I don’t want to read it, I’m uncomfortable. You know?

THERAPIST: I see, yeah. [0:43:05.6]

CLIENT: It would come into my mind and then I’d think if I get to there and them come back, you know? I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: Six forty-five?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: At one point today I thought to myself, maybe a little more than that. I thought I felt angry and I was thinking about this thing with my mom too, and I was thinking of myself, particularly with what my mom said. When I was talking to my mom she was like, I intentionally, you know, I’ve never told you this stuff. And I could tell what she meant, like I never told you this, so that I wouldn’t be bringing you into this stuff. I kept this from you out of concern for you. After reading that thing this morning, I just kind of thought to myself, I just felt really angry. I was like, I really wish at this point that those things weren’t kept from me. [0:44:30.4]

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: You know? Because so much of the difficulty I have with it now is less to do with the fact that it happened, but it’s so completely antithetical and like incapable of being reconciled with the way I put everything together. That’s like almost the real difficulty with it.

THERAPIST: In a way, you never got an opportunity to kind of form a different understanding of your dad.

CLIENT: Yeah. In my head, I was like sure, great, maybe I wasn’t aware, I didn’t have to think about and be worried about that stuff, at the cost of having absolutely no clue about who the people are around me. There’s a point at which that becomes not worth it. And now, years later, I’ve built up this massive structure that’s built upon things that have nothing to do with that, you know?

THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. [0:45:41.5]

CLIENT: I just kind of wish that, you know? I don’t know.

THERAPIST: It seems, in some way, to be built around built in a way to protect your image of him, but his image.

CLIENT: Why? It’s one thing if he was doing it, which he is in a way, but why people who were subjected to it? What’s the interest that you know? I don’t know, maybe not to have a bad divorce or something. I don’t know. I would have preferred that.

THERAPIST: And for him not to be a bad guy.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Not to be a bad guy who’s done damage, inflicted pain on you or anybody else around him, then not a good guy.

CLIENT: Or as if there might have been reasons for them having a divorce. You know, shellacking it, you know? [0:46:46.0]

THERAPIST: Yeah, right.

CLIENT: Like, we’re going to get divorced, but we’re not going to tell you any of the reasons why, or something. That’s not a very empowering way to have to go through something. You’re almost certain then, to make sense of it, like in a way, you know?

THERAPIST: Yes. They kind of withheld truth and it’s kind of had an impact on you.

CLIENT: Yeah. I experienced it too.

THERAPIST: You did, yeah.

CLIENT: You know?

THERAPIST: And it’s interesting too, that it’s been tied to these the checking behavior and stuff, like in some way.

CLIENT: It’s really weird. I don’t know what to make of it.

THERAPIST: I think they’re tied, they’re linked.

CLIENT: No, I mean, I had this image of me when I was younger and I was acting like I was younger, I feel younger. I don’t know, I feel…

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: Super, like getting sucked backwards or something. [0:47:50.6]

THERAPIST: And I think in a way, it makes sense that it’s doing that, because in a way, you’re trying to open something up. It’s opened up in a really unsettling way, but it’s opened up maybe in a way, almost like a very difficult, almost violent confrontation with it, but opened up something.

CLIENT: It opened up for me.

THERAPIST: Yeah, it’s going to open it up for you.

CLIENT: I’m just trying to close it back up. But yeah, and then as a result, things are re-settling.

THERAPIST: Yeah, and things get you unlock that stuff, that feeling that’s there with you now and resonates with a time in the past, of being a kid, and wondering, curious about what’s going on that’s causing so much tension and angst.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Almost like another way to try to open up the opportunity for another meaning may emerge, but it’s unsettling. Breaking down some past, you know, when it’s breaking down an old image for a new one, but it’s an unsettling process. [0:49:14.4]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I don’t know if that makes sense.

CLIENT: Yeah, an old image for a new image, an image I’m used to, one I’m not used to.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. But it gets you in contact with something deep inside of yourself, how you felt, how you feel. Almost kind of, you know, feeling like a small kid and scared.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Wondering who his parents are. Well, all right.

CLIENT: Monday.

THERAPIST: Monday, yeah.

CLIENT: Thanks.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

END TRANSCRIPT