TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Little clearance there.

CLIENT: Sorry?

THERAPIST: I said a little clearance for you behind the plant.

CLIENT: (over talking)

THERAPIST: Oh I didn’t see it. Didn’t see that one.

CLIENT: Thanks for the…I forgot that. Is this your first thing on Monday mornings?

THERAPIST: No.

CLIENT: No? I seen you walking in and wondered…

THERAPIST: No I was getting…

CLIENT: (inaudible)

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Full time job keeping those things loaded.

THERAPIST: Yeah, no joke. (mumbling) Alright. [00:01:07] So what were we talking about…

CLIENT: Last week? I like this, I do this now. This is my thing (laughter) I feel like for over a year it was like wanting to do this but for some reason not doing it.

THERAPIST: What we were talking about on Wednesday?

CLIENT: Yeah for feeling comfortable enough or I don’t even know, yeah I guess just feeling comfortable enough to dictate that in here or something and kind of wanting you maybe to kind of do that for me or something.

THERAPIST: Oh yeah?

CLIENT: Yeah that kind of…that ominous kind of feeling that I spoke about so much when I come in here and sit down, like that first sort of step in that direction, get this conversation going. You know what I mean? It sort of is anxious kind of thing in a weird way.

THERAPIST: Mm hm. [00:02:29]

CLIENT: Such that I would try to think of things to be prepared for on the train ride here or so on, it just was feeling like there was a lot at stake or something in that moment where I was kind of…I feel like for a while I would take it up with small talk or something because I wasn’t really sure.

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: Yeah I don’t know, I guess I just feel a lot more comfortable doing that now, coming in and just saying I want to keep talking about what we were talking about last time.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: That seems like a big hurdle for me to kind of get over because I don’t really have that weird feeling like when I would come in here and sit down and you’d just kind of look at me, it’d be up to me to kind of figure out where to go with the conversation, that used to be like a big thing here, you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: It’s something that had some sort of like tension for you?

CLIENT: Yeah I think it begged the question of like what should I do talking about here/are the things that we’ve been talking about for a while, are those things worth sort of assuming us talking about? Like is it silly for me to even think that’s something worth investigating, like my parents and stuff. In different ways I feel like I was kind of playing it out, like when I would ask you so many times “Just tell me if you think this is worthy of my thought or time?” In so many ways I feel like that was something that was really hard for me to just do something so small to like come in here and say “I want to keep talking about it.” [00:04:45] You know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Mm hm. Yeah, yeah and it seems to…one thought I have is that it has some relevance to me about what you’ve been talking about regarding your dad and your mom and the kind of complications of…not only sharing your experience with them in a unfettered or unfiltered kind of way but also having them yourself in some way, you know, and because what I’m thinking about is how much, how important it was the whole, one of the issues is even getting that it’s like between you and your mom, you and your dad, getting into what your experience was both with them and within yourself meant a whole lot. It was almost like I thought you were getting that last time really, really well was this kind of sense of a lot of reasons why you didn’t go there, you didn’t go there because of being very kind of aware of what impact, what effect it would have on others. [00:06:26] I was thinking there’s a certain amount that maybe your sort of saying in ways that you bring that with you, you did bring that with you here and in some ways it’s eased or something.

CLIENT: Yeah, definitely I think last time one of the things toward the end…I think we were having a conversation for a while and going on about me just sort of like cracking this topic open and thinking about it and finding myself going some direction and even less than the significance of whatever I may have been thinking at the moment, just like my general sense of discomfort with even trying to make sense of it, trying to put it together or something.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: To actually even feel anything very clear, you know, anything that really sort of like puts things on people, good things or bad things that really tries to sort of cut through the fog or whatever. I just felt so uncomfortable even assuming that was a task that I could do or something. [00:07:48] It really felt more productive for me to just like stay away from it. In a way that’s very similar I think that was very much like what I was experiencing with you for so long. Like how uncomfortable I felt even presuming that I have the knowledge or the reason to even say I want to come in here for six weeks and keep talking about this one topic. It begs the same question as last time, like if I’m sad, what then? What fault? What does that mean for…about the people that are implicated in the thing I’m sad about, about me, about my relationship with them, how does that…what does that look like for me on the other end of that moving forward.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And I think it’s like the exact same thing really. I think I really didn’t feel even confident with myself, literally just with myself, saying this is something I feel like I should talk about, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:09:02] Absolutely. (pause)

CLIENT: It feels kind of big I think, even just that, even saying that it’s a thing. I don’t even know what it is. I don’t know within the topic of my parents, their relationship, the divorce, family or something. I don’t have anything really to say about that apart from the fact that that’s like a component of my experience. That on some level it’s significant and has had an impact. It’s a thing, even if it’s just in a black box, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Like that’s not something that I had before I came here. I still feel I’m not being more comfortable asserting that outside of here but…

THERAPIST: Yeah and I think it’s, what I think…I’m kind of hearing from what you’re saying is that it’s not just the content of what you’re talking about but it’s the actual process of trying to make sense of it that’s important and relevant too. Your ability to come in and to say “This is where I want to start. I want to start by saying I want to think about what we talked about last time,” and having some latitude within yourself to do that, just the process of that and then it is significant in and of itself as well as getting into the feelings that are there. [00:11:13] (pause)

CLIENT: What it seems to suggest to me…I mean it seems like a simple thing, it’s almost hard to put it into words and articulate it in a way that doesn’t make it seem strangely simple or something. Before I came here and even as I was working it out I never would have really thought of it in those terms, like in a way what I just kind of explained in that I feel like I achieved prior to that and as it was playing out I never would have been able to conceive of that as something that I needed to...you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: But it makes me think like then what’s the converse of that right? Like what’s the (pause), what is the meaning of the lack of that (pause) outside of here? [00:12:23] It clearly, me achieving that is sort of constructing something in here that doesn’t exist and hadn’t existed prior to…what is that inform me about?

THERAPIST: Hm.

CLIENT: Those dynamics that didn’t allow that to achieve itself prior to coming here.

THERAPIST: Right, right.

CLIENT: Which I guess is kind of simple. I guess that speaks to a lot of what we’ve been talking about.

THERAPIST: Important. It’s important, it’s very important; I think that a lot of the guts of what you’ve been talking about is in that question.

CLIENT: Mm hm.

THERAPIST: There’s something important about that.

CLIENT: Yeah. (pause) Last week we were talking about (pause), I guess that’s kind of what we ended on. I think I kind of felt for most of the session that I was kind of going around in circles a little bit. [00:13:49] I felt like I had lost a little bit of the continuity and momentum I think some of our previous sessions and discussions had but I felt like it was really helpful by the end when I sort of noticed that I felt like what was really happening was me feeling very uncomfortable and I guess maybe me feeling extremely vulnerable would be a better way of putting it. I don’t know. Very vulnerable as I try to (pause) assume a sort of positionality (sp?) with respect to this topic that I can maybe, that I wouldn’t just be sort of like doing things to me that I might honestly be able to engage with it and exert some mass really over me. You’ve been like approaching that, imaging that. I just feel very vulnerable and unsure and uncertain about like what comes from that. [00:15:09] About what the means for the image I have of my mother and father, like if those images changed or what it means for me to be able to continue…that means moving forward, you know?

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: A lot of what we’ve spoken about in different ways has discussed the fact that this narrative I have in my head, whatever value stems from it doesn’t come from the fact that it’s an accurate representation of anything, you know what I mean, but rather the fact that it seems stead ahead and productive and sort of like a coping sense. It was (pause); I think it was in a way, you know what I mean? I believe that I think partially because when I think about reorganizing that or refiguring that or adjusting some of those components of that narrative I feel a little worried about my ability to cope with my relationship with my parents. You know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yes. [00:16:45] (pause) How have you felt like, how have you felt about it out there as you’ve been talking about this? How have you felt talking to your mom and your dad? Or thinking about it?

CLIENT: I had this conversation with Laney not too long ago, I don’t think I shared this with you but it was after I had gone up to my dad’s with Laney the last time and it wasn’t very enjoyable any more so than it ever is when I go up to my dad’s but it was made particularly anxious for me because I had Laney there. I always consider going up to my dad’s for the weekend sort of just as I described it to you, holding your breath and swimming under something until you get to this other side and it’s done and you’ve kind of done it. [00:18:00] It’s not pleasant but you can get through it but when Laney’s there and those things I sort of like that unease and sort of like sacrifice of myself or whatever I feel goes on when I’m up there, it’s a little more troubling when I feel like Laney comes with me and has to experience that too. It was really sort of tough I think because…having Laney there is a very different experience. I sort of explained it to her because she’s been discussing similar things like with her parents, very basically like she’s developing ideas of how she wants to live her life that conflict with her parents and she’s trying to find ways to navigate that and at the same time deal with the fact that she cares for her parents, doesn’t want to hurt them, you know?

THERAPIST: Mm hm.

CLIENT: So on and so forth…I was describing to her I feel like there’s two different ways that I can think about relating with my parents assuming that with my dad for example there are these very different ideas that we have either about things that are just random topics or even about different ideas about each other, like he has a different idea about himself than I do about him or something. [00:19:29] So how do you navigate that? Like when my dad does things and says things it really pissed me off. How do I decide how to react to that? I sort of use this analogy like I feel like you could think of it as me going up to my dad and it’s important for me to sort of vocalize and challenge things that my dad says or has done or whatever and see it as (pause) a sign of weakness or something if I don’t challenge that head on. Like that’s one way that I could think about handling my relationship with my parents. Another one would be like the way that you handle going and visiting like an old grandparent who has dementia. You go and you sit with them and maybe they say things that are just so disconnected from reality that are so…they just don’t make sense but you just sort of nod and you listen and you don’t even think about trying to tell them that what they’re saying doesn’t make sense because it’s not going to happen. [00:21:00] Even if they say things that you would find bothersome you wouldn’t hold them to the same level of accountability and even more so leaving you wouldn’t feel like you had to swallow your pride because you let them say things you knew were wrong.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: Whereas in the former it would be a source of like great discontent and unhappiness or something. Sort of like you leave and you kind of just know that they don’t know any better or something. I sort of explain it to Laney like sometimes I feel like I can take that angle, you know, like the grandparent with dementia with my parents or something. With things that are tense and unresolved and bad I can sort of look over them or something. With my dad I think it’s an easier example. I can sort of observe it and just make peace with it and just be like “That’s you. You don’t know any better, it’s not going to change,” the same way I wouldn’t get into a debate with a senile, elderly person, who thinks it’s 1915 because it just wouldn’t be productive, I’m not going to get in that debate with you because it wouldn’t be productive. [00:22:41] Those feel like two things I toggle between sometimes.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: You know what I mean? (pause) I don’t even know if that answers your question about like how it feels.

THERAPIST: Actually, yeah.

CLIENT: Because that’s what I’m doing here, I’m coming up with ideas that are like what we just talked about, the fact that the topic of my family or their divorce and my mom and my dad is like a feature of my experience. That’s something that, that stands in sort of contradiction to my relationship with my dad. Even something that minimal, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: When I go up to my dad’s I have to decide is that something that I superimpose upon this part of my life? That I demand that we have space for and demand his acknowledge? If I don’t do that do I feel like I’m being weak, I’m not being honest, I’m being…I don’t know. Or do I just say “You know what? it’s good that I’m able to figure these things out here,” but there can be a value in it without like thinking that to the extent that I acknowledge these things here, I have to make them acknowledged somewhere else. That’s the tension and that’s like what I get worried about I think sometimes. What if I come to a conclusion here? Do I have to rearrange things outside of here according to that? [00:24:53] You know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah, the question continues to be how does it impact your relationship with your dad? How does it impact the way you feel around him? What it’s like to spend time with him?

CLIENT: Yeah. So I guess that’s a big roundabout answer to your question.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But it’s…(pause) It brings me back to the idea like I mean…yeah I mean I don’t know. It’s (pause)…I feel like that’s the point where I worry. [00:26:08] You know? That’s a source of anxiety for me. (pause)

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause) Yeah what’s…?

CLIENT: It just feels like an unknown, worrisome…

THERAPIST: Yeah!

CLIENT: Horizon.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I don’t really know what to say about it, I just feel…I like to feel in control of certain things, you know what I mean? I like things that let me feel like I have some ability to pull shit back. I can jump on a grenade if I have to just to kind of keep things…cool.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I feel like that stuff gets… that’s what sort of in jeopardy or something.

THERAPIST: I think actually the grenade is a metaphor, it’s something explosive and the way in which your …this certain kind of experience that your articulating and getting into or kind of putting words to I think…I was thinking, it seemed to me like act in terms of “Where’s he going to land, whose he going to…whose going to hit,” not to be insensitive to the events of the last week but I was thinking “Where’s the shrapnel going to go?” you know?

CLIENT: Mm hm. [00:28:21] Yeah.

THERAPIST: Your father, you know…

CLIENT: That’s what I feel when I go up there for the weekend, just me. It’s just that, there’s this explosive potential just constantly trying to break through the surface or something.

THERAPIST: Ah.

CLIENT: And I…

THERAPIST: Holding your breath under?

CLIENT: Yeah like the feeling of feeling like I’m able to (pause) control that or something.

THERAPIST: Ah.

CLIENT: You know?

THERAPIST: Yeah I see that.

CLIENT: Even if it’s just to the end of maintaining this sort of ultimately unsatisfactory relationship with…you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Yeah it seems like it…it feels like it’s a grenade you’ve got that you can throw. [00:29:34]

CLIENT: Yeah it’s pretty simple, I just…I just really get anxious which sort of worries me about what might be there I guess. What do I actually feel about it? About…you know my parents.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You get worried about like that little slip that I had, that really, really worries me. (pause) What demands reassessment then along all of that? Do you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Uh huh. Yeah and if you reel it back in it can feel like “Alright, I know where this story goes.”

CLIENT: The happy ending (ph?)

THERAPIST: Mm hm. (pause) [00:30:56]

CLIENT: Yeah I mean I’m good with both of my parents, you know what I mean? We’re great, you know, for all intents and purposes. We never fight. I don’t fight with my parents, never had a fight…I can’t remember the last time, I think that thing I told you about in the car when I was like a freshman in high school before my parents split up, that might have been the last fight that I had with my parents, you know, the way that you have arguments with parents about anything. You can (inaudible) and shit you know? I don’t do that. It’s just the…it’s picturesque and it’s...(pause) [00:32:30] I just, I…(pause) I feel like I’m doing something here sometimes just the conversations we have feels so taboo on some level.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: That really innocuous observation we were talking about a few minutes ago. Like this feels like a really radically unique space even that’s like a thing, you know? Like for me to go up to my dad’s house and say “I’ve for the last year and a half been going to psychotherapy two times a week and it’s been really helpful for me to think about my experience with you and mom,” that’s like, I feel like that would be me like jabbing a knife in his stomach.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: You know what I mean? [00:34:13] I would be, pardon my French, fucking something up, you know? (pause)

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)

CLIENT: And it’s a struggle for me to try to bridge that between here and like outside here. I think that’s what I’m referring to with that metaphor, like do I have to? Should I assume that I’m still in this dynamic with my parents like when I was in grade school and I have to bring my report card home and show it to them? Or can I actually have something like this that could just be not like subject to that? Can I just have my own space here? You know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: A little bit of my life that I don’t…because I feel like that’s ultimately what’s in question here. I feel like all this at some point, if it doesn’t get wrapped back into that is in question or something. [00:35:56]

THERAPIST: Well I think just again another really, really important metaphor, the knife to the stomach, it seems to me it’s a…I was thinking about you wanting to feel pain, your pain, to understand your pain and yet when you think about it it can feel like an act of… almost like a violent act of intrusion or invasion but you want is for him to feel some pain.

CLIENT: I don’t know, right? I think two sessions ago, I mean I think a couple weeks ago I would probably, I think one of the things I was saying suggested that. I think I was saying “It makes me angry that he doesn’t seem to feel any pain,” any remorse, any…he in no way seems to operate on a premise that he’s done something. Do you know what I mean? But then I think two weeks ago when I like really recalled the moment of him crying, when he told me about my parents splitting up, it was very evident to me right then that I did not want to bring that back up. [00:37:21] Just thinking about it I wanted to forget it, I don’t want any more of that. That was kind of shocking to me. I feel like that would be something I harp on and like…(pause) It goes on like the fantasies that I think sometimes I even spoken about in here, me just like letting it all out and just like destroying my dad, even just verbally sharing some of this stuff with him. Sometimes I imagine that would be cathartic and there would be this new like existence for me or something on the other end of it. That would be revolution or something. In doing that I would overthrow this weight on my shoulder because I’ve never done that or something but I don’t know that that’s what I want. [00:38:48] I don’t know what would be fixed.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah. I think there’s also something more to be said about that experience you had, recollecting your father being in pain during that conversation, your fathers tears and sadness, what that meant to you. You’ve put it before as something that you find “I don’t like to think about,” because it sounds like there’s a lot in that.

CLIENT: I think the way that I feel when I see things that make it…(inaudible) that my mother’s in pain, which I feel like is just seeing her, you know, that kind of springs up. I don’t want to see that, I don’t want to see her ankles when they’re swollen; I don’t want to…I feel some similar aversion.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: Which is weird because it creates this similar sort of reaction to my mom and my dad which I feel like (pause)…I feel like, I’ve always said to myself “I want see my mom feel less pain and my dad feel more pain,” but I don’t know. [00:40:37] As if my pain is like the springboard against how much pain my mom or my dad is feeling, like that would relieve my pain or something. Like that’s what I need, that would actually relieve me or something, you know what I mean?

THERAPIST: Huh…

CLIENT: I don’t think I want anybody to cry again. (pause)

THERAPIST: Something connected with the crying and pain to kind of your mother’s body…the pain in your mother’s body.

CLIENT: Yeah I guess I just don’t want…my mom to be where she is. I don’t want her to have the experience that she’s having. I think what was really insightful two appointments ago is like my dad being just as miserable as my mom isn’t (inaudible). [00:42:01] Change that.

THERAPIST: Wouldn’t take her pain away?

CLIENT: Yeah, she’d probably just feel even worse.

THERAPIST: Right, right you were mentioning that.

CLIENT: But I think there’s actually something…that conclusion though is more unsettling than somehow holding onto the possibility that maybe I could do something about that.

THERAPIST: Mm.

CLIENT: That’s it, there’s no justice to it.

THERAPIST: I see, yeah.

CLIENT: Or something.

THERAPIST: If justice were served maybe the pain…it’s alleviated but when you look at it, it didn’t feel that way.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah…When I’m talking does this make sense to you? I feel like I’m rambling.

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: I feel like the time dwindling down and I’m worried that I’m not…I don’t know.

THERAPIST: You feel like your rambling?

CLIENT: I don’t know.

THERAPIST: That’s not my experience.

CLIENT: That’s helpful for me to hear. I don’t know, I…

THERAPIST: it reminds me of you saying… there’s a time last week when we met on Thursday that you felt that you were going around in circles or you were running in circles or something.

CLIENT: I’m doing the same thing, right, like I feel like I’m (pause)…

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: Making sense of it, there’s no…

THERAPIST: When did you start wondering? When did you start having that feeling like it’s not making sense? [00:43:50]

CLIENT: (over talking) I tried to make sense of this and as soon as I tried to suggest like “Oh well, maybe that’s not what I want,” you know?

THERAPIST: Just a thought I have about that is that first of all I understand the confusion because it seems to me like it was a time when you, the insight your referring to was like this feeling of “Yeah my…” you associated first of all your dad experience and pain with the way your mom…that your dad might experience the pain the same way your mom would which would be that their lives would kind of be really deteriorated or something, this pain would lead to kind of like a…if your dad were to experience it it would be associated in the same way you saw your mom, the effects the pain had on your mom’s life. Then it seems to me like pain is a very dubious thing to want anybody to have, anybody to experience. [00:45:31]

CLIENT: Mm hm.

THERAPIST: It’s like your sort of saying on some register in your mind your feeling the pain, the emotional pain of the divorce for your mom led to a lot of things including bodily….even in her body it was expressed, there’s this kind of way it’s felt that way to you, like she’s in pain in her joints, in her ankles, hands, right?

CLIENT: Mm hm.

THERAPIST: But also like not dating, not resuming a life worth resuming, I don’t know, having a life that wasn’t mired in that pain, wasn’t defined by it.

CLIENT: Mm hm. (pause)

THERAPIST: Yeah but the grenade again, the analogy of the grenade, the metaphor of the grenade is like if you get into your own kind of experience, maybe it’s pain but whatever it is if they experience the pain, if your dad does, what’s it going to do to him? Is he going to be a wounded veteran, you know? [00:47:07] A disabled veteran? Like a dog in this…the way I was thinking about your mom almost like disabled from it. (pause)

CLIENT: Yeah, yes I guess I’m very upset by the fact that I feel like…(pause) my parents are very upset, my dad was upset, my mom is upset, I feel I’m still very upset by that.

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause)

CLIENT: I don’t want any more of that.

THERAPIST: Right.

CLIENT: I don’t want to make it any worse, you know? I don’t want to contribute to that you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah. (pause) [00:48:36] Yeah you’d rather land or take a dive on the grenade…

CLIENT: Yeah but it’s like it sucks because I mean am I even diving on…you dive on the grenade to what? To shield other people from its effects? Maybe that’s even like a fantasy I can do that, you know?

THERAPIST: Hmm. (pause)

CLIENT: Maybe I’d like to have that much control. Maybe I’d like to be able to dive on my mom or something, rheumatoid arthritis grenade, but I can’t. I don’t know. (pause) That’s time. [00:49:44]

THERAPIST: Yeah I guess it was, yes.

CLIENT: Continue, continue with this next week.

THERAPIST: Thursday?

CLIENT: Thursday? Thursday, right, Thursday that’s right. I will see you then.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: Thank you.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I got to read the (inaudible). See you later.

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