TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: I’m used to like biting cold where you just run from one building to the next. I have way too many layers but I guess that’s good.

CLIENT: You can always lose some of them.

THERAPIST: So where are you today?

CLIENT: So today is our first day of classes. But luckily our first class isn’t until Friday so we still have some time to prepare, which is good because I feel like we’re definitely not very organized. Now this is Ryan who I’m the TF for and he is always kind of like very last minute where I feel like I’m the total opposite what with everything. To be very organized and planned and so we are supposed to send out a syllabus today which is kind of late anyway and I’m still waiting for his final (unclear). I keep sending him e-mails and saying, ‘I think the students kind of need it like by today if they want to come prepared for Friday.’ This is now the fourth year that I have done his course so I kind of get it and I feel like I need to remind myself to just kind of like take a step back and let it be okay. Like the beginning is kind of hard, too. And then things usually fall into place, so that’s kind of my plan. (Cross talk)

THERAPIST: (inaudible)

CLIENT: I know and that’s what I keep reminding myself, too. That it feels – it’s kind of nice that I have this and now that my QP is officially done I can move on to think about my dissertation proposals so that’s going to be like the focus of my work but it’s so nice that I don’t have other classes to try and manage at the same time. So that felt good. And I also feel like sometimes I lack – like being a TF took up too much time so I feel like I have to start being careful about that now. Like I almost think that – even like at the beginning stages Ryan and I have met on the weekends, he’s called a few times like late at night, like things that I feel like I don’t want to let happen further on but I have kind of let happen because we’re in kind of like this frenzy of trying to get it ready. But I think I need to be careful. [00:02:24]

THERAPIST: Set times for him.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I know in the past you’ve kind of thought about, just kind of blocking out like when are appropriate times for him and how much time during the week?

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: For him for this class.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And maybe doing that again even if it’s not something you outline with him, you’d outline for yourself that sort of stops responding to e-mails after a certain time.

CLIENT: And I do think I want to do that and even last semester I kind of thought of like okay – I forget what it was but like Thursday is the day I only think about my QP and Wednesday is the day I catch up on Jeff’s class or whatever. And it didn’t always work that way but just kind of having that in my head and so I feel like I want to do better about that. (Unclear) always jokes now that Ryan is like my work husband.

THERAPIST: (Laughs)

CLIENT: Because I had been waiting for a call from him during the day and then he didn’t call and it was something we really needed to finalize before like shopping or something. Last weekend Todd and I were in the middle of eating dinner when he called so I was like, ‘you know what, I don’t want to interrupt our dinner but I have to talk to him because it was already so late. So I took it and Todd was totally understanding but joking, like one more sign he’s your work husband. So it is like I think that I’, sometimes I’m pretty good, like I won’t answer his call if it is too late but I’ve kind of let those boundaries down a little bit right now just because I feel like I want to get organized.

THERAPIST: You’re anxious to get some stuff done. [00:03:49]

CLIENT: So I think being more aware of that once the course starts and starts to level out, I want to try and be a little bit better about that.

THERAPIST: Are there other TFs for this class, too? Are there other people.

CLIENT: Yes. We have one TF who’s returning from last year which will be great and one who didn’t work with us last year but worked the year before and she kind of took over as the head TF for me when I had Trae and she is wonderful. So I feel like (cross talk).

THERAPIST: (Unclear) new people and you’ve had that experience in the past, too.

CLIENT: And then we have one other new person, too, but she seems really great. Because I almost feel like sometimes I get in that role of wanting to do it all myself just because no one really knows. It’s their first time but it doesn’t quite feel like it.

THERAPIST: You rely a lot of these people.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Let yourself rely on them.

CLIENT: Yes, I need to do better, for sure. Yeah. And then this is also – Trae was sick all last week so it was my first day back on campus after – I came in for one meeting on a Tuesday when my mom was here but that was pretty much it. So I’ve also just kind of felt like out of it.

THERAPIST: Out of touch with it.

CLIENT: Yeah. And thankfully he’s better now. But we weren’t quite sure. Like he had a really high fever. So that was kind of scary not really knowing what it was caused by and usually like he always had like a runny nose or whatever so we kind of knew where it was coming from. I think we brought him back to the doctor. I think we went three times in the span of seven days trying to figure out what this was and then they thought he had a tonsil infection but then once the fever broke he had spots all over him like roseola so then they thought well maybe that’s what it was. And so I still don’t know if we ever knew. But now he’s back on track but I just felt like last week was a long week just being kind of worried about him but also you know, just not like really getting a lot of sleep with everything else and so it feels good that he’s (unclear). [00:05:53]

THERAPIST: (inaudible).

CLIENT: And it was kind of, I guess it was Todd’s last – last week was his first week of classes starting out because Cambridge is on a different schedule. So it just felt like kind of a chaotic week trying to juggle everything.

THERAPIST: You’ve had a rough winter.

CLIENT: I know, yeah. And it’s only January. Hopefully, we’ll have like an early spring. But then we keep joking, well okay we can add roseola to the list of things I can (unclear) now. But we actually – Todd and I are going to go away over – [00:06:21]

THERAPIST: This is the first (unclear) you’re not breast feeding.

CLIENT: I know. Yeah. Maybe that’s what it is. But we’re going to go away this weekend.

THERAPIST: Oh good. You’ll finally get that time.

CLIENT: Yes. We gave it to each other like our Christmas presents to each other and we thought we’d go in January and then like scheduling got all crazy and we thought we’d have to push it out until March just because our parent’s schedules and our schedules and then my dad had said no to this coming weekend because he thought his team would be in the Super Bowl so he’d be going to Indiana. So one good thing about that is that maybe they could watch him for us because they have agreed to watch him.

THERAPIST: Do you think they’re experimenting?

CLIENT: Yes. So I think that’s just like coming at such a good time because I feel like –

THERAPIST: Well, you guys have been sort of holding on and looking forward to having some time away so you can reconnect and just really relax with one another.

CLIENT: I know. I think it’s just – and it has. It’s just been so busy and I felt like last week kind of was like, alright, we need to make this happen. We’re both so tired and Trae’s been so sick and just have the time to focus on each other I think will be really good. And I think it’s funny – I was thinking back to our first overnight away from him in the summer, I guess, when we went to Providence and I was excited but I felt like I was dreading it like when I made the call to make the reservation I was like, I don’t know if I want to do this. And it definitely feels better now. I feel like I’m more looking forward to it than being nervous.

THERAPIST: Well, you were nervous about your first time away and how he would do and what it would feel like for you. But it went really well. You had fun.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: So some of the jitters from your first time away I think answered some of the questions you needed answered.

CLIENT: So it’s nice to have that to look forward to and I know, like my parents, especially my mom, like loves to have him there and I feel like that’s something for her to look forward to, too, just because I’m always worried about how she’s doing too. So I think that will be good for everyone around. Yeah.

THERAPIST: I’m glad you guys will get a chance to do that.

CLIENT: Yes. And I think like we had, my mom and my sister stayed two weekends ago, I guess, now, when Todd and Big Todd, my dad, went ice-fishing. And so that was good, too, just to like – I don’t know, I think my sister is worried about my mom, too. But I don’t know how much.

THERAPIST: Do you guys have as much reason to be worried as you both are?

CLIENT: Well, I don’t think so. I know that she’s sad and she tells me she’s sad but I don’t think she’s like abnormally sad. I think she’s experiencing a normal loss.

THERAPIST: I wonder if it would make more sense to be sad for her rather than worried for her.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I mean your typical go-to place is one of concern, anxiety, worry. And I mean it makes sense that she’s sad. Of course, she’s grieving. But maybe that’s not a worrisome thing.

CLIENT: Yeah, and I think it’s more like – it’s funny. It’s not like it makes me feel anxious. Like I don’t think about my mom and have those anxious feelings really. So maybe it is more like –

THERAPIST: When you say “worried”, what do you really mean then?

CLIENT: Then maybe I do mean “sad”, yeah. And I guess I am worried for her. But like it’s not –

THERAPIST: When you’re worried for her, what is it that you’re – what is your concern?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just that, I hate thinking of her being sad. You know. And like my dad is – if he’s out like busy at night or something. She has tons of friends at home, too. But I just hate that feeling of thinking of her being at home alone being sad when I know she has – our next door neighbors are two of her best friends. So she has plenty of support.

THERAPIST: She doesn’t have to be alone if she doesn’t want to. [00:10:38]

CLIENT: Yeah. But then we were also saying to her, like – I think sometimes my mom will hesitate to call – she hasn’t yet picked up the phone and said like, ‘I’m having a bad day. Can we talk?’ So we were trying to talk to her about that and saying like, ‘I think maybe some of that is like we know you’re sad but we know you aren’t really telling us about it because you don’t want to make us sad. Like it just has this funny chain reaction.

THERAPIST: It’s almost like you’re assuming that she might be sad, or that she is, because she’s not letting you know on the good days or the bad days.

CLIENT: Yeah. And I think she’s kind of doing that to protect us in a way, like she doesn’t want us to be worrying about her and she doesn’t want her sadness to make us more sad or whatever. [00:11:23]

THERAPIST: But it’s not limited to your concern.

CLIENT: Yeah. So we were trying to like tell her that like so it’s okay, if you’re feeling sad it’s okay. If you’re feeling sad I know you’ll pick up the phone and call your best friends or whatever, but you can also pick up the phone and call me, too. That isn’t something that you have to protect us from. So it was kind of like a good conversation and it all could have stemmed (unclear) because we haven’t really talked much about like our feelings of being sad that whole weekend until Sunday. Like we had talked a lot about my grandmother and my mom brought a whole bunch of like her jewelry that we went through. So we’d been talking about her but not really like how each one of us was doing. And I started to get frustrated on Sunday because we totally got Trae off of his nap schedule and he didn’t sleep well and sometimes it was like taking – if Todd and I want to do something you know, we have like a set window before his nap and it’s hard like for other people to get that.

THERAPIST: The moment he wakes up he’ll be ready to go.

CLIENT: Right. So I wasn’t being very sympathetic to that. But I was getting like frustrated like okay now it’s like it’s like almost 10:30 and he’s still needs to be home by 12:30 so it kind of came out badly and we’d gone to the museum which was really fun but we went kind of late and got home so late and so part of me is that I don’t like to be the parent who is such a stickler about naps because if we’re out doing something fun I feel like it’s okay to be flexible. But on the other hand I was like we came every Wednesday with us so we could have it be like an easy weekend for Trae. It’s my mom and sister so we can be accommodating to him I felt like, whereas I felt like if we were hosting like friends or something who don’t get it, maybe I wouldn’t want to be back right now. But we were out with my own mom and sister I was thinking like we could be accommodating for him.

THERAPIST: Allowed to be a little bit more demanding.

CLIENT: Yeah, so I felt myself getting in a bad mood about it all. And I certainly didn’t like influence the whole weekend but I felt myself by Sunday be like, okay, now we’ve kind of like thrown him all off his schedule and so we started talking about that and then I think I like automatically got like just by talking about that like something I was frustrated with about the weekend, then worrying like have I gone and ruined our weekend when I wanted so much for it to be like a good weekend for my mom not to be sad like open the door to everything and I started crying because I was worried about her and sad about Mimi and my mom started crying and so in a way I was kind of glad that – I don’t that we would have had that conversation so I guess that was good.

THERAPIST: It was a good conversation for everyone to have.

CLIENT: Yeah. So I don’t know, I think that it helped the situation. But at first I – and I still don’t know if I was overreacting about his naps anyway. Sometimes it’s hard to find that balance.

THERAPIST: I think you weren’t just reacting to the naps. You obviously have this sort of concern and had things that you wanted to be able to say to your mom that were sort of there under the surface and that made you wonder if you were more easily frustrated about other things. It was all this other stuff you were kind of hanging onto.

CLIENT: Yeah. I think that that probably was part of it too. [00:14:58]

THERAPIST: There’s no rule about how much do you react about naps and how important is the schedule when there’s no – you felt what you felt. Probably spurred by a couple of things that were going on.

CLIENT: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like there’s – it’s funny like I’ll react to something and then it’s always like I’ll still feel like that, like it’s sad and it’s still there, that sadness about Mimi. It’s something I’ll react to but then it will make me think about her. And then it will turn into being sad about her, too.

THERAPIST: I think that shows that it’s part of what – even if you’re not directly focused on it, it’s part of what you’re – whether you think about the (unclear) process of your body or your mind or your heart or whatever your language is for it, it’s going on there, that grieving process for that loss is ongoing and will be for a while whether or not you’re attuned to it at the moment. And that’s I think why you have that experience of reacting to one thing and then realizing then you end up talking about the feeling of loss or the sadness that you have.

CLIENT: Yeah. I’ve even noticed, because our friend who had a stroke a month ago, she was just back in the hospital. Everything’s fine but she needed a medication adjustment for her and so it was another scary window for a little while and now everything is totally fine but it’s funny like I feel – like it’s funny how those two things are almost connected for me because I think because they happened so close together that Todd took out her husband for like a night out on Saturday and her husband is so sad about the whole situation and it’s still like a day to day situation until they can make sure that she’s going to be fine. She ended up with about four tears in her arteries in her neck – not just the one. So it’s still – she’s going to be fine but it’s just a scary period and I think they went through so much. It’s just such a traumatic time and so Todd took him out and it’s just been really hard for him so that got Todd and me talking about it all and even that – feeling sad about Sarah, but then I also think about Mimi too because everything is just all kind of mixed in.

THERAPIST: And everything happened so close together. [00:17:32]

CLIENT: I’m thinking of her as a mom and you know my grandmother as a mom to my mom and like I feel like it’s just all – it’s interesting how lots of little things are bringing her back up to me in different ways.

THERAPIST: It’s really present.

CLIENT: Yeah. Which isn’t bad either. Like I kind of like that too, that I am (unclear) about her so much.

THERAPIST: For her already to be gone.

CLIENT: Yeah. So and I think it’s good too that, I know my mom hasn’t since we were all together, she hasn’t really like picked up the phone but I feel like at least now we can kind of get that –

THERAPIST: But it’s been acknowledged that you would be okay with that. She might not need that. But even if she doesn’t need to have one of you girls be the person that she calls, being able to say out loud that you’d be okay with that and that she could if she wanted to, feeling a nice offer of support and it’s acknowledgement of knowing that she might have days that are harder or (unclear) more. [00:18:37]

CLIENT: Yeah, so I think –

THERAPIST: How often do you pick up the phone and call?

CLIENT: Well, I was saying to her, like I don’t do that either. When I’m like feeling sad, you know, if I have like a moment during the day or whatever. I don’t really pick up the phone and call her either.

THERAPIST: Do you want to and don’t pick up the phone? Or don’t feel like you, even though you’re having a sad time, don’t really need that? What stops you?

CLIENT: Yeah. I don’t really feel like I have to because I feel like I can talk to Todd about it. Sometimes it just feels like a passing thing, too. Like Trae still gets me. Like every time I put him to bed he still wants me to read this one bedtime story that totally reminds me just of everything or my grandmother’s picture is still on his night side table and so he still like talks to her and everything. But I feel like, then I put him to bed and it’s kind of passed anyway. And I’ve noticed there have been happier things that I will call my mom to say like something that I remembered or – I’ve had all these like funny stories with – three things have happened so far where I’ve found something of hers in my shoe which is so weird. When we were going through her jewelry. Yeah. I dropped something and we searched the entire floor and it ended up in my boot. And then when we came home and I found a keychain she had given me in one of my slippers. I think Trae put it there. And then the third time I found this like little thing we had – we were giving out these little like favor things at her party and one of the favors was in one of the boots I put on the other day. So I have been calling my mom about stuff like that.

THERAPIST: Yeah, that’s nice.

CLIENT: Cool, just little coincidences, you know. So the happy stuff I feel like I’m telling her about but I haven’t – and I told her that and she said, ‘well that makes me feel bad that you feel like you can’t call either.’ But I think it’s both of us being worried like if I call her crying I’m going to make her cry and vice versa. You know, when – I don’t know.

THERAPIST: Well, it sounds like you sometimes don’t need necessarily to call. [00:20:53]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Because you experience a feeling or a thought and it passes. And that’s okay. Not every – you might not need somebody else to acknowledge or help you with every kind of feeling.

CLIENT: Yeah, right. And maybe that’s also happening for her. To have those times that either she can talk to your dad or somebody else or it passes.

THERAPIST: Right. And I think it’s important to remember that grief is a very normal process and it’s not the same as being depressed. I think sometimes grief can lead to depression but it doesn’t always. Very often it resolves in a normal, healthy way and those feelings, while uncomfortable, don’t necessarily need any sort of special attention.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: It works. The process works. In the kinds of talks that you have, in the ways that you are to your mom, even without doing anything necessarily extra-special.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: Because you have a relationship where you do talk and you do have fun together and you see her when she comes to take care of Trae and you spend lots of time – all those normal things you do in your everyday relationship work to help each other through any kind of hard process that comes up.

CLIENT: Right.

THERAPIST: It’s a lot that works really well and you have a very healthy relationship.

CLIENT: Yeah. And that’s been good too, to just remind each other that we are so lucky that we are so close and can help each other and so that’s been helping.

THERAPIST: You just do all the things you guys do normally.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That you’ve developed over the course of your lives have worked to create [00:22:52]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That’s all you really need in a situation where it’s a very normal grief process.

CLIENT: Yeah, I think when we’ve had – we’ve lost other people in our family, but I guess when I was younger – my grandfather, my stepdad Todd’s dad passed away when I was in high school and then we’ve lost other people when I was in high school I guess. But maybe just because I’m like, I don’t know, more aware of my parents’ feelings now or whatever – I feel like I just had such a close relationship with my grandmother.

THERAPIST: Right. Yeah, I wonder – there was something that you said early on after she passed away, was it being the first time that you’ve lost somebody having been a mom now made it feel really different. And I wonder if the parallel of you being a mom, your mom losing her mother and these three generations of women have a very close relationship, I wonder if all of that makes you much more empathic to what your mom is feeling and also makes your own feelings stronger because there’s so much that you identify with.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Certainly, when you were in high school you processed things in a different way, a whole different set of life experiences in which to put it. And adolescents tend to be a lot more, naturally and appropriately so, focused on themselves and are much more self-centered and really so much of what you’re experiencing is that you’re not just focused on your own feelings. You’re very aware of, and imagining and trying to be perceptive of what your mom is feeling, what your sister’s feeling and – [00:24:45]

CLIENT: Yeah. But I think it’s, I’m glad we’re kind of on this (unclear) like you’ve just been saying –

THERAPIST: That you can just kind of put it out there.

CLIENT: Even if it’s just joking. Like my mom was saying, ‘let’s make up like a code word that you can say if you’re feeling anxious about getting home for Trae’s nap. And then I said, well then we can use the same code word for you being sad. So we’ve been joking about a code work. I think I was kind of feeling, and my sister even too, like is mom okay or is she like not calling because she is okay?

THERAPIST: Do we know what’s going on?

CLIENT: Yeah. So that feels a little bit better. Just kind of moving forward.

THERAPIST: Yeah. It feels like it gives you more permission to ask, too. Now that it’s sort of been said and that gives you more permission to ask about that and makes them more aware if you’re doing something to ask like, ‘hey, is it important to be back?’

CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) So I don’t even, I feel like not sure what else is on my mind. Like those have been the biggest things and then just thinking forward to the start of the semester, too. I feel like it’s been kind of nice to have like January be this kind of down time with just like without classes going or anything and so now just kind of thinking about how it will feel like this semester starting up again and I feel like it’s exciting that a part of me is excited for the class and then excited to start working on my dissertation proposal are like the good parts and then another part of me is like, oh, but having that class is so much work and will I have enough time for my own stuff and –

THERAPIST: You need to create a schedule.

CLIENT: Yeah. So I think it’s just the newness of going into like the next semester.

THERAPIST: It will take you some time to develop a pattern that works for you to get your TF work done and research done. [00:26:52]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: What are your goals in terms of timelines for your proposal, or are there goals?

CLIENT: Well, I’m hoping to do – with a dissertation proposal, we have to get it approved by our committee but also by a school-wide committee on degrees which we didn’t have to do for our qualifying paper and so there are only certain times during the year when you can submit to the committee on degrees and the last day is in April. So I’m hoping to get the proposal done by April so then I can have everything in place to start collecting data when school starts in September. But I’m not sure if that is like unrealistic or not, so I kind of have it as a goal but I don’t want to be like too set on that because I realize it’s almost February now so it could be like really tough. Just knowing how long the process was with my qualifying paper, getting like professors’ feedback and everything felt so drawn out so –

THERAPIST: Right. Doing it in sort of two and a half months.

CLIENT: Yeah. I think – I’m not really sure. Like some of my friends have said once you know what you want to do you can just bang it out and it’s really not that big of a deal. It can only be like there’s a maximum limit that ends up being like 30 pages double-spaced. So it’s not like a huge thing to put together, but then thinking about my qualifying paper proposal, that did take from the beginning to get it approved – it took like a big span of time. So I’m not quite sure that it will all be in place by then.

THERAPIST: Do you know what you want to do?

CLIENT: Not quite. Like I want to build off of what I did with my qualifying paper but I’m not quite sure which way I want to go yet. And then I was kind of like, the whole month of January – I can just be like brainstorming and by the end have this like great idea. So that hasn’t really happened. So I’m meeting with all my committee – almost all of them this week so I think I’m in a brainstorming mode but I’m not quite sure, like when I’ll actually have the idea all nailed down or not. And it’s funny, I also felt like applying for the Brown Ed Review just took up a big chunk of time in January, too, which I (cross talk).

THERAPIST: Than you anticipated?

CLIENT: Because then, I think the last time I saw you I was about to have the interview and get those editing tasks and stuff and so it was just like you only had he 48 hours to finish it but I felt like that took two days out of my week and –

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: (Cross talk)

CLIENT: Yeah. And luckily I was glad I just used my day care time. Like I didn’t, because I was worried – am I going to feel like I have to be like I’m not even working on it and I don’t even think I worked on it at night. And I think it worked well just because there wasn’t really a right or wrong way to answer things so I just kept telling myself like just do the best you can and just be done with it. And I think I just put so much time into it that by the end I was just like –

THERAPIST: I’m done.

CLIENT: Get rid of it. Yeah. And so I was glad that I had that reaction instead of like trying to make – and I think I was, trying to go a little overboard trying to make everything perfect, but by the end I was just kind of ready to let it go. So now I’ve just like totally put it out of my head and just because I think that’s something that’s still hanging over me too, is I’m still not quite sure how I even feel about it. Like I know that I would really enjoy the work, but I’m still not sure if it would be too much to add on or you know. So I think that’s just another thing I can think about later, but it was something that took up more of January and with Trae being sick pretty much all of last week there were just – it was just the month went by a lot faster than I expected. But it was nice to just kind of feel disconnected from like the day to day school stuff since classes weren’t in session even though it felt like there was a lot of little work stuff that I had to do. It still felt like a break because it wasn’t the same stuff. [00:31:07]

THERAPIST: And you weren’t responsible for the same set of people.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: The mantra is to give yourself flexibility and see how the process goes and if you’re ready for that April time then you’re ready. If you’re not, you can do it the next round. And giving yourself the flexibility to work in a way that works best for you overall. It’s not just this one part of your life that you’re trying to manage. There are all these different parts.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Well, if there’s nothing else why don’t we leave some time for relaxation? Did we hit all the main things?

CLIENT: Yeah, I think so. I have a check for you too.

THERAPIST: Okay.

(Pause): [00:31:47 – 00:31:59]

THERAPIST: And I think we’ll probably need to schedule as well.

CLIENT: Oh yeah. Okay.

(Pause): [00:32:05 – 00:32:14]

THERAPIST: Is this a good time for you or would you prefer to go back to a Tuesday spot?

CLIENT: This is a good time and Tuesdays because my mom still watches Trae on Tuesday so that’s a little (unclear). I’m not quite sure when she (unclear) gets down. [00:32:25]

THERAPIST: I mean this 12:30 time could be a consistent time for you if you want it.

CLIENT: Okay. Yeah.

THERAPIST: You want to do it every other week?

CLIENT: Sure.

THERAPIST: So that would put us on the 10th and the 24th of February?

CLIENT: I should just check. We’re going to be going down to Florida to my grandma. So we’ll be in Florida on the 24th to visit Todd’s parents.

THERAPIST: So it’s unclear whether or not I’ll be here on the 17th because of President’s Day. We can definitely do the 10th and then if you want to meet like before you go away, if like the 21st or the 19th –

(Pause): [00:33:07 – 00:33:19]

CLIENT: So let’s see. We’re leaving on Wednesday the 19th and we’re back home on I think the 24th.

THERAPIST: Do you want to meet right when you get back on the 25th or 26th?

CLIENT: Yeah. So if we did Tuesday the 25th, maybe Wednesday will be better just because then my mom has the flexibility, yeah, of getting down here.

THERAPIST: Yeah, so my schedule is kind of clear but it looks like I could probably do a 1:30 or a 2:30 on the 26th.

CLIENT: I have a meeting from 1:30 to 3 on the 26th. That’s it though. Any other time would work.

THERAPIST: Let’s do – can you make it for 3:30?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That should work.

(Pause): [00:34:24 – 00:35:02]

THERAPIST: Alright. Let yourself get relaxed. Close your eyes and just settle into a rhythm of breathing that feels comfortable, relaxed. Allow yourself to take full breaths in and out.

(Pause): [00:35:15 – 00:35:25]

THERAPIST: Scanning your body as you breathe, taking notice of anything that feels uncomfortable, allowing yourself to shift whenever you need to to bring yourself greater comfort.

(Pause): [00:35:38 – 00:35:50]

THERAPIST: Taking a deep breath, breathing into any space that feels tight or uncomfortable. And then exhaling and letting go of the tension as you breathe out. Repeating that process as many times as you need to, breathing in and scanning your body, noticing what you feel. Exhaling and releasing, allowing yourself to become more relaxed with each breath.

(Pause): [00:36:18 – 00:36:33]

THERAPIST: Noticing thoughts that are running through your mind, acknowledging them without any judgment. And letting your thoughts go and letting your mind clear, allowing yourself to be fully present in the moment, knowing that important thoughts will come back to you when you need them. But for now giving your mind space.

(Pause): [00:37:04 – 00:37:23]

THERAPIST: Also begin to imagine a place that feels comfortable, a place that brings you comfort and ease.

(Pause): [00:37:27 – 00:37:40]

THERAPIST: Glad to make the things there that bring you peace letting yourself feel more relaxed, letting go of any tension or worry.

(Pause): [00:37:49 – 00:38:13]

THERAPIST: And go ahead and scan your body again noticing if there is any place that tension has crept back in or a place where tension has refused to leave. Think about actually bringing more tension, tightening up that space and then exhaling and relaxing completely. Repeating it, breathing in and tensing any place that feels uncomfortable. Exhaling and letting go, letting go of that last remaining bit of tension.

(Pause): [00:38:48 – 00:38:55]

THERAPIST: Breathing in and noticing a thought that has crept into your head and exhaling it and letting it go away, letting it be replaced with a sense of ease, comfort.

(Pause): [00:39:08 – 00:39:24]

THERAPIST: Now just taking a few more deep breaths, slowing extending the inhale and exhales.

(Pause): [00:39:31 – 00:39:42]

THERAPIST: Letting yourself memorize what it feels like to breathe at a relaxed comfortable pace, memorize what your body feels like when it’s relaxed.

(Pause): [00:39:52 – 00:39:58]

THERAPIST: Holding on to that sense of relaxation allowing yourself to come back to the room at your own relaxed pace.

(Pause): [00:40:0 5 00:40:12]

THERAPIST: We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.

CLIENT: Okay. That’s good.

END TRANSCRIPT