[LonesomeTonight]

Originally Posted by SlumberKitty

Glad playing the song went well LT!

Originally Posted by Salmon77

Really glad you felt good about it!

Thanks, Kit and Salmon! Still feeling good about it this morning. Will write up more of the actual session later, just still processing, I think.

[LonesomeTonight]

This is the song that I shared, if anyone is curious:
"Terrible Love," The National

[Anne2.0]

Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight

I feel I ended up taking a risk and getting a reward here. I know it could have gone badly, but I'm impressed with how my T handled it. I really didn't think we'd discuss it much at all. The fact that he picked out a line that he figured had meaning to me, and was correct about it (it wasn't necessarily an obvious line to pick out, though they do repeat it some)--that meant a lot and made me feel understood.

LT, I really feel that risk taking is a big deal for you-- and something that may hold a key to greater happiness. Risk taking is similar to what you already do well-- which is tell the truth in therapy. Maybe risk taking is the behavioral analogy to speaking truth. But I think it's great. I think you should do more of it. IME in relationships, including therapy, risk taking carries big payoffs and little knock downs. A balance I can live with.

[JaneTennison1]

Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight

This is the song that I shared, if anyone is curious:
"Terrible Love," The National

I had a hard time undestanding what they were saying so I'm glad your T got it. I googled the lyrics though and I like it.

[LonesomeTonight]

Originally Posted by JaneTennison1

I had a hard time undestanding what they were saying so I'm glad your T got it. I googled the lyrics though and I like it.

That singer can be hard to understand. I had printed the lyrics out for T because he'd requested that when we had discussed my possibly playing a song for him. Glad you liked it!

[stopdog]

Originally Posted by JaneTennison1

I had a hard time undestanding what they were saying so I'm glad your T got it.

I tried listening to it as well but could not make it through the whole thing. I shut it off after about the first 45 seconds or so. (I am old and it is not my sort of music at all. )
Were they saying "walking with spiders"?

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by stopdog

I tried listening to it as well but could not make it through the whole thing. I shut it off after about the first 45 seconds or so. (I am old and it is not my sort of music at all. )
Were they saying "walking with spiders"?

Yeah. There are a few more googles where various people explain what it might mean. It's no "Satisfaction". You lasted longer than i did.

[LonesomeTonight]

Yeah, "walking with spiders." That was a line that T asked me about. The one he thought probably resonated with me is "It takes an ocean not to break." His interpretation is that it takes the strength of the ocean to hold it together when I'm struggling, and I said that explanation resonated with me. And the one part, about the struggle to fall asleep, feels like anxiety to me.
Here are lyrics (not totally accurate) and people's interpretations.

[comrademoomoo]

I love The National! Go and sit down, Grandmas!!

[LonesomeTonight]

I said (I have absolutely no idea if this is anything close to what he meant) that the "walking with spiders" line made me think of what someone (not main character, someone else) says in Crime and Punishment, how maybe the afterlife is just a dark room with spiders.

Not sure if this is an accurate quote, but found this online:
“We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is.” And it was Svidrigailov (sp depends on translation)

[unaluna]

Originally Posted by comrademoomoo

I love The National! Go and sit down, Grandmas!!

Fooled you! We already ARE sitting down!

[LonesomeTonight]

Originally Posted by comrademoomoo

I love The National! Go and sit down, Grandmas!!

They have a new album out today, I Am Easy to Find. It's quite lovely so far--they brought in a few female guest vocalists (and I think a boy's choir?)

[unaluna]

I did like the cover art on the national violet album.

[arielawhile]

Hey, so this is a totally random first post (stumbled onto this forum googling therapist-related stuff). Was browsing around, saw this, and just wanted to say The National is amazing! So many great songs (Apartment Story, Slow Show, Fake Empire, Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks...)! (Have seen them multiple times...love live music...and they're so tight live.) Glad I'm not the only one who talks music with his/her therapist. Anyway, pardon the barge and the fangirl moment!

[InkyBooky]

Oh man, I love The National so much. Their 2007 album, Boxer, is one of my favorites....Green Gloves, Slow Show, Fake Empire....

and Start a War. oh my god-

YouTube

[velcro003]

I'm also a fan of The National I like that song, LT. I'm glad you got what you wanted/needed out of that session.

[stopdog]

You kids get off my lawn.
And don't even ask to borrow my cd set of the well tempered clavier. Or my Hildegard Consort cds.

[atisketatasket]

Originally Posted by stopdog

You kids get off my lawn.
And don't even ask to borrow my cd set of the well tempered clavier. Or my Hildegard Consort cds.

I also own the well-tempered klavier.

[stopdog]

It took a while, but mine is no longer in 8track cartridge format - my nod to modernization is the cd.

[LonesomeTonight]

T Thursday. He retrieved me right on time and said "Hey" quietly as I walked past him. I replied, "Hello." Went back and sat down. I said I kept thinking about playing a song for him and felt like I wanted to do it, even if I wasn't sure what I was looking for. And I was trying to figure out if he was telling me last session that I shouldn't do it. He said he just wanted to make sure I knew what I was looking for from it. I said I'd posted about it on PC and had gotten a variety of responses. That one was about how it seemed to be coming from a teenaged part of me. That I kind of agreed with that. We discussed that briefly.

Me: "You said Monday how if I played the song, you'd feel awkward if I was sitting there staring at you, waiting for a reaction. And I was thinking to myself: 'Then you'd know how I feel every session!'" T laughed: "Turning the tables?" Me: "Yeah."

Me: "I know you're trying to make sure my expectations aren't too high. But part of me just wants to try it. I mean, maybe it would make you vomit immediately." T: "Well, that would at least be an emotional reaction." Me: "True!" T (not exact words but something like this): "I feel like how you do therapy is that you're trying to express your inner world and have that be understood. And this would be a part of that." Me: "So if you don't understand it, you feel that might negatively affect me?" T: "Maybe." Me: "I wouldn't expect you to have the same experience of the song as me. Especially after hearing it once." T: "OK."

I gestured at the painting over his desk, a Japanese landscape. Me: "Like maybe that painting means a lot to you, and I were to just be like, 'eh, that's a dumb painting.' But maybe it has personal meaning to you--or maybe you even painted it, though it appears to have a Japanese signature, so I doubt it." I forget what exactly he said to that, but led to brief discussion of how art can be similar in how it affects people in different ways. I said maybe this is sort of like me bringing in a picture of a painting and saying how it affected me.

Me: "Also... I mean, I know you're not into music. But presumably, you're at least somewhat familiar with, say, the Beatles. If you're not, then I'm not sure how you've managed to avoid them your whole life. But if I were to say that I'm really affected by some Beatles songs, you'd have some sort of basic context at least for what I'm talking about." T: "OK, I see." Me: "I mean, like, f I mention watching a football game, you've presumably watched one in your life, so you know what that can be like. But if I were to talk about watching...I don't know, jai alai or something--trying to come up with a sport you might not be familiar with." T (smiling): "Sports are a bad example to use with me" (he's also a sports psychologist). Me: "Ah, good point! But I mean, just, I want you to be able to think, 'Oh that's what that band sounds like.' I don't know."

I said I also felt like this was different from sharing music with a friend. Me: "If it was a friend, I would ask what music they're into before sharing. And choose which artist or song partly based on that. Like most music I'm into, I know my mom wouldn't like. But with my dad, there's some overlap, so I do share things with him." T: "Well, you don't know what kind of music I like." Me: "I thought you weren't into any music?" T smiled in a way that suggested he does in fact like some music.

Me: "Well, you've managed to set my expectations so low at this point. Would it be OK if we tried it?" T: "Sure." Me: "I brought the lyrics." T: "I appreciate that." Me: "But because you wanted to read them, it made me rethink which song to play. Because if you're focusing on the lyrics, this one song won't make as much sense." T said was OK.

Me: "So do you want to hear 'Terrible Love' or 'The Geese of Beverly Road'?" T: "It's up to you!" Me: "I know...let me go with the one where the lyrics are more obvious." T: "You can always play one, and if it doesn't feel right, do the other one. Or both." Me: "OK. I'll go with 'Terrible Love' then." I handed him the lyrics.

I picked up my phone and scrolled through the artist listing in iTunes. T: "You don't have it all cued up?" Me: "Well, I listened to music in the car!" I got to the song. Me: "How do I do this--do you want the phone?" T: "Why don't you keep it so you can stop if it feels weird." Me: "OK." I hit play. "Not sure what the volume should be." I kept clicking one up. Me: "That good?" T: "One more." Me: "OK!"

I played the song. While it played, I mostly stared out the window, watching the trees blowing in the wind, could see him in my peripheral vision and sorta glanced over at once or twice--he was looking intently the lyrics sheet. Partway through, I said, "The song does change eventually." T: "They repeat a lot." Me: "Yeah, they do. OK, I'll stop talking." After one section where they repeat "It takes an ocean not to break," T said, "I imagine that line has meaning to you." Me: "Yes it does." My eyes welled up a few times as it played, but didn't spill over. With about 30 seconds of the song to go, I heard him fold up the lyrics sheet. I pondered if I should let the last 30 (instrumental) seconds play? I did, feeling slightly awkward.

I looked up nervously at T. T: "That was an interesting song." Me: "Yeah." T: "It reminds me of something I've heard before. I know someone who will know what song I'm thinking of." Me: "OK. Maybe it's a song I don't know?" T: "I seriously doubt there's a song I've heard that you haven't." Me: "OK, well, maybe if it's a current pop song?" T: "I still doubt it."

T looked at the lyrics and brought up the "It takes an ocean not to break" line. T: "What it makes me think of is...if you're struggling emotionally, it can take a lot of effort, like an ocean of effort, to keep it together.

Possible trigger:

Like not to SH or have other thoughts.

.
Me: "Yes, exactly." T: "And it's kind of clever, using 'ocean' with 'break.'" Me: "Yeah, breaking waves. Another part that speaks to me is 'It's hard to go to sleep without a little help. It takes a while to settle down, until the panic's out.' The whole song partly feels like it's about anxiety to me. It has an edginess to it." T: "OK."

T: "I'm not sure how to interpret parts of it. It almost seems like a couple different songs in one." Me: "Yeah." T: "Like what does he mean by 'walking with spiders'?" Me: "I'm not sure, I've read that some think it's a scary sort of love. And he had apparently just had his first kid when he wrote this album. So some said how that can be scary." T: "That makes sense, how that brings out all these emotions."

Me: "Yeah. But something that I associated it with...I have absolutely no idea if he had this in his mind at all--but in 'Crime and Punishment,' which I read both in high school then in college, one of the characters--not the main one, not Raskolnikov--said how maybe the afterlife is just a small, dark room with spiders. So I associated it with that." T said that was interesting. Me: "It was actually on my user name on a therapy site I was on before PC." T: "What, 'walking with spiders'?" Me: "Yeah, but then I thought maybe it would seem weird or creepy if someone didn't know the song." T: "In what way?" Me: "Well, spiders..."

I was really surprised, based on our discussion before about playing the song and all his caveats, that we spent this long discussing the song. I really expected him to just be like, "Well, OK then" after I played it. Certainly not that he'd give some of his own interpretation. Or pick up on a line that meant a lot to me. I guess that was an advantage of really low expectations...

I asked if any other client had played music for him before. He said some were in bands or did rap, so they'd played their own stuff. I said that probably felt a bit different, because it was their own. He agreed and said maybe 5 clients (he's been practicing >15 years) had shared a song in the way I did. (I had to wonder if one of those had gone poorly, hence all the caveats?)

I said how maybe I needed to rely on music more in my life, because in a way it's a creative outlet. How I wished I could write music. He said I could. I said I didn't really have the training or knowledge to do that. He said I could pick it up, teach myself. I said maybe I just needed a creative outlet. Mentioned writing, poetry, etc. Like maybe I could be brave and take a creative writing class? He asked if I wanted to write fiction. I said maybe more of a memoir sort of thing.

Talked about other creative outlets. He mentioned painting. I said I'm afraid to take a painting class because of a bad experience when I was a kid, where the instructor said my flowers looked diseased and that it was terrible. T: "You should have said, 'That's exactly what I was going for! Nailed it!'" I laughed.

T said if I took a beginner painting class, they'd likely go through all the basic steps. I said part of my thing is, I don't know what to paint. He said they would likely give assignments. And that he thinks of painting as sort of limitless in what you can do with it. Me: "Maybe I should do more with photography. I find it to be kind of a mindfulness thing if I'm walking around looking for things to photograph and thinking about how to do it." T said how a friend had taken a class in photography with the iPhone at our local community college. Me: "That could be interesting. I did take a class in high school, where I actually developed film and everything." T: "Well, you don't have to deal with that anymore. I feel like photography is more limited though, compared to painting." Me: "I mean, I guess in the sense that you have to photograph what exists. But there are many different ways you can frame a photo, like do I include that tree, do I want it here or there." T: "OK, I just always thought it had more limits."

We were about out of time, but T didn't seem to be trying to wrap it up. He glanced at the lyrics sheet, and I said he could keep it if he wanted. T: "I was planning on it so I could ask that person about the song." He confirmed if the that was the song title I had listed at the top, and I said yes. Me: "I hope you can figure out what song you're thinking of." T: "I'm sure this person could help. Though it's not quite as obvious as 'Ice Ice Baby' and...what was the song?" Me: "Queen and David Bowie's 'Under Pressure.' I admit I liked Vanilla Ice at the time. I really like 'Under Pressure' though. The line about 'why can't we give love that one more chance?'" It's sad they're both dead now..."

T asked if I was familiar with the Deadpool movies. I said no. He said how in one, a character made a comment about being sad Freddie Mercury was dead, and the other guy was like, 'At least we still have Bowie.' And watching it, it's like, 'oooohhh.'" Me: "Oh because it was shortly after his death?" T: "Yeah." Talked about how some recent musicians' deaths had really affected me, even if I wasn't all that into their music. Like Prince. T said how he knows I'm a bit younger, but with people his age, when "Purple Rain" came out, it was just everywhere, so a big thing for people. He said how the music that was around when people were in high school and college is often what really sticks with them. i agreed, saying for me, that was basically all of the '90s.

We were at about 56 minutes. T picked up his phone: "So we're set for next week." Me: "Yes." Went over to pay. I was about to mention new charge, but thought maybe T would remember. He was about to put in my credit card, then was like, "Aha! Got it!" and deleted it before doing correct charge. Paid. T, shaking my hand, "Have a good weekend." Me: "Thanks, you too." T: "It's supposed to be really nice this weekend." Me: "Will there actually be a day when it doesn't rain?" T: "Sounds like it." Me: "Good!" T: "Enjoy the weather." Me: "You, too."

I left with a good feeling, like I'd connected with T in a new way. I'm glad I took the risk to play the song. I think maybe I'd be glad even if it had gone poorly?