Originally Posted by
Florence 
My A is seeing an addiction counselor in addition to attending meetings. I suspect he's going in there and reporting that everything is hunky-dory and A-okay, which means the therapist then doesn't have anything to work with. All she has is what he tells her so there's nothing to work with, and he gets to come home feeling like he's doing his part even if he isn't using that time or resource as it's meant to be used. He hasn't gotten worse over time, but he hasn't gotten any better either. And because he's a
well-enough-functioning, manipulative drunk I can't even tell whether he's sober or not. :/ BTW, I'm uber-cranky about the situation today IF YOU CAN'T TELL.
I've got one of those, too. That's part of the problem, it seems; some A's seem so prone to confabulation, even a great therapist can only work with what they're given more or less. My AH came off abusive behavior + a "summer of relapsing" and then walked right into therapy and managed to deftly deflect the therapist's attention away from whatever he wanted to keep tucked away and not actually work through/on.
Some of the therapy that has helped me the most has been of the variety that bypasses the conscious or logical thought, because I guess my subconscious has created a lot of protective barriers around things that were too traumatic; these things drive me in some ways, and the only way to access what I cannot remember is to do alternative therapies (EMDR is one example; there are others.)
~emp919