I wasn't sure if or where to post this, but I know there are some members of this forum who will find this interesting, so I decided to post it here.
I started seeing a therapist/coach a few weeks ago for issues unrelated to my former drinking problem. She's pretty good for what I was seeking. She's young, still pursuing additional certifications. She markets herself as an addictions counselor (among other things), so it was only a matter of time before we talked about my history with alcohol. It came up toward the end of a session and she gave me some literature to take with me. It was everything many of us don't like about the addictions counseling industry.
I decided to let that sleeping dog lie, but she wanted to discuss my AVRT-based approach in more detail. She kept asking me to consider reframing my understanding of addiction - which is something I really don't care for. I never saw any purpose in telling someone who was succeeding against their addiction that they should do things another way. I told her as much. I also told her I didn't want to discuss it with her because I was afraid we would waste valuable time with her trying to force her text book learned approach on me when it wasn't necessary. Then I brought up the fact that the literature she gave me to read contains numerous absolute statements about how to get free of addiction that I knew for a fact were not absolute truths.
She agreed the "one size fits all" approach is not helpful, but did not believe the literature she had given me contained absolute statements. She even suggested I was being a bit defensive and that I was seeing what I expected to see in the literature. We got the literature out and I showed her where it said (bolding mine), "You will
never get sober by simply deciding not to drink" and "defeating your addiction
requires building a substantial support network".
She was quiet for a minute and then agreed those were absolute statements and she would not give that literature to anyone else.
There's hope for her yet.
