Welcome Scott, it's good to have as much support as you can get. Have you thought about what is in your mind when you relapse? If you've been a member for as long as you have, then obviously you have been worried about your intake for a long time. It took me a decade of stop start drinking to really begin to put firmer plans in place, and even then I was looking at drink management rather than complete abstinence. I could not at that point foresee a future where alcohol did not play a part. I had to (literally, and in Dee's words), 'take alcohol off the table' it had to no longer be on the menu, or in my future. I dealt with my recovery one day at a time, but I still had to firmly believe I was choosing a different way of life.
Some here on SR have low self esteem, some have been told so often they believe it, that they are failures. Some, like me, used alcohol as an emotional crutch to help suspend dealing with strong emotional situations, I also used it to oil social meetings, I was rather shy! I also used it to cope with the disappointment I felt in the way my life had 'turned out'.
i feel once a person had looked into the reasons they drink, and the reasons they fail in recovery, they can look at the right tools to help them to stay on the path. For me I had some counselling. I also spent the first year or so actually dealing with suppressed emotions that I had bottled down. I also made changes in the things that made me unhappy.
none of this happens over night. And none of this is easy. But all of it is achievable one bite at a time.
It really helped me to open up here, writing about my feelings I got feedback from others here - free counselling! - it also helped me to support others. I spend a huge amount of time here initially. We put drinking ahead of everything when we are deep in our addiction, we have to put our recovery above everything else, be as selfish about that as we were about drinking, if we are to make it work.
Willow, certainly you need to feel in sinc with your counsellor. They need to be empathetic, but also challenge you to look inside yourself. We don't always like what we see, but those are the things that it is within our power to change.
Coz you're right, we cannot change how another acts, speaks and feels, all we can change is our own response to it. That is a lot easier when it is someone in the periphery of our lives, but if they are living with us on a daily basis it is not so easy, we get drawn into responses. Much depends on our own moods as to how we react. My response to an argument was to get good and drunk, and blame my lapse on hubby. It also helped to hide from the reasons for the arguments. Now I have more mature ways of dealing and fewer arguments.