My current therapist with whom I've now had 3 (or is it 4) visits is a licensed family marriage therapist (California), and I thought was going to evaluate me, set treatment goals, and get on with things. I'm stressed, depressed, burned out and miserable, meds aren't working any more and to get better and avoid relapses, I need to combine the meds with a proven therapeutic strategy such as CBT, which she listed as one of her therapeutic methodologies.

Mostly the sessions aren't really going that way, and when I broached the subject of a treatment plan at my last session, she hemmed and hawed and said "well what is it you would like to work on?". I sort of thought we'd sorted that out on the first visit.

Not what I was expecting, obviously. I was thinking there was more to cognitive behavior therapy than a few generalizations about how it takes awhile to recover from bad things that happen to us (I expect that coming in, but I also expected some specific plans, maybe some homework, etc.), that journaling and yoga and meditation are good (yup, been doing that forever), and to learn about assertiveness training (been there done that, it's worked well for me since I first did assertiveness training 25 years ago).

She also seems to be enthused with 12-step ideology and asked me several times to read "Codependent no more" (fortunately I found a copy for 1 cent on Amazon) and that would sort things out for me.

I am not codependent, I am not alcoholic, my spouse is not alcoholic or abusive, and our marriage is a happy one, a loving and romantic partnership between two best friends that feels like we're enjoyed a 16 year honeymoon.

I have some personal issues with the cultish religious overtones (I am agnostic), even though they say your "higher power" could be anything, even a piece of furniture. I don't buy into the "we are powerless" stuff, and I don't like how every feeling is reduced to a prepackaged slogan.

I have known 12-steppers in the past, even dated one for awhile, and though he was proud of having stopped drinking and could tell me exactly how many days it's been since his last drink, from what I could see all he'd done was swapped alcohol for gambling -- you could see his eyes light up with anticipation as soon as he started talking about it, just the way you would expect any other kind of addict to look forward to the next "hit". All of his social life revolved around AA meetings, AA friends, and AA slogans. Everyone's an addict, everyone needs AA, anyone who tries to conquer addiction without AA will fail, ad nauseam

There seems to be nothing in AA about learning from past mistakes and putting them behind you and going on with the rest of your life. AA doesn't seem to have any higher success rate or lower relapse rate than any other form of addiction treatment, including deciding on your own to quit doing things that are harmful and stupid, according to some of the research I've seen, and I don't want to become the kind of person that typifies an AA member. That isn't me, and isn't who I want to be.

I managed to get more than halfway through reading "Codependent no more" and found less and less of myself and my issues in each page I read, even though the book is supposed to help "anyone" with "any" kind of problem (therapist said "just ignore the word 'alcohol'"). It's now in the trash, which I almost never do with books, and I'm ready to fire my therapist (in as nice a way as I can) and find someone else. She's a nice lady and I'm sure we could have been great friends in a different context, but the only steps I've felt like "working" so far are the ones out of her office and back to my car after the sessions.

Is it standard these days for therapists to go with generic "one size fits all" therapy (no point asking or discussing with the client what I want to do with this), and to push 12-step ideology to the exclusion of all else? Is CBT just another name for AA and all its offshoots? How horribly disappointing, if so.