Reconciling the good and the bad

My new therapist says I’m not focused in therapy. That I talk about umpteen different topics. Well I said I still can’t reconcile good Dad vs bad Dad. But she thought I could come up with more good things than bad about him than bad. I can’t reconcile the good times with the bad and when I say bad I mean abuse. I have a few memories of that but my mom tells me it was much worse_ something she didn’t want to reveal while he was still alive. Stuff like affairs, professionals if you know what I mean, illegal drugs and drinking when he wasn’t home. How does one reconcile the good memories with the bad? Still can’t do it and we’ve been talking about it in therapy for six weeks now.

My dad was also either absent, neglectful, or scary too. I wish I had some good words for you, but I have a MASSIVE problem with splitting (AKA black and white thinking and idealization/devaluation falls under this too).
It's just really hard to integrate two incompatible things at once, but when I was in DBT there was a lot of emphasis on the D(ialectical) bit where you practice thinking "x can be true, but so can y. There's no mutual exclusiveness.

If you don't feel like talking to your dad in therapy, can you just tell her? Come up with other stuff to work on. You can even ease her mind if you say you "just need a break and will get back ot it" eve if that's bs.

I talked about other aspects of my life yesterday and she said I’m not focused on my purpose of therapy- namely being an adult child of an alcoholic. I get stuck at the integration and she isn’t helping! Your suggestions are very helpful thank you! I’ll look into your links once I get home where my iPad is. I’m on my phone at starbucks right now.