ABSTRACT
James, a counselor-in-training, was seeing Rachel and Ed in couples therapy. Rachel arranged the couple's first appointment, telling James over the phone that she had been feeling depressed and that she also found herself angry at Ed much of the time. At their first session, Ed said that he didn't understand what was bothering Rachel, only that she “got bitchy” a lot and he thought it had to do with “her time of the month.” He did say that he was interested in “getting Rachel off my back and getting things back to how they used to be when she wasn't so hard to get along with.” As James asked more questions about Rachel's and Ed's views of their difficulties, Rachel mentioned that Ed's drinking bothered her.
“How much do you drink?” James asked Ed.
“Not much. Just a beer or two now and then.”
“Tell the truth, Ed,” Rachel chimed in. “You know you get a couple cases of beer every Saturday when we go grocery shopping, and they're finished by Friday night.”
James did some quick math in his head. “It sounds to me like you have a pretty severe drinking problem, Ed.”
“She's exaggerating,” Ed replied, his neck beginning to turn red. “She just wants to blame all her problems on me. I don't have a drinking problem.”
“Denying that you have a problem is one of the first signs of alcoholism,” James said.
88Ed began to shift around in his chair. “I'm not denying anything,” he said. “There's nothing to deny. I came here to get Rachel to quit bitching at me all the time, not to have some junior counselor tell me I've got a drinking problem.”
“There's no point trying to work on a relationship problem when one person is drinking too much,” James told them. “Ed, what are you going to do about your problem?”
Ed sat silently for a moment, his whole face red now. Then he turned to Rachel. “I told you this was going to be a waste of time,” he said. “You can stay around to listen to this bullshit if you want, but I'm not going to.” With that, he got up and walked out of James's office. Despite Rachel's repeated efforts over the next few weeks to get him to come back, he never returned.
