
aa Spoken Here Community Group
Fellowship Where you can share your thoughts, feelings, stories and get support to gain and continue sobriety.

m8bear
Ok, well tonight I heard a piece of information from a new group I ventured to....
It was a 'newcomers' meeting but not at all what I expected. The 'newest' sobriety was 2 days...the oldest was 43 years! lol
But...yep, I am still trying to look for a sponsor as well as taking what I can from the meetings.
Tonight I heard that you should pick a sponsor that is also the sponsee of someone? Is this just the opinion of the person I was talking to or should this be the case?
Do people ever tell each other who there sponsor is or is this 'secret agent' stuff?
It was a 'newcomers' meeting but not at all what I expected. The 'newest' sobriety was 2 days...the oldest was 43 years! lol
But...yep, I am still trying to look for a sponsor as well as taking what I can from the meetings.
Tonight I heard that you should pick a sponsor that is also the sponsee of someone? Is this just the opinion of the person I was talking to or should this be the case?
Do people ever tell each other who there sponsor is or is this 'secret agent' stuff?
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I make no secret who my sponsor is and by the same token Karen will tell other people I am her sponsee. Neither of us run around telling everybody either - it is just whatever you are personally comfortable with.
Re the gratitude list - I never made one every day but I did at times when I was feeling bad.
What you should do when you have "done" the Steps is work Steps 10, 11 and 12 on a daily basis. Step 10 is a daily check on yourself and this can be written or just thought through. A lot of rehabs get their clients to do a daily feelings diary for group discussion - which is an idea based on Step 10 to get you into the habit of daily analysis of what you could have done better, what you did well etc.
I'll echo Phil too, the steps are very important!!
Once I do the steps I will get to 10, 11 and 12 then as I was told in the meeting last night 'they are in order for a reason' so I shall be patient and wait.
So...with the 'sponsor being a sponsee' concept, do they tell what you tell them or is it just the 'general concept' they would ask for help on if they didnt have the answer?
We need to have a sponsor for own challenges - like I need to have Karen be a sounding board about my recent "surprise" in the last few days and remind me how I need to use my spiritual tools to cope if I am getting a bit bogged down in my own feelings, which I am at the moment.!
Our own sponsees are our 12 step work and if we take any problem to our sponsor on this it is in a general way - we do not break confidentiality on specific detail but to look at the bigger picture and deal with, for example, a pride issue.
The lady I chatted to last night after the meeting made me laugh.....she said, in reality, AA meetings really are just a group of drunks! That sentence certainly shocked me but it is true :)
Funny you should mention counselling skills, I am trained in counselling skills but there is a distinct difference when it comes to AA.
It is always useful to have counselling training because it teaches you to listen well, help people to open up and guide them to finding a different perspective from which to view their dilemmas.
In AA, however, the counselling skills are gained at the "university of life" and because our disease follows a path and we all to greater or lesser degrees have common "character defects", we have the benefit of experience, having been there ourselves, and therefore can be a more specific and direct advisor.
An AA sponsor will lead you directly on spiritual matters because that is the only source of power for us to rely upon with our unique and faulty way of thinking as an alcoholic. You will find that professionally trained people are often at a loss when it comes to spiritual matters because one's spirituality is an absent consideration in formal training!
A decent sponsor will share some of their own dire truths with you in the process of building trust, no alcoholic has a halo regarding their past. How can we when we all know where it leads us when we are truly out of control. It is a common solution for a common problem.
I was brought up to keep myself to myself - no washing dirty laundry in public and all that. The "work" required in the Steps is realising within ourselves that we have some very fundamental changes to make in the thinking processes that we came to rely on and which always let us down. It is pretty amazing we can do this - and the older we are the harder it is - but it is essential if we are to recover. We have living examples of proof at every meeting we attend.
Your very personal stuff you should always keep just for God - and your sponsor when necessary. A lot of people new in AA do not understand at first that they do not have to make personal revelations when they share at a meeting, it is enough to say that a "certain situation" left you feeling frightened, depressed and hopeless etc or whatever it is for you.
You are right, the message that was given out last week at my home group was very much of spirituality. Seems to be if you have it and practice it, you get through the day, if you do not you crash and burn.
Yes, It is important to find a sponsor that has a sponsor. The reason being that anyone that is sponsoring themselves has an idiot for a sponsor. ;)
I have a sponsor that has a sponsor who has a sponsor. My sponsor has 20 years in AA and her sponsor has 30 years. A sponsor gets help staying sober by giving away what was freely given to them. I would be selfish to not call my sponsor after all she has done for me. I also need her wisdom. I get off the beam still.
Some people tell others who there sponsor is and some don't. It is completely up to you and your sponsor. I'm proud of my sponsors sobriety so I mention her name sometimes.
A gratitude list is a good idea. I was given a gratitude journal until I started to look at life as a blessing instead of a curse. Gratitude comes easy now because my life is wonderful today. A grateful heart will never drink!
It is good that you are asking questions. Just remember that a sponsor isn't a God, Just another drunk to help us stay sober and do the steps. They can have problems and bad days too. That is why they need a sponsor!
Thank you all for your responses. I shall go to more different meetings to find a lady who I think I can gel with (who has a sponsor).