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These are really important please read carefully them before you begin.

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These are just to help you recall resentments if you feel a bit stuck.

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Step 11 is the step where you decide everything!

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Step 11 is the step where you decide everything!

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God's will is your will here! (!!!)
I like mindful meditation, and listening to Alan Watts for example, and the Zen readings, particularly I really love Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, I also go to church on Sundays as I like the sense of community worship, I'm not heavily into any given doctrine tho, and over the years I've enjoyed being a part of Islamic communities and Quaker ones as well for extended periods of time.
However you may not like any of those things it's fine, I've known people do meditation while running, and all sorts of things that wouldn't suit me, I can say without hesitation that anything you do with sincere intention to connect to a higher power, and with that sole purpose in mind, will bring about unexpected rewards of growing self confidence and sense of "all rightness" in the world.

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Step 4 is where we inventory the events from our lives that have caused emotional turbulence of any sort - it could be confusion, anger, sadness, fear, craving, shame etc. We don't just inventory resentment - this is a moral inventory, so we'll cover everything. Often it will be about how life has harmed us, but also about how we have harmed others, we will begin to see our real motives in life...and begin to realise that there is a whole new way of seeing these events, our addiction and our recovery - and finally an objective way to evaluate our thinking! 

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Step 4 is where we inventory the events from our lives that have caused emotional turbulence of any sort - it could be confusion, anger, sadness, fear, craving, shame etc. We don't just inventory resentment - this is a moral inventory, so we'll cover everything. Often it will be about how life has harmed us, but also about how we have harmed others, we will begin to see our real motives in life...and begin to realise that there is a whole new way of seeing these events, our addiction and our recovery - and finally an objective way to evaluate our thinking! 

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Why are we really at meetings?
How can we make sure that a meeting will always leave us feeling better?
How can we keep that "honeymoon" period of early recovery in our lives as a permanent feature of our experience?
The answers are all in Tradition 5.

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Step 8 is, in a way, the opposite of Step 4. In Step 4 we often wrote about how we were harmed in life. In Step 8 we focus on how we have harmed others.
You may find some of your Step 4 names useful here!

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Although I've enjoyed these books etc, they are presented as some places to look if you are interested, they aren't a part of the sponsorship as such!

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These actions are the Living Daily Actions of Step One, Two & Three.
Unlike some other ways of working the Steps, we don't leave these behind us as we move forward into the other Step work, we grow our Step One, Two and Three, every day, by daily practice, so that they deepen and strengthen as our recovery progresses, and we keep changing and improving our mindset.
If you can follow these suggesitons, you will stay sober in good times and bad, regardless of where else you may be on the Steps.
They take about 20 minutes a day at a minimum. I do these every day to the best of my ability.
When Sponsees start struggling in early recovery, it's invariably because they aren't doing some of these simple actions.
A key part of a Sponsor's role is to keep reminding the Sponsee of these simple, effective, actions.

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3) Step 4 - The 16 Defects of Character (for phone)

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3) Step 4 - The 16 Defects of Character (for phone)

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How and Why do we carry a message of Recovery?
When are we "ready" for Step 12?
How can we tell we've had a "Spiritual Awakening"?
Key parts of the text are boxed in red.

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TRAUMA RECOVERY

The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel Van Der Kolk

SEX AND LOVE ADDICTION

Facing Love Addiction - Pia Melody

Facing Codependency - Pia Melody

The Intimacy Factor - Pia Melody

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Sadhana - Anthony DeMello

Mindfulness in Eight Weeks - Michael Chaskalson

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It's recomended that after Step 5, you make a note of any names that you may need for your Step 8, and then BURN or otherwise destroy your inventory. 

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It's recomended that after Step 5, you make a note of any names that you may need for your Step 8, and then BURN or otherwise destroy your inventory. 

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Daily Program of Steps 1-3  Double Sided Pocket Card

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Daily Program of Steps 1-3  Double Sided Pocket Card

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To print this as double sided pocket card, select "print on both sides of paper" and also "flip on short edge."

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SLAA Awakening Daily Program of Steps 1-3 Pocket Card CP V4.2

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What Are Some Key Features of the SLAA Awakening Program?

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What Are Some Key Features of the SLAA Awakening Program?

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We start working Steps 1-3 straight away, and we keep doing this each day in recovery. This gives us the essential Daily Spiritual Routine spoken about in the SLAA (p111) & AA (p85) Basic Texts. This keeps us Sober.

We begin using a very simple form of emotional inventory (Step 4 and 10) immediately.

We do a specific gratitude practice each day to help reduce our sense of missing out.

We make a practice of service and fellowship early in recovery, to get us connected to others in meaningful activity.

We use a very in-depth Step 4 that stays focused on Step 4, and doesn't attempt to combine Step 4 & Step 8.  We use a set-list of 16 defects of character drawn from AA & SLAA official literature.

We do Step 8 as another in-depth exercise.

We don't use long lists of compulsory questions on any of the Steps - we find ways to live the Steps in Daily Actions, which we don't leave behind in long-forgotten essay work.

Studying the 12 Traditions is an integral part of this way of working the Steps, you will be aided in developing an in-depth understanding of how and why each Tradition came about.

All of this teaches us how to live just for today, one day at a time, from the beginning - a spiritual experience doesn't have to take a long time, we can begin to have one straight away!

We start getting early rewards:

we learn how to live in the present moment

we stop being guided and dominated by fear

we learn how to cope with our emotional turmoil

we learn how to settle our emotional turmoil

we begin to gain mastery over our feelings and actions

we gain the power to act soberly.

We also learn more as we go further, about how to work effectively, and productivity with our 12 Step group. Working in groups is a key area of  stress and fear for addicts. The 12 Traditions and Steps show us how we can reverse our history and experience meaningful, healthy and safe interactions in groups.

The SLAA Awakening addresses Social, Emotional, and Sexual Anorexia at the same time as Sex and Love Addiction - there is no need to do another set of steps afterwards.

We don't experience a limited "honeymoon period" of recovery - we continue to grow, and experience increasing freedom and happiness.

We don't slip or relapse - we remain Sober.

We let the most useful and important aspects of both the AA and the SLAA Basic Texts guide and inform us. We don't ignore the unique value of the SLAA Basic Text.

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It's highly recommended that you PRINT THIS List, until you have memorised all 16 defects of character!

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You've been sharing at meetings for a while now and you've found it useful to structure your thoughts, and share your story, to connect with your feelings, and your fellows.
There are other vitally important reasons to share at a meeting, and if we don't start understanding them soon, we will eventually become bored of sharing our story and getting current at meetings, we will lose that feeling of being lifted by a meeting, because we are too focused on what we can take, and not focused enough on what we need to be bringing to the meeting to give.

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In this exercise you write your own Step One - what exactly are you powerless over? What behaviours cause you to become unmanageable and powerless? You can use the "Setting Bottom Lines" document to go into as much detail as you personally need to, to answer these essential questions.

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We celebrate together & mark the transition from living on self-will to trying to live according to the will of a power greater than ourselves.
The Full Step Three ceremony is optional, if there is a time pressure then you can just read through the short AA step three reading and prayer on page 9 with your sponsee.
We do one or the other though, we don't miss this vital Step with our sponsees.

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Our inventory of Harms.

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I've found the "inner child" work from Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA) very powerful. Especially working on creating a nurturing inner parental voice to talk to myself with when in emotionally difficult states such as rage and fear.
You can find some of these activites on YouTube.

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Before dating ask yourself if the following are in place:

* Daily Program
* Service
* Sponsoring others
* Regular Inventory
* Have made some Amends
* Regular Step 11
* Regular Meetings & Step 12

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The Book (on the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are) - Alan Watts

Zen Mind Beginner's Mind Shunryu Suzuki

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Read the AA Text on Step 5. It makes two things clear:
1. We usually take Step 5 with our sponsor or co-sponsor, but, as the reading explains, it's not essential - we can pick someone else if circumstances make it hard to do Step 5 with our sponsor. We pick a close-mouthed, trustworthy person who will not be harmed by our disclosures, and we tell them our whole story.

2. When Step 5 is over, we head home, and spend an hour reviewing our work so far - the AA Basic texts explains how to do this in the following extract.

It's also recommended that you record any names from your Step 4 that you may need for your Step 8 and now BURN or otherwise destroy your Step 4.

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Daily Program of Steps 1-3 (JPEG for Phone)

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Daily Program of Steps 1-3 (JPEG for Phone)

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Before you begin the 12 Steps you need to answer a simple question to the best of your ability, without hesitation. You should listen to your first intuitive answer to this question, because it will tell you and your sponsor a lot about how successful this program is going to be for you.

The question comes from the Alcoholics Anonymous book, the original 12 Step fellowship.

It's a question that should always be asked of a sponsee before any work begins, because it will indicate how successful the sponsee / sponsor relationship is going to be.

So - the question is....

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The SLAA Awakening Program is based on a synthesis of two things:

1. A decades old AA sponsorship approach which I was lucky enough to be introduced to over 20 years ago, which stretches back at least 50 years and which has been the powerhouse behind some of the biggest and most successful AA groups in the UK, and

2. all of the most useful and robust approaches I've found in SLAA.

The SLAA Awakening Program is a highly structured way of working the 12 Steps that focuses on simple actions as the primary means by which we begin to experience a Spiritual Awakening. Since the Awakening is the total goal of the 12 Steps, we immediately focus on the main source of your recovery - your Higher Power, and the main thing that will stop you from recovering - your resentments and emotional turbulence!

We begin our recovery in the way that both the AA and the SLAA text tells us is most effective, a daily routine, a spiritual rhythm, which will be the mainstay of the gradual return to self-regulation:
The essential DAILY PROGRAM.
"Time and daily consistency are the tools with which we fashion our release .... from the tyranny of the psychic realm." P111 SLAA BT

"We are not cured of [addiction]. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." P85 AA BT

The Daily Program of the SLAA Awakening is a set of small, simple actions that will repeatedly re-connect us to our initial state of surrender and acceptance of our illness, in these actions we visit Step  1, 2 and 3 on a daily basis, so that we never need to "lose step one" ie relapse because we have lost touch with the fundamental truths of our condition. The daily program works because it becomes a set of actions that are instantly calming and settling, which produce the sense of serenity and connection to a Higher Power which we need to get through life, a day at time, especially when we are stressed and life is difficult.

Also, we emphasise early on in the Awakening Program two key spiritual necessities:

1. getting into Service in SLAA, and

2. learning how to make sure you get the most out of any 12 Step meeting, how to always come away  feeling positive and uplifted - no matter what!

Although the above are very common and successful strategies for recovery in AA and other very well-established fellowships, they are not widely practiced in SLAA.

I saw what I learned in AA  working so well for me and many others for over 20 years, and I constantly noticed how little clarity other methods seemed to grant others, although people worked just as hard on them as I did. So, starting with this very rigorous and structured AA method, the SLAA Awakening then incorporates anything I've found in SLAA that has produced Recovery from Sex, Love, Anorexia and Fantasy Addiction - anything that has added to, and hasn't contradicted, what worked in my substance recovery in AA.

For example the idea of having a week of Setting Bottom Lines questions, and 30 Questions for Steps 1-3 has been borrowed from the HOW program, but the actual questions have been radically changed, because as I worked the early HOW program I found it disappointing, generic and impersonal, as I progressed though it had less and less to do with Sex & Love issues, and I wasn't surprised to learn that it had actually been largely copied and pasted from Overeaters Anonymous in the early 2000's.

I created and compiled this program between 2020-2021, with the oversight of a small SLAA group, my new SLAA sponsor, the help of my old AA sponsor.

The set of 7 and 30 questions were created by me and a working group of around 12 SLAA members, men and women, sex, love and anorexia addicts. I was also in regular contact with the HOW Writing Committee, who recognised that changes were needed in the HOW program, but who felt that it's structure was now "set in stone".

However unlike many ways of working the steps, after the 30 Questions we stop doing sets of questions on each step, instead we find ways to work that step in our daily lives - as outlined in the AA Basic Text.

We do the steps in a way that has a logical, rather than numeric, order - we don't make people wait too long to do Step 10 for example, we do it immediately after Step 5, because it's essential to prevent relapse, and Step 10 is just a regular or daily Step 4.

Lastly, the SLAA Awakening is not connected in any way with "The AA Big Book Awakening" or the "SLAA (AA) Big Book Awakening".

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This is a moral inventory - in other words, an inventory of your entire back catalogue of anger, sorrow, weirdness, unresolved feelings of loss, longing and regret etc. Anything and everythinng that still sits somewhere in your mind. It is not restricted just to the things we are still angry about.

Some of this may also end up on our Step 8, but focus on your own emotional inventory for now, rather than harms.

The inventory should be done in approximately this order, but if stuff is coming up from different areas, just jot them into each seperate inventory as best you can.

Try and keep each inventory seperate as far as a possible, and organised.
1. General 'Resentments'
2. Sexual Resentments
3. Shame
4. Fantasy
5. Fear
6. Anorexia

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30 Questions for Steps 1-3: On The Origins of Your Own Sex and Love Addiction (Optional) 

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30 Questions for Steps 1-3: On The Origins of Your Own Sex and Love Addiction (Optional) 

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Firstly - these 30 questions are optional. You are already working Steps 1-3 in your daily program.
These 30 questions were developed in 2020, specifically to have a framework to gain more self understanding of one's personal SLA core issues.
The questionss were developed by myself (Alex T) and a small working group of about 10-12 interested male and female SLAA members, including Anorectic members.
The questions are a good resource for looking at the patterns of trauma and resultant behaviour, and are particularly powerful when tackled while in withdrawal.
The process of acknowledging our real history is of course, completely essential for healing of our trauma, so this exercise will always strengthen our recovery, provided we are ready for it.
However, they are optional, and anyone who feels this is too much for them at the moment is welcome to either pick what questions they want, or leave the exercise perhaps for another time, and move onto Step 4.

If you are ready for these searching questions, then great - dig deep, because what you find here will last you a lifetime.

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#001 - 30 Questions for Steps 1-3  - Working Draft V2.0

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Before you step up any sponsee at a meeting they must have:

Done Step Three

And must have 30 days continuous sobriety.

They may also (by then) have

Gone over Step 12.

Tradition 5.

Appendix II with a sponsor.

But this is not essential.

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Apendix II of the AA Basic Text: Spiritual Experience

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Apendix II of the AA Basic Text: Spiritual Experience

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What if you don't think you've had a "Spiritual Awakening" yet? This short appendix from the AA Basic Text tells us what the originators of the 12 Steps meant by Spiritual Awakening.

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For anyone who has already done some work on the bottom lines etc., it can be a good idea to just use Q7 alone to tweak and tidy up the Step One framework. (Rather than going through the whole of the "Setting Bottom LInes" document).

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I'm not particularly religious, but I really like  this talk about Step Three, which is all about the fantasy of a higher power vs the reality of recovering.

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In Step 9 we discuss and plan each amends in advance with our sponsor. This is especially important for the first lot of amends, if we strike out with the wrong attitude on this vital Step, impatient and ill informed, then our spiritual awakening will soon become a rude awakening! So, be warned - this Step is not as simple as it may at first appear!

Our amends should take a very definite & structured format; as given below.

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"A business that fails to take reguiar inventory usually goes broke."
We take regular inventory on fears; resentments; fantasy etc. anything that has unsettled us in the recent past, today, last week etc. or that still comes back to us from years ago. Anything.
This is also an excellent way to have an ongoing evaluation of our relationships. Are we spotting red flag behaviour in our relationships? Is it reoccurring? Do we need to address this explicitly?
Anorexia & Avoidance Inventory
1. Avoidance can be not doing things (not going out, not washing, not phoning people, not making arrangements to meet up with people)...
2. When we go deeper It can also be doing things that diminish us, and that get in the way of how we want to live, for example gazing, mobile phone over use, unhealthy eating, over-sharing, visiting places that are for the moment not good for us or with an unhealthy intention.
3. Hence, we may see our "middle circle" areas here for a while, or the Top Line behaviours we haev been ignoring.
4. This inventory is meant to be helpful only, a means to extend what we are taking inventory on. If you have any confusion about which one to use on something you know you want to inventory, don't hesitate to ask or outreach, but also don't worry about "getting it wrong" beacuse ultimately, the most importnt thing is to do the actions ... As you become more practiced you will grow in intuition and confidence about which inventory suits what areas of our lives.

Afterwards we Pray for the Happiness and Success of any person or institution etc that we have harboured resentments, or fantasies, shame etc., about and....
we then say the Step complete AA 7 Prayer.. "My Creator, I am ready for you to have all of me now, Good and Bad....."

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Although I've enjoyed these books etc, they are presented as some places to look if you are interested, they aren't a part of the sponsorship as such!

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You have lots of work to do elsewhere, so don't do extra work here when you don't need to.
The AA Basic text makes these Steps extremeley simple, quick and accessible - only asking us to take an hour preparing for Step 6.
So don't (at this stage) add to your burden by finding questions on the internet etc. and in other methods of working the Steps.
1. After your week considering the questions of Step 6, get together with your sponsor.
2. Read the following extract from the AA Basic text and:
3. Give your sponsor your answer to all the Questions in the two orange boxes.
5. Recite the Step 7 Prayer together.

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Do I need to beleive in God to do this program?

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Do I need to beleive in God to do this program?

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You may not have a Higher Power yet, and you may know of some you definitely do not want to have! That's fine - contrary to popular misconceptions about the 12 Steps you don't actually need an specific concept of a Higher Power to do the work and to get well.

So long as you are willing to take some simple actions, you will begin to experience the changes that the actions bring about, and you may well remain completely atheist forever, and yet this simple program will still change your life - it's all about the actions we take, nothing to do with what we do or don't, can or cannot believe.

Hence: anyone can recover. Even you.

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One of the simplest and best I've seen.

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After Step 5 we "spent an hour" evaluating our work on the 12 Steps so far.

If we are happy with the work we've put in so far, then we now read on from there and spend about a week considering Step 6, using the few quesiotns the AA Text lays out for us at this point - are we entirely ready to have a Higher Power remove all these defects of character?

With this in mind, over the next week, we do the following things:

1) Consider if we want to be rid of all of these defects of character.
2) Allow anything else we may have forgotten in our Step 5 to come out - and we share this with our sponsor.
3) While this week unfolds, we take any more inventory as we go - in other words we start Step 10.

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Read this book as a precursor to Step 11 Studies. The history of the 12 Traditions. How and Why they came into being. The first 100 or so pages are a bit of a drag. The rest is excellent!

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Another great opportunity to share progress with the group and newcomers!

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Are you willing to go to any lengths for your recovery? 

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Are you willing to go to any lengths for your recovery? 

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We ask this question because, in order to recover, you are going to have to do work that it's frankly highly unusual for the vast majority of people to do in thier lives.
You will have to engage in a level of honesty and self searching which no one would normally do unless they felt they had no choice.
The 12 steps requires us to take a long, hard and honest look at ourselves, and it also requires us to work hard to help others to travel the road we have begun walking.
It will require a lot of humility and a lot of self sacrifice - it will often feel like we would rather be doing something else. For recovery to be successful it needs to impose itself on our lives, it needs to literally get in the way of our own schemes and ideas, our own plans and designs, because they have all become infected with the disease of addiction, we need something that will start to cut back our addictive thinking, and the 12 step program will do that. But we need to fit our lives around it, not fit it around our lives. For this recovery to work, we need to make it the centre of our lives, and we need to want it above anything else.

The good news is that, if you take this attitude to heart, and give yourself entirely to this way of living, you will soon begin to enjoy a freedom and joy in living, which it's unlikely you've ever experienced before.

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Why is this method called "The Awakening"?

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Why is this method called "The Awakening"?

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Because it's designed to produce - and maintain - three essential awakening results:

1. A Spiritual Awakening:
We get to work on this straight away by using the "Daily Program of Steps 1-3" . You will immediately start on your road to spiritual awakening - the most fundamental part of the Steps, and the whole reason for doing the Steps. In this method we don't wait around to have a spiritual experience, or consider it to be inaccessible to those who are just beginning the program. We don't place an arbitrary wait time on anyone's progress (for example no0one has to it 30 days to do Step 3). We get on with the key work of the steps immediately, because each step is another life-saving tool, we have no right to hold back anyone's prgress.
As an essential part of this we even  start a rudimentary form of "moral inventory" (Step 4 & 10) straight away. This helps to clear our resentments, and give us a more neutral thinking space.

2. Waking up to our Symptoms & Needs:
The "Setting Bottom Lines" questions are designed to help wake you up to your symptoms - all of them - of Sex and Love, Fantasy and Anorexia Addiction. Also, we look at Top Lines and Self-Care in a far more systematic and in depth way than other SLAA programs.

3. Waking up to the Patterns & Causes of our addiction:
The "30 Questions for Steps 1-3" of the Awakening Method were written in 2020, by myself and other members of SLAA.  They are designed to facilitate the awakening of deep self knowledge of our own personal journey into addiction, from our earliest experiences.  They are designed to open up our understanding of how we became addicts in the first place. When we know who we truly are, it is not possible to harm ourselves, or others. Understanding our unique patterns leads us to be far more safety conscious and, in a good way, mores self involved in our own needs at crucial times of disregulation, instead of desperately trying to ignore our needs to atrempt to please and gain validation from the outside world.

"Then why not just do part three?" you may ask:
Because self knowledge alone is not enough to keep us stopped - we need a spiritual experience for that to happen, in order to keep the knowledge we acquire, we need to live a spiritual experience. If we don't do this, our knowledge will become muddy and confused over time, and in the face of our subtle destructive addictive thinking, we will find rationalisations for why we "need to use".