The topic of games we play with sponsors at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

So mine's Tim. I'm an alcoholic. I don't speak for AA. You need to know that this is going to be a very personal view.

I may change my mind at a later point in time. So this is just how things appear to me today. I've gone back on almost everything I've I've thought at some point, so I'll probably go back on this, but this is how things appear to me.

Umm

song can keep an eye on the other microphones. That would be super helpful. Thanks Alastair. So this is called the games we play with sponsors.

Now what I'm going to be talking about this evening is it is very, it's such a sensitive topic. Frankly,

it's not talked about in meetings at all

because it's so sensitive. Although

if you've got a sponsor and you have sponsors of your own, as soon as you get sponsees of your own, you discover yourself talking to your sponsor far more than you did when you had your own problems.

And so all of this material it's not I haven't come up with anything new. I all of this is been going on behind the scenes in Alcoholics Anonymous since it's founding. People work at how on earth are we going to deal with. There's now eyes are very difficult character when I got to a A

and so all the everything I'm going to describe in terms of what sponsees can do is stuff I have done myself. But the question is, if you're a sponsor, when you're presented with it, how do you deal with it and also with these so-called games. I'll come to what we mean by game in a little bit. With these games, the sponsor is as much of A player as the Swansea and I'll come to that as well. What the sponsors roller needs

so my view of sponsorship is is my job is to make myself a channel for the higher power to work through me to help other people. I don't help people A higher power helps people Ioffer myself up to the process. The higher power users our knowledge and experience. Now for the relationship to work well, the sponsor and the sponsor you need to be on the same page about what the purposes purpose of the relationship is. And sponsors went automatically know this because

a sponsorship is unlike any other

relationship that I know of. It's it's, it has similarities with all sorts of things, but it is none of those things. It's not like therapy. It's not like friendship. It's not like anything else. So it's very important with a sponsee who is pretty well with people who are new to the notion of sponsorship to set out exactly what you're there for. And of course, people are free to have whatever sorts of relationships with sponsors or sponsors that they want. This is just what I

just what I do based on what I found to have worked and I'll come to why the things that don't work don't work in a bit, which is how I got to this point. So I'm now to take the person through the steps. I'm there to provide guidance on the program and on the fellowship more generally. I think we are there to help people troubleshoot

emotional difficulties and practical difficulties by by using those as case studies for how to apply the program.

And also it it's app planning is absolutely the case. Some people say they don't give advice.

If I hadn't been given advice when I was new, I would have been dead because I would have been following my own advice. If I hadn't been following the advice of other people in AA, I would have been following my own catastrophic best thinking. But there are limits to what the advice is. And

most of the best advice actually just boils down to basic common sense

life tips and experience. And that's the very good way to provide advice is simply say, well, this is what I did, this is my experience. What I'm not for as a sponsor is doing things for sponsors that they can and should do for themselves. So looking at meeting details, finding things on a particular page in the big book, providing information that can be Googled.

I'm not there to provide medical advice, psychiatric advice, or psychotherapy advice.

I'm not there to some people say I need a sponsor so I can be accountable. I'm not there to be someone's accountability buddy or something. I've never really understood that. I, I think according to the big book anyway, I'm not accountable to other people. I'm accountable to my higher power

and to myself and no one else can take that that from me or I'm I'm not there to plug someone else's motivation gap if they're unwilling. I'm not there to supply the willingness for them,

and I'm not there to listen to venting.

Or, as Ann Wilson Shaff SCHAEF calls it, emotional vomiting.

I, with friends, we allow a good friend and I allow ourselves about 30 seconds to 75 seconds, and then we're done. My other half permits me maybe five or six seconds of benching and then says that needs to stop.

I'm not there as a sponsor to hear 10 minute, 15 minute, 20 minute venting sessions and I don't, I don't do that to my sponsor.

Friendship and sponsorship. There's a line in the big book where it says we offer them friendship and fellowship, but I think that's meant in very general terms. It doesn't. I remember I had a sponsor called Brian. He's still sober. Very, very good, very wise is Brian. He's been sober 1000 years

and

I said to him once, can we meet for a coffee And he, it was over the phone, but I could feel him leaning in and he said, you know, we're not friends, don't you?

And a little shiver ran down my back because I've never really, I'd never really thought that one through, but I, I was trying to treat him as a friend when he was my sponsor. So we aim to be friendly and cordial and as personable as our individual personalities allow. I'm on a fairly short leash with that one. I'm afraid so some people are much friendlier than me. So go and talk to them.

So I try to be friendly, but it's it's I've had lots of sponsors over the years and all of them have had the single principle of businesses, business

and they've expressed it in different ways. They've all been very different personalities. But that is the core principle that's come down to me from every single sponsor. We're there to do a specific job and other roles get in the way of that.

Occasionally I've made the mistake of letting friendship develop out of the sponsorship,

and in every single case, it's the friendships got in the way of the sponsorship. Because it's very hard to challenge someone when they're your friend as well as your sponsee.

Exceptions, but vanishingly rare. It's almost impossible to challenge someone, and the person will also not be willing to be challenged by someone they consider to be a friend. You can be challenged by someone that you're not about to go out for dinner with, but if you're going out for dinner with them or going on holiday with them, you don't want to be challenged by them.

There are ways of making it work, but that's that's for another, I think that's for another session that that that's for those except there are exceptional circumstances. So these are general principles. They do admit exceptions

and also one thing I've noticed again and again again, not just with me but with friends of mine as well who've made friends with their sponses. When the friendship is mixed in with the sponsorship, you usually lose both

and so it's best to pick pick one. Pick which one is more important. Sometimes the friendship is more important and you just go and get someone else as your sponsor.

Most people, most of the time, I find once you explain what I've just said, a totally fine can understand it and follow it and the relationship functions well. But there are sometimes some other patterns which come into play, and let's call these games

now the notion of games. There's a writer in the domain of psychology called Eric Byrne Berne, and I borrowed his term. I'm not an expert in his stuff by any means. I'm not a trained psychologist. I don't pretend to be. I think there is one in the house, but I went out the person,

but I found his writings very, very useful. What he talks about is how what is going on in the on the surface of the conversation

is not what is going on underneath and that there are hidden purposes to conversations or exchanges or interactions and that that's what the real purpose is. What is going on on the surface is merely operating as a vehicle for what is going on underneath. Now, as I said, I'm not, I'm not going to present a sort of strict Bernie and analysis this. I borrowed the idea. I borrowed the term and I run with it

because it helps me explain what I've experienced but couldn't put words to until I read his stuff.

And what reading his stuff also helped was for me to learn how to spot and stop the games happening but maintain a sponsorship relationship so that the benefit can be accrued from it. By the by the Swansea

now he calls it a game now. It's not fun. It's not called games because they're enjoyable. So it's not like Monopoly or Twister for or Ke Chang,

they're not fun, but what they are, they're they're called games because they're predictable sequences of moves and counter moves like in drafts or chess or chess or whatever.

And there is a payoff, and the payoff is the real reason for the interaction

and the kinds of payoffs when I've played these games with people. And by the way, sometimes people talk about people also, you know, Susan or Clive or George or Harry is playing a game with me. Often what they mean by that is some deliberate deception. I'm not talking about deliberate deception here. Occasionally there are jerks who are deliberately

trying to rile you or deceive you or whatever. But my experience is that it's incredibly rare in AA. There are very few people. I look back and think there was a, that was a conscious plan. I, I think in, in 99 cases out of 100, in 99 people out of 100. These patterns, they're like, they're like software programs which just start running automatically. People are not aware of what is going on and they're not absolutely not to blame, but we

we do need to

identify what is going on and stop it. But it doesn't doesn't help. So this is not a sort of blamey thing that we're doing here. It's learning what works and what doesn't work. Now with the, with these games, these subconscious games, as I say, I all the ones I'm going to talk about, I have played myself as the Swonsee and a sponsorship necessarily is, is a little bit like a relationship with an authority figure. Now,

not authorities in terms of being further up, but we are in terms of being further along. So there isn't, we're not vertically above people. We're horizontally further ahead because we've been sober for longer or we've got more experience or that. So we're equals, we're brothers, but one of us has been around, one of us has got some some useful things to share.

But these games, I learnt to play them with authority figures

when I was a kid and then I got a sponsor of Boom. Here was a new venue to play out all of my stuff with authority figures. Now I said there are these rip these, these standard moves and counter moves

and there's a payoff and the payouts that I sought in my interactions with old timers, with sponsors, with basically anyone further ahead than me and a A. And as I say, I've I've done this with

authority figures, with bosses, with parents, with all sorts of people.

The payouts usually involve one of the following attention. I just want someone to look at me, to see me, to valid whatever validation and praise. I want to be patted on the head. I want, I want special treatment. I want to be thought of as someone who is special in some way. Absolutely what I feel guilty and I want you to let me off the hook.

I want to find a way of avoiding making progress in doing any actual work whilst getting the points for making it look as though I'm progressing.

So there's often what I would want to do is I want to get rid of the guilt for not working the program, so I would engage in these manoeuvres of basically treading water so it looks as though I'm doing something but actually no progress is being made. So avoiding making progress.

Paul M talks about activity versus action. So activity is like being in a rocking chair and you're going back and forth, but you're not actually getting anywhere.

Shifting responsibility to someone else. If you tell me what to do if it goes wrong, it's your fault, not mine. Shifting blame to someone else. So, and this is the standard thing I learned in Al Anon. When an alcoholic is angry and blaming, it's because they feel guilty and they want to make you guilty so that you're like, it's like past is like exploding past the parcel. So they want to make sure that when the music stops,

you're holding the parcels so it blows up in your face, not theirs.

As I say, I've played this game myself. If I can make

make something someone else's fault, I no longer need to feel guilty.

And also particularly pernicious one is defeating an authority figure. So it's like I would duel old timers in AAI, would draw them on thick on tricky subjects, have these sort of quasi arguments and feel very self satisfied with myself that I had won.

And occasionally I've been set up for these and I've certainly set other people up for these. So I'm not proud of any of those. But The thing is I learned these. I don't know where I learned them from. I guess I must have observed people around me and I just sort of picked them up as innate ways of being. And then I played them out in a, a as I said, these, these are unconscious until you learn how to become conscious of them. And then what? What's interesting

when you when you can call out one of these games, the game is over

because it kind of needs to be under the cover of darkness to operate. As soon as it's brought to the surface, you can't play it anymore.

What I'm going to talk about is some specific some specific examples. I mean that there are endless examples because there are endless types of people in the world. But these are the main ones that seem to crop up in sponsorship a lot. And when talking about these, as I say, I want to repeat that one must when once, when you spot someone playing these or you catch yourself engaging as the sponsor in one of these games, subconsciously

or unconsciously that both people are innocent, that what happens. It's like, it's like the program starts up in me when people talk about being triggered. I think that's absolutely the right sense. It's like someone flips the switch and you're playing and it's like you're watching yourself engaging in an interaction you know is super unhealthy. But for some reason you can't find the stop button. So one's got to view people as

innocent in this. As soon as you get angry with them, you kind of, that's

part of the game actually, is when you become angry, that can be one of the moves that's being elicited. So to remain completely neutral when observing these and to view everyone as innocent. And also I've given these like funny names or what? At least I think they're funny

to make fun out of this. I get this from Jim with Joe, my sponsor. Joe's first sponsor in San Antonio got sober in 1957. Still sober, still sharing. They can't stop him. He's very good, but he gives his character defects, nicknames. It'll playful names so we don't take ourselves to

seriously. So here goes. But I'm going to try and give brief descriptions of the game, how I as the sponsor unconsciously participate in the game, and then the antidote, how to stop the game. The first one I would call I'm only little. This is where I go to a sponsor claiming I just don't know what to do about fear. I know I've been in a A for 17 years, but this fear is different. I just don't know. Can you help me? I'm wrong

and the sponsor. This is where as a sponsor, if I've got if I've got untreated al anonism, I will rush in and rescue the the antidote is if you if if you, you can always tell with the sponsee that a game is being played and not just a sponsee. Sometimes it's newcomers, it's acquaintances, it people in a a play these the whole time.

Group conscience meetings, business meetings, intergroup meetings, region meetings. I won't even go near the board.

Umm, when you

what was I going to say?

I'm going to get, There's another point, but I'll come when I remember. I'll come back to it

when I spot someone in this particular one. The job is to, oh, that's what I was going to say, is you know, that the game is being played when you're having a perfectly normal conversation with someone and then they say something and your whole body tenses up.

I don't know if you ever, I mean, maybe it's just me. Claire's nodding,

Elise she ever smiling. So I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

My body tenses in a very serious case. My blood starts to run backwards, just this cold chill because it's reminding me of something. And if that's the point, if I'm not careful, that's when I get sucked in. So that's how you spot it. Your body will never lie.

If you have those visceral reactions, there's something going on below the surface of the interaction and you need to watch out because the body, as I say, the body never lies. The emotions are all over the place and the mind doesn't know how to tell the truth. But the body has no ability to dissimulate it. It always tells the truth. It it, you can rely on that.

So with this one, it's very simple. There's a, there's a, there's a,

a variant of it called Home James where you feel that you're becoming the sponsees manservant or maid.

So in these cases, it's very simple, very gently, just point out that the person already has the solution, that they're able to find the information themselves, that whatever they're looking for is already to hand. It doesn't need to be explained. It doesn't need to be repeated. I mean, by the way, we're all of us on a journey, but this as sponsees and as sponsors. So what I'm setting out is ideals. I know I fall short of these. I still fall for the game. I still take the bait on occasion.

I don't think one ever gets this perfectly. So what I'm setting out here is the ideals when I'm talking about the antidotes. The next game is look at what the cat brought in. So you know the way cats bring in dead mice and they'd they're not. No, that's that's the point. If the mouse were dead, it would be fine, but the mouse is half dead and the cat drops the half dead mouse on the map and then it runs around half dead.

And your job now it's your problem. It's your problem to deal with the half dead mouse. And this is where when I as a sponsee and presented with a situation I find difficult. And rather than applying any kind of knowledge or experience or expertise or anything that I've learned in a A over the God knows how many years, I immediately phone my sponsor in a panicky breathly voice. Breathy voice

drop the situation in garbled fashion in front of and say you sorted out,

it's up to you, you're my sponsor. They say to call your sponsor when you're upset. So I'm upset then I'm calling now when you're super new, you know, if you're in your first few minutes of recovery or days or week like I've got, you have no resources. But by the time you have the resources,

the sponsors job is to take the sponsee from the furthest point they can reach themselves and help them go further. It's a waste of time for the sponsor to do what the sponsor can do for themselves

and do the kind of basic processing. Now, sometimes when you're really upset as a sponsee, there's a limit to how much basic processing you can do, but it's just a courtesy. Get the facts straight. Who are the people involved?

Dramatis personae? First blow by blow what happened in the order that the things happened and then say what you do know about the solution and why you still have a problem.

So there are so, so rather than just, you know, sending the sponsee away, you show them how to preprocess a situation so that when they bring situation to you, you can add value to it rather than doing their job for them.

Amnesia is the next game. Have you ever had the situation in recovery where you talk to someone for 45 minutes about a situation or two hours and you feel so pleased at the end of it that you've really, you've gotten to the bottom of it, you've made the most amazing progress. You really feel that the person understood all sorts of fundamental ideas

and then two weeks later they phone up with an almost identical situation

with absolutely no memory of what you discussed the last time you spoke. And there's a Clancy story about when he did a 12 step call, or rather someone called him and said, I, I've let you down, I've let a a down, I've drunk again, will you help me? And he goes over and he talks to this drunk all night, gets back to his house and morning about to have a shower, go straight into work without any sleep

or barely any sleep. And the drunk calls him and says, I thought you said you were going to come over. Like he's so drunk he has no recollection of what happened. Now,

sometimes that, you know, one doesn't necessarily diagnose these correctly every time, but if that keeps happening, then there's a purpose to those conversations when you're in inverter comms processing situations with people and it's not for them to learn how to process them.

It's the pros. The processing itself is the payoff, the content you're trying to give them the program. They don't want the program, they want the processing. And I'm not going to go into the psychological reasons why because that's that's a different conversation. It's out of the scope of this. The job as the sponsor is I think to spot when this is happening. And what I get people to do is to take notes from the conversations we have and to have a notebook

with AA solutions. And whenever to scan the conversations, we've had to scan the note and put all of their solutions that anyone in a, A tells them about from the, from tapes, from a A books, from meetings, from sponsors, from friends, to keep all the solutions together so that they're building up a barrage of solutions rather than having to come to you every single time something happens because they've developed amnesia. And these are not people who've got amnesia. There is something else

now. There are people with mental illness. There are people who are very, very severely damaged psychologically and maybe with brain damage, whatever. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people who may be in their everyday lives, a super, super competent and never forget anything. And you know, and their jobs will, will, will be absolute stars. But when it comes to this stuff, a whole other dynamic comes into play.

The next game is called Greased Pig. They say that wrestling a greased pig is pointless because you end up covered in mud and the Greased Pig loves it.

Now what this looks like as a sponsee. You see, I will have a problem and I will ask for input and guidance.

And then as soon as the guidance starts being given, I react to it. I resist it, I reject it. And then I reproach the sponsor for providing it and go around meetings warning people off my sponsor because he's giving such damaging advice. That's the PS de resistance. Once you, once you've, you've, you've sworn at your sponsor and put the phone down. I've done this. You you go around besmirching their reputation.

But here's the interesting thing.

I was the one that asked for the input

and what I was taught

very early in AA by some really good sponsors who were very helpful to me was that if if I as soon as I started to argue, they said

why don't you call back another time when you've got a more constructive attitude. Now I to my shame, I've got this very wrong over the years and I respond to someone resisting anything I'm saying with convincing, persuading, cajoling and arguing.

Now this is difficult because often the questions are legitimate and there's a really interesting and useful discussion that needs to be had. So there's some subtlety here. This is not black and white. Sometimes it can take a while to work out whether this is someone asking genuine questions because they genuinely want to understand this. And when someone is resisting it, you can't always tell 100% that you can feel it physically. Usually

say it's not to do the words that you're saying, it's to do with the dynamic that's going on in the situation. So when I feel that I'm pushing up against something,

when I'm explaining things, that's when I've learned to stop and reconvene later or move to a different topic, but not to engage in trying to force through the wall of resistance because it doesn't work. The next game is called. Someone gave me this, this term for it, pigeon chess. When you play chess with a pigeon, it disregards the rules of chess.

It struck all around the board knocking over pieces and then acts like it won.

Umm, Now the way this works as a Swansea, I'll ask someone for help. And it's also innocent. I'm in such a situation. You've helped me so much in the past and I'd really love your input on this. And then they start to provide the input and then I shift into a different gear and I, I switch focus. I I misconstrue

what people are saying. There was a sketch many years ago I've not been able to find where every single thing the diner says the way to misconstrue.

So the diner says, does the chicken come with vegetables? And the waiter says it doesn't come, we bring it.

And I would do this with Spawn. Like whatever they would say, I would find a way of interpreting it and responding it as though I'd misunderstood what they'd said. Shifting the facts. So just very gradually changing the constellation of facts during the course of the conversation so that the person I'm trying to get advice from is basically operating in the dark, rambling, going around in circles, reopening

settled points, and just generally resisting.

And to my shame, when I've done this with sponsors or other people, I secretly enjoy it. I don't know why, but I do.

I love being the pigeon. The job as the sponsor, I think, is to spot when no progress is being made and say, honey, how about you go to a couple of meetings, sleep on it, pray, read your little big book. Listen to some of these, Listen to some of those,

have some dinner and we'll talk tomorrow. And then very often just simply pausing and reconvening. If they do call back, it's with a different attitude. And if you try to battle with it, you would have got nowhere. If you pause and reconvene often the next day, it's fine.

There are another. The next two are slightly peculiar ones. They're not. They don't look like resistance, but they are. The first one is called Heavy weather

from the phrase to make heavy weather of something. This is where you give someone a very simple task and

they turn it into the, the, the the labours of Hercules. And you know, you're expecting someone to do a little bullet point list, which will take 10 minutes and it can be fitted on one, not even a four, a five piece of paper. But they go and buy a full scat notebook and then two weeks later you're like, how you getting on with it?

Oh, it's so hard. This step work is so hard. There's so much to do. I don't think I'm gonna finish this. Just there's too much problem.

I've done this as a sponsee and it's a way of avoiding progress by making it look as though you're working very, very hard. And then the brilliant thing about it is you make it the sponsors fault for how tired and difficult you're finding it. But the fact is

you've, you've changed the nature and the scope of the task to make it impossible so that you can't complete it. But it's someone else's fault that you can't complete it. So it's that thing you want to get rid of the guilt and make it someone else's fault. So that's heavy weather. There's a variation of this called vanilla flavouring. So vanilla flavouring, if you can't find vanilla essence in the little local shop, you get vanilla flavoring instead. It ain't the same. Everyone will know

and this is where you give someone a task and they change the task, they come back with a completely different task and a very disappointed when you say there wasn't what they asked and it's it's a variation of the same thing.

What I tend to do is if there's a suspicion of this, I give people a very small tasks like tiny little bits and see if they can do that and gradually build up and that usually works. Now this game, this the game of heavy weather or vanilla flavouring,

it happens a lot in Step 4 where people try to turn the exercise into something else they're not. And sometimes it's not necessarily for obstruction, it's for other purposes as well. So but gradually getting people used to the idea of doing the exercise as it's presented rather rather than using it for some other purposes. And that is just a matter of very gently training people by giving them very small bite sized pieces.

The next one,

the dog ate my homework. Now you all know what this one is. It's finding 1001 excuses for why whatever, whatever you're supposed to be doing hasn't been done.

And if you're smart, you'll you'll find excuses which are apparently totally beyond your control. But it's amazing when someone shifts from being unwilling to willing how lots of things which appear to be outside their control suddenly come within their control.

Umm.

The mistake that I can make as a sponsor here is to engage in discussion of the excuses or reasons. And honestly,

I've started. I've reverted to what was shown to me a very long time ago, and I resisted doing a response, which is saying, if you're willing, you'll find a way. Click. Which is exactly what people did with me. If you're willing, you'll find a way.

In A Course of Miracles, it talks about

hiding unwillingness behind a veil of circumstances that appear to be outside one's control. So other people have spotted it too. We have, you know, we haven't invented this. This is a well established phenomenon.

Jobs worth is the next one from the phrase something that's more than my job's worth. So when someone will do the. It was very common within the in the sort of labour disputes of the 1970s in this country where people would refuse to do anything beyond what they were contractually obliged to do. And

it's very difficult to sponsor someone when you feel like you're like 87 times more enthusiastic about their recovery than they are.

And honestly, I think my, for this to work, my heart has to be in it. It doesn't. It just doesn't work when I'm mechanically going through the motions. So, and I think it can sour people's experience of the steps if they kind of force their way through it when they don't want. They basically don't want to do it because first of all, it never gets done properly. And if it's not done properly, it doesn't go all the way in. It's kind of bounce, it bounces off

Umm. So there's a variation that's called sufferance where people will comply, but they'll be face pulling and sighing just to tell you how horrible the task you've just given them is. And I've started to pick people up on the sign because it's, it's kind of an I don't know how aware people are doing it, but it's really disconcerting as a sponsor when you're really, you're giving your free time to do this and you're just getting

size and face pulling an eye rolling.

I rolling is my favorite one. Some people can do all three. They ought to be in the circus. It's amazing.

And you know, I've done, I've done it myself,

pauses as well, Very, very, very of you. And suggest something. A very, very long pause. Long, dramatic pauses.

I've started with someone a few months ago. I started asking. Tell me, can you ask yourself why you let yourself sigh audibly at that point?

And The funny thing was the person like immediately recognized it, admitted it. We had a good conversation about it, and it never happened again.

So often addressing these head on in a kind of jokey, fun way, say, honey, did you see what you just did there? And people, if you do it in the right way, you can you can bring up almost anything. But the point is to, you know, you got to be neutral when you bring it up. If you're angry when you bring it up, the anger will Telegraph. None of us are perfect. We're all working towards that, but that's the ideal

two or three more than we'll go on some some more solutions

and I'm going to start, I'm going to speed up slightly papal dispensation. So this is where I've got a a decision that I've made, which I know is selfish. And I want my sponsor to tell me that it's somehow in accordance with the principles of the AA or the Al Anon program so that I can do it and not feel guilty about it.

19 out of 20 questions of shall I do X or shall I do Y to someone else in a A? It's because I want someone to give me the dispensation to do the thing that I want to do, but I kind of know is naughty.

Papal absolution is when you've already done it and you want them afterwards to tell you that it's OK or, and it happens a lot with people who slip or people who act out with sex or food or whatever is they want to be told it's OK. And with my

a friend a few years ago who said you need to keep talking about this stuff with me. But me telling me that you've done it does not make it OK. You need to stop doing it at some point,

but don't stop talking. But I can't give you absolution

here. It's my job as a sponsor to push the responsibility for decision making back onto the individual. So I'm not here to make your decisions for you or to Co sign them. I just can't do that.

A couple more little little games that get played. Checkmate.

A good example of checkmate if you've ever played chess. When you're in a situation, you realize if you move the queen forward,

the game is over. If you keep the queen where it is, the game is over. Like whatever you do, you're going to be, you're going to be checkmated. Your king is vulnerable. What However you move, your king is vulnerable.

Umm, one of the great tools if someone is super resistant or aggressive with you as a sponsor to say, sweetheart this isn't working so

maybe find someone you feel more comfortable with. You seem really tense when you talk to me, so how about you find somebody feel more comfortable with? I think maybe you'll make more progress because you'll be able to accept what they're offering. Fine.

Now there was a, there have been situations where

I also suggest that people do things and they, they think you're a terrible tyrant for suggesting lots of things and overburdening with them with these unreasonable demands. And so you say that's, that's fine. That's fine. You, I don't have to sponsor you. If you don't want to do it this way, that's absolutely fine. There are lots of different ways of doing recovery, of doing a, a, of doing the big book, blah, blah, blah. So how about you go with someone else? So you get out of being the villain

by saying we don't have to do this. It's fine if you don't want to do this.

I've had this on many occasions. Someone says you're abandoning me.

So if you stay as the sponsor offering suggestions, you're bullying them by loading them with tasks. And if you threaten to withdraw the sponsorship, you're abandoning them. If you move forward, you're the villain. If you move back, you're the villain. And in those situations, you can't win. Reason won't work. Just I've just learned to to bow out gracefully in those situations.

And this is not a blaming thing. When something isn't working,

don't try and force it with maybe a slight shift, but the person goes to someone else, makes huge progress. If they start with you, they would have been stuck for years. So there's no, there's nothing wrong with this. I had a whole load of sponsors in my first year and it was a first couple of years and it was a good thing. I needed each one. Each one got me to the next stage and then the next stage. Sometimes it lasts six weeks, sometimes it lasts 10 years. So it's not a sign of failure on either part.

Due diligence.

Sometimes you get very, very closely questioned by a sponsor sponsee on what you're suggesting. Now some explanation is required and it's completely legitimate to ask some questions, but sometimes you feel as though you're being cross examined. Like, again, your body will tell you when this is going on.

Sometimes it's a way of of, of discounting the advice by basically throwing lots of skepticism at it. The

advice I was given actually by Course in Miracles teacher about how to approach the Course in Miracles is don't analyse the suggestions, try out, try them out and then you'll see if they work or not. If they don't work, fine, don't do something else. And that's what I said. Sponsors who get super questioned before they'll do something is just just try it, just try it. And if it doesn't work, that's fine, but you won't lose anything by trying so that you just skirt that completely.

So some some things which are helpful. This is a general solutions here to always view the sponsee and yourself as people who are innocent but are trapped in these patterns and so therefore not to take it personally. So when I have played games with people, it hasn't been personal to the person I've played it with. I've been playing it my whole life with all sorts of different people, same dynamic again and again and again. So it's never personal

if as a sponsor you're stuck, what you can do, you can pray, you can call your own sponsor. Read chapter seven of the big book, working with others. There are loads of great tips there. Sometimes you you don't know how to handle a sponsor. You read that chapter immediately. You're like you've forgotten some really basic things. And al Anon literature will sensitise you to all sorts of unhealthy patterns of yourself as a sponsor,

helpful ways of handling these situations in the moment.

Don't take the bait. You know you're in a don't take the bait situation when you can smell the bait and it's just delicious. Don't argue. Pause before speaking. Whilst you're pausing, pray you can suggest reconvening later or the next day

come rediscuss the purpose of the sponsorship of the sponsee. Sometimes that slips and it needs to be brought back. You can gently come back to the topic at hand. So you that. So when when you don't take the bait, you take you think to yourself, why are we here? What is this conversation supposed to be

be about? And you bring it back to that? Give them a task to do. That's what people did with me. Give them a task to do. Come back the next day, everything's fine.

Say one thing at a time and see how they respond rather than doing a kind of 10 minute spiel. Whatever you say, keep it simple.

Maybe don't explain anything, Just present an offer and if they don't want it, that's fine and don't repeat yourself. If you're repeating yourself, as I've been told, you're nagging,

and that solves most. That solves most situations.