The topic of step 12 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

With that, I will, the topic of tonight's meeting is working Step 12 with the Swansea and Tim will share anything between 3030 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be opened for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim. Thanks Tim. Our colleague Alistair, can you hear me properly? OK, good. I'll just change my audio setup. So I needed to check.

Well, this is a big topic.

Now The thing is

I specifically haven't planned this because it's too big a topic to do an outline of. And there's no need to because you know, it doesn't need to be squeezed into one week. So we can, we can do this at whatever pace suits people. But what I am going to do is come at this systematically so that we know what we've covered.

And where I'd start off is having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

Now that doesn't look like it's something you can take someone through. It's something that's supposed to happen automatically as the result of doing the steps,

except it doesn't always happen. Now, don't tell anyone. This will frighten all the newcomers. But sometimes you get to step 12 and oh, there's there's some pieces missing. I'll tell you some experiences that I had.

I think I did have a spiritual experience the first time round.

The test, this is the test. If you suddenly discover you really want to help people even though you don't like people, that's a if you like people already, you can't really test it because you want, you wanted to help people here. But if really people are not your thing and you discover yourself

feeling and not even wanting to, but feeling this overwhelming obligation to not run away after the meeting, if there's someone suffering in the meeting, you just you feel. You feel this like magnetic pull, that it's the right thing to do, to go up to them, to offer them your number.

You're looking around automatically at the end of the meeting for who's about to run off. If you're going for fellowship, half of you, you've got one eye looking at where you're going, the other eye looking at who's in the room, who's feeling left out, who might want to be invited along.

It happened automatically.

Now,

I won't do the full history of my first 15 years in in recovery,

but I did a very a much more thorough round of steps when I was about 15 years sober. And the same thing happened when I completed. This is the interesting thing. It wasn't when I was halfway through it, man. It was when I completed the last amend. There was this rather overwhelming shift and the same thing I went to. I went to a meeting and my perception of the meeting and the overwhelming kind of

groaning need for help

in aggregate of the people in the room was really struck me.

So the spiritual experience is not feeling all largely dark and going through the, you know, tripping through the tulips. It's it's awakening.

Well, I think I've lost these.

Yeah, we've lost it soon.

OK, I think I've got you back. Can you got me back? Good.

It's this. It's this overwhelming sense of responsibility and connection with other people. You feel what is going on around you and that's why you have to do something about it. You have you develop automatically in empathy for what people are experiencing

and you can't just be an island. I don't be political about this, but

is it Nam Chomsky or is it someone else

who says reality skews left? Because once you become aware of how people in other parts of the world or in your own country are suffering, you've got to have a very hard heart indeed to turn a completely blind eye to it. So the more in touch with the reality you are, the more you're aware of have now exactly what you do about that. That's a political question. But the awareness that there is that there is need out there. And I think this, this, this should happen

automatically. But, bemusing Lee, it doesn't. And also this fails to happen, I'm afraid so on a fairly regular basis. Now, it doesn't mean you just throw the baby out with the bath water at this point. So, well, you know, bugger that

sometimes a few things need to happen. Sometimes people need to have a second surrender in recovery. So what? OK, So what happens a lot, and I did this in some ways over the first eight years, is you think

now I've got my marbles back, You know, a A is very, very good. It's got me sober and it's made me a marginally nicer, personal or at least less disagreeable person. There's the opportunity to go and make something of myself in the world and say I I focused very heavily on my career

in my first eight years. And so my concern for, for the initial overwhelming concern for other people faded as I became reinterested in my own affairs.

And what brought me back to the table really at around 9-10 years back to the a, a table was the failure of that system. So sometimes people get to step 12 and there's a bit of a sort of,

it's a bit of a damp squid. So what's supposed to have happened hasn't happened. And sometimes you need to wait for life to fill in the missing piece. And it's, it will either be adversity or unresolved, very deep conflicts which come to the surface and make themselves felt, or people going all out with a life on self will, which then fails and then they crash. And then

now you're interested.

Now you really give yourself to the path. So often I, I think it's like with with fairy lights and Christmas lights and the, I think the new ones are different. But the old ones from when I was a child,

if there was one bulb in the chain which didn't work, the whole chain didn't work. So you had to go and test each little bowl 1 by 1. And then when you found the right bulb and twisted it, the whole chain lit up. And I think it can be like that with step 12,

that if you get if, if you get there and someone hasn't fully woken up, it's not because the whole thing is dead in the water, It's because there are a couple of bulbs that need

twisting. There are also some

basic points which come out of the earlier steps which sometimes people understand them intellectually, but it hasn't gone all the way through and it can take a while for it to click. And the two in particular,

I remember a friend of mine in the middle of step four and five, he said his big realization, it was he had a, he had a nemesis. It's a good word. He had a nemesis, not just an enemy, not just someone that got up his nose, but a nemesis at work. And he was doing the inventory in the Step 5 on the nemesis at work. And he said, he said. My realization was this.

Oh, I'm the asshole.

I have no idea. I was the asshole. So suddenly realising that I'm the asshole, that's a spiritual experience.

Sometimes people get to step 12 and that's not there yet.

The other thing is

now people work on this at different speeds and get this point at different speeds, and this is something which runs so counter to the way the world operates. People are entirely forgivable

for not getting this point, especially even in a a this. This is not always well understood in a a that I'm I never react to a situation. I'm only ever reacting to the story that I'm telling myself about the situation, and the story that I'm telling myself about a situation is generated by algorithms programmed into me when I was about 6.

And and

the invisible bit of my brain, the bit under the bonnet is processing situations that occur around me using old algorithms and Chernik basically churning out a story where I'm innocent and everybody else is guilty and it is a world of woe and they need to be destroyed. That's the basic plot. And even though you're suffering, you know, as, as

Annika Jawa says,

that you're still the hero of the dream, You know what? Even though it's a nightmare, it's still all about you. So it's deadly because it's so attractive.

And so sometimes that lesson that I'm creating my own suffering

hasn't got through, not fully. Science understood intellectually, but it's not there all the way down.

And also another thing people can be forgiven for thinking

is because it's so widespread in the various fellowships and society as a whole, Once you've discovered all of these problems and psychological difficulties, you have to sort of do something with them. And my experience is you don't. Once you know what the problem is from the 1st 11 steps, the job is then to abandon self, stop being a human shield

for your own ego and get out of the way. And it

honestly, I, I think that I mean, therapy and things like that have been great for helping me get into touch with what's actually going on. Not providing solutions, but helping to thaw me out and to sensitise me, to stop me running on autopilot and to get me to, to see what is actually going on. But then the steps do something with that. Analyze that systematically

and

I think that the real awakening and beginning of step 12 is the realization is all of that stuff that I've uncovered and discovered needs to be discarded. I don't need to do anything with it. It's the as my sponsors, as the bloated nothingness of self. And the way I do that is by by

getting involved in ServiceNow. Once people understand that the only solution, the only way out

is the only way to heal is to throw yourself completely unreservedly into a life of service. And it's a sandwich. The bottom of the sandwich is a is a slice of bread, which is looking after yourself. So you've got to look after yourself physically and and spiritually. And

Tim, we've lost you again,

right? I'm back. Can you hear me again?

OK, so once you realize that the solution involves

service, as I don't know how far I got into the sandwich analogy, bottom layer bread, looking after yourself. If you don't have the bottom layer, the filling goes everywhere. So you've got to have a bottom layer, which is looking after yourself. And then you've got the filling and then you've got the top layer, the top layer of bread, which is is, you know, enjoying the world, having a bit of fun. But the the the key element of the sound which the bread is just the vehicle.

The filling is being of service

people. Service is hard,

so I only did it because I realized it was the only way out.

So sometimes it's a tedious process. When the first first nine steps are completed is a tedious process of people coming to the realization that service is the only way out. You don't have to like it, you just have to recognize it.

There's a difference between liking it and recognizing it.

You just have to recognize it and do it. And then you discover all of it. What I discovered, all of these emotional difficulties gradually melt away because you can't be bothered. You haven't got time. You spend enough time. You spend enough time away from something that when you come back to it, you realize you see it for what it is, but you need the time away to see if what it is. And I think that's what service does.

So if someone that if, if there hasn't been a kind of loud pop

in step 12, beginning of step 12, where the person wakes up and is just desperate to be of service. If that hasn't happened, if you wait, life will present the circumstances where the person, all of the other options are knocked on the head 1 by 1 by 1 until that's the only one that's left. When that when service is the only option that's left, it lights up somehow. So you, you stick, you stick with people you don't draw. If they're not sort of super interested in service, you don't drop them.

You, you keep them on board as long as they're willing to be on board and hope that life does the job that you're unable to do.

And eventually everyone gets it, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, and sometimes other obsessions or compulsions to the great persuade. It talks about alcohol being the great persuader and I think other obsessions or compulsions, what Clancy refers to as the the obsessions of the mind. He doesn't go into detail, but you know what he means.

Everyone's got their own. So having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other Alcoholics. So how do you sponsor someone through that? Well, first of all,

you've got to understand what the what that actually means carrying the message. There are two. So there are two types of service.

There's service which is the direct carrying of the message and then there's service which enables the carrying of the message. So the direct carrying the message will be sponsorship and sharing in the meetings and talking to Susan and Clive after the meeting and going to rehabs, going to treatment centres, doing encounters with Alcoholics in the world outside.

Then anything that enabled service is all the service structure stuff running a group and also talks to professionals, which enables the message to be carried,

sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Now the first thing to make clear is that although the second type, the service which enables the message to be carried is terribly important, it's not the high octane stuff, it's not the good gear. So it get, it does get you out of yourself,

but this the, but it's administrative largely

it's sponsoring other people who have similar psychological problems to you. But you can see how ridiculous they are in someone else, whereas they seem so important in oneself and real. And you see it in someone else and you think, oh, they're completely nuts, therefore I must be completely nuts. And things melt away.

The second thing that happens when you see P. And This is why sponsorship is simple. You, you see people who've done the most appalling things,

but they're the same appalling things that you've done and you look at them. What was the phrase that someone used the other day? The

the infantile charm of the hapless. So you see this poor old soul, you know, wandering through the world messing things up and hurting people, but you see the sort of innocent child who's doing it. You don't see this evil monster. You see this poor creature who's condemned

by whatever is going on inside them to behave this way, and then you think, Oh my God, I'm like that. So I'm not the monster that I thought, just because you are not your own behaviour. And there's a story which is very long, which is

it's on the Baal Shem 12 stories, where the punchline is when you hear your own story told back to you, then you're healed. And I think that's why we sponsor other people.

And then so the most useful thing that someone who is, let's say one year, so over two years, over three years sober, are new to Step 12 but still full of psychological maladjustments. The most useful thing they can do is sponsor other people and see their own maladjustments reflected in the people who are attracted to them. That will do 1000 times more good than any wise words that you can pass down the tubes. So whenever they come to you, you pick them up,

you turn them around,

you wind up the key in their back and you push them in the direction of sponsoring other people. It's it's now one has to engage with the problems and the psychological stuff a little bit, but it's about 10% of the deal. It's gotta be 90% action, 10% psychological, you know, unpicking.

Um, so you point them in the direction of helping other people and

but what do I encourage people to do? Some people naturally attract sponses. I've talked about my friend Melody. I think she had a homing beacon installed in her and whenever, wherever she went, there was this, you know, the character is it character, the character Linus in Peanuts who's got the blanket and all the flies follow him wherever he goes. She was like that, but with Swansea's and little and like sort of wet the waifs and strays. Wherever you, wherever Melody went,

there were these people following her. Yeah, in various degrees of mental breakdown. Pig pens, Evan says. Not Linus.

And, and so some people have just got the personality that attracts people in trouble and basically people who are very, very kind.

Another character type which attracts people is people who are sort of disciplined and structured and have some.

Or apparent authority. If you're if you've got one of these two character types, then you're lucky. So people will will run after you for sponsorship.

If you're not particularly if you don't sort of exude lots of motherly, motherly warmth and you're not like sort of clear Sergeant major type, then neither of which are particularly, you know, admirable qualities. You either have them or you don't. Then you might have to work a bit harder.

And there have also been times when I've I generally haven't had a huge amount of trouble finding sponsors, but there have been times when I have. So I just pass on what I did. I made myself omnipresent in local meetings.

I just went to very large numbers of meetings, got there early, shared a lot

and stayed late and eventually something sticks. But I made it my mission every day. I treated it as the most important thing I did every day was to get to a meeting, get there early, talk to people, talk to as many people as possible, get numbers, exchange numbers. So if you haven't got sponsor, if the sponsee hasn't got sponsees, they can be putting all the time that would be going into sponsorship into placing themselves in a situation where they might acquire

sponsees. And sometimes sponsorship is misunderstood. 1 doesn't have to have the formal title of sponsor to be sponsoring someone. And you can be sponsoring. So I, I remember saying to my sponsor many years ago about X as someone I said, I don't know if I should stop sponsoring him. He said you haven't sponsored him for years just because you're you're, you know, if they're sort of

someone held up, you know, a baseball bat above them and a dark alley and said, who's your sponsor? If your name would, you know, Creek out of their mouth. It doesn't mean you're actually sponsoring them. It just means you're the brass plate.

So often people worry that they haven't got enough Swansea's. Maybe they've got one or two or no sponsees, but they're talking to a lot of people and helping a lot of people. And that sponsorship in in in substance if not in form. So always make clear to people that they're doing that. The point here is to be making the effort. You get the points for effort, not for the it's not like, you know, the First World War One planes where they sort of stamped the enemy aircraft,

played, shot down on the side of the aircraft. It's not about collecting numbers

of people

or accumulating a large number. It is about collecting their telephone numbers, but it's not about accumulating a large number of responses, but but what it also what it talks about. My sponsor is very strong on this. He, he says he talks about intensive work with

sponsees from page 89 and also it talks about on page 19.

Most of us,

many of us spend much of our, or most of us spend much of our free time engaging the kind of work we're going to describe. So although it's got to be extensive time wise, the real value comes from it being intensive, which means being super present for it and super engaged.

Also the other thing, if you're sponsoring a bunch of people and you've got sponsees who are just starting their sponsorship journey, don't expect them to hit the ground running like instantly getting a lot of sponsors. Often people who are very new to this, it takes a long time before they get the first one that takes. So they may have to spend, you know, six months to a year of getting, you know, no one gets beyond two days or four days or a week or two weeks. And, and lots of people who are very, very iffy about

are most likely to gravitate for sponsorship to people who are just at the beginning of the journey. And they're often the ones they can relate to the most. So naturally people who are new at sponsorship are going to get the sponsors who are least likely to stick as if you've been around for a while, you're most likely to get people who are

who already know what they want. So they're going to someone who's got, you know, track a longer track record.

But the main thing is put the time that people should be encouraged. Put the time and put the effort in. And somehow it will if if you it's Lord Kitchener, if I dare, I'm not sure you're allowed to quote people from with the word Lord in front of them anymore. I get

and he's just pull their statues down, I think. But anyway, Lord Kitchener said something to the effect of if you don't let up in your fight with the enemy, if you don't let up, eventually I if you don't cave, they'll have to cave. If you don't surrender, they'll have to surrender. Someone's going to have to surrender. And how this applies is if you, if you desperately want, if you treat it as the number one priority. I must. I want to be useful to God and to other people.

Eventually it will click. If you hold yourself up against that

and you pay attention, you pray, you meditate, you talk to people, the blocks will be removed one by one and then it will flow. And it's rather like,

it's like a dam or something where there's one last piece in place. Once that last piece is removed, the whole dam collapses. So sometimes people are frustrated because they haven't got enough Spanish or they've only got 1 Swansea and they've actually removed nine of the blocks, but there's the 10th block that still has to go. When the 10th block goes, the whole thing starts to flow automatically.

What you can do as well is encourage your sponsees to work with each other. So you get sponsee 8 preprocessor chapter of the book with spawn CB. So that spawn CB is getting practice on how to talk someone through part of the book. So that means the work gets shared around. So it doesn't, it's not like because you can't have this turn into a Ponzi scheme where everything kind of goes up, the goes up the, the structure,

the, the, the work should be shared out amongst all the people in the group pretty equally because everyone needs to be useful. So you can't keep. That's why I always get sponsors to work with each other

and that's super helpful because people get to practice without having like the full responsibility of a sponsee.

I think that's the main thing I want to say about sponsorship or about sponsoring someone with like the beginnings of sponsorship. I think there's more. I'm going to make a note of this

actually, why not? I was going to go on service, but there's there's a couple more things to say about

how to sponsor someone through their sponsorship of other people. I think about 90% of my calls to my sponsor over the past

ten years have been how to handle a sponsee, in response to which I'm tearing my hair out. I won't say because of which, in response to which I'm the one that has the problem. I've got a problem with the sponsee. It's not their problem. They're not doing it. They're just being themselves. I'm just having a reaction because of a pre-existing psychological maladjustment which has come to the surface because of this person in front of me. So it's not about that. It's about me.

And I think the real the real

gold in sponsoring other people is helping them sponsor other people, helping them troubleshoot sponsees they're either having this massive emotional reaction to or seem to be getting nowhere with. And there you've got to have, you know, very minute discussion. So exactly what is going on? What have they reported to you? And it's, it's, you know, it's not breaking confidence as it can be done perfectly anonymously.

You know, I've got a sponsee who I'm talking to someone who, and you don't, you don't, you don't find out who they are. So it's signature principles, not personalities. But that's how you figure something out. You don't learn how to sponsor people in the abstract. You, you the, the, the, you know, you know the way in German, they, they have all of these words, they're phrases they've acquired from English or they think they're required from English. No English person uses them. So a projector is called

and a mobile phone is called a handy. And in German, if you go to any sort of German HR thing, they used to work in Germany and they, they, they use this phrase learning by doing. And of course now I've never heard anyone in this country say learning by doing. But the Germans have picked this up and think that's something that we said. There is very, very good this learning by doing

so, but this is so it's very useful because this is how you you learn how to sponsor people

by sponsoring other people and then running to your sponsor saying I want to push this person down the stairs or they want to push me down the stairs. What do we do next? How do how do we not kill each other? Should I continue sponsoring this person? You know, or they've called with the same problem 18 times in a row. I don't know what to say. That's where the real benefit happens.

And my sponsor, who's annoying, says things like,

what is the gift that you are waiting to unwrap in this person who is being presented to you? I mean, just a horrible question. I don't want to know that. I want to know what I can say so I can fix the situation. I don't want to look inside and say what, you know, what's the gift that I'm unwrapping here?

And the other thing is whoever is being attracted to you is not by accident. There is a clear if if you want evidence that the universe has some kind of structured system, your watch who gets attracted to you as a sponsor and the people that are attracted to they really are attracted because because you're vibrating on the same wavelength

somehow. So something unresolved in you is resonating with something unresolved in them, which is why they've come to you. And then you get to work through the stuff you haven't resolved in you through by trying to help them. And

I can't. I've gone through so many different phases of sponsors.

I think I may be going through an angry young man phase. I haven't had one of those for a long time. It's one of the ones that comes around the mountain occasionally.

I went through a long phase of very, very distraught women between 55 and 75.

By the time I figured out how to sponsor

a very distraught woman who'd been in recovery twenty, 30-40 years, between 20, you know, between 55 and 75 by the time and very difficult by the time I figured it out. Once I figured it out that the last person in that category, I kind of, we, it, it was working and it resolved itself. I was like, right, I can handle this type of Swansea now. Do you think anyone in that category has asked me since then? No.

So this is, it's like a computer game. Once you complete the level,

you don't get to do that level again. It's really annoying. You'd think you'd have a period where you get to practice the thing you learn how to do, but no, you get sent an entirely new category of person, or as I say, comes around the mountain more than once. So you'll get to practice on whatever the category is again. It, it looks, it feels so like there is a curriculum here. And I think there is. It's whatever is at the top of your consciousness, which needs dealing with

is going to manifest whether you like it or not in the people around you.

Because Azul Pardi says the reason you're attracted, you know, you're attracted to situations is because you projected part of yourself out there. And you'll say what you're seeing in there is what you're seeing inside and that's why you're attracted. And you can't get away from it because it's you you can't get away from. Listen to the recording. If that didn't sink in straight away, it took a while for me as well. So I think sponsorship is really interesting thing. The other just so we can park the other topics.

There's the question of how to sponsor someone through the traditions and the concepts, the short version of which is don't just they're going to read the stuff,

how to sponsor someone with the group and service structure and then how to sponsor someone with problems in other areas. So those are the topics to park. If Alistair, you can make a little note of that, but I think I'm pretty much done.

So I don't know if you want to see if there are any questions.

Thank you very much, Tim.

The meeting is now open for questions for Tim, which can be done by the raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function and I will ask him directly. If all else fails, just wave at the camera and I will try to come to you in turn. And we do try to close around the hour mark, but we're not particularly strict about that. And with that, I'll open it up for questions.

James,

thank you. Thanks, Tim. Thanks for that presentation. And my question is, do you have any suggestions for when sponsees are there at the point where they're ready to be available to sponsor others? But there's resistance and it's not so much because they don't, maybe they don't want to, but it's resistance of the whole, oh, I'm, I don't feel ready. I'm not well enough. I don't, I don't. What am I supposed to do?

If you got any

suggestions for how to respond to that, please. Yeah.

OK. So sponsoring other people is like a sort of training program for yourself. So it's not the thing that you do when you graduate. It is the training program. And I've not graduated. I mean, even in the last six months, I've had situations where things have got have come in below the radar and I haven't figured out until I'm like excessively engaged. So you never get, you never take the 1st 100 people you sponsor are definitely the hardest. It starts to ease up

after 300. Let me just so there's that prospect. So there is hope. There is hope here. Brian, my old sponsor Brian says the 1st 20 years of the worst. So it's you're never going to stop learning. So I'm not ready. I'm I'm I can do it, but I'm not ready for it because you don't know who you don't know who's going to call next and each person is entirely new situation. It's not painting by numbers this so no one's ready,

but it's rather like a sort of wartime situation,

right? You've never been an air raid warden. Well, I'm afraid we've got incoming, we've got an incoming Luftwaffe and we need to do something about it. So you're going to be the air raid one. No one was trained to be air raid wardens before they had air raids. They had, they had to learn it on the job. And I think it's like that with sponsorship. There is no way. It's like swimming as well. You, you can't really learn swimming in a, in a,

you know, from a book, you know, planking on a sort of chair or something. You just have to get in the water.

In computer courses. They used to, they used, they used to have to say this to people. You can't break it by pressing a button. So if you pressed your sponsee buttons, you haven't broken them. The buttons were already there and they're being pressed all day long. You're just one of us streamer people pressing those buttons. All you're saying is you pressing them. You're not seeing all the other people now.

11 should aim to be kind and temperate and moderate and so on.

But it doesn't matter if you leak

because you're not. We're not professionals, so it's OK to be a human God. The people who sponsors and other old times who've leaked on me, I've exasperated. If you go to someone's house when you're 2 weeks sober at 11:30 on at night and beg to be let in, you will exasperate them. You know, just in case you haven't tried.

And it was right for them to be exasperated and to let that show because I was then learning how people, ordinary human beings, respond to my behaviour. Professionals will keep a facade up and won't show it. So people don't get to experience the consequences of them dicking professionals around because the professional has to remain professional. One of the amazing things about sponsorship is you get to see the human reaction,

your engagement with them. So you don't have to be, you don't have to be like super poised and professional now. You have to be yourself now. Obviously this is a journey

I've some people are naturally much nicer than me. It's take. I mean, this is after 28 years work, so you can imagine what I was like when I started off.

You don't have to be all like super nice and pleasant and long. You have to be on a journey towards being more pleasant and moderate and temperate and genial and approachable and all of those things. But you don't have to be fixed,

in other words, to sponsor people.

Um, Tom Weston says if everyone in his first meeting had been serene, pleasant vegetarian joggers, he wouldn't have gone back.

So maybe it's the humanity and the spikiness and the fact that if you're, if you're still, as someone else says, pardon my friendship, if you're still all pissed and vinegar, that might be, those might be characteristics which the person can relate to. They couldn't. I remember going to ask someone to sponsor me and I'd like 8 years so but and he was so nice

and he was so Placid and peaceful and he was an organist, probably played really quietly

and I've he freaked me out. I wanted someone with a bit of punch and pizzas, someone with an edge. So if your sponsor you still got an edge, good.

As for you know, well, I'm still F dot, what do I have to offer?

OK, so your job, there are different types of sponsors for different purposes.

So

my sponsor specialises in doing profound psychological rearrangements are very messed up people that hit, that's his personal deal, he's good at that, so he does that. Other people, their job is to show them mechanics. This is where you go every day, This is what you do. This is how you share at a meeting. This is what this bit in the book means. This is what the no psychological stuff, no getting in there to the detail, just showing them the practical ropes.

So

there's a great line in Chapter 7 where it says having had the experience yourself, the experience of the 12 steps, having had the experience yourself, you can be a much practical use to the other person. So whatever experience the person has can be deployed in the sponsorship. And it doesn't matter if you're not great at like unravelling psychological doodars, send them to someone who's good at that for those types of topics.

But there's, there's whatever the person has learned they can pass on. So somewhat, I don't think people need be frightened about it. And that what you can tell him is if you're frightened of sponsoring someone because you don't know how you're going to respond to a particular thing they throw at you, all you do is you get them to write on a piece of paper above the chair where they sit and take sponsee calls. I'm going to think about how to respond to that. I'll call you back later. And then they get to call you

their spawn. So to say they've just said this, what do I say next? And then you tell them what to say next. And then they go and say the thing you told them to say. And then 5 minutes later they've had to do the same thing. I'm gonna have to call you back. And then this goes back and forth and gradually people. So people can always press the pause button and retreat and come back for further information.

By the way, if you're ever talking to someone, they say I'm going to need to call you back later.

It's because they need to call their sponsor probably. So you've just thrown them a curveball. So, you know, kudos to you.

I think we should get points for making our sponsors talk to their own sponsors that there should be, we run chips for length and sobriety. You know, how many times this week have you caused your sponsor to pause a call halfway through to like regain their composure or go and have a, you know, some white bread to calm them down?

So, so there's nothing to be, there's nothing to be frightened of. And if it doesn't work out, I mean, the sponsee, if it's not working for the sponsee, like the grand sponsee, the grand sponsee will figure that out and go somewhere else. And if your sponsee, if I mean, sometimes you know,

there's a great line, have the grace to know when you're out of your depth. Sometimes I've had sconces where I'm just out of my death and I'm like, I kick them upstairs to Joe or to someone else. I just can't. I can't deal with it. I don't know. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do.

So your sponsee, if it gets too psychologically fraught and entangled, can step away from it. So there's no risk as, as Clancy says, there is no such thing as dictator dictatorship sponsorship because as soon as the sponsor says they're done, the dictatorship is over. There's no there's no reprisal. And often when you've got a tangled situation which doesn't work.

I'm getting better at this. I'm not as good as I should be. Let go now,

because though I can't tell you how often I've really struggled with the Swansea and it's so embarrassing. They go to someone, you think, my God, they've gone to them for sponsorship and now they get sober. Now they get well from from being told what I don't know what they're being told, but it worked. And or you know, the the aggregate wisdom that I had to offer did nothing useless. And they go to some Charlie who tells him to not to drink and go to meetings and to trust God. And suddenly they're fixed.

So if it's not working, maybe it's not meant to work, just try someone else. There's always, there's always plenty more and it's not any. This is where I think we all work out our psychological quirks in sponsorship. Because if, if something goes super wrong, there's no harm. You don't want to be working out those quirks in intimate relationships or relationships with colleagues or bosses as if you mess that up, you're really messing stuff up. Whereas you can mess up stuff in sponsorship and people kind of like dough, they bounce back into shape

as long as they're going to, you know, 100,000 meetings.

I think that was something else I've forgotten. But if it wants to come back, it'll come back. So if we see if there are any other questions?

Thanks, Tim.

Thanks, Tim. So Rivka, you have the question. Yeah, Hi. Thanks. Thanks, Alistair. Thanks, Tim. I have a question. I've had the experience where Sponsee calls me up and tells me a story about something that happened and then says to me, how do you think I handled that?

And I, I used to answer the question and then lately I've been feeling like there's something wrong with that. I shouldn't really be giving an evaluation afterwards, or maybe I should be. I feel like it's a game, but I'm not sure. Do you have any thoughts about that? Yeah, that's a, that's a really good, that's a really good question.

OK,

it can be a setup,

but it's not always a setup. There's a legitimate situation in which that occurs and are not so legitimate situation where it occurs legitimately. Sometimes people are just faced with a situation suddenly you just have to respond and they're doing, they're performing due diligence as lawyers would say. They're making sure that what they did was was fine and to learn from it to maybe react better or differently next time.