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

To set the tone for the meeting, I will read an extract from Doctor Bob's Nightmare, page 180 and 181.

I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learn to others who want it and need it badly. I do it for four reasons. 1A Sense of duty 2. It's a pleasure. Three, because in so doing I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it on to me for. Because every time I do it, I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.

Tonight's meeting is part five of Working Step 12 with the sponsee, and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will hand it over to Tim. Thank you, your brave souls, being here for part five of anything. I wouldn't be anyway

Tim Alcoholic, thank you for having me back. We got 3 topics left on step 12. I have a feeling there's like something else that's going to come after that, but we'll see when we get there. I think Ellie Sheva's been talking about that anyway. Anyway, anyway, tonight

the remaining topics, although more may pop up, are drama.

Drama. That's drama

families. Maybe a separate topic may be the same topic

onshore, we'll see. And workplace, which is kind of dull,

so I don't want to bore myself. I'll go in with drama. Let me open a window.

OK, So dealing with dramatic sponses, I kind of didn't get the hang of it for around

26 1/2 years, so it took a while to work out the kinks

out of, right? Right. Traumatic sponsee many years ago. Who

I suggested that they do

tea at a meeting and they're very good. They got the little flasks full of hot water, put out the tea and coffee very neatly and tidily, and the biscuits. Of course biscuits are very important.

And then they would sit as far away from the tea as possible, leaving people to serve themselves. And I suggested, well that's trying a lot. The point of the team commitment, it's, it's that you get to talk to everyone. And the individual in question said that

in in her family of origin, You always know, I get always get a slightly tensile, hear that phrase, you know, because you kind of know what's coming.

In my family, my family of origin,

I was made to play the servant role. So me doing tea at the meeting, it just triggers me because it reminds me of that. So I'm not going to do that. I'm going to sit on the other side of the room and they can serve themselves

and on what level I can, I can kind of see that whatever, fair enough. But this becomes a pattern of it became a pattern of resistance and drama.

One night, for reasons I can't remember why I did, why my phone was off, I have no idea. This was about all 17, maybe 1819 years ago my phone was on and it rang at 3:30 in the morning. And the poor individual was, you know when someone is sobbing so hard they can't say anything? It's just sobbing for like 4 or 5 minutes until the sobbing stops. And it was something about they were going to go to a family wedding and they didn't want

to. The family wedding.

If you don't want to go, don't go. There we go. It's as simple as that. You don't have to do anything. If it's traumatizing, you don't have to do it

now you deal with each of these situations and you can well, I'm being a very, very good sponsor. I look, I'm giving solutions and the solutions of, you know, appreciated and the person's continuing to call back.

But the difficulty is that with sponsees where there's lots of drama,

umm is one day you're going to be the subject matter of the drama. What do you do then? You're now that you're not everyone gets to take a turn as the problem.

So you're you might be you might be flavour of the month for a while, helping them deal with other traumas. But one day you become the drama. One day I became the drama. I phoned Maureen. I said I didn't know what to do about this.

And she said

you tell the individual I don't think I'm the right person to sponsor you and you wish them well and send them off into the night. And as you're walking away, don't mutter under your breath. And I can't imagine who would be. So you know, be kind about it. Don't say that. Say about a tenth of what is going through your mind. Say only what is necessary when you get to the point that you've become part of the problem.

Drama can happen in two ways. It can happen in

It can be positive drama or negative drama.

What I mean by positive drama, sometimes most sponsors are like totally business like, you know, in conversations with youth, they're like the cat and Pepe Le Q. They can't get off the phone quick enough. It's fine. This is healthy. But the ones who are too keen, are you going to be very, very careful? There was one I did not know what they wanted from, but there was something. I didn't know what it was, so I said. I said to them,

why are you write down what you think it is that you want from?

And they sent me this e-mail which which sends shudders down my spine to this day.

It was a they wrote, OK, I wrote 27 points. Now that's that's trouble to start with, isn't it? You know, you know, you're in for a long day.

And the first point was, I want your fingers to enter my brain and massage truth into my soul.

And at this point, I deleted the e-mail, I deleted the, I emptied the deleted items folder. And ever since I've regretted it. Oh, I'd love to know what the other 26 items were, but but it's lost very much lost posterity. And I terminated the relationship then. And I should have terminated it way before

they phoned up very dramatically one day like 2:00

Thursday afternoon.

And there was this kind of the first thing was this reproachful question,

Did you say or did you not say that Jesus Christ was the Son of God? I'm like, I'm in the middle of a work. Is this an urgent question? Where is this coming from? So, so drama. It can be that kind of when they want to entangle with you

or the drama can appear to be about everyone else.

Umm with very true. I've got the hang of very dramatic people now and very, very few call me because I'm not available for the I'm not available and available for the drama dance. And you kind of give off vibes when you're no longer available for the a certain type of dance. People stop asking to dance particular dance,

but the things that the way I, what I've learned from having very dramatic sponsors over the years is

I didn't 'cause it, I can't control it and I sure as hell can't cure it. And something that Joe said many years ago was that their drama is their bomb, is their ointment for their inner sense of inadequacy and guilt and shame and so on. That rather than facing that they immediately go into blame and and and and drama.

And that's a useful Ave. to

because I'm what I don't want to give the impression of is if someone is very dramatic, there's nothing you could do. There's a lot you can do. There are cases where it goes so far that it's just irremediable, at least with you. Maybe you'll you've gotten to the next stage, they'll handle it with someone else. But but how to deal with it? OK, so first of all, sometimes you can redirect the attention to what are the feelings you're trying to avoid by creating this drama in the first place.

There's the whole borderline personality thing where, as Tom said, you know, borderline personality, people are happy only when everyone around them is in chaos is to look at what are you getting out of this drama? What is the kick? So let's not look at the content. It's not about the content. It's about the fact that there is a drama being created again and again and again. And it's just like the cycles in the Big Book with the alcoholic and the doctor's opinion

of

the ease and comfort

that you get from the first stages of a dramatic situation,

followed by the the well known stages of the spree and then emerging remorseful and they emerge Remorsel at the end of the cycle. I say they, I mean, it's not like I have done this. The only way I can deal with it is because I used to be like this myself.

You get people to look at the cycle because it's not about the content. If you solve one another, one will prop up the next day. Because it's the machine that's generating the dramas which is the problem. The drama which is occurring is simply the whatever tools are available, whatever, whoever's there will be the subject matter of drama. It's not where it's not coming from. The situation, the situation is being used,

and that's a useful conversation. You can have a second conversation. This is a very common one

when people are very, very sort of upset and it's someone elses fault. So this is very common with the sort of Essenon and Alanon

with, with the alcoholic, what they think it's everyone else's fault very often. And beside being on both sides, I've been the typical alcoholic character and the typical Alalon character. The typical alcoholic character

expect everyone else to do everything for them so they don't have to do it for themselves. And the typical Al Anon is to play the hero or the martyr. So they're doing, you know, you're doing all the laundry, you're doing everything, right? You're doing the dinner, you're doing the TV, you're doing everything. Why can't they just help with something Occasionally? It wouldn't hurt if they folded a sock. You know, that kind of an angle and that they're kind of two different situations because it's very clear

with the alcoholic who's just going around causing trouble, not lifting a finger, that they're the problem

with the Alalons and the Essenons, from my own experience of being an alumni, actually probably an Essenon camp that as well. I won't go any further.

It can. It can look superficially as though the problem is originating elsewhere,

but the way I'm I handle it, and this is the way I handle my own propensity to drama, is to say in any dramatic situation,

the situation may command a response from, but I won't know what the response is until I'm at peace. Because let's say you think there are 10 things wrong in a relationship with a person, and you're furious about lots of them. And then you get calm and you realize nine of them are rubbish or inconsequential or not even a problem. One of them is a genuine problem. The one that's a genuine problem now looks completely different anyway, now that you're calm.

And then you notice something else which does need to change, which was being masked by your own rage.

So it's vital if you're going to act right in a tricky relationship, but it's a work relationship or an AA relationship or a group situation. Unless you're at peace, you're going to mess it up anyway. You're going to act where it's none of your business. You're going to misapprehend the situations which genuinely command the response and act wrong in those. And you're going to miss the other things which are being masked. So

a lot of the drama, the, the form it usually takes is

infamy. Infamy. They've all got it in for me, the blamethrower, not the flamethrower, the blamethrower where I feel bad I'm being so mistreated, blah, blah, blah. And for years I tried to unpick the content of those situations and it never worked. I, I mean, you can kind of superficially do it

and people are sort of happy because you've given them some attention, actually rather a lot of attention. Often, you know, 90% of my sponsor time was going on. The 10% of sponsors that were excessively dramatic, that's not a great use of time,

but the sponsees were pleased because they were calm. And part of the kind of acting out is to create the situation, which is itself a bomb to the internal God shaped void. And secondly, to get all of like the help and the attention from the sponsor or a therapist or whoever else. And that's, that's like Part 2 of the ointment. And then once they've got those two elements, they've got thrill, and then they get the relief,

they're done. And then they're quiet for a day or two days, and then it all starts up again. So delet unpicking the content.

What's in what was fascinating about these dramatic situations, particularly the last couple of years, like between 24 years and 26 years, I started seeing that every single drama with a particular person was that actually the same drama repeating, wearing different clothes and all of that unpicking had done absolutely nothing.

None of it had gone in. None of it had penetrated the subconscious. None of it had had any effect at all

and I've switched tack and the tack I've switched is this and it's let me just get rid of the calls. There we go. The type I've switched is this.

I I had a number of emotional difficulties for a number of years from the from around 20 years so but onwards.

So like all of my personal relationships were largely fine. It was sort of seething resentments against categories of people in the world I classed as idiotic and dangerous.

Whether they are idiotic and or dangerous is another question. They might be, but my problem was sitting in my living room or going for a walk in leafy de Beauvoir town. I was fulminating with rage about these categories of people not doing anything about anything but just culminating with rage doing inventory after inventory thinking. If only I analyzed the third column, Care finals, there may be something will pop. And then occasionally I'd see through

that we've got.

But what I learned was that it's, as I've already said, it's not about content. It's about the fact that the rage, the anger or whatever the fear also

is,

contains it is. That's the drug. That's the drug. I've got to stop taking the drug. It's not about how to handle these situations or these types of people,

it's the fact I'm continuing to feed myself the drug. So what I've switched to

with myself, and this is what I've then shown to sponsee, isn't it? It's it's much more helpful than what I was doing before, is to say right. I sometimes recount the story. I was in the

the The Hoff warehouse, not in Munich, but in Las Vegas,

Munich, Bavarian Beer Hall. And I was with my sponsor and with two steely eyed Al Anons who were several thousand years old.

And I said something flippant, you know, to break the ice, the tension at the table. And this old, old Alan said, did you know in al Anon in Texas? Obviously, because al Anon in Texas is different than al Anon elsewhere, then al Anon in Texas

a slip is a negative thought.

I then stayed largely silent for the rest of the rest of the conversation, having nothing to say.

And so the, the job is to,

with my own propensity to, to, to drama in whatever form it takes, is to treat that as being a case of slippers and negative thought.

And so you treat it like a game. Your ego will tempt you many times a day to start thinking negative thoughts about this or about that. And generally, it'll come into come in one of three forms.

There's resentment,

and the subversions of that are resentment against oneself. So remorse, gain remorse, shame, guilt, all of those. But that's just resent against one side, resentment. Second one,

fear. Third one, plotting, plotting, scheming, planning, devising, arguing with them in your mind, winning the argument in your mind so that you're prepared for the next conversation so they work outwit you.

Those are the three mental habits. What my experience is, is that those mental habits need to be broken to detoxify myself. When I detoxify myself and look at the wreckage of the situation, the truth is immediately self-evident. I tried to explain or try to lead people back from.

The drama to what sanity would be in a situation.

And this is the thing I've stopped doing because I don't think it can be done. It's just like with a drink. You can't argue someone sober who's been drinking. You can't argue someone sane who's in one of their hysterical banshee

moments. What you have to do is to stop the poison entering the system and have them detox.

So it's to replace all resentful thoughts where this is a sick man, how can I be helpful? This is just another child of God. How can I be helpful to replace

the fear thoughts to substitute for the fear thoughts? God, is there any practical action you'd like me to take? Or I'm going to trust this whole situation is in your hands and go and do something else.

So to practice the Emmett Fox notion of substitution

and you get immediate results. Now people will push back hugely against this. I had someone not unusually pushing back. It was about the, the, the, the situation was

where a family member was behaving badly and the family member may or may not be behaving badly. And the question was, do I need to tell him and list for him all the things he's doing wrong?

Shall I do that? And the answer lies in the Just for Today club. I won't regulate any anybody but myself. My feelings may be hurt, but if they are hurt, I won't show it. And a slippers and negative thought replace any resentment and fear with the appropriate positive. Thank you. And when you're at peace, then we can discuss how you're handling the situation and whether any action needs taken. But you can't. We're not even going to look at that

until you're at peace and have been at peace for some time because it's a waste of time trying to change things when you're upset

and the put you get all sorts of pushbacks.

One of the pushbacks is

but therapists always say that you have to tell people the negative ways in which their behaviour is affecting actually someone you. So I've been using that as an example of apocryphally for some time. There's someone actually said it today.

Understand that, you know, I've had therapists

and I said, well, I don't know, do what you want. If you want to do what the therapist says, do what the therapist says. All I can tell you is I've been in a relationship with someone for 17 years. We don't argue, we're happy. And these are the rules that I follow. So take your pick. So you're not arguing. If you as soon as you're arguing, you're losing.

First and last time I quote Ronald Reagan.

If if you're arguing, if if you're explain, that's it. You, if you're explaining, you're losing. I'm sure Evan, if he's here, will correct me. If you're explaining, you're losing,

so just to it's that. It's that course in miracles thing. If you apply the solution, you don't analyse the solution because analyze means anal lies. If you take a huge analyzers, chop it into little bits and look at each of the individual little bits.

If you take a person and you chop in chop them into little bits, then you won't learn anything about the person, you'll only learn about the little bits. I've never chopped a person into little bits. I should add, I've been reliably informed this by my mobster friends, of whom I have none. But if you chop people into little pieces, they can't tell you anything useful.

If I analyse this, if I analyse the solution, it's the, it's the cockroach defending itself

against the exterminator.

If you ask the cockroach its view as to, you know, whether the exterminator should be in the kitchen and what kind of powder they're using, the cockroach is not going to help you but achieve your objective. They're going to, they're going to argue. It's like suddenly around this part of East London, I don't know if they have them where you live. You know those dogs which always look angry and then they rush up at people angrily embarking and they say, oh, don't worry, he's only playing, He just wants to

friendly those dogs. You know when you give them a newspaper, within 7 seconds there's a pile of, there's a pile of newspaper on the floor. They've ripped it all up and they look up at you pleased with themselves. The same if you give one of them a soft toy or something, within 7 seconds it's completely destroyed and they look pleased with themselves. That's my mind. In response to a solution, you give the solution to my mind, it analyzes it, it destroys it and it is pleased with itself.

So I don't discuss the sort of like one thing that I've been giving people is, Oh my God, you just this goes straight, this goes straight to this is like the crucifix in the heart of the vampire, like with a spiky end to the crucifix to repeat every time you have a negative thought about another person or yourself. I am innocent, they are innocent. I am innocent, they are innocent,

and people almost literally start hissing at me when you suggest that as a but they're not innocent.

You get him doing that and everything starts to change straight away.

But you, they've got to do it. There's no point in trying to understand it. So I'm happy, but I don't understand why they're innocent. I know they don't have to understand it, You just have to apply it.

And it's just like in Course in Miracles lessons where they say you, you don't have to like, you don't have to like the solution. You don't have to agree with it, but you all you have to do is apply it and then you'll find out it's true. It's only through application that you find out it's true. And what this does, this is brilliant because it means you don't have to have, you don't have to perform an exorcism on them, which is what it's like dealing with dramatic people. Otherwise, if you

in the content, you're now in a scene from The Exorcist, you know when the, the, the you know the girl is levitating off that White's always a girl. I don't know. But when the girl is levitated, Freud would tell you, when the girl is levitating off the bed and the priest is like the young priest and the old priest and the young priest is trying to address the demon inside the person. And the girl is speaking with the demon's voice. And the demon knows everything about the young priest and then

and incorporates all of its knowledge about the young police and the young police steepest darkest fears into its rebuttal into its argument against the exorcism. And you have the old priest saying, basically, don't engage with any of that stuff. It's all lies. You've got us. You've got to don't touch the material, otherwise you get the material all over you and you become part of the problem.

As soon as you're part of their problem, you've lost. They're going to have to go on to they've burnt you out. It's like the fuser's gone, you're done. They have to go on to the next one,

but that those bet that basic sort of Emmett Fox Course in Miracles approach works and if they work the step systematically. So the way you address the situation

is through the systematic formal approach of Step 4, if you're going to address it at all, which goes very, very systematically, you know, and I won't rehearse it now. We've done it in another in another of these talks about first column, second column, third column, forgiveness page 67 questions beer inventory, sex inventory, sane and sound ideal, which is the appropriate but and each of those,

however six someone is, if they're willing, they can go through that. But you can't short circuit that in the kind of step 10 situation with someone who is on their high horse just doesn't work.

So you gotta shoot straight to the detox process. And then when they're farmers, I say 90% of the structure collapses. They realize they've been crazy and it's obvious to them how.

What else do we need to know about dramatic

situations? Don't take it personally

and repeat that. Don't take it personally. The dramatic ones, the dramatic sponsees

have got a way of involving and entangling you.

And if you're not careful, you get involved in in time And

when it, when this is the therapy, you see, this is the therapist and Big little Lies, when it breaks down because it's going to break down. It's not if when it breaks down, then you've got to be very careful what you say to people who are very dramatic because they will tell everyone else, except they went, they went to everyone else, exactly what you said. They'll tell everyone else their version.

So you've got to be very, very careful. But the point is,

it's not about you,

it's about them, so I mustn't get involved. And even when it breaks down,

there might be all sorts of fallout in your home, group or locally. You just stand firm and you must muscle through it basically,

and it can be unpleasant. The point therefore is to avoid getting to that stage

where you stay, you basically keep the same arm's length business like approach with a very dramatic people as with everyone else. So the the temptation if you got an al Anon streak is to is to get more involved and to see this as a project as as I can't remember who said it

when, when you respond to the prospect of a dramatic phone call from the Swansea with a mixture of excitement and a dread,

like a, here's a fascinating project, but B, you feel slightly sick at the same time. Those situations. I want to be careful of that because what I'm doing is what they're doing. So they have a drama about whoever else and then they become your drama. Then you're telling all your friends and you're telling your sponsor and your brother. You go into your extra Allen on meeting hoping to qualify doesn't show up, you know,

So I mean I I can replicate that

I can do what they're doing. It's almost contagious drama. It's almost contagious. It's an extraordinary that the whole dynamic is extraordinary and it's the

someone here will know more about this than me. They've disappeared sitting there the the the drama triangle of the the victim, the persecutor and the rescuer and the danger.

If you've got someone who is playing the victim role in the drama triangle that you've been cast as the rescuer. And the thing about the the Cartman CKARPMAN, go and read about it Cartman drama triangle. And the funky thing about the Cartman drama triangle is the roles aren't fixed.

So on Monday,

you're they're the victim

and you're the rescuer. But then something weird happens and suddenly you become the victim and they become the persecutor. And you didn't see how could this happen to me? You enter the triangle. When you enter the triangle, that's when the musical chairs start. And when the music stops, the seat you're nearest to is the one you're sitting in the next period until the music starts up again.

So one's got to stay outside the triangle. Very difficult.

The reason this is very difficult is someone who is in a drama cycle is going to look like very much like an ordinary person with a situation. And it can take two or three

calls or two or two or three problems solving situations before you realize, oh, OK, so this is a pattern. This, this, this is not problem solving. This is something else. This is a historical reenactment of an unresolved drama from childhood or wherever.

And you know, we're reenacting the Civil War, basically trying to get the ending to change, but the ending never changes because it's fixed. The, the, the, the, the ending is determined by the rules of the game. The parameters of the game determine the end. That, that the, the payoff is the victimhood, which is why people don't want to be relieved of it.

And I know this because that was me. You know, the only way I know anything is because I've done, I did it for decades until finally I was relieved of it myself. Now I can see it playing out. So I think that's all I've got to sound drama. It's very difficult subject. That's all I've got to sound drama. Does anyone have anything to ask

what I'm going to do, if I may, and obviously if there are other questions arise, just just comes, you know, put your little hand up or something. Is the family stuff. This is very dangerous territory because it involves Ian's real people and their actual families. So I'm extremely cautious about giving any kind of advice,

and

my advice is limited almost solely to what it says in the Big Book.

Your page references, if you like page references are pages 98 to 99

and then the chapter is basically from page 115 to 135. That 20 page block has got a bunch of a bunch of things. Don't do these, but do do those things not to do things to do. And I get people just to read those passages and do what it says. And

let me just get the big book,

as we call it, up on screen. I might share it if I may. I think I probably can.

So 98

though his family be at fault in many respects, he should not be concerned about that. He should concentrate on his own spiritual demonstration, arguments and fault finding and to be avoided like plague. And then the next important bit is on the next page.

The alcoholic continues to demonstrate that he can be sober, considerate and helpful.

Regard will arise of boundaries.

And so this is it's usually with family. This is the point I I sort of share with my, my experience of what boundaries are and how you set them. And I think there are two types of boundary. First type of boundary is the have we talked about boundaries before or not in these sessions? I can't remember.

OK, so the first type of boundary is the I can't I won't boundary. So when the boundaries do with me,

um, you know, you're invited to a family gathering.

All the people who press your buttons, because they're all the buttons are going to be there. Your seven months sober and it's in a country house 47 miles from a railway station. You have no car. Everyone's going to be drunk. Should you go

ask the question

and Max is there you go and it's over a long weekend, bank holidays, deepest Scotland. It's going to be snowing.

You know, a possible boundary is

I can't come or I won't come. You know the line. I was quote this one from Phoebe and Friends where some asked her to do something. She said, Gee, I wish I could, but I don't want to.

And so this is always an option to just duck out of things.

Where boundaries get trickier is where it's a boundary where you want someone else to do something, Either start doing something, stop doing something, or do it differently. And then you've got the five levels to estimate through of a polite request offering a transaction. So transaction is if we, if you come out with me and my mother this weekend, I'll go out with you and your mother next weekend. Deal. If you come to my work dinner, I will come to yours.

If I do the dinner tonight, will you do the laundry transaction?

The third type of boundary is the

Cova. So covert consequences. So when someone. The most obvious example is

if you've got a family member that is sometimes rude and accusatory and insane and sometimes really pleasant. The covert boundary is to

basically you don't reply unless they're pleasant. If they're unpleasant, you don't reply and they get to join the dots and recognize if they want your engagement, they're going to have to play nice. That's the covert boundary. The overt, the overt consequences is when you say, if you carry on shouting, I'm going to put the phone down and then they carry on shouting and then they hear it click. That's the over. That's the so you threaten the over consequence and then you enact the over consequence, which

putting the phone down, leaving, calling the police, changing the locks, something like that. And so I run through those, but honestly, honestly.

I'm very skeptical. I'm very clear about like the I can't, I don't want to boundaries. I think those are very, very useful to me and I use them a lot.

What I'm much more skeptical about, particularly with families, because if it goes wrong, you're kind of stuck with your blood relatives. You're stuck with them literally forever. You know, you can excommunicate a family member, but they remain your family member. It's not like leaving the Home group. You know, you're, you're stuck with the relationship whether or not you're seeing them. So one has to be terrible with the family

is something that Tom's sponsor says don't expect much to change.

So when you realize that probably not much, if anything is going to change, the question is what's the point in even trying to set the boundary? It just aggravates people. Stick to one a month. Find a really careful, subtle way of communicating things.

You run out of the Bouchers really, really quickly. What you're left with now, these, all these tools all help in all sorts of situations.

The

the one type of situation which is very knotty

is people in romantic relationships which are toxic and involve verbal or physical violence and

people in other sort of family relationships with verbal physical violence

with the with the ones where it's romantic relationships, I've got to the stage where I've discovered it's just, I probably mentioned this before. It's just like if they're drinking or taking drugs or,

you know, eating 17 Belgian buns, they're high. They're high on the drama, the violence, the toxicity, the so-called codependency, which is I, I hate the word, but there we go. And they won't make any progress in that actual program if they stay in a relationship. So I can't, I won't tell someone to leave the relationship. But what I will say is I, I don't think the time trying to I'm spending trying to help you is helping while you're in the relationship.

I can't sponsor you. If you stay in a relationship, there are 1000 other people that can sponsor you. If you want to stay in the relationship and have a sponsor, ask one of them. But I'm not doing it because it's page 96. The if, if the toxic relationship is so getting in the way of like it occupies 9/10 of the room. So there's only a tenth of the room left for the program. There's

a There are magical creatures in the Harry Potter

wizarding world who are this is the adjective that JK Rowling made-up. Quran uptick sick on What Quranopticsic means is that they grow to fill the space they're in. If you can entice one into a teapot, it will fill the teapot. If if it escapes into a large run, it will grow to fill the rum and the toxic relationships like that, whatever their life is like. And I've been like this when I'm in a toxic relationship. I haven't been in one for years.

Many years, thank God. Fingers crossed touch wood. It occupies 9/10 of my consciousness.

Whatever, however big or small my life is, it's going to occupy nine cents. And I can't help people who are in a toxic romantic relationship. Send them. So where's Dominic? There you go. Send. Dominic can help. Those poor old Dominic's going to get a stream of calls. He knows where to send them to special place some of us know about. And you know, maybe there that they can be helped by another fellowship.

The family ones are trickier.

Say you're stuck with them.

With my own family, there are three cats. I think there are three categories of people. There are people I'm I don't know where this tape is going. This doesn't get broadcast at anyone in my family. There is someone in my family who actually listens to these. So I'll have to tell them to be very careful. You know where people don't play this at home?

There are some people I'm largely indifferent to. They're like, fine. Like if I'm at a wake,

fine, I'll talk to him. We're not going to be exchanging Christmas presents. We're not going to be,

you know, we're not going to be having huge amounts of Hangouts trying to get great. But there's no problem.

There are some people. I've got some some

troubled, very troubled relations, particularly on the French side. The English side are much more sedate, but the French side,

there are some whose behaviour is so extreme and so bizarre and so criminal actually,

like Charlotte Rampling, you know, upper class criminal but criminal,

you know, 7 figure criminals, that kind of thing. They're so awful. I mean they've got hearts of gold I'm sure somewhere but I just, it's just too much toxicity to deal with. I can't even go near it.

And then everyone else, there's the everyone else and everyone else, you know, because I'm in meant I was immensely troubled. I'm a little better now. I come from the family which is very, very troubled

and there are some very troubled people. Now some of the troubled people are good as gold and sweet and occasionally they do strange things and you try and help them where you can. But some of the people, it depends what day you catch them on. If they're on a good day then you can have a normal conversation. If they're on a bad day, God help you. And when I used to go and visit my mother in Dorset, she's she's much older now. This is many years ago scared out when she lived in Dorset to go

and she's got 1000 good reasons for being difficult. So this is not to I don't want to sort of pillory her. So if I'd had her life I'd be far more difficult and she is. She's amazing considering what she's been through. But anyway,

when we arrived in Dorset for a weekend visit, Jonathan would go to Tesco's to buy champagne, chocolate and flowers. Now whilst he was there, my mother had built up a head of steam over days and weeks with all the things she wanted to reproach me for. And our deal was when Jonathan was at Tesco's, she would see her opportunity. She would get it all off her chest. He'd come back with the flowers. The

the champagne and since you've got it off her, she was fine for the rest of the weekend. She just needed to get it off her chest. And So what I practiced was

quietly listening to it, not engaging with any of it, and seeing past the behaviour to the hurt child within, keeping my focus on that as being the real person. The service behaviour is not her. The real person is innocent and wounded. That's all. They're innocent and wounded.

And so this is something that I will share with people if the parcel is gonna be in your life because they're your mother and you, they're your mother.

You try and I try to estrange myself for a while, for a couple of years. And it was no less painful than seeing her regularly. It was is you're no further ahead by strangers. A relationship continues psychically. I don't know how that happens. My brother tried to estrange himself from her, eventually killed himself.

So it doesn't work.

And the relationship between him and her has continued to this day, unresolved because he didn't resolve it while he was on this plane. So she still has a disordered relationship with him and with my sister who died earlier this year. So I think the job with these ones, I have to face these ones and the way I face them, they're very difficult. But it's, as I say, it's all the Emmett Fox stuff of seeing the real person behind the surface. And over many years they stop