The
AA (General Service conference approved) booklet: Questions and Answers on Sponsorship)
Extract:
“Can
a sponsor be overprotective?
In
their enthusiasm to help a newcomer achieve sobriety, some sponsors
may tend to be overprotective. They worry unduly about the persons
they sponsor and tend to smother them with attention. In doing so,
they may run the risk of having a newcomer depend on an individual
member, rather than on the A.A. program. The most effective
sponsors recognize that alcoholics who join A.A. must eventually
stand on their own feet and make their own decisions — and that
there is a difference between helping people to their feet and
insisting on holding them up thereafter.
Another
danger of overprotectiveness is that it may annoy the newcomer to the
point of resenting the attempts to help — and expressing that
resentment by
turning away from A.A.”
(our
emphasis)
Comment:
Or in the case of cult sponsors setting themselves up as the
sponsee's Higher Power and bullying rather than smothering them into
submission. The reality is that newcomers to AA have to start making
their own decisions from the off! No-one else is entitled to take
that responsibility.
Remember
- Step 3 states:
“Made
a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God
as we understood Him."
(our
emphasis)
It
does NOT say:
Made
a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our
sponsor as we understood Him.
Moreover a sponsor is NOT ESSENTIAL to recovery. And NO sponsorship
is better by far than BAD sponsorship!
Cheers
The
Fellas (Friends of Alcoholics Anonymous)
(to
be continued)
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