Sometimes one has a good sponsor who is very clear about the instructions and timelines and provides lots of help, in which case it becomes pretty hard to avoid making progress with the Steps. It's nonetheless possible to obstruct the process perfectly adequately by adopting one or more of the following approaches:
- Calling only when you do not have your materials with you or you can't take notes
- Calling when your sponsor is not available, requesting callback, then instantly disappearing
- Not writing down instructions
- Writing them down wrong
- Writing them down but losing them
- Leaving such gaps between calls that one 'forgets' everything, so the whole time is spent recapping
- Doing simple exercises so thoroughly that what should take an hour takes a month
- Doing exercises so cursorily that there is no substance to them at all
- Adjusting the exercise to your own liking and doing that instead
- Replacing the exercise with another, more agreeable one and doing that instead
Now, your sponsor may be wise to this and may challenge you. This presents a problem, as there is a terrible risk that you will lose the argument. The task, then, is to confound the logical flow of the argument. This is easily done by adopting one or more of the following approaches:
- Attack
- Defence
- Deflection
- Denial
- Excuse
- Explanation
- Evasion
- Justification
- Stunned silence
- Non sequitur
- Self-contradiction
- Sighing
- Tears
- Babbling
This can go on almost indefinitely, unless your sponsor has been to 100,000 Al Anon meetings, in which case they might suggest you rethink your attitude and come back when you're more sponsorable.
If they say this, it's probably best to throw the towel in and join the winning side!
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