Q: My sponsee says they can't do [X] because of [Y]. How do I respond?

I arrived in AA not just with alcoholism but mentally ill, with undiagnosed and untreated Asperger's, displaying antisocial behaviour, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and 'low self-worth', and without any meaningful ability to function. I had trouble going to shops, having conversations, tidying my room. Real basic stuff. I was in a state of almost permanent nervous breakdown. Traumatised and triggered by everything from 'being in a room with people' to 'buying broccoli' (I'm not joking; I had a problem with broccoli. I won't go into details).

Over the first many years I was in AA, I had trouble doing what people suggested. But I did it—badly, falteringly, yet with increasing confidence. I told people I had panic attacks. They said, 'bring your panic attack to a meeting and have it there.' I said I couldn't communicate like others, because of my mental condition, so could not write a Step Four. They said to write one anyway. This was the answer to everything. Whatever the label, I was still responsible for choosing what to believe, think, and do. Sure, it might take me longer (it did) and I might need lots more help than others (I did). But the label did not change the curriculum.

I would brandish the label like a decorative defence and require the curriculum to be adapted to my objections, since I framed the problem, the label, the state, as lying outside my responsibility. Sure, I was not responsible for having the label or the state, but I was responsible for doing something about it.

Here's an excerpt from 'A Course In Miracles', from the lesson entitled, 'Sickness is a defense against the truth.'

W-pI.136.3. Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. 2 They are secret, magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. 3 They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. 4 In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

I have had a habit of leading with my sickness, in other words squeezing the sickness into the conversation as early as possible, to make sure it's taken account of and worked around. Acting out would also be oddly selective, in retrospect perfectly tailored to certain situations where the effect was maximised and the consequences, minimised. All of this appeared unconscious. It was not.

W-pI.136.4. Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? 2 All this cannot be done unconsciously. 3 But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

Here, it's not just talking about the moment: it's talking about the whole, underlying decision in favour of sickness. I found the notion I was unwell terrifying but tantalising in equal measure. It lent me an identity, specialness, and a set of defences against the world and authority in particular. I required 'special measures'. At one point in my teenage years, I actually consciously fostered a physical illness to give myself a get-out from a challenging situation. The mechanism had fully surfaced into my conscious mind and been incorporated into my laboured decision-making. I have consciously decided to amplify my acting out to make a point. I have invoked the labels to defend against challenges to my reactions and behaviour. 'I can't help it, because of X, Y, Z, so treat me differently.' Whatever the theoretical merits, nothing changed because nothing changed. It's the results that count.

Sickness is a defence, but how the sickness is framed lends the sickness itself a defence. The pathologising label would absolve me of guilt and would absolve me of responsibility. Now, guilt was obviously not warranted, but absolving myself of responsibility by absolving myself of guilt did me no favours. I was not guilty but I was indeed responsible, because no one could start to effect change but me.

Ultimately, all of my disorders boiled down to beliefs, thinking, and behaviour. For example, one particular episode of panic boiled down to this: I was in a social situation. I compared myself to others. I found myself gravely wanting. I could see no remedy. That's when I became lost inside myself, unable to hear anything that was going on, whirling like a dervish inside my own thoughts, unreachable, inconsolable, and threatening self-harm. I kept people up till 3.00 a.m., so distraught was I. What was the trigger? Company. A label would turn this into a porcelain egg: un-analysable, immutable, solid, unyielding. Remove the label, unpack the situation, and what do you have: 'I compared myself to others.' We have a culprit! In the weeks following the event, I talked to Maureen. She said, quite simply: 'Do not compare yourself to others; it makes you vain or bitter.' I practised applying this, and it worked. Gradually these reactions abated. I was not responsible for the starting position; but I was responsible for taking responsibility and progressing away from that starting position.

Rather than sitting at the starting blocks, clutching my broken mind as a defence against change, I submitted my broken mind to the process. Rather than saying, 'No! Absolutely not!' I learned to say, 'Yes, and I'm going to need help following through.'

I have occasionally used outside resources to help me do that. The purpose of the outside resources was not to compartmentalise and 'protect' certain parts of me from investigation and treatment, to park aspects of my belief, thinking, and behaviour in a strongbox labelled with the name of the relevant disorder. The purpose was to integrate the approaches. Someone told their sponsor, 'I'm going to have therapy.' The sponsor said, 'Great. Tell me what character defects you uncover in therapy and we'll work the Steps to eliminate them.' 

This change required a sincere desire to cooperate, and a willingness to take the actions suggested without dismissing or discounting them in advance. Sure, my performance would be faltering, haphazard, and marked by progress not perfection. But the desire to perform had to begin with me.

***

So, turning to a prospective sponsee of the above ilk, what do you do?

People simply laid out AA's attitudes and actions for me to pick up once I was willing. They did not make adjustments. When I was in enough pain, I was willing to suffer the pain of taking actions that generated intense negative emotion, because of the greater good of recovery.

I'm not sure there's anything else that can be said or done. My defence system could be dismantled only from the inside. Outside assaults were useless. Once I was willing, I was willing. Until then, people just waited. I knew where they were.