Step 12b: Give It Away To Keep It

Step 12b: Give It Away To Keep It

“So you dealt with dependence on pills, alcohol, and porn, but that wasn’t the real issue?” “No, the real problems were my people pleasing and pride.” Ben Sledge’s story involves going to war in Afghanistan as a 20 year old, getting blown up and a friend bleeding out on him, divorce, and all the fall out that came after. Don’t miss this story of a war-torn veteran whose issues began long before the USA put a gun in his hands.

Step 12a: Our Shared Broken Humanity

"Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs." The last of the12 Steps [https://www.verywellmind.com/the-twelve-steps-63284]is to carry the message to others and to put the principles of the program into practice in every area of your life. For those in recovery programs, practicing Step 12 is simply: "to keep it you have to give it away."

Step 11b: Healing From Abuse and Eating Disorders

“I needed something more…because, you know, the drugs and alcohol wear off. I needed something that’s more consistent and readily available, and so I developed an eating disorder.” After enduring nearly every form of abuse, Morgan was desperate to find a way to cope with the pain that consumed her. She tried cocaine, alcohol, and sex, but settled instead into stepping between bulimia and anorexia. A few years into this, she felt abandoned by everyone she’d ever loved, and she was contemplating jumping off a bridge, when a commanding voice broke into the storm of her thoughts and asked a question that changed her trajectory.

Step 11a: Prayer & Meditation

“The process of enlightenment is usually slow. But in the end, our seeking always brings a finding. These great mysteries are, after all, enshrined in complete simplicity.” – Bill W In recovery we find that spirituality really is constantly developing and changing just like us. New situations and new people all have an effect on us and our spirituality needs to grow along those lines. The Step 11 task at hand is therefore finding ways to improve conscious contact and connection with the “God” of our own understanding. We already have a conscious awareness of a “higher power” working in our lives, which we began to develop in Step Two. Working on Step Three we learned to trust that higher power for guidance. In the process of working through all of the steps so far, we were improving our relationship with the higher power.

Step 10b: Healing From Co-Dependence

“That started to shift my mindset from, ‘What are all the things that I can get from other people to get my worth,’ to ‘How can I attune myself to what God is saying is true about me, and keep doing that, so that I don’t fall back into this codependency pattern?’” Andre Bradford, national slam poet speaker on empathy, shares his story about how he sought his sense of worth in relationships, and yet found himself self-sabotaging in those relationships because he felt he didn’t deserve them. In friendships, he would constantly second guess himself, wondering whether he’d said or done something to offend someone, and cause them to not want to see him anymore. Until Recovery. In the steps, he learned to let go of control, take responsibility for the things he has ownership of, and show up in a confident humility that allowed him to finally experience a happy and successful relationship.