Healthy Connections

Anonymous

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Healthy connections are something I’ve struggled with, but I’ve gotten a lot better with forming them through working the twelve steps. And in a pandemic, forming healthy connections makes all the difference in my Program.

In theory, I “should” be making healthy connections through some of the traditional tools of twelve step recovery: for one, making outreach calls. And sometimes I do. But most of the time, I find healthy connections in other ways. In other words, I don’t pretend to work the Program perfectly, but I am working hard at especially steps six through eleven to better address my own thinking and dis-ease.

I just hit one year of sobriety, and the path was not easy. As a result of gaining greater clarity around what I am powerless over and what makes my life unmanageable, my bottom line is less strict than it once was, but for years I couldn’t stay sober off of any bottom line. So, a year means a lot, but I got there through a somewhat unconventional path.

For one thing, the tools that I have most frequently used—to varying degrees—are service, writing, and listening to positive music. Service is a given for staying sober for many in SLAA: when I first drew up my recovery plan with three circles, my sponsor strongly suggested that I put service at the top of my list of healthy outer circle activities.

I’ve never served on Intergroup, but I do service for different meetings, on Zoom these days, especially as chair and as one of the newcomer greeters. I’ve also given leads on different steps and recovery topics. In the future, I hope to learn to do Treasurer and other positions that involve financial responsibilities, which I’ve often struggled with.

I’ve started sponsoring a couple of people during the pandemic, but I am currently reconfiguring my sponsorship approach, so I hope to sponsor again soon. The classic Program idea about keeping our sobriety through giving it away has been critical to me, but my carrying the message has been equally important at times when I wasn’t sober so that I could get to a better place in my recovery. I work very hard to welcome newcomers at meetings and let them know that they are not alone. Even though I didn’t come into this Program after a rough bottom—that is, I didn’t have the gift of desperation—I try to share my experience, strength, and hope, including when I’m not sponsoring others.

Writing has also been critical for me in this time—I’ve had maybe the most prolific writing year of my life since the pandemic broke out, and though I don’t journal or have a routine practice for writing, just starting to write and seizing ideas has still helped me very much in my recovery. I have published pieces about different relationships in my life, including one about my work in Program (that did not break my anonymity).

Without getting into outside issues, I feel like this pandemic has made me question a lot of my own ideas and self-righteousness. In the last year, I’ve worked steps eight and nine in a different fellowship, and that’s caused me to look more deeply at my relationships with others. The biggest work has been on an amends to myself, working on my avoidance of self-care and confrontation.

And others’ creative expression—in my case, my obsession is music—has been powerfully impactful for me in the last year. I have a positive music playlist on a streaming platform, with well over 300 songs added since March. While I can get stuck listening to the same music over and over, adding to my playlist has resulted in greater willingness to listen to different styles.

Regarding dating, I have had one relationship in the last year, which lasted three months. I was sober through it, but it didn’t feel healthy to me for different reasons. About six weeks ago, I deleted my dating apps, not out of sexual anorexia, but because I was getting a hit from looking at different profiles and also getting ghosted—if anything, the connections I formed on dating apps were tenuous and emotionally anorexic.

I will continue to work on forming healthier connections in dating, working through fear and anxiety, and staying sober, one day at a time.

Another area where I’m working on myself in relationships and connections with others is in detaching from others’ issues. I have people in my life who, in my view, make extremely questionable decisions about their lives, and I remind myself of something I’ve learned from others in Program: there’s my business, God’s business, and none of my business.

This is a very imperfect process, of course, as I still struggle with resentments. Maybe I can do another fourth step soon, surrendering to my Higher Power rather than to perfectionism.

But after a year in sobriety, I can rest easy knowing that my life today is a recovery miracle and that only Powers greater than myself can remove things from me that I can’t, including terminal uniqueness. Then again, SLAA is not a Program for complacency. I will continue to get better, one day at a time. 

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