How To Pick A Sponsor

Is picking a sponsor a seemingly difficult or impossible task for you? Well get some advice on how to do it and who to pick.

Transcript

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It's time again for Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jock DeBerker, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. I wanted to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, Please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light. All right. Have a good time. Learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional. In the process of recovery there comes a time when you need some help. And one of the ways that we help each other is through what we call the 12 step, which is going out and spreading the good news. And that good news is about recovery. Right. So how do you find somebody to help you? In other words, how do you find a sponsor? Let's say you're going through the 12-step process, or if you're in some other form of recovery process, but finding a mentor, somebody that can mentor you through this process. In the 12-step process, we have sponsors. A sponsor is a person who is a guide, a leader in that recovery process for you, right? Walks you through the steps and teaches you what they know about recovery. And hopefully it's something that's useful to you in ways that you couldn't have possibly perceived that you needed help. And so the difficulty is in how do you select a sponsor? How do you find somebody? It's a question that comes up in AA, SA, OA, and Al-Anon. And the question of how do you find one is one that I get hit with all the time when I'm walking people through the process of recovery. So today I wanted to talk about how to find a sponsor. Finding a sponsor is key to your recovery, honestly. Finding a sponsor is somebody that you can rely on, count on. can depend on the person who's there for you and has been through this process of recovery themselves and they are solidly in their recovery and now they want to help. So that person is someone that makes you accountable and keeps you on track and makes it so that it's possible for you to actually get there. And finding one is a real simple process. I was getting it down for people who are trying to figure it out in a couple of sentences Really, it's you go into the rooms and you listen to the people in the room and the various people are going to be there and you pick somebody that's got five years or more of recovery. That's kind of my own standard. because that gives them enough time to be able to be in their recovery solidly, right? So there's no question about whether or not they're actually in recovery because by my estimation, somebody who's been in recovery for five years, they're there. Like they've already worked through all their stuff. So you want five years or more and you sit and you listen to people in the room that you're in and it could be any of the meetings. It doesn't have to be a meeting that you go to regularly. It can be any meeting that you just happen to be in and what you do is you look around the room and you find the person that says something that seems really wise they really smart really fully understands recovery the way that you want to be able to do it yourself right that's who you then walk up to you you say to them hey man I really like what you said in the meeting and I was wondering if you are taking sponsees it's that simple It's not complicated. This could be an extremely short podcast if I just cut it off now at five minutes and say, well, you just walk up to them and you ask them if they're taking sponsees and if they say no, then you say, okay, fine, and you go to the next one. But it's really, it's very difficult to walk up to somebody and say, hey, Would you guide me through the process right now it's at this point it's you need a sponsor so you wait and you look and you find a person that seems to be speaking your language and you really they're in a place where you would like to be that's where you would like to be where they are and they knew how to get there and they got there and so now maybe they can teach you how to get there so when you're looking for a sponsor you find somebody that seems like a good match for you and when you find that person pounce. Literally just walk up to them and ask them. Ask them if they're taking sponsees. Now, there are a series of questions that I always recommend that people ask the potential sponsor. One of them is, as I said earlier, how many years have you been in recovery? A second question is, Who's your sponsor? And interesting in the recovery community, people who are really into the community are going to know everybody else pretty much. The old timers are going to know each other. So they'll be able to tell you, yeah, this is my sponsor. That other guy was his sponsor. And there's a whole hierarchy, a flow chart of who's connected to who. And some of the meetings I've been to, they refer to each other as grand sponsor, great grand sponsor, so on. But who was your sponsor? And then another question is, what do you want me to do? Like, what do you expect me to do as your sponsee? Like, what do you want? And when they're able to tell you those things, they're going to have specific answers for them. And so when you're asking, like, what, you know, how long have you been in recovery? They're going to immediately say seven years, five years, 10 years, 15 years. How many other sponsees do you have? Like, how many people do you sponsor? And they might say, well, I have one. Or they might say, you know, I got about four or five. Now, for me, unless that person is retired from their career, I'm not sure how you can handle that. more than just a couple of sponsees as a sponsor because you're supposed to be interacting with them daily. And so I'm not sure exactly how that would work. So if they tell you they got a lot of sponsees, I'm not so sure I'd accept that one as a sponsor. However, on the other hand, they may say, well, I haven't had one before. You'd be my first. There's some good and there's some bad to that response. Now, the good thing is that they are willing to do it. They want to share. They want to spread the good news, right? So they want to spread that good news and they want to share it with you. They want to guide you. Of course, the opposite and more negative side is that they have absolutely no experience at being a sponsor. And so you're going to be the guinea pig. Now, that could be good or bad. Depends. I don't know. But like anything else, when you're seeking help, it may take you two or three or four people before you settle on your sponsor. Now, their response of, I can't take anybody on right now, or I don't accept sponsees right now, I'm not sponsoring anybody, you can't take that personally. If they say no, there's a reason, and it's not you, It's because they can't. If they are already seeing other people and guiding them as their sponsor, it's because they have too many. There may be another reason. For example, I've presented at meetings as a speaker. I don't disclose that I'm a therapist, but I do say right up front, I am not taking sponsees. I cannot sponsor anybody. They don't need to know the reason why, but I tell them that I'm not doing it. My reason for doing it is because I do it as a profession. I do counseling. It's my career. I spend all of my work hours working with clients. I just don't have it in me to do it. I wouldn't do a very good job of it because I don't have anything left to give outside of what I do professionally. If I wasn't doing this as a profession, being a therapist and dealing with addiction I probably would sponsor people but I can't so it's not the person that's asking me though and I've had people ask me I presented at one meeting and there were probably about seven people that came up to me and wanted me to be their sponsor and I had to tell them after I'd already told them at the beginning I'm not sponsoring people that I can't do it but I would you know I'd say hey look you know you need to make sure you do get a sponsor though And in that particular meeting, I happened to know three or four other people. So I said, you know what, but I know that person is right there and they would do a great job for you. So again, you don't take it personally if they say, no, I can't take you on as a sponsee. You just go to the next person. I'm fully aware of the fact that if this is your first attempt at recovery and you're being told over and over again that you have to get a sponsor, that that information is comes as a bit of a shock because that means you have to be in the program in a way that perhaps you weren't prepared to get into the program. But it also is a vulnerability thing. And you're asking somebody to question you and to probe you and to be able to um listen to them when they say you know what i think you're lying to me or to make you accountable because as you've heard in these other podcasts i talk about how the chief tool the primary tool that addicts use to defend themselves is arrogance and if somebody's asking you to be um to be honest and open you can't be arrogant or The sponsor has to be able to understand that arrogance is part of this, which they always do, and there's going to be a bunch of nonsense coming out of your mouth, but you to be able to then say, hey, I want to go through this, and I want you to help me go through this, and I'm going to listen to you and do what you tell me. That's kind of a tall order. So you can kind of get a little intimidated when you're asking, and especially if the person– that you're asking you have some level of emotional investment in because you listen to them and you really respect them and if they tell you that they can't be your sponsor it can be kind of hurtful but there is a sponsor for every single person out there you just have to find them so when you're asking don't personalize any of it but it's very difficult to ask somebody to help you especially if you feel like you're in a very bad place have the courage to do it. Have the courage to walk up to somebody and say something that you don't feel necessarily comfortable saying. Now, when you've identified a sponsor, when you've identified that person as the sponsor, and they do say yes, understand that it is a two-way relationship. In other words, you have to be able to match with them and they have to match with you. So it's a personal relationship. It's not a professional one. It's a mutual aid society, right? It's peer to peer. So you may work with them for a while, And I'm assuming, I'm hoping that you're coming from a position of actually having a therapist that you're working with outside of just going to AA. Because if you're trying to really seriously get into recovery, that's what you have to do. Because you can't self-guide through a clinical disease state. You can't treat yourself. So if you are, it's good for you to be able to tell your therapist, yeah, I got a sponsor. And this is what they're like, and this is what they're saying. And I'm hoping also that you are working with a therapist who is somebody who understands addiction so that when you're describing things, they can give you some feedback on what you're saying and what you're experiencing with that sponsor. But you're saying to your therapist, hey, I have a sponsor. This is what they're like. This is what they're telling me. And you can get that feedback to see if it's actually a good match for you. It may not be a good match. And sometimes there are situations, and I've run into these with some frequency as well, where the sponsor that you've gotten is one that is not a good match for you. You're finding that what they're saying to you is it's not moving you, it's upsetting you. It's not helping you, it's aggravating you. It's upsetting you in a way that is not okay. For example... you find that the sponsor you got is somebody who seems to be a little bit sarcastic, right? And they use sarcasm, but for them, sarcasm is not offensive or upsetting, but for you it is. And so you can't, you're not going to get past that. And it's okay, right? In an ideal world, when you tell a sponsor, hey, you know what? Listen, I appreciate you trying to help me, but I'm just not feeling it, man. I'm not getting the vibe here. So I want to get a different sponsor. And hopefully that sponsor, even though they're peers, right, they're not professionals, they are not going to take that personally. Some do. Some will say, oh, you're just quitting because you're just going to go out and drink. It's like, no, no, no, no. I'm here. I just I just I don't think like this is a good match. And so, you know, I want to try to find a different sponsor. Or you might just say, look, it's not working, man. I mean, however you say it, however you approach that with them is like, no, it's not working. And going out and getting another sponsor is perfectly fine. It's very much like therapy, except the person's not a therapist in that, as I tell my therapy clients, listen, you came in and saw me and I was the first sponsor or the sponsor. I was the first therapist you ran into. Yeah. I may not be the match for you. And I tell every single person that comes in to see me, I may not be a match for you, and it's okay. You can tell me. I don't take it personally. We have a difference of opinions. We have a different approach. You don't like my approach. You wanted somebody that was more focused on process than recovery, than the roots of it, whatever it is. It's fine. It's fine. As professionals, we don't take that personally. And hopefully your sponsor is not going to take that personally either. However, they may accuse you of just using that as a means to not actually get into sobriety. And that's the disproving that is when you just keep coming to the meetings. And now you're working with a different sponsor. And so that should ally those fears that that person has that you're just running away. But you can't do anything about that in the moment. You just have to, it's part of the experience. So can you leave a sponsor to go to another one? Absolutely. Sometimes the sponsor will say, listen, man, you need some more help than I can give you. I can't call you every single day. I know I should, but I can't. And I'm going to do you a disservice if I keep working with you. So what I want to do is I want you to meet Tom over here because I would like him to work with you. And it's not anything personal. It's just I can't give you the time that you need. And that's okay, too. You should not take that personally. If you're being passed from one sponsor to another, they're trying to help you. Right. I mean, he's the person's not just saying, hey, it's not working out. Go find somebody else. They're actually trying to help you. Right. They don't want you to leave. They don't want you to leave the program. They don't want you to jump out of your recovery. They're not accusing you of anything. They're just saying, look, I can't give you what you need. I thought I could, but I can't. So here here's some other here's somebody else you can talk to. You're all part of the family. And that's OK, too. But a sponsor. is somebody who is responsible for helping you, right? So the accountability part is key. And so when they say to you, hey, I expect you to call me or answer the phone when I call you at seven o'clock every morning. So I'm gonna call you at seven, you have to answer the phone. And if you don't do what they say, they're not going to continue helping you. That's their method, right? So they're going to call you every day at 7 in the morning. They're going to chit-chat for five minutes and do a check-in. And then they expect you to meet with them once a week to actually do the recovery work and do the steps. And, hey, I want you to make sure you're coming to our meeting, yours and mine. That's your home meeting now. So I want you to come to that meeting. But you also need to go to other meetings or whatever, right? So they become part of the team and the process of recovery for you because that's what help looks like. Now, if you are starting off in recovery, all of this sounds very foreign and intrusive in your life. True, but so is your use of drugs and alcohol or whatever your substance that you're abusing or behavior that you're engaging in. It also is intrusive in your life. So you surrender to your recovery, you engage in that process fully. And that's part of the recovery process for you. That's how it works. So it is absolutely key to identifying somebody that can act as a sponsor. You're not going to do it in the first meeting. You're not gonna necessarily find them in the first week or maybe even a month. But if you've been going to meetings, and you don't ever get a sponsor, it's been three, four months, and you go to meetings two, three, four, five times a week, and you don't have a sponsor, you're actually not doing what you're supposed to do in recovery. So you have to make sure you get a sponsor, right? Don't be afraid. And I'm sure that if you ask people, hey, how did you find your sponsor in the meetings, in the rooms that you go to? You'll get answers. You'll absolutely get answers and they will be helpful. So don't be afraid. Don't be a coward. Really get into recovery the right way. So if you're doing step work, you're going to get there. If you're just going to meetings and you're not doing anything else, You're never going to get there. Trust me. You just won't. Oh, man. So that's an episode already gone. So go out there and get a sponsor and start working on recovery. If you are in need of help, you can reach out to me. I'll give you some friendly advice. And if you are in need of a higher level of help, hey, go check into rehab. Go to a doctor. See a specialist in recovery and addiction. Because it's not worth ending your life to save your addiction. Go the other way and that addiction get your life back so you can be sane stable and sober for everybody around you you know the best part about recovery is you get to experience life again you get to like live so go out there and get into recovery and I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Doc Jacques your addiction lifeguard and until next time this is Doc Jacques saying see ya