What is a Sponsor?
- A person who has worked the 12 steps and is willing to help others do the same
- Has enough sobriety to have gone through the 12 steps
- A volunteer
- Provide experiences and examples from their own life
- Point the way in which they got to sobriety
- Explain how they worked each step
- Provide examples from friends in sobriety
- Offer encouragement
- Tell you what they would do, but not what you should do
What Should a Sponsor Not Do?
- Break Anonymity
- Act as a therapist, counselor or psychiatrist. They have no mental health training.
- Be an enabler.
- Impose their will
- Cross personal boundaries
- Lend money
- Borrowing money
- Criticize, Judge or Shame
- Becomeoverly active in a persons life
- Take any responsibility for the sponsee's sobriety (or lack of sobriety)
- Break confidentiality
- Neglect their own program
- Try to fix you
- Boss you around