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Miracles In Progress 12 Step Recovery Forums -> Step Work -> Step Work -> SLAA third step
Post Info TOPIC: SLAA third step
drheathrann


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Posts: 18
Date:
SLAA third step
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Hi, my name is Heather, and I am a grateful recovering sex and love anorexic and romance, fantasy, and love addict. I am addicted to hopeless relationships with unavailable people.


I know the board has already moved on to step 5, but I am "catching up" after a few weeks of being too busy to work on the boards....


I have worked various twelve step programs twenty years since I was 18... but not in the last ten to twelve years. I am having a really different experience with the steps since beginning to work the SLAA program. At my very first meeting, I was given a small pocket-size pamphlet "Pocket Toolkit: You Are Not Alone." Among other things, it mentioned the importance of asking our Higher Power every morning for help to avoid our bottom line(s) just for that day and to thank our Higher Power for that help every night. Though I wasn't used to this kind of prayer, I had hit bottom, being hospitalized in a psychiatric institution for ten days, and I am now ready to do anything that works, anything my program tells me to do to be restored to sanity. So even though I am frequently advised in other settings NOT to pray for myself (only for others) and even though I have been in the habit of praying as a constant ongoing conversation with God, I started to do this as soon as I read it. But I wasn't really sure what to pray for, because in SLAA, the bottom line is different for everyone. All the SLAA literature and meetings are very clear that some of the first work we have to do is figure out our bottom line(s) -- whatever we must avoid in order to stay sober. It took a lot of work on my first step, writing it out for the first time, about twenty handwritten pages, before I finally figured out what my bottom lines are right now. After going through my first step, I wrote down nine bottom lines and eleven top lines (what I must do to stay sober), and now I pray for my Higher Power's help, on my knees, out loud, with each bottom and top line just for today. I only found out today that this is the Third Step prayer! It took me almost two months in the program to get this done, but I am grateful that I have been able to ask my HP for help in this specific way each day this week and continued to express more general gratitude at night.


Thank you, everyone, for being here and helping me work through and reflect on these steps!


Dear Lord, please help me not to hunt for "Mr. Right" just for today


Just for today, please help me not to date until and unless I am working the twelve steps of SLAA with a sponsor and engaged in service with my home group.


Just for today, please help me not to self-disclose my issues in an exhibitionistic and self-seeking, attention-seeking way.


Just for today, please help me not to drink alcohol on a date or hang out on a date after 10 p.m. and to remember that drinking and fatigue lower my inhibitions and boundaries.


Just for today, please help me not to give in to wallowing in despair, hanging onto "the dark drama," rejecting all possibility of hope and the positive.


Just for today, please help me not to continue to rage over past hurts, especially at innocent bystanders. Help me not to "take hostages."


Just for today, please help me not to use negative thinking as an armor against vulnerability, hope, and uncertainty.


Just for today, please help me not to isolate.


Just for today, please help me to be in contact with at least one person and to linger at social gatherings.


Just for today, please help me to go to at least one face to face home group meeting this week.


Just for today, please help me to pray my third step prayer in the morning and at night.


Just for today, please help me to give people a chance and to put people before activities and tasks.


Just for today, please help me stay grounded in my body.


Just for today, please help keep my feet firmly on the ground and breathe through stress, anxiety, urges to act out my addiction or act in my anorexia.


Just for today, please help me to be gentle and loving with myself and to fulfill my basic needs.


Just for today, please help me to focus on the steps and my program.


Just for today, please help me to feel my feelings of sadness without wallowing in them.


Just for today, please help me to see men as fellow human beings, not as potential partners or perpetrators.


Just for today, please help me just be myself.



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Heather
amanda2u2


Senior Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 228
Date:
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Heather, I'm so glad to have access to the SLAA program too...        please don't think you have to 'catch up' and do the back steps...  cuz we will be cycling around again later.  Please put up an excerpt from the SLAA Steps that goes with the one that we are doing.  do you have a book? what kind of resources do you have for it? This is actually an important program and might be useful to establish a section on it if we can. I have attended a few meetings of SA a few years ago.


Thanks for pitching in.


If all our Step 1's are together,,, and Step 2's,,,  it makes it easier for people who come in to browse to find the Step they are looking for.


Gotta go for now.


amanda



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do your best and God does the rest, a Step at a time
drheathrann


Member

Status: Offline
Posts: 18
Date:
Permalink  

sorry -- at the time i posted this, i thought people were just beginning the fourth step so i didn't think i was that far behind. i will try to post excerpts from the slaa book online going with the step we're on. (the fifth step now from what john tells me.) thanks

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Heather
manuelcherri


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Posts: 9
Date:
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oh my god :o

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