“The Fine Line of Compassion”

Sometimes, it seems to me that the real miracle of the program is that anyone gets helped at all. I think about how it’s true, there is no better help for someone suffering from this disease than someone else who has been through it and has found the way out. Then I think about how we are all self-centered egotists doing our best to not be what we are, to not give in to the warped instincts our disease has wrought. I’ve been to plenty of meetings where it truly felt like the blind leading the blind.

Add to that how so many of us deal with codependence issues. We have what could be described as a compulsion to help others. Partially, it’s because we see suffering and are sympathetic, having been there ourselves. Sometimes, it’s because we have control issues and want to do anything we can to make things better. I’ve known people who have driven themselves right back to insanity by taking on too much service. I’ve known others who have helped the wrong person and ended up in real danger.

It can be confusing. Step Twelve is all about being of service, about helping others. But how can you help someone who doesn’t want to be helped? You can’t. Recovery is for people who want it, not people who need it. If all someone does is shows up to meetings, then that’s all the help they want. When someone starts making calls, looking for a sponsor, then there is more willingness there. They’re ready to work the steps. I can’t make anyone else work their steps--and I certainly can’t work the steps for them. Some sage advice I was once given: don’t waste your time trying to help someone who isn’t ready; find someone who is.

Willingness can come and go, too. I struggled through working my steps--especially the first time. Steps four and eight I remember being particularly difficult. Having a good sponsor helps the process a lot. Even with a good sponsor, though, there are plenty of times where you might not want to hear what they’re saying. God knows I have those moments. There are times, too when sponsors are wrong. It doesn’t mean someone is a bad sponsor, or a bad sponsee, just that we’re all human beings. We all have failings; none of us are perfect. There are going to be rough patches because that is just part of living life. If Recovery were easy, everyone would do it.

One of the best parts of the sponsor/sponsee relationship can be the support each gives the other. A sponsee can find the courage to open up to someone safe who knows exactly what they’re talking about. A sponsor can get the satisfaction of giving back what was so freely given to them. Usually there is an empathy there, and (ideally) a sense of compassion. Compassion can take many forms, though, and not all of them look like compassion at first. Sometimes that ‘tough love’ comes into play, and that can be difficult to understand. I shared in a meeting over the weekend about how much I appreciate that my sponsor never hesitates to beat me over the head with something I don’t want to look at. And when I’m in denial, I depend on my friends in the program to call me on my shit because I can’t see it--I’m busy being stuck in it.

Some sponsors are harsh. They don’t take any lip, to use an old phrase. “Be of service--go make coffee,” and if the sponsee protests, they say, “do it or go get loaded.” Because that’s really what it comes down to in this program: we’re either moving toward our next drink or fix, or moving away from it. All the middle crap can be cut out very neatly. Either work the program, or go back out there and die. It really is that simple. It might not always seem like it, but it is. The NA literature is very specific about this. Our disease, if untreated, always leads to the same three places: jails, institutions, or death. You can find it in the Big Book of AA as well. For so many people, this is the crux of hitting bottom: they realize that if they keep going on in the same way, they will die; and then they realize they don’t really want to die after all. The Program offers us a solution that works.

I’m usually not that harsh with my sponsees. I do my best to have as much compassion for what they’re going through as possible. But I know, too, if I see them balking or engaging in old behaviors, it’s my job as a sponsor to hold that mirror up and show them what’s happening.

It’s a fine line to walk, acknowledging the validity of what someone might be feeling, while giving them large doses of truth to swallow. Many of us have heard the complaint, “the Program doesn’t work,” to which we muttered under our breath the reply, “that’s because you don’t work it.” Sometimes, being there means talking about your own experiences of how you’ve been through something similar and felt exactly the same way. Sometimes, being compassionate means pointing out how someone isn’t following suggestions--even if the pointing out seems harsh. Sometimes, it’s both.