About 12-step Recovery Meetings:
12-step recovery is an anonymous program, and respects the confidentiality of its members at all times. 12-step recovery programs are not a medical or psychiatric service, nor does it provide personal or family counseling. Leadership of group meetings rotates and is non-professional. The leader's function is simply to conduct the meeting, not to serve as an authority. Our meetings are structured to assist individuals who want to achieve and maintain emotional health by understanding and utilizing the Twelve Steps of the Anonymous 12-step program choosen in their daily lives. 12-step recovery programs provide a warm and accepting group setting in which to share experiences without fear of criticism. Through weekly support meetings, members discover they are not alone in their struggles. We may each have different symptoms, but the underlying emotions are the same or similar. What is said in a 12-step recovery meeting, stays in that 12-step recovery meeting....that is the ANONYMOUS part of it where the confidentiality of all the attendees of a meeting is respected at all times.
| 12-step recovery meeting basic concepts: - We attend 12-step recovery meetings to learn how to live a new way of life through the twelve-step programs which consists of Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, concepts, the Serenity Prayer, slogans, Just for Todays, program literature, weekly meetings, telephone and personal contacts, and living the program one day at a time. We do not come for another person — we come to help ourselves and to share our experiences, strength, and hope with others.
- We are experts only on our own stories, how we try to live the program, how the program works for us, and what the program has done for us. No one speaks for any 12-step recovery program as a whole.
- We respect anonymity (no questions are asked). We aim for an atmosphere of love and acceptance. We do not care who you are or what you have done. You are welcome.
- We do not judge; we do not criticize; we do not argue. We do not give advice regarding personal or family affairs.
- 12-step programs are not a sounding board for continually reviewing our miseries, but a way to learn to detach ourselves from them. Part of our serenity comes from being able to live at peace with unsolved problems.
- We never discuss religion, politics, national or international issues, or other belief systems or policies. 12-step programs have no opinion on outside issues.
- 12-step programs are a spiritual based program, not a religious program. We do not advocate any particular belief system.
- The steps suggest a belief in a Power greater than ourselves. This can be human love, a force for good, the group, nature, the universe, God, or any entity a member chooses as a personal Higher Power.
- We utilize the program (we do not analyze it). Understanding comes with experience. Each day we apply some part of the program to our personal lives.
- We have not found it helpful to place labels on any degree of illness or health. We may have different symptoms, but the underlying emotions are the same or similar. We discover we are not unique in our difficulties and illnesses.
- Each person is entitled to his or her own opinions and may express them at a meeting within the guidelines of the 12-step programs. We are all equal (no one is more important than another).
- Part of the beauty and wonder of the 12-step programs are that at meetings we can say anything and know it stays there. Anything we hear at a meeting, on the telephone, or from another member is confidential and is not to be repeated to anyone which includes other program members, mates, families, relatives or friends.
Codependentschat Group Guidelines CoDA 12-steps CoDA Meetings (face-to-face overview) |
Our main purpose for this community is: to carry its message to other codependents who still suffer. (# 5 of the Twelve Tradtions -- listed below)
The Twelve Traditions of Co-Dependents Anonymous
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon CoDA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority: a loving Higher Power as expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for membership in CoDA is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.
4. Each group should remain autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or CoDA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose: to carry its message to other codependents who still suffer.
6. A CoDA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the CoDA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim.
7. Every CoDA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Co-Dependents Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. CoDA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. CoDA has no opinion on outside issues; hence, the CoDA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
