I regularly attend a 12 Step meeting that asks for everyone who raises their hand to “please limit your sharing to 3 to 5 minutes”. Ironically, the sponsor who took me through the 12 Steps for the first time often told me the very same thing, but she also always added something else on to that. She’d tell me quite bluntly that anything more than 3 to 5 minutes is just going to be bullshit coming from my ego. Unfortunately, it took me a good while in recovery to figure out how right she truly was.
The fact is I used to hold most 12 Step meetings hostage that I went to by sharing for far longer than 3 to 5 minutes. Usually those shares were either about my drama I was still creating in life or the messes I used to create during the days I got drunk or high. Sadly, I never had much in the way of hope to contribute to any of those meetings, but I never really cared because my ego liked the spotlight. And the reason why my ego liked that spotlight stemmed back to my lack of having it during all of my childhood years.
Back then, I never felt like my parents or anybody in school paid much attention to me so I grew up feeling like I didn’t matter. And my discovery of alcohol and drugs would only numb that feeling for the years I did them addictively. By the time I found sobriety from both and began to check out those 12 Step meetings, I immediately started to feel like I mattered in life because all eyes would be intently on me for each of the moments I shared in them. The downside was that I’d frequently speak for 10 minutes or more where most of what I said rarely had anything of importance to help someone else.
Thankfully, my Higher Power brought that sponsor into my life and she became the first one to tell me how much I was feeding my ego every time I shared. Although I was initially offended and carried a slight resentment towards her because of it, I eventually saw it for myself. I noticed how people would get up and go to the bathroom or even leave every time I shared. I saw how many would pull out their cell phones and play on them when I spoke. And I observed how no one ever came up to me after the meeting to thank me for any of what I had to say. The reality was that I should have spent more time listening, and not talking, in each of those 12 Step meetings I went to early on in my recovery. But I didn’t and instead I spent years droning on about my miseries of life not ever realizing it was all ego and bullshit just like my sponsor had said.
I’m rather grateful to say that’s not who I am anymore and I have to thank that former sponsor and those wise words she once told me about limiting my sharing. Because of her, I’m doing my best these days to limit it to that 3 to 5 minute rule not only because I’ve learned how to spread my experience, strength, and hope in under that amount of time, but also because I absolutely want to hear from others more so than myself.
I’m just glad I don’t allow my ego anymore to convince me otherwise, but even better, I have a lot more compassion nowadays for all those who end up holding a meeting hostage like I once did. Hopefully they too will one day learn the same invaluable lesson my sponsor once taught me, by limiting their own sharing to 3 to 5 minutes…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson