As many of you know, this AA group (Get Up, Get Out, Get Sober) has an interest in emotional sobriety. Bill W describes emotional sobriety in the Twelve & Twelve as a key objective stating “we practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety (12/12 p.106).
During the month of February 2026, all 4 Saturday morning meetings will be devoted to discussions about key building blocks for Emotional Sobriety. The topics will build on each other; so it would be great if you could attend all 4 meetings in Saturday. Each week I’ll make additions to this post with updates for the upcoming week. Even if you’ve never attended this meeting, you are welcome to join us for this February discussion on Emotional Sobriety.
The purpose of this article is to provide background and resources to support these February meetings. As you may also know, we have a whole section of the website devoted to Emotional Sobriety. We also have complimentary sections of the website devoted to exploring closely related topics of Toxic Shame and Healing Our Jekyll/Hyde Divided Self.
Meeting #5 Emotional Sobriety Worksheet
Meeting Invitation – Tomorrow we will finish our now 5 week discussion about Emotional Sobriety as we review an article about doing an ‘Emotional Sobriety Worksheet’. I believe this exercise will be a great way to see first hand how we manufacture misery as we place unrealistic demands and expectations upon others, our life circumstance and/or ourselves. If you want to get a head start on this, read the article and listen to the first 20 minutes of the YouTube talk. Take any situation that has come up recently in your life where you have felt disturbed and see if you can apply this worksheet to it. You can download and print out the worksheet from the article.
Our format will be a little different. We will use a 20 minute talk from Dr. Allen Berger as the basis for our sharing. We should be done with listening to his talk about how to use this worksheet he created by 8am. We will then use the rest of our time together for you to share your thoughts and perhaps insights about this worksheet. We will go over 4 columns of this worksheet tomorrow as we take real life circumstances and ask ourselves these questions:
1 Describe What Happened – Describe an upsetting event in very specific detail. Do not get into any commentary about why this happened or what it means … just recount the facts very specifically.
2 Describe Your Reaction – How did you respond to this disturbance? What did it mean to you? What did it say about you? What did this situation reflect about your own sense of who you are?
3 Identify Your Expectation – To identify your expectation simply complete this sentence “What they should have done or what was supposed to happen was ”
4 Identify Your Unhealthy Dependence – The unhealthy dependence that is underlying my reaction is ________”.
I would like to record this session tomorrow so please let me know if you’re uncomfortable with having your sharing included in this recording.
Here is a a link to the article that you can also find in the #Today category on the gugogs.org home page. I hope you’ll join us and participate in this revealing exercise!!!
Meeting Introduction – This is our 5th and final meeting in our Emotional Sobriety Series that began in early February. Today we get very practical in learning how to use an Emotional Sobriety Worksheet to help us discover ‘our part’ in perhaps the many emotional disturbances (that sense of being off balance and out of proportion) we experience each day.
As we do this , I’d like us to begin again with the ‘Set Aside Prayer’ as we consider this possibility that each of us has a spiritual center and essence of who we truly are … an unsuspected inner resource , a place of neutrality, a newfound Friend to help us regain our equilibrium and see our lives with greater curiousity , compassion and clarity …and with this we have a foundation that can move beyond attempting to treat ourselves and others as objects to create outcomes into subjects full of sources of limitless expansion and growth (and adventure).
After this prayer, we will go immediately into a 20 minute talk from Dr. Allen Berger who has over 50 years of sobriety , is a Gestalt therapist specializing in addiction, and the author of the book “12 Essential Insights For Emotional Sobriety. He’s also the creator of this worksheet. You should see and be able to download the worksheet from the article we’re using today.
Meeting #5 Emotional Sobriety Worksheet & Meeting Recording
Call Summary – The meeting introduces the emotional sobriety worksheet and its connection to Step 4/10 of recovery. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing emotional dependence and its impact on relationships, highlighting the need for self-awareness and humility. In his talk, Dr. Berger encourages participants to use an emotional sobriety inventory to identify specific instances of emotional dependence and their reactions to them.
The discussion focused on identifying unhealthy dependencies and demands in relationships. A specific example was given of a man who expected his partner to celebrate his sobriety milestone, highlighting his need for external validation. This led to a broader conversation about how expectations and demands can alienate partners and hinder emotional sobriety.
Troy shared his journey of sobriety, emphasizing the importance of doing it for oneself rather than seeking external validation. Caroline discussed the concept of “what is my part?” and how it relates to emotional autonomy, seeking clarification on the latter. Jim shared his experience with the emotional sobriety inventory, highlighting the importance of accepting others’ choices and practicing humility.
Bruce discussed the tendency to treat people as objects in an attempt to create outcomes and the opportunity emotional sobriety gives to experience room for two … enough for you and enough for me … and with this self acceptance and empathy how we experience ourselves and other as subjects (no longer objects).
Meeting #5 Background Materials
Revolutionary! How Step 10 Suggests A Novel Response Ability When We’re Disturbed
Step 10 – Make A U-Turn As We Seek To Understand Our Part(s) In A Disturbance
If You Spot It You Got It – How We Distort Reality With The ‘Blind Spot’ Of Our Projections
Changing The Way We See In Our 4th Step
Meeting #4 Healthy Relationships
Room for you and room for me – what does that look like … and how is that contrasted to the lack of true partnership where we feel compelled to dominate or hide ourselves from others? Why are my relationships so painful and how am I manufacturing my own relationship misery with unrealistic demands and expectations that others give me what I can’t seem to give myself? How do we change these relationships where we are trying to kill our pain to ones where we learn to heal it? Can it be true that healing unfolds not by escaping our lives but meeting them more fully with curiosity and compassion as we find clarity about ourselves and empathy for others? What role does a Higher Power play here?
The theme for this session is “healthy relationships”. I want to challenge us to explore how we are short changing ourselves … how we can learn to nourish and enlarge our relationships as we learn to make room for ourselves and room for the other. This requires us to practice what the Big Book (p.568 – Spiritual Experience) describes as three indispensable principles … honesty, open mindedness, and willingness. We can move beyond blaming and complaining about others as well as self condemnation and self pity with ourselves. To facilitate and hopefully harden a tangible way of practicing this ; we will be introduce you to an ‘emotional sobriety worksheet’ in this session.
I also want us to recall the Power we have access to when we can find this ‘place of neutrality’ (BB p.83,84 ) within us … this ‘unsuspected inner resource’ (BB p.567) …this newfound Friend (BB p.13) … that is no longer attached to a particular outcome but honest, open and willing to uncover, discover and discard what is not true and encounter this possibility that the ‘truth will set us free’.
Like so much of our recovery, this process of experiencing more healthy relationships needs to begin with us practicing rigorous honesty and letting go of this old story that we are hopeless victims to external conditions that ‘make us feel’ and act in old, destructive patterns like resentment, jealousy, and self pity.
Let’s begin with this article ‘The Light Of Rigorous Honesty Overcomes The Darkness of Victimhood’.
Next, we going to read this short article entitled ‘Emotional Sobriety In Relationships’
And finally, we’re going to listen to about 20 minutes of a talk about using the ‘Emotional Sobriety Worksheet’ from its author, Dr. Allen Berger.
Whatever remaining time we can spend in sharing although I don’t expect that we will have much time for that.
Meeting #4 Healthy Relationships Recording
Call Summary – Bruce M. discusses the importance of healthy relationships and the challenges of appeasement and passive-aggressive behavior in intimate relationships. They emphasize the need for honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness to foster true partnerships, drawing from the 12 and 12 and the concept of an “unsuspected inner resource.” The session aims to explore how to nourish relationships by making room for oneself and others, moving beyond blame and self-condemnation.
Rigorous honesty is crucial for recovery from addiction, as it helps overcome victimhood and resentment. The article “Victim Narratives and Radical Honesty” by Anthony Robinson highlights the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions and facing character defects. By practicing honesty and self-reflection, individuals can improve their relationships and achieve a sense of fairness and order.
In Dr. Bergers’s article goes on to discuss the importance of healthy relationships in recovery, emphasizing the need for emotional sobriety and self-acceptance. It highlights the pitfalls of emotional dependency and the importance of preserving individuality within a partnership. The author encourages introspection and forgiveness to achieve emotional well-being and healthy relationships.
Meeting #4 Background Materials
Breaking My Pattern of Appeasement & Passive Aggressive Behavior
False Pride & Self Centered Fear
Introduction For Meeting #3 On Self Acceptance
We continue with our theme of Emotional Sobriety with a focus on self acceptance.
Self-acceptance is about embracing who we are now, not holding ourselves hostage to a perceived, ideal version of who “I should be’. I can trace many of my character defects/defaults to threats to the ‘make believe’ I’ve created of who ‘I should be’. We can all relate to how stuck we remain as alcoholics with the old idea that ‘I should be able drink like everyone else’ rather than accepting the truth that for me ‘one is too many and a thousand is not enough’. Our journey in self acceptance is about discovering the truth of who we are not continuing to pretend to be someone we aren’t.
We’ll cover key takeaways like:
1. Self acceptance is not complacency: It’s the starting point for growth, not a resignation to stay the same.
2. It’s an antidote to our war within: It helps us resolve the internal battle against our own thoughts, feelings, and experiences as we ‘move toward’ these conflicts with curiosity not judgement or self condemnation.
3. It connects us to mature responses ability and emotional balance : When we accept who we are, we have the clarity of a firm foundation, with God’s help, to make different choices … to see how the abyss of our self centered fear of our own unworthiness can never be filled by people, places and things … it’s an inside job which calls for an ‘unsuspected inner resource’.
I hope you’ll join us tomorrow as we read through the document linked below and discuss this crucial topic.
Meeting #3 7:30am Saturday February 21st 2026
Self Acceptance (Linked Article)
Recording of Meeting #3
Call Summary – The discussion focuses on self-acceptance, highlighting signs of low self-acceptance such as negative self-evaluation, experiential avoidance, constant self-criticism, and rule-governed behavior. The speaker emphasizes the importance of accepting oneself, including flaws and imperfections, as a starting point for personal growth and change. Dr. Berger’s definition of perfectionism is shared, describing it as the expectation of doing things perfectly rather than the act of doing things perfectly.
The text emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance in recovery, highlighting the need to let go of control and embrace spiritual values like honesty and patience. It discusses the concept of the “false self,” formed from internalized societal expectations, and how this can hinder true self-discovery and acceptance. The author stresses that self-acceptance is the foundation for emotional sobriety and a fulfilling life.
Self-acceptance is a crucial step in recovery, requiring the admission of powerlessness and the recognition of one’s true self. It involves embracing authenticity, integrity, and honesty, challenging the false self built on unrealistic expectations. This journey towards self-acceptance is ongoing, demanding honesty and self-awareness to overcome resistance and achieve emotional sobriety.
Meeting #3 Background Materials
Applying St Francis Prayer To Inside Job Of Reconciliation & Healing Audio
Perfectionism Amplifies Self Hatred Video
Self Acceptance And The Twelve Steps
The Essential To Recovery Of Self Acceptance
Practicing Tolerance And Self Acceptance
Self Acceptance As We Respond Differently To Our ‘Should Monster’
Self Acceptance – Let Us Love You Until You Can Love Yourself
Understanding Relapse By Addresssing Shame
Homework From Meeting #1 To Prepare For Meeting #2 (The Power of Pause)
Take a situation where you find yourself off balance / disturbed and rather than blaming, complaining or condemning … take the energy of your judgment along with the Set Aside Prayer and see if u can practice curiousity/courage to reveal what your part in the disturbance might be. Look for demands or unrealistic expectations that u might be placing on others, a situation or yourself.
Take a minute to write down what making this U turn from judgement to curiosity has made u conscious of that perhaps u didn’t realize and share it with the group on Saturday February 14th.
Meeting #2 7:30am Saturday February 14th 2026
Recording of Meeting #2
Call Summary – The meeting begins with a prayer and a reading about the power of pause and emotional sobriety. The reading emphasizes the importance of acknowledging emotional imbalance, recognizing contradictions within oneself, and reframing imbalance as an opportunity for growth. It encourages participants to explore their inner resources, discover their “second voice,” and accept themselves and life as it is.
The text discusses the importance of acknowledging and accepting internal contradictions as a natural part of self-understanding and growth. It emphasizes the need to avoid self-condemnation and instead recognize the complexity and potential within oneself. The text also highlights the value of facing pain, uncertainty, and hard work as opportunities for growth and change, rather than avoiding them.
Alcoholism is a complex issue intertwined with selfishness, pride, and fear. By appealing to a higher power and embracing a spiritual program, individuals can find a place of neutrality, free from the struggle with alcohol. This spiritual awakening leads to a profound change in attitude and behavior, resulting in a natural aversion to alcohol and a focus on helping others.
Meeting #2 Background Materials
A Novel Response Ability When We’re Disturbed
Discovering What Is Innate And Healing Within
4th Step/10th Worksheet & Video
An Unsuspected Inner Resource – By Dan H
Spiritual Experience Appendix 2 pages 567/568
Meeting #1 7:30am Saturday February 7th 2026
Waking Up To Emotional Sobriety
Questions covered will be ‘What Is Emotional Sobriety’, ‘How Do Our Dependencies And Outcome Demands Impact Emotional Sobriety, and How Do Our Emotions Impact Emotional Sobriety
Recording Of Meeting #1
Call Summary – The meeting focused on the concept of emotional sobriety, defined as a state of mental balance and maturity. Participants explored the idea of using the “best” parts of oneself to lead the rest, drawing from concepts like the “8 Cs” (compassion, curiosity, courage, etc.) and the “5 Ps” (presence, perspective, etc.). The discussion also touched on the importance of maturity, emphasizing emotional intelligence, responsibility, self-control, and acceptance as key aspects.
Bruce discusses the concept of “character defaults,” behaviors we default to when threatened, and how moving away from judgment towards curiosity can lead us to new answers grounded in emotional sobriety. The discussion emphasized the importance of accepting life’s challenges and finding meaning in them, rather than projecting and imposing unrealistic expectations and creating misery on these challenges. Bruce also highlights the negative impact of perfectionism and grandiosity on emotional well-being.
Addison shared insights from Dr. Alan Berger’s book, “12 Essential Insights for Emotional Sobriety,” highlighting the importance of finding emotional centeredness within oneself. Addison emphasized the need to detach from external influences and recognize one’s own value, leading to greater peace and serenity. Margaret also contributed, discussing the impact of childhood experiences on emotional sobriety and the role of a higher power in the healing process.
Emotional sobriety is impacted by dependencies and outcome demands, which are often masked by false pride and self-centered fears. Bill W. describes the need to cut away these dependencies to experience true love and freedom, as exemplified by Saint Francis.
Meeting #1 Background Materials
- Emotional Sobriety Video By Dr. Allen Berger (30 minutes) … if you have to prioritize one background action; this would be my choice.
- Living Life On Life’s Terms Video By Dr. Allen Berger (45 minutes)
- Bill W January 1958 Grapevine Article – The Next Frontier Emotional Sobriety
- No One Is Coming
- False Pride & Self Centered Fear
- Facing Our Fears
- 12 Essential Insights For Emotional Sobriety – certainly not required but this is an excellent book that is the source material for much of what we will be covering in these meetings
4 thoughts on “Emotional Sobriety – 7:30am Saturdays In February – Resources & Background Information”