When people come to you for sponsorship, you show them the programme, help them get their stepwork right, and offer course corrections.
The second element involves challenging the individual's perception and interpretation of the past and present.
The third element involves making suggestions about conduct, whether positive (do this) or negative (don't do that).
It would be lovely if the programme and life were so entirely separate that one could discuss the former without touching the latter.
The programme is a set of principles that have meaning only when applied to life, however.
Showing someone how to apply the programme necessarily entails discussion of the individual's life.
The book Alcoholics Anonymous repeatedly advises us that the people we are trying to help are very ill.
Put these three phenomena together—challenge, suggestion, and the individual's illness—and you've got the potential for an absolute shitstorm (that's a technical term), with all sorts of disordered and disruptive behaviour. It's very easy to get dragged in, as a sponsor, and to become co-culpable for the shitstorm.
Fortunately, only a minority of sponsorship relationships turn into shitstorms. As with real storms, one can predict the conditions in which they are more likely to arise, and politely redirect the person to someone more suitable, but when and where such storms will arise is in the lap of the gods. I continue, occasionally, to be surprised.
Here's how I act as a sponsee:
- I don't have to be in AA. It's my choice.
- I don't have to go to a particular group. It's my choice.
- I don't have to have a particular sponsor. It's my choice.
- I don't have to take on board anything anyone says.
- I don't have to do anything anyone says.
- I can leave the sponsorship relationship whenever I want.
As a sponsor, I keep much more of a cool, formal distance than I used to. I'm very quick to point out to the sponsee that they might be better off with another sponsor, sometimes at the first sign of resistance. If resistance repeats and escalates, I end the relationship. This does open one up to accusations of being unapproachable, indifferent, or dismissive. However, this is better than the alternatives flowing from excessive involvement. You really can't win. So pick the not winning with the minimal collateral damage.
The few occasions where structural resistance is overcome are outweighed by the many cases in which a vast amount of time is spent trying and failing to overcome it. When the person does overcome it, it's almost invariably with someone else.
It's worth noting that some people actively construct situations in which they feel hard done by in order to have a bogeyman to pin their problems on. With these people, there's nothing that can be done. Spot it and move on ASAP.