Guest Writer

Today’s blog is about one of the paradoxes in the program of ETA. I first heard the paradox “Surrender to Win” a couple of months after I started into the program of ETA. Since my sponsor has highly suggested that I ask questions instead of assuming, I asked her what it meant. Be careful doing that, though! Sponsors are prone to not only explaining something using THEIR life experience, but they also seem to enjoy taking the learning experience to a whole new level…YOUR current life experience. You can try this experiment for yourself, if you like. Call your sponsor and ask about an ETA idea you’ve heard in a meeting several times that…(admit it, now!)…you really don’t understand. Your conversation might go something like the following. (Sponsor’s words are in bold; the “sponsee’s” words are in italics).

Hey there. Just checking in and saying I’m good. Oh, and by the way, can I ask a question?

No, you can’t. You've used up your quota for the week. Besides you already did. (rolls eyes which can’t be heard over the phone)

Um, oh, yeah right. Anyway, today in a meeting, Barbie said she had been having a hard time with her mother-in-law’s nosy behavior and some jerk next to her said when he had something similar happen, he had to ‘surrender to win.’ It was really annoying because Barbie’s, like, TRIED everything. She’s made passive aggressive comments at family dinners, pretended to have a hearing problem, and even put Breathe Right strips in her Christmas stocking to give her nosy mother-in-law a clue. Barbie says nothing is working, the mother-in-law is still just as nosy as ever, and then this jerk tells Barbie to just lie down and take it?!? What kind of program is this? Are people in ETA crazy??

Well, yeah. We are. Apparently we don't like dealing straight up with our issues, either. Barbie must like being subtle with the clueless and then act stunned when they don't catch on. I wonder how many times she has done this and expected different results?

"I take it you are ticked about the 'surrender to win' comment? He’s not telling her to lie down and take it like a doormat. That’s not what ‘Surrender to Win’ means. Do you remember me talking about there being several paradoxes in ETA?

Yeah.

OK, good, because this is one of them. Now—

Wait! Do I need to write this down?

Pause. Sigh. (That’s what the sponsee hears because the sponsor is yet again rolling her eyes. If this continues, the sponsor will need new contacts because hers will have flown out of her eyes from all of this movement.)

No. This is not a lecture class in college. There won’t be a quiz. Just listen. Remember how I told you when we first started working together about ‘give it away to keep it?’ How if I want to stay active in my recovery that I have to do intense work with another alcoholic?

Yeah.

OK, well, that’s one of the paradox's. They are like that. It makes no sense initially because it doesn’t sound like it would work. Surrendering to win goes against everything, in your vast experience with therapy, you were taught to believe. (More eye rolling. The sponsor probably needs some eye drops now). When we come into the ETA program, we’re so used to pushing hard against and defying anything and anyone who upsets us. We want everything and everyone else to change change to our liking. We have to cease fighting everyone and everything. Surrendering means giving control of the situation over to your Higher Power. It doesn’t mean giving control to the person or situation you’re frustrated with. You stop trying to change the situation and person by your own sheer willpower and you let your Higher Power have it. You let Him know that you need something to handle the situation and you don’t know what it is. You get on your knees before you deal with the person and pray that your actions will be a gift to your Higher Power. You remind yourself that the other person has the right to be as wrong as he or she needs to be. You ask your Higher Power to be with you at all times; to protect you, insulate you…whatever feels right…when you’re dealing with this situation and you continue doing the next right thing. Do you see where this is entirely different than being a doormat or fighting?

Yeah. It seems like instead of changing the other person, you start to change. Maybe you stop trying to manipulate the other person into acting the way you think he or she should act and just let them be themselves and focus on you.

Perhaps. The point is that the situation, or the outcome, isn’t your job and now you know that. You stop trying to control it. You give it your Higher Power and let Him have it. You ask Him to give you what you need so that your actions are the next right thing, according to His purpose.

(There’s a silence as the sponsee considers this). So, does it work?

No. I'm tricking you and setting you up to be humiliated. pause as sponsee roles her eyes. Of course it works! But like most things in this program, it doesn’t happen overnight.

If you’re like me, you think the above conversation is pretty cool. Sounds great in theory, right? Well, if you have a sponsor like mine, you will discover that this conversation is only Part I of the “lesson.” Your sponsor will wait—sometimes days, sometimes months—until you have a situation in your life where this can be applied. This is a program of action after all. We in ETA had spent many years rolling ideas around in our brains like mental gobstoppers before we started working a program of recovery.

Several weeks later, I called my sponsor because I was about to either slap my boss or just quit my job. This was an ongoing stressor for me in my early sobriety and my sponsor and I spent many hours working together on my work/boss issues so I could behave in a sober manner…and not end up drunk at the end of the day. She had me doing all sorts of stupid things and saying all these prayers throughout the day. She would change the things and prayers every time I called her. Little by little, small things began to shift. Maybe I’ll tell that story a little more in detail here sometime.

For now, let me just say that I wasn’t exactly thrilled when my sponsor told me that THIS was how I was applying ‘Surrender to Win’ in my life. I much prefer learning these things when they happen to someone else, like Barbie and her mother-in-law. Don’t we all?

Have a good and sober day.