Parejas

Welcome to the Step Study Group we are _________ in recovery with ____________ and _________ in recovery with ____________. We are your leaders for this meeting.

We hope you will find in this Fellowship the help and friendship we have been privileged to enjoy. Let's open the meeting with a moment of silence, followed by the Serenity Prayer. In this group, the Serenity Prayer uses the words weand us."

God grant us the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

Now is the time we introduce ourselves as couples I'm __________ in recovery with ______ and I'm ____________ in recovery with ___________________.

Would someone please read the 12 steps.

THE TWELVE STEPS OF RCA

1. We admitted wewere powerless over our relationship and that our life together had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to commitment and intimacy.

3. We made a decision to turn our wills and our life together over to the care of God as we understood God.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our relationship together as a couple.5. We admitted to God, to each other, and to another couple the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character, communication, and caring.

7. We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. We made direct amends to such peoplewherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it to our partner and to others we had harmed.

11. We sought through our common prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry thatout.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to other couples, and to practice these principles in all aspects of our lives, our relationship, and our families

Would someone please read the safety guidelines:

RCA Safety Guidelines

Anonymity and mutual respect of boundaries are essential to providing a healing experience for eachof us. We meet to both receive and provide the nurturing our relationship needs to grow and endure. Our purpose is not to give advice or try to fix one another, but rather to create a safe environment in which we can support each other through the sharing of our experience, strength, hope, pain and joy.

Most of us have had great difficulty establishing our boundaries, assertiveness, andpersonal space, and we are, therefore, sensitive to “cross talk”. For that reason, it is important for us to act and speak respectfully to our partners and others. As we do this, we value the group and the relationships within it.

We have found that:

1. It is OK to have feelings, and to express them, clearly and respectfully.

2. It is OK to make mistakes, and to make appropriate amends.

3. Itis OK to disagree, and to use a conflict-resolution plan.

4. It is OK to have needs, and to ask politely for them to be heard.

5. It is important that we avoid taking or sharing another person's inventory, or using statements that are baiting, button-pushing, case-building, self-righteous, or judgmental. We use "I statements" to help us each take individual responsibility for our feelingsand thoughts, and to avoid blame

6. It is important that we each work on our own individual recovery, to support our couple recovery. We learn to forgive, remembering that resentment hurts us, our coupleship, and our partner, and we learn the healing power of compassion, as well.

7. It is important also to respect ourselves and to avoid "self- pity" or "self put-downs." It is helpful to...