Mentoring Lessons from 12-Step Recovery: Making It Work for You

Mentoring has been practiced for millennia. It’s a fantastic way to build community, groom new leaders, forge ties between various groups, pass on institutional knowledge and culture, and feel connected to others. I’ve learned a ton about both being mentored and being a mentor in 12-step recovery through what’s called “sponsorship” in recovery. The most basic model of sponsorship in recovery is that you “find someone who has what you want and ask how s/he got it.” If the conversation goes well, you ask them to be your sponsor, and if they say yes, they take you through the 12 steps.

In some 12-step recovery programs, people are told that if someone asks, “Will you sponsor me?” you must say yes. As a former people-pleaser and rescuer, that doesn’t work for me. I’d have 50 sponsees if that was the case! So the main message I have for you here is:

Whatever mentoring relationship you get into, it needs to work for YOU!

It doesn’t matter if that’s a sponsorship relationship in 12-step recovery, career mentorship, spiritual mentorship, or a right-of-passage program. If the mentoring relationship doesn’t feel right to you, you don’t have to stay in it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the mentor or the mentee. You get to be in a mentoring relationship that fits you, feels right, and you’re getting something substantial out of it.

I’m going to share my experience of sponsoring and being sponsored with some recommendations. Just as with everything I share, take what you want and leave the rest. My way is right for me, it might not be right for you.

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Recommendations about mentoring relationships

If you're the mentor and feeling completely drained because you have too many mentees or other responsibilities, or your mentees need more from you than you’re willing and able to give, you can let people go. You could also change the way you do things. Perhaps start a group mentoring situation. Being a mentor should enhance your life, not detract from it. If you decide to let them go, you might try to help them find another mentor.

If you’re a mentee and feel like your mentor is just not getting you, not helping you, or you feeling crappy every time you talk to them, you can let them go. It's okay to do that. It's likely that over the course of your life, you’ll have multiple mentors. Some could be in different areas of your life, some could be in different stages of your life. In fact, having a coach is much like having a mentor except that mentors are typically not paid. Sometimes people work together with the same mentor for decades, and some people go from mentor to mentor. It's an individual thing, there’s no one right way for everyone.

If you’re the mentee, you get a say in whether the person mentors you or not. If someone says, “I’m going to be your mentor” you don’t have to agree. It’s unhealthy for people to foist their help onto others. We get to consent to whatever types of help we accept.

Getting started with mentoring

In choosing who might be your mentor, it’s good to look for someone who has the kind of life you want. This could be the kind of career, family, spiritual life, or recovery that you want. Whatever the area is that you’re seeking mentorship, they should be doing well in a way that you admire. When you find someone like that, speak to them and tell them what you admire about them, and ask if they’d be willing to be your mentor. Consider trying it out on a temporary basis, which might be best for both of you to get started. It will also be easier to let the relationship go if necessary when you start with an understanding that it’s temporary.?

Whether you decide to try out the mentorship temporarily or on a longer-term basis, perhaps check in at the 30-day point and again at the 90-day point to make sure it’s working for both of you. I recommend putting the onus on the mentor to do the check-in and to do it via email to make it as easy as possible for the mentee to bow out of the relationship if they choose to do that.??

Personally, I think it’s important to wait to get a mentor until you find one you really like. That way it’s much more likely to be a good match than if you just get a mentor to get a mentor. However, in 12-step recovery programs for addiction to substances like drugs or alcohol, you could possibly die if you go one more day without a sponsor. Keep that in mind.?

Take what works and leave the rest

The way the person gives you guidance is also important. You’re an adult and get to make your own decisions about how to live your life, so if someone is telling you to do something that just doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to do it. In fact, I prefer people who say things like, “Here's what I’ve tried that might work for you…” or “If I were in your shoes, here’s what I’d do…” rather than someone who says, “You need to do this.”

Think of it like this: they’ve been on this metaphorical staircase before you. They're ahead of you with a flashlight and they know which stairs creak but are still strong, which one's got a nail sticking out, and which one is broken. They're not there to tell you “You must go this way” but instead, “Here’s what I recommend” or perhaps “Here's what I've seen work in such situations.” They're there to guide you, not dictate to you.?

My personal experience

Now I’ll talk about my personal experience with sponsorship in 12-step recovery. When I met my first sponsor in OA, she said, “I’ll take you through the 12 steps, and when we're done I'm going to move on and get a new sponsee and you're going to move on and get a new sponsor.” That is, she set up the expectations for both of us from the start. That way, the entire time I worked with her, I knew it was going to end. I knew to start looking for another sponsor as we got toward the end of step 12. I found another sponsor soon after she and I finished the 12 steps.?

That person worked on something different with me using 12-step literature rather than doing the steps. But the work was still specific to the recovery program we were both in. My current sponsor and I read personal development literature together and talked about it. Sometimes it’s 12-step recovery literature, sometimes it’s not. I also share with her any difficulties I’m having and how I’m using the steps and my other recovery tools to handle things. I ask her for advice when necessary, and vent to her if it comes to that (which is less and less often as the years go by). I have a bi-weekly call scheduled with her, but if necessary, I reach out to her in between calls when I need support.

In terms of being a sponsor, I have several sponsees between my two recovery programs. In my ACA program, I’ve been working with the same sponsees for years. Once we completed the steps, we moved on to other program literature. Most of them I meet with bi-weekly at this point, though we met weekly for the first couple of years. I have one sponsee who’s taken the summer off from sponsorship work and another who’s currently on “pause” but texts me daily that she’s meditated for 10 minutes that day. That was something we both agreed would be helpful to her in her early recovery and she continues to do it. That way we’re still in touch a bit. At some point in the future, we’ll likely pick back up where we left off in the literature we were working through.?

When I started sponsoring, my sponsor told me I might sponsor 10-12 people before I finally take a sponsee all the way through the 12 steps. That was really helpful to me because I worked with people who’d dropped out of recovery, who decided our relationship wasn't working for them, or they weren't willing to do the work. Knowing that it doesn’t always work out the first time (or the second or third…) was so helpful. For me, it was my ninth sponsee that I got through all 12 steps. I had the intention of continuing to work with her after we finished the steps, but she decided to move on so I got another sponsee after in that program. The same could be true in any mentoring relationship – the relationship may not last as long as you’d hoped.

The other thing that I do in terms of how I work with my sponsees is that I have them scheduled ahead of time. If we meet weekly, it’s the same time each week. If it’s biweekly, it's the first and third or second and fourth weeks of the month on the same day and time. That’s what works for me and my sponsees. Some people gag at the idea of being the scheduled like, and that’s okay. That’s what works for me. It also ensures that I don’t lose track of any of my sponsees and that they stay in the work. If someone can't commit to being on the phone with me at a prescheduled time, I’m not the right sponsor for them. If they need to speak with me between calls, they text me to find a time to talk soon.

If you’re someone who has been around in recovery for a long time, or in a career or other position for a long time, I hope you’ll consider mentoring others. People are thirsty for connection, especially post-COVID, and this is a great way to give back to others.