Step 3: Thoughts and Feelings or Action ?

A common occurrence I have had in my recovery experience and within the fellowship of SLAA is the awareness of being consumed with thoughts and feelings.  These thoughts may include what I think about a relationship, what I think about myself thinking about the relationship and what I think and feel about my life. However, this thinking and feeling have only lead me to frustration, acting out behaviors and an addictive process.  So in recovery, my goal is to allow the higher power to come in to stop this addictive process and to let the addictive process leak its way out of my life.

However, when I first started my recovery it was important for me to identify what my thoughts and feelings were as I was often consumed with what other peoples thoughts and feelings were etc.  So this was, in fact, a good thing to be aware of and it allowed me to work through my insane thinking of inadequacy and failure and shame and bring in more positive self-affirming thoughts. However helpful this has been for my recovery and self-identity it is only useful in as much this thinking directs me to take the required action I need to maintain bottom lines, execute top-lines and be of service to those about me.  The third step gives us this guidance. When I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, this means I am turning my thoughts and my actions into gods care. The litmus of whether or not I am doing so is in the results.

For example, I can ask myself: Am I constantly fuzzing over a problem over and over and this leads to not getting things done? Am I constantly processing emotions and feeling and this leads me to outreach to everyone about it without taking any practical action? If you answered yes then more than likely, in my experience, you may be stuck in the gluttony of a thought and emotional experience vs the spiritual experience that occurs when I take action.  When I take action my thinking changes, but knowing that I have thoughts and feelings doesn’t change a thing,  and as our literature states in step 2 there is “ no such thing as a self-powered cure”.



The spiritual experience I seek to not act out today is in taking the action when I take the next indicated action I see the results of the power that will help me not act out today. In my experience the results are the priceless miracles that allow me to lead a path of emotional and sexual sobriety and enjoy happiness in my life.

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