Guideline 1 states:

Keep your sharing focused on your own thoughts and feelings, using ‘I’ and ‘Me’ statements. Limit your sharing to 3-5 minutes.

This is the basic guideline which is extended in the following way:
Using ‘I’ and ‘Me’ statements keeps us focussed on our own thoughts, feelings, and actions, allowing us to take responsibility for our own recovery. Please adhere to the 3-5 minute rule, so that everyone has an opportunity to share, and to ensure that one person doesn’t dominate the group sharing time.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think this one of the most difficult guidelines both for me and most of the participants in CR, to do.

So why is this the case? Well, to talk using ‘I’ and ‘Me’ statements just isn’t the way ‘we’ talk is it?! The phrase, “You know what I mean?” is synonymous with our speech patterns that generally speaking use ‘we’ and ‘you’ statements. But this of course is when we are having a conversation or dialogue with others.

However, this is where being in a CR open share or step study group is different. We are not engaging in a group conversation with a backward and forward response to what someone has shared. Being in a small group is our opportunity to share /speak out our thoughts, feelings, hurts, habits and hang-ups without anyone else’s comments.

It is right here in this setting, that we ‘take responsibility for our own recovery’. When I choose to say ‘I’ my heart and mind become open to the truth and reality of my life and reminds me that I am here to work on myself. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen God work in my heart and of those in the group when this happens. It is an amazing miracle of God’s continuing presence and healing power.

If you struggle with this guideline then ask God, your higher power, to help you in the moment. And do you know what? He will!