Monthly Reflections
THE TWELVE TRADITIONS
The 12 Traditions are the guidelines by which our group and our fellowship function. They have proven over the years to be an effective way of holding the fellowship and individual groups together.
Tradition 8: Emotions Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional but our service centers may employ special workers.
Our International Service Center employs a director, an accountant, a person who does the mailing and another who manages the email communications, donor contributions and meeting information on the website. No one works more than two days per week to run the office. The members of the fellowship all serve on a volunteer basis. The trustees are reimbursed for their expenses for travel to St Paul, Minnesota, the location of the ISC, for our annual business meeting. Our fellowship includes people from all walks of life, probably every profession represented, though they do not serve in those respective roles. They are just people who came to Emotions Anonymous looking for a better way to live. And we should remain forever nonprofessional as the Tradition states...Derita P
EA is not a “professional” program because it does not offer trained professionals like counselors or therapists. In-stead, the EA fellowship gathers to listen, share, and provide mutual support. Although professionals may join the EA fellowship, they do so for their own emotional recovery, not to provide their services. As our Helpful Concepts explain, in EA “we are all equal.” While EA’s fellowship meetings are non-professional, its worldwide efforts to further the message of recovery require more time and effort than volunteers can provide. EA hires “special workers” to keep operations running smoothly through coordination, communication, literature, and outreach…Paul N
One of the most important aspects to our program is the sharing that happens in the group setting between members who have gone through similar experiences. There is a power in not only telling your story, but having it heard by other people who feel similarly to you. It is what helps us through our journey to emotional wellness. In this spirit, we do not seek professionals at our meetings to help manage this experience. Many of us seek professional help with doctors outside of the meetings, but the meetings are a separate and independently powerful part of our emotional healing...Steve B
Tradition 7 reminds us that although we need basic funding to keep the International Service Center staffed and running and pay basic group expenses, we do not take money from outside entities. You may have heard the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” This means that a person who is paying someone to do something may have too much say in deciding how it should be done. EA wants to avoid inviting this kind of outside influence into a fellowship focused so completely on recovery…Colleen C
Please consider adding your own reflections to the EA Trustees' thoughts on the monthly reflection.The order of the Principles and Steps follow the calendar months. In 2019 we will work our way through the Traditions as they relate to the Steps.
If you would like to submit your reflection for publication consideration, email it to editor@emotionsanonymous.org by the 15th of the month prior to publication. EA needs member involvement! Please keep your submissions to 100 words. Due to space limitations, not all submissions will be published and they may be edited. We will try to include as many as we can!
