I really struggled with surrender while doing the 12 steps.
My obsession to drink had been lifted but i was on a roller coaster up and down trying to figure out solutions to all the defects i now knew i had. Some had been dulled but alot were still very glaring. (Some i hadnt noticed they were gone yet)
I thought i had finally found the answer to my problems I just couldn't see the problems before but now that i could i could come up with a logical plan to solve each one over time.
I've always had a very hard time speaking in front of people be it in college speech class or in a room of people i mostly know although the latter being somewhat less paralyzing.
Whenever i would talk in meetings my mind would go blank. I would have all these great things i wanted to say and nifty points to make but when i finally would muster the courage to talk i would end up usually talking in circles never saying what i wanted.
My sponsor had me going to an inpatient rehab center meeting he helped to bring in there each week. I hated speaking in that room it was full of 50-60 people and the fear i had each week i went there was horrible. I would spend most the meeting looking at the clock trying to think of something to say that would help them and also make me look like i knew what i was talking about. Sometimes i would open my mouth usually regretting it but most the time i would let the time lapse and then feel bad i didn't have the courage to do it. My sponsor was on me to speak to try to get someone to help but it just seemed impossible to attract someone to ask me when i cant even talk well in the meeting. I would go through the big book trying to come up with some set speech i could say and memorize so my mind wouldn't wander.
One day before the meeting i was at home. I wondered if God could help me think of something to say and keep my mind from going blank. So i prayed and said God please give something i can say that will help these people. And i left. grabbed my pen and big book and sat in the passenger seat. I thought well i better come up with something just in case this doesn't work. While i was thinking that i was playing around with this ink pen it was the kind you can unscrew from the middle. I was unscrewing it and screwing it back over and over.
When i went to start writing i had it unscrewed and I tried for 5 minutes THAT PEN WOULD NOT go back together LOL.
Then all the sudden it clicked I thought maybe for this to work i have to have the courage to have no back up plan and faith it will work. I threw the pen out the window. At the meeting that night i forget what exactly was said but someone said something i had just experienced and i talked next about it without the circles or my mind going blank.
A couple people there said after the meeting i really related to this or that.
Today i don't have the same fear i used to have. I have a nervousness that usually goes away when i start to talk.
I remember how happy i was after that meeting and going up to my sponsor saying i prayed and it worked!.
I don't know if that pen would have ever gone back together or not but what a wierd time for it not to and what a great lesson i learned when it didn't.
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I've experienced the same problem.