The EA Connection: July 2018Your monthly newsletter from ISC
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EA Tools for Recovery
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Tradition 7: Every EA group ought to be fully self -supporting, declining outside contributions.
Helpful Concept 7: Emotions Anonymous is a spiritual program, not a religious program.
We do not advocate any particular belief system.
Promise 7: Self-seeking slips away.
Just for Today 7: Just for today I will have a program. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it.
I will save myself from two pests—hurry and indecision.
Slogan 7: By the Grace of God

From the President, EA Board of Trustees
We in EA are fortunate to have the availability of attending regular group meetings, be they face to face, internet,Skyp, phone or other forms of meetings available to us. While the majority of us participate in healthy meetings, there
are those who have not had that experience. A healthy EA group is one in which all members attend for the same
purpose: to become well emotionally; to be there for others with the same desire; as well as to reach out to those still
suffering (Tradition 5).
For a healthy group, It is important that members show up on time, not doing so can be difficult and disruptive,
especially when one is sharing. Following an established format is helpful; reading the tools of the program, especially
the Twelve Concepts and the Twelve Traditions as they explain group procedures and guidelines; maintaining groupserenity, which includes saying the Serenity Prayer; being conscious of boundaries, both personal and sexual; assuring
anonymity; accepting and respecting every member; dealing with disruptions in appropriate ways; holding groupconscience meetings as needed; and avoiding crosstalk. The use of “I” Statements is crucial during our meetings as wecan speak only of ourselves in our recovery.
It is important that all members take an active role in the meetings. We do this best by volunteering to set up andclean the meeting room; preparing coffee if available, volunteer to run a given meeting and in serving in other ways. It
is important to financially support the local group as well as the ISC.
It is obvious that I’ve merely surfaced a few thoughts on what makes a Healthy Group. Our goal should always be toprovide a safe environment and to welcome the individual who is still suffering and desires only to become wellemotionally. You may find our literature, A Key to Successful Groups (#11) and How Our Meetings Work (#37), helpful
and can always contact ISC for help or additional information….Gus S, President, EA Board of Trustees

Specials Gifts and Memorials
In Memory of Jerry B—Rialto , CA. Jerry passed away this past January at age 85. He joined EA in his
mid-30's, and was a passionate, articulate leader for 50 years. His "I Was Afraid of My Fear" testimony isin the EA book. He was instrumental in the CD, “Into to EA,” organized retreats, gave talks at conventions,and sponsored many newcomers. We are grateful for his life and contributions to the Fellowship of EA.
In Memory of Ron B— IN. He was the contact for 2 groups in Fort Wayne, IN. Ron had been a memberof EA for 25 years 2006. He is being remembered by Kelly S, Jill B, Keith H, Sandy S, Peggy R, and Lois B
Also received was a memorial for Ron from his sister’s, Sher D, co-workers at Swizz Re.
In Memory of Victoria S—GA. Our founder who passed away suddenly this year, Sunday AthensGroup ,GA. Memorials were also received from Mari G, MS, Luanne B, MS and Gail S, MS

Recovery using the Tools of EA• to trust and to feel faith in God,• to trust I´m in good hands• to be honest with myself• to be willing to surrender again• a hope of new growth in recovery• a path to self acceptance• the only way to my serenity
So simple but so difficult...Luz
I am comfortable acknowledging
three main, key defects that I possess: my failure to love God, failure
to love myself, and failure to loveothers. As I prepare to focus on
these in Step Seven, I will also focus
on the one thing I can do for eachdefect to help me turn it around.
Failure to love God: One way I candemonstrate love for God is to trust
Him. To do this, I will pray eachmorning for the next month for thewisdom and strength to turn my day
over to Him. “What do you want meto do or say to whom, when, andwhere?” If I can commit to this simple action each morning, I feel like I
will be taking one good step towardlearning to love God.

Failure to love Myself: While loving
myself may be as simple as looking
in the mirror and repeating a phrase
over and over, I think a better way tolove myself is to embrace my feelings and emotions. These are who I
truly am. So I each day I can invite
my feelings and emotions to comeout. I can accept them, understandthem, embrace them and then letthem go. In this way, I can begin todemonstrate self-love.
Failure to love Others: The one thing

I can commit to trying to do each
day is to be true to people who are
not around me at the moment. I canrefrain from gossiping, putting others down, making fun of others, criticizing others, and everything else I
do on a daily basis to people at adistance. I can be true to everyone
even if they are not present. This is
one good way to demonstrate love
for others.
In step seven, I will ask God to remove three shortcomings—and tohelp with the process, I will focus oneach of these little things to counteract the way that I fail to love God,myself, and others...ChrisSlogan 7: By the grace of God.
Promise 7: Self-seeking
slips away.
Self is a hot topic in EA, selfacceptance self-care, self-control,self-esteem, self-forgiveness, selflove, self-pity, self-worth... All goodways to take care of ourselves andto enhance recovery. But selfseeking seems to take a different
tone, possibly because it usuallytakes place before we get into recovery.
Often when we are in the throws of
our illness, it is all about me, me,me! Why does this happen to me,
why me, no one cares about me, noone loves me... In our illness it isdifficult to focus outside of ourselves, except to blame other for
where we are at and what we havedone. Before I got into recovery it
was: you did this to me, you mademe feel this way, you made me act
this way.
I found it really hard in the beginning
not to blame others, but in time, as I

worked the Steps I began to see mypart in things and to understand thatthe only person, by the grace ofGod, that I could change was me.
It is only through the grace of God
that I am who I am today. And, notonly do I like me, I love the program
and the people who surround me inrecover...Anonymous

Tradition 7: Every EA
group ought to be fully
self-supporting, declining
outside contributions.
It follows that if we are not to lend
our EA name to any outside enterprise to avoid conflict of interest,
then we must also decline outsidecontributions. There’s an old saying,
He who pays the piper calls thetune.. It means that outside donors
contributing large sums of money
might want some say in the runningof our organization.
If large outside gifts and bequests
were accepted, EA could someday
be in the position of making difficult
investment decisions, and feel
obliged to support contributors insome way. Members would no longer believe that their donations andsupport were important to thegroup. We would lose that very important sense of being responsible,
self-supporting, independent, andfocused completely on our primary
purpose.
EA does accept gifts from EA members, provided that these donations
have no qualifications or requirements attached…
It Works if You Work It, p55-56
Editor’s note: The Traditions are the backbone of the program and have proven to be
an asset in holding the Fellowship together.

Discovering the tools of EA
My Inner Child
Some recent work with a psychologist seems to be opening up a new road into my emotions, and helping to learn toaccept them better, and to be gentle and caring towards myself. It involves "talking" to my 'inner child', as I seem tohave put up a wall to keep my emotions inside since I was very young.

I don't think I could manage to take on this work without the support I am getting in EA, and the learning about myemotions that goes with it. Also, EA is a spiritual program, and I need this part of me to be developed too.
So...still feeling some emotional pain and fatigue, but there is a new connection opening up for me, and I hope I canwalk safely towards my emotions with the support of my Higher Power, EA, and my therapist. EAnon and EA in general
are changing my life for the better...Rory S

Learning to Live with EmotionsI have lived in my head for so long. I worked hard to understand everything. I read voraciously as a child and listened in
to adult conversations trying to figure out and understand the why of our family pain and dysfunction. Why? was mygo to question. Looking back I see how I believed that if I could understand then I could fix it and we would all be okay.
I forced solutions and manipulated. I wanted to control the pain and not be a victim any more.
But a little girl—nor a grown woman can not fix her mother's dissociation, grief, loneliness, and anger. Nor can she
stop her father's addictions. Nor can she make everything safe for her little sister. But I sure tried. In the end, I lostsight of my pain and what I was feeling. Learning to feel again was painful as it felt like all of the feelings hit at once.
And not once did my feelings make sense because I did not know what was "normal" to feel. I had blocked it all.
Because of my back log of feelings, they would come out all at once. I would be sad and crying at happy times. I wouldbe loud and angry at calm times. I would be playful and jokey at sad times. etc. My feelings were simply trying to unclog and I was erratic. I felt a lot of shame during this time. Shame that something must be wrong with me.
A friend in the program gave me two exercises. One was to write and repeat during the day, "Feelings are just feelings,
neither good nor bad—simply signals. I can learn to have all my feelings and to express them appropriately."
The other was to set time aside with a feeling: (ie/ anger) and see how anger felt in my body or to hold a conversation
with anger or come up with images or simply color for the feeling. Some how this gave my feelings a safe container torelease them and it was without engaging my head about the whys and who did what and who did not etc.
So now I try to stay with my body when the feelings come up, to accept and let go before I look at what brought up thefeelings and what I need to do. This gives me release and breathing space so that I don't simply go back to fixing
things...WrenMy Slip Into Old Habits
After my share of yesterday I am slowly coming around to the fact that for the last few months I have slipped into oldhabits again and failed to love myself as I can. Feeling lonely has little to do with how many people are around me. Infact, I'm realizing too that in some ways the more people I hang out with the greater the loneliness feels. No, the problem is that I'm not giving real attention to myself—I'm isolated from my true self.
So, today marks a move back to habits I'd given up over the last few months. I need to listen and identify my feelings
without obsessing about them, or trying to change them, as a measure of my needs. I have begun my progressive muscle relaxation again. I am getting a good nights sleep each night and eating healthily. And I am planning my time andenergy better. I will do things I enjoy doing, listening to good music, reading an easy book, and taking a short walk. Iwill sit down and listen to myself. In short, I will stop pontificating and return to the Just for Today's.
This morning I am grateful for being invited to an ordination service yesterday evening, for my lovely Fathers Day present from my daughter, for the kindness of the owner of the B&B where we made a mistake with dates and the way
she handled it, for the forgiveness of Veronica, and for healthy food for lunch...Ian

2017 - 2018 EA Board of Trustees
Please feel free to contact members of the Board with questions or concerns
Gus S, AZ 602-319-3890 schloesser us@gmail.com President
Scott J, MN 507-276-0323 sdjakel@gmail.com Vice President/Treasurer
John W, MN 612-760-0313 johnwerner52@gmail.com Secretary

The 12 Principles—Step 7: Humility
Step 7: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings
In the early 1950’s Twelve Steps groups began informally sharing what has become known as the Principles of the 12Steps. Each step has a corresponding principle that one can keep in mind when working the steps. Below two of ourtrustees share how Humility factors into Step 7 for them.
HUMILITY: (N) A disposition to be humble; a lack of false pride. As I’ve come to know the 12 Steps of EA, I’ve learned
that the first six steps were all about developing a more realistic acceptance of myself; a more realistic acceptance ofmy strengths and yes, my weaknesses. And it was in working these steps that I learned about HUMILITY. I was put
dead smack in the midst of my humanness. I could no longer live solely in my head. I had to go to my heart as well. In
doing so, change was able to happen…my doing what I could and allowing my HP to do the rest. This took humility.
Thank you, HP!...Gus SMy humility involves an honest assessment of who I am. Step 7 involves my Higher Power removing my short-comings
discovered in my inventory. What my H.P. doesn’t have to remove are things that I am glad are in my life. Healthy humility means I rejoice in all the good things present in my life. I feel good about me being me. Following Step 7 means
I can be even more delighted in who I am – because my H.P. is actively helping me to be an even better version of myself than I have been up to this point in time...Scott J
Today Book, March 7—Humility
REFLECTION FOR TODAY

Anger can get me into trouble, and pride can keep me there. Admitting I am wrong is hard as I want to be perfect, keep
my world all intact, and not lose control. I am not alone in the world any more. I am a human being living a life which isthe best I know, and I do not have to be perfect. I can make mistakes and then correct the error without being a failure.

EA Connection and News
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by email? You can sign up for our email list by sending youremail address and the state where you live (so we can include you in your particular region's email list as well as the national list)
to groupdata@emotionsanonymous.org.

EAnon (aka: the loop)
Many of the fine shares in the EA Connection come from EAnon
EAnon was started in 1997 and today has over 900 members.
For more information or to become a member go to The Loop. Members
are excited about the progress they make by sharing on the Loop, and thefriendship they develop.

Emotions Anonymous™
Hours Mon—Thurs: 10 to 3:30
Phone 651-647-9712
Fax 651-647-1593
PO Box 4245
St Paul, MN 55104
www.EmotionsAnonymous.org
director@emotionsanonymous.org

editor@emotionsanonymous.org
groupdata@emotionsanonymous.org
info@emotionsanonymous.org
orders@emotionsanonymous.org

EAnon Quote: "There is not enough evidence to be pessimistic."

shipping@emotionsanonymous.org