Band of Brothers Support Group

This is an exercise called 3 CIRCLES. Its purpose is to identify our bottom-line behaviour, triggers and healthy habits to combat addictions and compulsive tendencies.

Inner or Red Circle: Here u list all your bottom-line behaviours. You need to be brutally honest with yourself and detail the addictive and acting out behaviours that make you a dysfunctional person.

Middle or Yellow Circle: Here, you list all the boundaries and trigger behaviours that lead you to the unwanted Red Circle acting out behaviours.

YELLOW CIRCLE BOUNDARY CATEGORIES

1. Place (Adult Bookstores, Affair Partner’s House, Prostitute Hotel, bathroom, etc.)

2. Media (R-rated Movies, Sexually Explicit TV shows, etc.)

3. People (Unhealthy Friends/Family, Affair Partner, etc.)

4. Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)

5. Internet (Filter, Accountability Software, etc.)

6. Substances (Alcohol, Drugs, Food, Cigarettes, etc.)

7. Driving and Showering (Cruising, Specific Street, Time Limit, etc.)

8. Other (Games, Sports, Gambling, Finances, Swearing, etc.)

Outer or Green Circle: Here you list all the healthy habits and disciplines that prevent you from entering the yellow circles and that pay attention to your overall wellbeing.

Having an accountability partner or Sponsor is a critical key to recovery. Given the nature of sexual addiction, having an accountability partner or sponsor is not merely a suggestion, it is mandatory!

We believe that accountability does not seek you, but you seek it.

The best place to find a sponsor is on a well-established support group like SAA. It must be someone who has a solid recovery plan in place and has a minimal one-year clean time.

Once you have a sponsor, you will need to phone them every day and follow their guidelines to sober living.

We suggest that you join a well-established support group and attend a meeting once a week. This is so that you can connect with other like-minded men who are also walking the journey of recovery.

Meeting information will be posted on the BOB What’s ap group regularly.

We, as a Band of Brothers, will have a check-in meeting once a week on a Monday at 19:00 - 20:00 via Zoom. The purpose of this meeting is to keep each other in check and encourage during challenges and struggles. It also serves the purpose of snapping you out of any binge cycle that leads to the “shame cycle”, which is extremely destructive and unproductive.

1. This is where we bring in the discipline of a 5-Man Plan.

• Through the meeting or in our fellowship, identify 5 guys that you can phone every day as the need arises. This excludes your daily check in with your sponsor.

• These guys know when you call them that it’s about emotional support.

• The reason for having 5 contacts is that if you can’t get hold of the first guy, you can call the next and so on. This leaves you with no excuse not to reach out.

• It is vital to get into the discipline of phoning every day, whether you are having a good or bad day. This creates consistency in reaching out and breaks the chains of isolation.

• The other part of the emotional support plan is to engage in Emotional Journaling. This is a personal exercise done at the end of every day, and it doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes.

Here are the guideline questions that apply to your emotional journaling.

1. What am I thinking, or what’s going on in my mind?

2. What am I feeling? Identify your emotions.

3. What do I experience?

4. Where in my body do I feel these emotions? Where do they come from?

5. What do I want to do when I feel these emotions?

6. Where in the past have I experienced these emotions?

It’s also suggested that you share these journal entries with your Sponsor.

Once a month, Band of Brothers will get together for fellowship where we will support, celebrate, share testimonies, worship, pray for one another and tweak our recovery plan.

This is also a good opportunity to invite a guy who wants to be on a journey of freedom.