The Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, and other CoDA documents are the principles of our program and guides to developing and maintaining healthy relationships.
The 12 Steps: CoDA is a program of recovery based on working the Twelve Steps Co-Dependents Anonymous. Working the steps helps a person to realize that many of his/her problems have a solution. The Promise of the program is that when a member is diligent in working the Steps, he/she will achieve recovery over personal problems of codependence.
The 12 Traditions: Our Twelve Traditions are the spiritual principles for the membership of CoDA as a whole. They help CoDA to remain spiritually centered and to operate from a state of integrity.
The Twelve Steps of Co-Dependents Anonymous
- We admitted we were powerless over others - that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other co-dependents, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
The Twelve Traditions of Co-Dependents Anonymous
- Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon CoDA unity.
- For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority -- a loving higher power as expressed to our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
- The only requirement for membership in CoDA is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.
- Each group should remain autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or CoDA as a whole.
- Each group has but one primary purpose -- to carry its message to other codependents who still suffer.
- A CoDA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the CoDA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim.
- A CoDA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
- CoDependents Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
- CoDA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
- CoDA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the CoDA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
- Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions; ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
The Twelve Steps reprinted and adapted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
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