What are the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions?
Tens of thousands have found that OA’s Twelve Step program brings recovery on all three levels. The Twelve Steps embody a set of actions we take. These Steps put us in touch with a Higher Power who restores us to sanity.
As we work the Steps, we let go of old attitudes, and we find we are being relieved of our obsession with our eating disorder. Those of us who choose to work the Steps, one day at a time, achieve a new way of life with lasting freedom from our food obsession.
The Twelve Traditions are the means by which OA remains unified in a common cause. These Twelve Traditions are to the groups what the Twelve Steps are to the individual. They are suggested principles to ensure the survival and growth of the many groups that compose Overeaters Anonymous.
Like the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions have their origins in Alcoholics Anonymous. These Traditions describe attitudes which those early members believed were important to group survival.
The 12 Steps of Overeaters Anonymous
We admitted we were powerless over food – 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 our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
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 Him 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 Him, praying only for knowledge of His 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 compulsive overeaters and to practise these principles in all our affairs.
The 12 Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous
Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon OA unity.
For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority – a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole.
Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.
An OA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the OA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
OA, as such, ought never be organised; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA 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, films, television, and other public media of communication.
Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Where do I start?
Want to know more about starting the program? You can find the Where Do I Start? brochure in various languages here.