How EHA Works
Emotional Health Anonymous is based on the same 12 steps as Alcoholics Anonymous only adapted to people who suffer from emotional problems not related to substance abuse. Many of us were driven into EHA by depression, severe anxiety, anger brought on by chronic resentment along with many other debilitating emotional symptoms. By coming back on a regular basis to EHA meetings, we become familiar with the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (see below) on which our fellowship is based. Our program is based solely on the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous. Our belief is that “if it works, don’t fix it”. The Big Book is just as applicable to people like ourselves as it is to the alcoholic. We are living proof of that as is illustrated in the “Our Stories” section of our website.
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Anonymity is practiced by our fellowship as it is laid out in the twelfth tradition – “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”
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Twelve Steps
The Twelve Steps of Emotional Health Anonymous*
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We admitted we were powerless over our emotions, that our lives had become unmanageable.
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Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
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Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
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Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
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Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
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Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
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Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
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Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
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Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
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Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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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.
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Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to emotionally and mentally ill persons and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
*As adapted from the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous
The Twelve Traditions
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The Twelve Traditions of Emotional Health Anonymous*
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1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon EHA unity.
2. 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.
3. The only requirement for EHA membership is a desire to recover from emotional illness not related to substance abuse.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or EHA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the person who still suffers from emotional or mental illness.
6. An EHA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the EHA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every EHA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Emotional Health Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. EHA as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Emotional Health Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the EHA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, T.V. and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
*As adapted from the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous