Literature
Literature
This pamphlet is for those who want to develop cooperative relationships with professionals who come into contact with sex addicts.
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Why This Pamphlet?
This pamphlet is for those who want to develop cooperative relationships with professionals who come into contact with sex addicts.
Why Cooperate with Professionals?
Our focus is shedding a light on sex addiction and informing the professional community about what SAA offers. We aim to provide resources and share our personal stories about sex addiction and SAA. Once professionals learn about SAA, they may discover they have a new way to help sex addicts; they may choose to share information about SAA with the addict who is still suffering. A recommendation from a trusted professional can be a powerful incentive for an addict to call an SAA contact or attend their first meeting.
According to our membership survey, many of our members would not have found SAA without a recommendation from a professional.
There are many professionals who are not familiar with SAA’s positive impact on the lives of suffering addicts.
Likewise, as we build these relationships, we have much to learn from the professionals.
What Do the Steps and Traditions Say?
Step Twelve encourages us to carry the SAA message to the sex addict who still suffers. Informing professionals of what we offer is a direct method of working this step outside of the rooms.
Tradition Five states that carrying the message to sex addicts (in and out of the rooms) is our primary purpose.
Traditions Six and Eleven give us guidance on how to properly cooperate with the professional community.
Tradition Six reminds us to cooperate with outside entities without endorsing or affiliating with them. Tradition Eleven suggests that we can attract members by opening lines of communication with professionals.
Who Do We Seek to Cooperate With?
“We have learned that the best insurance against relapse is helping another sex addict.” Sex Addicts Anonymous, p. 75
The types of entities we seek to cooperate with might include therapists, physicians, clinicians, members of the clergy, attorneys, judges, parole officers, or human resource professionals. These and other professionals can help us to get the message of recovery to still-suffering sex addicts. They can be “friends” of SAA.
How Do We Approach Our Contacts?
We approach with humility as people who simply want to be helpful. We spread the news that the SAA program offers the hope we have found and which we believe is available to all sex addicts seeking recovery.
We don’t try to push our message on anyone or promote our cause as the ultimate solution.
How Do We Cooperate?
The following sections list ways in which to reach out to these professionals.
Professional Conferences
We can build relationships with professionals by attending their local conferences. The ISO can help assist with the preparation, attendance and follow-up for these events.
Examples include conferences for medical, legal, educational or behavioral health professionals. More-detailed lists of professional conferences that would be beneficial to think of attending can be found in the CPC Handbook. You may be able to think of other possibilities—get creative!
Open Meetings
Holding open speaker meetings is another way to generate interest within the professional community. An alternative approach is to have an “invitation-only” meeting where professionals can observe an otherwise closed meeting.
How can the ISO Help?
The best resource to get started is the CPC Handbook.
The ISO PI/CPC Program Manager is another great resource. We encourage you to contact the program manager to help you or your group get started. The program manager can be reached at +1 713-869-4902.
We believe your efforts will help sex addicts who are still suffering find their way to the SAA fellowship. We hope that you will find it as rewarding as we have.
Resources:
- SAA Twelve Traditions
- CPC Handbook
- PI/CPC manual
- Pamphlet “Introducing SAA to the Professional Community”
- Client Referral Packets
- Webinar: SAA speaker training
- CPC training from ISO Program Manager
- PI/CPC: Public Information and Cooperation with the Professional Community.
Mailings
Another means of reaching professionals is to send them information via mail. As a follow-up to the mailing, local SAA volunteers contact the professionals individually. The ISO can help in several ways:
- Mailer templates
- Ideas on mailer contents
- Printing mailers
- Bulk mailing for 200+ pieces
Direct Personal Contact
Once our foot is in the door, a great way to follow up and further cement relationships with professionals is through direct personal interactions at their facilities. Some examples of ways to connect to various professionals include lunchtime presentations to small groups at a practice; one-on-one meetings in an office or speaking to an addictions class at a local college. The other efforts above make these events possible.
Need More?
ISO Literature Committee Approved January 2023
- ISO Literature Committee Approved indicates review and approval by the Literature Committee (LitCom) for publication by the ISO. These publications are copyrighted by the ISO and carry the SAA logo.
- ISO Literature Committee Approved under Concurrent Review/Distribution indicates material that has received initial review by the LitCom and has been released for distribution to members of the fellowship while more in-depth review by the LitCom continues. Typically, these documents have been generated within the ISO and submitted with a request for immediate distribution to meet an urgent need or to provide time-sensitive information.
- ISO Conference Approved indicates the added endorsement of the delegates voting at an annual meeting of the ISO Conference. After LitCom approval and publication of a piece, the fellowship-at-large is given an opportunity to offer feedback (usually two years), after which the LitCom may, at its sole discretion, present the piece to the Conference for approval.Article V, Section 9, of the ISO Bylaws stipulates that a two-thirds majority of the voting delegates is required to confer this highest level of approval on a piece of literature.
- Outside literature approved for sale designates literature published by entities other than the ISO but approved by the Board of Trustees for sale through the SAA Store. By definition, these publications fall outside the supervisory authority of the LitCom.