From the initial Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, over 200 different types of twelve step meetings have evolved. Most people can benefit from recovery groups. By checking several different types of twelve step meeting, each person will benefit. Anyone who has a desire to help people will need to find new ways of relating.. The slogan for Al-Anon for friends or family of the addict is: "To help them, you have to help yourself first."

Recovery meetings give people in need of healing (and aren't we all) a safe haven and a place to try out new ways of relating. The group reflects back to each person the behaviors that need to be changed. The twelve step meetings provide the most structure and the most personal experience.
In the beginning stages that a newcomer to a group goes through, often it will seem that s/he is being singled out for criticism. In order to move past this "they're out to get me" mentality, s/he has to understand projection. Projection in psychology means putting our own feelings on someone or something else. To understand this, think of the projector of a movie. The projector reflects out on the screen the image in the projector. In exactly similar means we reflect out our feelings on another person or group. We project it outward so that we can reject these feelings and blame the other for the feelings that we don't want to own.

In order to trust the group and feel safe, s/he must learn to accept the negativity that s/he feels is coming from his/herself. With time and experience with the group, s/he will learn to gauge how s/he is feeling by what s/he feels. This is owning your feelings. After s/he has learned to accept her/his feelings, then learning to use the group to reflect back new learnings is possible.S/he has to learn to surrender to the wisdom of the group in order to become one with the group. Generally when we come to recovery, we are using our energy either passively (s/he will want the group to "tell" them what to do) or aggressively (s/he will want to "run" the group). Energy that is effective is assertive energy.