What is a Slip Report?
A Slip Report is a short documentation (in email, text, or on paper) answering a few questions about your most recent slip that you can share with your sponsor, counselor, or trusted friend. The questions are:
What lead up to your slip?
- Circumstances at home or at work?
- Pressures, anxieties, or fears internally or externally?
What were you thinking and feeling?
- Desire to numb or mask pain?
- Wanting to escape?
- Wanting to feel better?
What were the trigger events?
- Where did it start? What were the choices along the way?
- Do you always do the same things? (Then it could be called your “ritual”)
What happened?
- Try to avoid only using words that hide your choices such as “acting out” or “porn”
- If porn, what were you searching for, selecting, and watching?
- If acting out, what did you do, where, how many times?
- This is where the more honest I am, the more useful it is to me.
How did you feel afterwards?
- Assume shame. What does shame feel like?
- Assume guilt. What does guilt feel like?
- Assume embarrassment. What does embarrassment feel like?
What could you do differently next time to avoid the same outcome?
- What could you physically do to block your ritual path?
- What warning sign could you notice that you are starting down that path?
Why a Slip Report?
After a slip, our tendency is to want to move past the shame and guilt as quickly as possible and not think about it. But the healthy thing to do is to process it, learn from it, and set some boundaries and safeguards that will prevent the same ritual cycle and chain of events in the future. Journaling our thoughts, feelings, and observations soon after our slip will give us the chance to see the process we went through, the emotional environment, and the triggering events that led us into those choices. We can determine to notice some warning signs early enough in the process that will help us make better choices to engage support and use my recovery tools to prevent the same outcome next time.
Read Rick’s Slip Report here.