The Tiger Woods “12-Step”: Which dance will he choose?
Step 1
Become a young sports superstar. Make sure your family teaches you the importance of being loved for performance, rather than who you are. Improve upon your talent but stop growing emotionally.
Step 2
Find yourself insulated from day-to-day personal growth lessons because you are increasingly surrounded by those more concerned about your athletic performance and earning potential than your growth as a man.
Step 3
Encourage the world to idealize you while getting paid to do so. Polish your image by having your face appear on billboards and ad campaigns all over the world. Then get caught up in the feeling of invincibility that flows from having a lot of money and power. Repeat many times.
Step 4
Isolate yourself further by hanging out with men who are comfortable controlling and manipulating people using power, image and money. Feel special in their presence because they admire your athletic skill- despite the fact that they really don’t know you.
Step 5
Learn to use your emotional deficits to your advantage by hiding behind a manufactured, squeaky-clean and emotionally detached image, while living out a secret double-life of bars, strip clubs and serial infidelity with prostitutes and players. Learn how easy it is to get as much sex and attention you want without having to take the risks that come with intimate friendships and love.
Step 6
Utilize only the best publicists, marketing and PR people to help hide the truth of your personal challenges. Keep your real self under wraps and only reveal yourself when scripted to do so. Come to believe your own hype.
Step 7
Get married and then betray your spouse–often. Break promise after promise made to her and keep a lot of secrets. Spend long periods of time and distance away from home so you can live out your double life and maintain your image. Note that pictures of a loving family life can be used to burnish your image. Make sure to take sleeping pills when on the road and pain pills if injured. Take as many as you need to take in order to keep winning on the course.
Step 8
When the eventual discovery and crisis come about, hide behind the publicity machine and manufactured image that have always worked for you in the past. Try to ignore the problem. When this fails, disappear.
Step 9
Go to treatment and find yourself grieving all that you missed out on as a child. Learn about the life rewards that come only when who you are is more important to you than your performance.
Step 10
Reconcile with your wife in treatment. Admit your wrongs to her and those close to you. Get clean from the inside out. Start feeling hopeful about yourself and your life for the first time in a long time. Begin to connect with your children and realize what really matters in life. Take the time for you that you have let others take from you.
Step 11
Go public with your problem and tell the truth, as you know it. Acknowledge that you will have to go forward living differently. Understand that your words mean little and promises even less. What matters going forward is what YOU DO. Promise to change, to live differently and admit your sins but put no timeline or agenda on it. Don’t let people’s judgments or opinions matter. Let your spirit and hearts of those who love and know you be your guides.
Step 12 A
Don’t go back to work anytime soon. Follow the advice of the professionals who are working with you. Stay the course of treatment and remain deeply involved. Understand that trust is only regained after a very long time – if ever. Be less focused on what others think of you and focus instead on what makes your life and the lives of those you love full, sincere and healthy.
-OR-
Step 12 B
Return to work before you are ready on the advice of professionals who rely on your income for their financial stability. Worry too much about those whose fortunes rise and fall with your own. Become again seduced by the call of fame and fortune as a restorative function, this myth based on your performance – not who you are. Make promises to wife, loved ones and professionals that this time it will be “different.” (Return to step 8 and repeat).
Written by Robert Weiss, LCSW, CSAT-S