Step Four
April 3, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” BRB p.150
“When we do our Step Four inventory in the Yellow Workbook, we see that so many of our childhood experiences still seem like fresh wounds. Things that we may have talked about endlessly, even in therapy, take on new meaning when it all suddenly comes together. We notice patterns.
We begin to see a way out of the madness. We breathe a little deeper as the pain begins to subside. We trust in the process. We see that others who have gone through this seem lighter and have a flexibility we want. We trust their experience.
We notice that this inventory is going deeper than the Step work we may have done in other 12 Step programs. We are examining issues that we may have minimized before, especially surrounding our feelings.
We try to be as fearless as possible. Even though we try not to hold back, we also do not push our Inner Children to recount what they are not ready to see. We know we can do another Fourth Step for the next layer of the onion.
On this day l allow myself to be honest and thorough, welcoming the fact that I am always learning more about myself.”
My Experience:
What a learning process. I have learned that those traits that I have grown so comfortable with have melded into become defects of character. It was tough to revisit those issues from the past, to acknowledge what had been done to me and what I lived through. But it is honest and real. Its what happened. I cannot change that. What I can change is who I am today in relation to those things. I can cease being angry at the world. Doc Holliday said it best in Tombstone, “He was angry for being born.” I no longer have to be that guy and live my life through that lens. I can show myself mercy and forgiveness. I can step away from people that want to keep me in this place. All because I chose to look at those things that crafted my survival traits. It was very difficult, but well worth it. Today my view is, “that’s who I was, not who I am. “
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