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Source: Ellen C – 12 Steps to Serenity – Part 2 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ellen-c-12-steps-to-serenity-part-2-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:48:21
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Let's see if everybody's back in their seats, okay. We are at step four, which says, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. That would be the kicker. That's the hard part. I did my first fourth step because I wanted to be a real Al-Anon. There seemed to be something in the eyes of people. It seemed like every meeting I went to was on the fourth step. You know, when you haven't done one, every meeting you go to, they're talking about the fourth step.
And there's a look in the face of folks who've done their inventory and the fifth step. And I wanted to be a real Al-Anon. I thought that's where you got the secret handshake, you know, or the password or whatever it was going to be. I'm so grateful that this step said fearless and not fear free. It just says fearless. I just had to be an Al-Anon long enough to be not too scared to do it. I just had to have a little bit of space between me and some old thoughts to be able to turn around and look at them.
There isn't any wrong way to do an inventory. There are lots and lots of ways to do it. There are no wrong ways. Just do it. Just do it. There are plenty of ideas out there, and my sponsor always, of course, had us go through and do it in the columns in the big book. I had difficulty with that because it allowed me to start off pointing my finger at who had done this terrible thing to me. And I had a very hard time getting over to the other columns.
I'm just all full of what they did and who they were. This is supposed to be an inventory of my actions, my reactions, my feelings, my perception of what happened. When I did my first inventory, maybe the most honest thing I said to her was, I don't know how much of this is true. I don't know how much of it's true. I made up a lot of stuff, and thank God I made up the stuff. I don't think I would have survived.
I don't think I would have survived if I hadn't made up stories, if I didn't have denial. And she said it doesn't matter whether it's true or not. All that matters is it's your perception. That's all we're looking at is your perception. Now, if you talk, I have two younger brothers and a younger sister who grew up in the same house I did. If you talk to us about what happened when we were kids, you get four different stories.
It does not sound like we grew up in the same house. But they have pieces. My sister went for a little counseling one time, and the counselor asked her, who ran the kitchen in your house? And she said, my sister Ellen, she ran the kitchen. And the counselor said, whoever ran the kitchen ran the house. I went, oh. Well, you know, my idea of running the kitchen was I opened boxes of Jell-O and let them eat it right out of the box.
That's how I ran the kitchen. What I discovered in my inventory is that I'm co-bizarre. I am just as bizarre, if not bizarre-er. When I wrote that first inventory, I typed it and corrected it. I kept it. I'm not sure if I thought it was going out for publication when I was done or if it would be bound with the others and presented for a Ph.D. someplace. I'm not sure. But that's what I did. I kept it in the trunk of my car, which probably was a good plan, even though part of it wasn't even true.
It was probably good that I just kept it in the trunk of my car. What I realized today is I'd written that inventory for my sponsor. I wrote the inventory I wanted her to hear. That's what I wrote. It wasn't even totally honest. I left out this huge thing in my life. I left out the whole reason I was coming to Al-Anon. I just left that part out. And it wasn't like I thought about it and said, you know, I just don't think I'll write that down.
It was the kind of thing that you went to your grave with. It never occurred to me to tell anybody that. It never occurred to me to tell anybody that. So I didn't tell her. But you know what? It doesn't matter. It still worked as well as it could work, which is the reason why I'm so glad we don't just do one and then we're done. More stuff. More is revealed. More is revealed. Step 10 assures me I'm going to have to take some more inventories, and that's what happened to me.
What I know today, what I didn't tell her.
[00:05:00]
Okay, so I'll tell you what I didn't tell her. I didn't tell her I was having an affair with a married man and I was married myself. Well, it wasn't my first one either. It wasn't my last one. But we go for progress here, not perfection. It's way past my last one now because, you know, now I've had menopause. Who cares? Anyway. I almost forgot what all the furor was about. But I didn't tell her that.
And I looked back at it later when I finally did fess up to what I'd done, and what I realized was this lady who was here in my inventory, she was the one who'd gotten me into Al-Anon. She had children in the school where I worked, and she was the one that I had confessed to over the phone that my husband drank too much, although his drinking was not the problem. The problem was he didn't come home at night.
That was the problem, but I wasn't going to tell anybody that because I was pretty sure that was about me. If I was a better wife, if the house was cleaner, if I cooked pork chops every night or whatever, then he'd be coming home. So I said all I could say, which was he drank too much, too. I was trying to make her feel better because she had just confessed that her husband was an alcoholic synonymous.
She was new in Al-Anon, and she hunted me. At one point she said to me, six months later, when I finally went to my first meeting, after a while she said, Who's your sponsor? She terrified me, absolutely terrified me. I went, Oh, I thought you were. I didn't want her to be my sponsor, but I just was too afraid for her not to be my sponsor, and too scared to ask anybody else. She took me on. As God has stuff unfold, years later I look back at that and I realize I'm the first inventory she ever heard.
She'd probably just done hers the week before. The affair I was having was with my boss, who ran the school where her kids were going. What a load that would have been to drop on somebody who was six months into the program. So it didn't come up. It just didn't come up. I didn't tell her until the time came when I had to do it. So my sponsor said, when I finally could get to the last column. That column is the column that's made all the difference in my life.
The last column is the column that says, What did you contribute? What was your part? The big book says, What was your mistake? What did you do? It was the first time I realized in my life that there are not some places in my life where I'm a helpless victim and other places where I have a part. I have a part in everything. Even in that stuff that happened to me as little kids, as a little kid that I really couldn't have told them not to.
My parents were going to get a divorce. I was going to behave the way a little kid behaves when your parents are getting a divorce. I couldn't change that. My part in it is I've carried it through the years. My part is that it still colors how I behave 50 years later. That's my part. Blaming my parents for how I am today is a cop-out. It's one more time not taking responsibility for myself. My sponsor said, All that you are responsible for is your part.
You're not responsible for anybody else's part. And that's another, you know, the yeah buts show up. Yeah, but if he hadn't done, if they hadn't done, if she hadn't said, I wouldn't have had to. No. Nobody had a gun to your head. No. You know, if you look at the way I reacted to the things that happened in our house and you look at the way my siblings happened to what happened in the house, it's one more, you know, we had the same parents.
We lived in the same places. It's one more place where I recognized the issue was my receiver, at least as much as it was what was being given out. My receiver is just weird, and it came weird. Both of my children are adopted, and I so hoped that they would come to me as empty little slates that I could write on and make into the perfect children because I have such a knowledge of perfect children, you know.
Well, thank goodness that's not what happens. But my son was about 18 months old or something, and I realized he didn't like ice cream and he didn't like watermelon. And I knew because I'd had him his whole life that he'd never had a bad experience with watermelon or ice cream. So what I finally figured out was he came to the planet not liking watermelon and not liking ice cream. That's the way he came here.
And I came here. I came here all set up to learn my life lessons. That's what I came here to do. There are several ways to do a four-step. I don't particularly love the blueprint for progress. It asks a lot of questions, but it doesn't allow me to tell my story,
[00:10:02]
and that's what I need to do is tell my story. It's not my favorite, but it works for some folks. Feel free if it works for you. If it doesn't work for you, move on. There are other things. My sponsor said you could write your life in seven-year increments. She said you could do a fifth step at the end every seven years if you wanted to. If it was just too much for you, feel free. No rules. Another thing she allowed us to do was what she called a pie inventory.
You could make your life the whole pie, and then you could have each piece of the pie be different parts of your life, your program, your friendships, your children, your job, your church, each part of your life. Then you write about what the dream was for those, which basically is what were your expectations, how did you think that was supposed to look, and what happened, and today's reality of where those things are.
You don't have to make any judgments. This is not a place where I evaluate. That's the prayer I say, and the prayer I say to my sponsors. When you're going to do this, I say, God, please let it go from my heart down my arm and out my hand, and don't let it go through my head, because I'll edit it, I'll rationalize, and I'll justify, and I need to just write it down. All this is about is inventorying.
It's not about evaluating or judging. It's just get it down on paper. Get it out of me. She would encourage us to write about our fears, to write out our worst fears. She believed that you ought to take each fear to its root cause. She called it stringing, that you string the fear to its root cause. What happened to me, the first time I was able to do that clearly was, I'm afraid he's going to leave me.
That was my fear. I'm afraid he's going to leave me. He said, why do you think he's going to leave you? I said, well, he said he was going to. She said, when is he going? I said, well, he said Friday. She said, well, I can tell you something, honey. The way to tell whether or not an alcoholic is leaving you is if they're gone. That was where I began to understand the difference. She told me to turn off the sound and look at the picture.
See, I get lost in the sound. I believe what they say. I hang my life on what I hear. A lot of times it's because they really mean it when they say it. But I make it the truth forever. They just meant it then. He meant to come home. It just didn't happen when it was time. But I've made it my, you know, my life is hung on him coming home. She would say, turn off the sound and look at the picture. The picture will rarely lie to you.
Just live where the pictures are. But I was afraid he was going to leave me. And the fear under that was I'm afraid if he leaves me, he's going to leave me by myself. And I'm afraid if he leaves me by myself, I'm going to find out that my worst fear is true, and that's that I'm not enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not tall enough. I'm not bright enough. There isn't enough money. I'm not quick enough.
Whatever it is, I'm not enough. And I am not going to be able to take care of myself by myself. Now, that's a little kid fear that I had brought into adulthood with me and masked it with all my terrific alligator, as opposed to al-anon, because I was not an al-anon. I was an alligator. With all my alligator traits, which was busy, loud, in control, you know, I had a schmoozy way about me, so I could just schmooze people into doing stuff.
But I masked that fear of I'm not enough. And the thing is, if he leaves me, and he leaves me alone, and I'm not enough, I'll die. I won't be able to take care of myself, and I'll die. Now, rational people would go, that's not true, but that's how it felt. And I lived my life based on how it felt, not on the truth, but on how it felt. I was too scared to look at that. You know, fear is not a character defect.
It's a good human feeling to have. It keeps you from running in front of trucks. It keeps you from drinking acid and those kind of things, you know. I'm afraid I won't do that. That's a little fearful. Oh, stove is hot. Hot, won't do that again, you know. Right, like we ever did that. But stove is hot. No, not this time. Oh, yeah, still this time. What I have is a fear of fear because the fear I have is not natural.
Because I'm afraid to look at it, because I didn't have the tools to deal with it, the fear got bigger and bigger and bigger, and I'm afraid to be afraid because when I get afraid, the fear takes over. The fear takes over my brain. The fear takes over my life. The fear makes the decisions for me. over my life. The fear makes the decisions for me. The fear will keep me from breathing.
[00:15:03]
It will. People in fear are like animals when they're scared. They tend to pant. They take shallow breaths. They don't take deep breaths. How many times has someone said to you in this program or you've said to somebody, breathe, just breathe. I'm caught in the fear again. I was afraid to be afraid. That's the fear that I had never gotten past was if I can't take care of myself, I'll just die. I recognize now there was yet another fear under there that said, and there is no God. This is it, a cipher, meaning nothing going nowhere. This is it. That was my fear. I couldn't do that by myself. I wonder how many humans could sit and look at a fear like that by themselves. I could not do it. It didn't even surface.
Another thing, when I'm doing a fifth step with my sponsees, I'll do with them what my sponsor used to do with me. She says a prayer when we start. She prays us through the first four steps. What she would say and what I say to my girls is, God, please let everything that can be healed be revealed. Whatever can be healed is revealed. If it isn't time for other stuff, it just doesn't come up. Thank you, God. People say God doesn't give you more than you can handle. That's bull poop. God doesn't give you anything anyway. God's just there to support you and try to help you get to be happy, joyous and free. Life is what gives us stuff. Being a human, encountering this, having this experience of living a human life, this was God's idea. God wanted to see what it would be like to be human. Here we are. It's that line out of Weagnostics that I just love more than anything. We're on the edge of creation is where we are. It's gone, I can't tell you. It's in there. Just read the whole chapter. You'll find it. Life gives us everything we can handle and a lot more because that's what life does. That's why we couldn't do this without God. God's how I get through the stuff that's more than I can handle here on this planet. That was God's guarantee. You will never have to do this. Let's go have an experience. This is going to be so much fun. My grandson says, let's have a venture. Are we going on a venture?
Yes, we're going on a venture. This is a venture. String out my fears, write down my resentments, who the person is, and from the start what my relationship has been, what they did, what my actions toward them were, and then what she made me write down was the thoughts I had about them, what I said to them, and what I said behind their backs. She would say, in front of them and behind them, what did you say? How did those affect me? Where had I been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? Look at myself and see what I expected from those people. What did I expect from those people? Write it down. She said unfulfilled expectations of others creates resentments. You know what I know about resentments today? I don't feel resentful unless I feel victimized. It's a place where I felt like a victim. One more time, it's a place, you know, I don't know where enough is, but I know where too much is. I don't know when I've done enough. I know when I've done too much because now I feel resentful. I've done too much. I've stepped over the line. Then she said I could write about sex, but I could not believe I was going to talk to her about sex, but I did. She wanted me to write out my most degrading sexual experience, which whoa, that was pretty exciting. I think it's where the sheeps and goats things came up.
I don't know. I just made that up. But she did say I want you to write down how you want to be in those relationships. She did a lot of that, how you want to be. Who do you want to be here? I'd never given that, you know, I'd never given that. I was so busy beating myself up for what I thought I was that I never allowed myself the opportunity to think who do you want to be here? How do you want that to look here? You can walk toward that ideal. There was a gal, as lots of you know, I'm really not a girly girl. I think girls are lovely, and I'm crazy about all of you. I love you in a special way, the same way you already love me, I'm sure. But I'm not a girly girl, and these girls I sponsor say, oh, I know what let's do Saturday, let's go shopping for the day. I'm like, shoot me.
And they won't, they know better than that. The sponsor I have today, Nell Largent from
[00:20:04]
Warwick, Oklahoma, Nell and I were speaking at a conference together one time, and there was a mall across the street, and Nell said, oh, Ellen, let's go to the mall. I'm like, are you kidding me? I don't do malls, okay, I don't do them. She said, it's okay, sweetheart, just stick your finger in my belt loop, and you can walk with me through the mall. And you know what? As long as I was hooked on to her, I could go through the mall, I really could. And it's another thing, and I don't know if it's children who grew up in alcoholic homes or if a lot of us who just end up in Al-Anon are like this. What I discovered about malls, and I discovered it in an inventory, actually in FISDEP, was that I, in my diseasiness, I live off the edge of my fingers. I don't live in here. I live out here. I test the room when I come into the room. I test groups of people. I get a sense, you know, I can, I know what's going on over there. I can read faces, I can read body language, I think I know what they're saying, and I can tell if there's danger, danger, Will Robinson, don't go over there, you know, stay away. And when I go in a mall, and all these people, you know, Al-Anons have the ability. Sympathy is when you just feel sorry because somebody else hurts. Oh, I'm so sorry, you feel bad. Sorry about that. Empathy is if you've had the feeling yourself, and you can really share that experience with them. Oh, man, I remember what that was like, wow. We have a whole other ability. We erase the lines between us and somebody else. We don't just know how they feel. We are feeling what they're feeling when they're feeling it. It's an incredible thing. It's really a gift. The problem is we lose ourselves. You know, intimacy is the ability for two to come together as one, and then to go back as two wholes, and those are W-H-O-L-E-S, not black H-O-L-E-S's that suck up everything that come around them, you know. But what happens to me is I get, you know, in alcoholism, that's what happened to me in alcoholism is it erased the lines, and I get sucked into somebody else, and I don't know where they start, and I stop. I don't know where the lines are. Al-Anon has allowed me lines again. We call them boundaries, and the boundaries aren't for them. The boundaries are for me. The boundaries aren't for me.
I thought the boundaries were like, you know, the Alamo, all right, step over this line, and I will kill you all dead, you know. Okay, you did it. You stepped over the line. Of course, you know, what we do is we just back up and make, okay, well, here's another line. Okay, this line, I really mean it, you know. You step over this line. What I, you know, there's a great page in Courage to Change that talks about boundaries are for me. They're for me to know where the edges of my life are. They aren't for me to torture other people and tell them if you can't be what it is I want you to be, well, I don't, you know, I'll just suffer there. I'll show you now.
It really is, you know, what do you want to do in this situation? What, you know, what are you willing to, who are you willing to be here? And it wasn't, you know, when I was new in Al-Anon and what my inventory was so much about was I know what I don't want to do. I know what I don't want to be. I know what I don't, but the whole idea of who do you want to be? Who could you be if you could design, if you could be another person?
Who could you be? And it isn't another person. We'll talk about that in six and seven. So five says admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I always feel like Fonzie when we get there, you know, Fonzie. I don't know if you remember Fonzie, but Fonz couldn't say wrong. He was like rah, rah, rah. And actually this is the step that scared me the most when I was new.
Four didn't scare me. It was having to sit down and tell somebody that scared me. That scared me. I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to tell anybody. I'd spent my whole life not telling anybody. And I sure didn't want to start now. And I think it's why I had to write that first inventory for her. Because it's what I could do. And that's, you know, that's what this is about. Do what you can do.
The truth is until I do four and five, I don't have any choice about who I was or who I can be. I end up stuck in my story. I am stuck in my story. And I don't want to be stuck in my story anymore. Wounds that are opened up in a fourth step can't be healed until you do a fifth. And there are wounds opened up in fourth steps. No matter how small you think they are, they're opened up. And they can't be healed until you do five.
She says this is where we begin to have a spiritual awakening, a spiritual experience. And it's because we're walking through the fear. It's because we're willing to connect, contact with another human being. I've done great harm to myself and I've blamed it on other people.
[00:25:04]
Until I look at my part, I stay helpless victim. I was the martyred child. I was. I ran the kitchen. I walked uphill to the grocery store and uphill home. Really, I did. My mom never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner from the time I was about 11 or 12. She never cooked a Thanksgiving dinner until I got married and left home at 20. And then I came home and cooked at home for her again. I did. I did all of that.
I was the martyred child. And that was the part I wasn't sure whether that was true or not. Much of that was true. I was an abused wife, physically abused wife. It was very obvious. I mean, I had physical things to show for the physical abuse that went on in that first marriage. And it was very obvious who the problem was. It was him. But, you know, I did enough inventories and I talked about it enough that I started to see I was the one sticking my face up there.
I was the one going, oh, yeah. Hello. The abandoned wife. I can remember sitting on the sofa literally with my hand to my head thinking, oh, why am I the one stuck here with the kids and he's out having such a good time. I was just abandoned. Who, you know, hello. Discovering choices. No, never came to me discovering choices. It was all his fault that I'm the abandoned wife sitting there. I was an unwilling mistress.
I know you find that hard to believe, but I really was. When that guy asked me, the one that got me in here, when he asked me to have an affair, my first thought was, no, I don't want to do this again. I hate how I feel when I do this. I don't want to do it. But the word no never left my lips, you know. My sponsor, that was the hardest word for me to learn to say. And it's really the space between step six and seven, but I'll tell you now.
She would say, if you can't say no, can you at least say not now. And, you know, that gave me a lot of freedom. If I could say not now, I can't do it now. Can I let you know later? Because one more time, there's a thing that happens to me, particularly if it's my children or my husband or one of those people I'm so emotionally involved with. When I'm physically in their presence, I lose the ability to speak for myself sometimes.
And if I can say to them, you know what, let me let you know. If I can get physically away, I can make a better decision for myself. I can make a better decision. And I know that about me. You know, the best detachment I ever did from my precious daughter was physically detach from her. I do much better over the phone, although I can still just get sucked right through the phone, you know. And I read this part because I know that I, oh, in reality I'm a volunteer and I get power from telling the stories.
I get power telling people I was abused. I get power telling people I'm martyred. I get power telling people I was an unwilling mistress. I get power out of that, and that's why I did it. I've enabled people by not holding them responsible for their part, by not giving them the power in their own lives. My son was 19 years old. He couldn't hold a job. He had graduated from high school. He was darling and precious, and I loved him.
And there was a circle around his seat on the sofa because he'd spilled drinks and potato chips, and he just never moved. And I'd sit there all the time watching TV, and I would come home from work, and I'd walk in the back door, and I would be mad the minute I walked in. I'm mad before I walked in. I'm so resentful at that boy, and I just stormed back to my bedroom. And I realized one day, you are living in your bedroom because you have given him the power of the living room.
You've given him everything going on up there. And I thought, this is not right. And I talked to my sponsor, and she said, you know what? He's graduated. And I went, you're right. You know, that was when she taught me about if I do what's best for me, it's what's best for them. I don't have a God that has things that are good for me and not good for you. The God I have does only win-win situations.
Everybody wins in every situation if it's up to God. If I make the decision that's best for me, it's best for you whether you know it or not, whether you agree with me or not. It's the best decision. And the best decision for me in that situation was to allow my son to leave home. And I printed out a certificate, and I said, congratulations. You have graduated from your mother's house. Ta-da! And he's, you know, he was mad for, you know.
kicking me out I said honey I'm not kicking you out you didn't say that at
[00:30:02]
high school when they gave you a graduate you know your certificate there and they said you were done you're done here and I was celebrating yeah I'm getting the living room back you know I'm having the carpet clean and I you know that was one of those that was one of those defining moments that my sponsor talked about me for years because my you know our children are huge parts of our inventories huge parts where I went from mothering to cheerleading because when they're 19 20 21 they quit listening to you long time ago they were 10 maybe the last time they heard you you know they're not listening anymore they know exactly what you're gonna say and they do the uh-huh uh-huh stuff you know they're done you can talk to you blue in the face but you're not you're not changing anything after that they got it or they didn't get it one or the other she said Ellen you know there comes a point when the best thing you can do is support them the best thing you can do is cheerlead them the best thing you can do is know even when they don't know that they're capable people and if you don't treat them like capable people you know there's that page in the ODAT that talks about if I don't treat him like a grown man he ain't gonna act like a grown man what's the same thing with my kid and I told my darling son I said I know that you can find your way I know you can I know you can make this work I know you can and I'm I love you and I'll support you forever out there just anytime you need a good rock call me up you know so he bummed around for about a month and then he ended up having to move in with his dad he had his dad had left us when he was three when my son was three and when my son was 16 he decided he wanted to go back and live with his dad again and his dad was the physical abuser and I knew that was still going on he had a new wife and I knew that was still going on and if it hadn't been you know the day my son decided he wanted to leave my daughter had disappeared had been disappeared for a while and I didn't know where she was and it wasn't the day it was the week that he actually went over there see if it wasn't for Al-Anon I didn't ever let him go I never let him go and my sponsor said he's got a relationship with his dad that doesn't have anything to do with you and you need to let him have his relationship with his dad God went to a lot of trouble to get those two together and you need to let him have the relationship so I sent him with a quarter and I said the minute you think there might be trouble don't wait till there is the minute you think there might be trouble you call me and I'll be there in a heartbeat to get you and you can come home anytime you're ready and I let him go off and try to establish a relationship with his dad and then this was a Saturday night and my daughter's disappeared been gone for a while Mari's gone off with his dad and and the vet called that day and said the dog had the worst case of heartworm we'd ever seen and he didn't expect her to live you know and I thought oh my god and I was supposed to go that night and share my experience strength and hope at an anniversary someplace you know I was not feeling hopeful I was feeling pretty miserable and I called up my sponsor and I said this is just awful this is terrible bad things are happening she said I said you know this program doesn't work she said sweetheart and this is about this is where you put your program in action this is where God shows up this is exactly how you know the program works it'll be interesting to see how God works all this out and she said she said you just take the action because I said I want to go back to when my life was shallow at least at least then I could I could tell my son he couldn't leave and I could track my daughter down you know and I could just act like nothing bad's happening to the dog and she said she said um this is called recovery this is recovery and the dog didn't die and it wasn't but a couple of weeks later that my son called and said I can't stay here anymore I got to come home so he'd come home and he hadn't spoken to his dad since then so here he's moved out you know now he's graduated and he's gone and he bummed around for about a month with his friends and wore them all out and then he had to end up going back to his dad he had no place else to go but his dad's and he went and was forced to establish a relationship with his dad his dad was thrilled to have him he lived there with his dad for a year and it was all the impetus he needed to get a job keep a job get his own car and get out of there it was perfect a couple of years ago my daughter was talking my sister was talking to my son my sister has a boy just like my boy and she told my son she said I remember what you used to be like she said what happened because now he's a grown man with two kids his own house two cars had same job for 14 years he's you know mr. dependable he's a great dad he's a wonderful husband married to the same woman for 15 years I think now and and he said he looked over at me and he said don't tell her he said the best thing she ever did was kick me out of the house you know and it was the best thing for him and it was the best thing
[00:35:00]
for me so I'm addicted to excitement I'm an adrenaline junkie I fill voids in my life with my own stuff so I can stay in control in my diseasiness I keep things stirred up because in a crisis I don't have to think I just do I just act and I confuse activity with progress I think if I'm doing something I'm getting somewhere it's not true my greatest asset my worst defect is assuming the feelings of other people I suffer from perfectionism and we talk about that in here and it's really not perfectionism it's imperfectionism I'm not looking for the places I'm perfect I'm looking for the places I'm flawed that's what I pick on all the time and there is no abuse worse than self-abuse there is nothing worse than what we say to each other say to ourselves in our heads there's nothing worse and there is no amount of self-abuse that I've done that has changed anybody else and it certainly hadn't changed me judgmentalness what I want is acceptance what I offer is judgment and it separates me judgmentalness separates me from you you know I don't know about you but I got here I was better than everybody or worse than everybody but I was never the same as anybody my judgmentalness always keeps me separate from you I'm afraid of angry people in my dis-easiness what I heard was I love you but what I had to learn to say to my children was I love you and what I learned about anger was I wasn't afraid of their anger I was afraid of mine it been so long since I'd have allowed myself to be angry that all I had was rage I used to pin my children to the wall with my rage but they were the only people who saw that nobody else saw it otherwise I and I was afraid to let myself be angry because I was afraid I'd go over that dark hold so I wasn't afraid of their anger I was afraid of mine one more time another defect is not letting go of other people I hold on everything has claw marks on it and it's because I don't have my own boundaries that's why that happens the reason I have to do this with another person is I have to get I need another person to get a different perspective because I think God sees us all the same my assets out of balance that's a when I did when I did my first honest inventory and I told that gal about the affair I was having and we were sitting on swings in a playground I couldn't be in a closed house to tell anybody I couldn't write it down I just had to sit and talk to her about it and she was writing stuff down and she wrote down you know it used to be what we called Al-Anon calling cards which were our deposit slips we never had a need for the deposit slip but wasn't any money going in there's you might as well just hand it to you it's got my name and address on it I've still got her deposit slip she wrote on that day and that was she wrote down assets that she had heard I had assets she said I was teachable I was lovable and I was joyful I had never thought that that had never occurred to me and it was such a gift because I respected her and I loved her and I trusted her and my sponsor told me one time she thinks maybe the best thing we do for each other in here is we attend each other's pain we don't tell each other I wish you didn't feel like that we don't tell each other you need to get I have to back away from you now you know we don't say it out loud and we don't say it with our bodies I have to move away from you now because you're in pain and I can't stand to be around people in pain you know we don't tell each other if you wipe that look off your face we might let you come back to another meeting or if you could get a little better attitude we'd let you share you know we just attend each other's pain when somebody hurts we sit with them we don't try to change him we don't try to take it away that's what happens in a fifth step is somebody attends my pain oh shoot I'm so sorry you can't hear about that but you can't do good hearing a fifth step is maybe the the greatest gift somebody gives me when somebody tells me what they're even afraid to remember you know here's what happens in a fifth step we have the person when I hear a fifth step I write down the names I hear them call themselves which turns out to be their character defects I was that I was angry you know it's an I am statement I am which makes that that's what I think I am I think I I thought I was those defects so I write down those things that they thought they were and and the
[00:40:06]
the names that come up in the fifth and my main fears and I do that with the person when I hear a fifth step I write that down for them all they're there to do is talk I'll write that down and we'll talk about if you see any patterns if you see any you know have you had any aha's and write down the list of people I think I owe amends to from this step and then my sponsor said you can write tear up burn up destroy that fourth step and I know lots of people believe in hanging on to them I really believe in letting go of it I really believe in letting go of it there is some power in that smoke when it goes up my chimney that that's gone you know we don't have to deal with that anymore okay real quick step six which is shame we're gonna have to talk about step six more six says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character I suspect a healthy person wouldn't hesitate you know I've just made this list and here's some horrible things and whoo baby I don't want to hold on to this anymore I'd like to get rid of it but we're like oh yeah there's some of that causes me pain but you know rest of it's not that bad you know it's that all I feel you know I lost yeah let's give up lust wait a minute there's a little bit of that I'd like to keep that's the fun part I don't want the painful part I don't want the fun part if I've been painstaking in my inventory and accept my part in the insanity why wouldn't I want to have the stumbling blocks removed the fact is that some of them are not that bad in the heat of the fist if I'll say oh yes yes please take them but when the dust is settled my tendency is to revert to my old behavior so here's where the rubber of entirely ready and all meet the road of willingness step six is you know it's in the big book they're the shortest little steps in the whole world there's a sentence and a prayer and that's it for six and seven and and I think they're the most powerful steps we have I think I live in six and seven the a8 12 and 12 is much more helpful talking about these steps step step six is step one with footnotes you know now I know exactly what I'm powerless over now I know exactly what it is it makes my life manageable I have names for all of that it's personal it's not general it's not about it or them it's about me now it's step six I know my part and if I'm deep into step six what I come into is the willingness that I cannot change my own behavior I cannot I am NOT equipped this is what makes I heard a guy talk one time about he called it a history of the steps not the history of the steps but it was his version and he said he'd done a lot of research and he said he he could find religious and and historical background for every one of the steps almost word for word except six and seven except six and seven he said you know step six and seven the church I grew up in we went and prayed to God to make us you know we said God I'm gonna try really really hard to be who it is you want me to be I am I am I'm gonna try really really hard that's me and I know you don't want me to be a sinner you want me to be perfect and that's what I'm gonna work to be yes I dedicate my life to being perfect we get to six and seven we go this is it God on my own this is as good as I get you know left to my own devices this is all I can change this is all I can do if there's anything else that's gonna happen to me you're gonna have to do it because I can't do it ready to have God if I could have made myself a better happy happier thinner wiser person I would have but I didn't do it self-knowledge has availed me nothing all it's done is get me to this place ready to have God because I've tried all my tricks if my tricks were going to change me I would be changed removed doesn't mean eradicated it just means separated from a distance from enough space to turn around and look at a choice maybe now I might have a choice about how I respond to these old situations there's some questions that I asked myself at step six can I accept that you will figure it out is not one of our slogans have I had enough have I had all I want if not there is more available do I really want my life to be different if I change there's a universal law of change that says if I change everything around me will change whether it wants to or not it's the universal law of change if I change everything in some way changes but if nothing changes nothing changes I don't get to turn, I don't get to decide how this goes, this is up to God, am I willing to be changed,
[00:45:05]
am I willing to be someone different, can I allow that it might be someone I really want to be. Steps 6 and 7 were very scary for me, what if I give up these defects of character, they are who I am, what if I give them up, who will I be? Well, there's a good possibility I might be somebody I'm going to be, that I might be somebody I'd like to be. Otherwise, my other choice is going through the rest of my life defending who I am, that's my only other choice is to live defensively, I'm tired of that.
Do I really want how I see them, him to be changed? Am I willing to give up my old tools, can I accept that I have no problem that another man or sugar won't make worse? You can insert the solution of your choice in there. Those have been my two life changers. Can I give up being right? My prayer, one of my little six step prayers, God, let me be wrong about it all. Can I, is living in harmony more important than the show?
I don't know about you, but I love the show. Am I willing to give up the drama of being involved in another person's behavior and rehashing it over and over and over and over and over again? If the defects are removed, can I trust the process of the steps to fill the void with something that will work? Am I willing to now surrender my insides to the program, to the process? A lot of times for me, the only way to get yes to that is to become entirely ready is to keep doing the old behavior over and over again.
That's what happens to me at step 6, the old feelings come up and I keep, I realize that I don't have any control to do it any different. The pain comes when I know my part, when I see myself do it and I can't change my behavior, that's painful. When my principles change and my behavior doesn't, that's painful. When I use my assets for me, selfish or out of fear or at them, I end up resentful and in pain.
And I think it takes what it takes to get me to be willing, just like every alcoholic has to have every drink they have to take, it takes every one of them. The AA 12 and 12 says willingness is the key to the lock, to the door of, to freedom, freedom from the bondage of self-centeredness, to live happy, joyous and free. And if that's the life I want, step 6 is for me. The steps are transformational.
They are not about just change. They are transformational. We are transformed into people we would, we had no idea we could be. And we watch it happen in other people and the place that transformation starts is 6 and 7. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.