Step Four

[MajestyJo]

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step Four is a Step that people hesitate to do and look on it with fear. I had to change that fear into an act of faith. I was told that I had to take an inventory of what was there so I would know what I needed to change. My sponsor said that I had to change everything, yet I didn't know what that everything was.

I didn't know that meant an inventory of the postive as well as the negative. It wasn't a punishing step, it was one of affirmation and validation. I was not a bad person, I was a sick person who needed to get well, it didn't say I had to get good.

Without doing Steps 4 & 5, I would be a dry drunk. I couldn't truly go onto the following Steps without them.


Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step Five was an enlightening Step, as well as a Step which lightened the burdens I had carried for years.

I knew God knew all things, and that is why I walked in fear. I knew I didn't have to tell Him, He knew, and I didn't realize that it was necessary to share with him to begin the process of the five As of change: Awareness, admittance, acceptance, action which brought about a change in attitude which allowed for spiritual growth.

By sharing with another, it meant that I could obtain self-honesty. I couldn't look at my life through rose-coloured glasses, with tunnel vision, and it brought about an awareness of two things. I wasn't as bad as I thought I was, but I sure had a lot of work to be done!

Ntoice that it says the nature of my disease it didn't say to list each and every one I made. i.e. thief, adulteress, bad wife, mother, friend, etc.

Just for today, God and I are still working on them.

[MajestyJo]

Quote:
I like to compare myself to a battery. A battery has two terminals. A positive terminal and a negative terminal. If a battery has to many negative cells it has not live in it and is useless. If a battery has to many positives charges it will explode and you have nothing. But if a battery has the right amount of positives and negatives you can start up a D-9 Caterpillar and go push a mountain around. That is the way I am. To many negatives I am useless. To many positives I am not worth nothing either.

- Anonymous

I like the battery premise, it reminds me that when I surrender to my Higher Power, I am empowered to do what I need to do for myself.

When I was in treatment, we had to do "daily affirmations", each morning we had to say something positive about ourselves! It was difficult for all of us. We all came from different walks of life, but after years of poor self-esteem, self-worth and abuse, there wasn't much thought of the positive. It was a good way to start my recovery. One of the greatest gifts in early recovery was to be told by a native woman that "God doesn't make no junk!"

What comes to mind is the song, "Eliminate the negative, excentuate (?) the positive, and go with Mr. In-Between. Again, like all things, it is about balance.

One of the scariest things I hear is that people haven't done this step or that, because they haven't done any other than Step One. I had a man ask me once if I worked the Twelve Steps in my recovery and I said, "Yes, some days all Twelve!"

In the Big Book on page 76 is says:

Quote:
Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble? Does this mean we are going to get drunk? Some people tell us so. But this is only a half-truth. It depends on us and on our motives. If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience.

... We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.

In this book you read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him. If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.

This sound like me getting honest with me. God can, I can't, and just for today, I choose to let Him.

[MajestyJo]

The Blueprint to Progress is an excellent Step Four format and I had a lady here, who has been in AA for 20+ years confirm this.

When I share, I always tell people that they need to do a Step Four to get rid of the darkness so the light of reason can shine. This means taking an inventory of good and bad, what I need to change, what needs adjusting, what needs improvement, and what needs totally discarded. I looked at it as if I was doing an inventory of a warehouse.

I am a sick person trying to get well, not a bad person trying to get better. I was told to start with a resentment sheet because the whole picture could be very overwhelming. I was also told that for every negative I HAD TO FIND A POSITIVE!!!

In the Big Book it talks about the anger, resentment, guilt and fear because they are the big offenders which often takes people back out if not addressed. A lot of people "stay sick" because they aren't willing to look at themselves. That is why we used in the first place, we could not look and be with ourselves. We have a dis-ease! More than a drinking and drugging problem, I have a thinking problem. I haven't used for twelve years, but I still need to live in today.

I did a Step Four every eighteen months to two years up until I was six years sober, then I did a verbal one with a therapist from then until now; in fact, that reminds me I need to call her and resume our meetings which we dropped over the holiday season.

I have had new "defects" develop that I didn't know had in early recovery. I had new spiritual awakenings and new awareness as a result of working the step, from the time I did the original ones, and I needed to address the issues which I had buried and hadn't been able to look at previously.

For me this is a one day at a time program, that means I work the steps, one day at a time. Some people say ten, eleven and twelve are maintenance steps, and they are, but I had to do a Step Ten in early recovery in order to live long enough to find the courage and lose the fear to do a Fourth Step. The honesty didn't come until later. I had to make a conscious contact with the God of my understanding, in order to work the steps, and that consciousness grew. I had to go to meetings, which for me is Step Twelve work, sharing my experience, strength and hope. I didn't wait until I worked all the steps to work these maintenance steps.

As far as ego goes, I got up to speak at my home group one night and said, "I just found out I have an ego, I thought it was a male thing!" You should have seen the look on the faces in the audience.

AA does have it's own Fourth Step Guide. One that I saw, which was quite lengthy and very detailed in dealing with emotions was from Adult Children of Alcoholics.

When we come into recovery, most of what we feel is the negative ones and don't know what the good ones are. When we stuff the anger and the hurt, we don't have the luxury of keeping the love and kindness, everything disappears and we become spiritually, emotionally, and mentally bancrupt and well as the physical malady of this disease.

I remember when I was going through a recovery house and this girl would say to me, "But how do you feeeellllllll????" I always wanted to hit her, lash out because I didn't know. I use to respond with, "I don't know, if I did, I wouldn't be asking!"

What I heard most in AA was follow the questions as they are asked in the Big Book in How It Works in chapter five. I also heard a priest who has 50 years in recovery say, this is a today program, the inventory is about today. Things from your past which you are still carrying in today and need to let go of the excess baggage in order to grow and move on in your recovery.


Sometimes when a post is long, I put it in large print. I realize it is also because I am old and read better when things are in large print. I know how to enlarge the print or make it smaller by pressing Ctrl + or -, but then I forget! I know that if I get a long page of small print, I seldom read it. It has to catch my attention in the first paragraph or I am out of there. Now that is an example of a 4th and 5th Step.

Luv...Jo

[MajestyJo]

Quote:
STEP FOUR: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
"Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction."

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 42-43

One of the first things I was told to notice that it said fearless and until I could let go of the fear with a good Step Three, I wasn't ready to do a truly honest Step Four. If I wasn't entirely ready and willing, then I wouldn't be willing to do a thorough search. I was told to not look at the whole picture because it could be very overwhelming and daunting; and was told to break it down and start with a resentment sheet. They say resentments are the number one killer of alcoholics. I heard a long-timer say he thought that guilt was just as much of an offender as resentments; and that was true for me. Guilt kept me sick for a long time.

It wasn't until I was willing to bring everything from my past out of the darkness into the light and truly look at them honestly, that I was able to heal and move forward. I went on to do two more written Step Fours and verbal Steps every eighteen - twenty-four months in Counselling. I always thought that honesty was what I got first and that I was always honest, yet self-honest, true self-honesty was one of the most difficult things for me. I didn't want to face me. It was like I wanted to continue to be the martyr and the victim. By doing so, I wouldn't have to look at the people in my life and look at my decisions concerning them. It wasn't about other people, it was about me and I could no longer play the blame game.

This was a very freeing Step, especially when I followed it by a Fifth Step and released the burdens that I had been carrying for so long.

Originally posted my site Star Choices

[MajestyJo]

Quote:
STEP FOUR: Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
"If we have been thorough about our personal
inventory, we have written down a lot. We have
listed and analyzed our resentments. We have
begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality.
We have commenced to see their terrible
destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance,
patience and good will toward all men, even our
enemies....We have listed the people we have hurt
by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out
the past if we can."

Alcoholics Anonymous, page 70

The two biggest resentments that I carried were toward God and my life. The big "Why me?" The answer was, "Why not me?" What makes me so special that I should miss out on the experiences of 'life' and it was my decisions that put me on the path I chose.

The signs were there, but I ignored them. The direction was there, yet I was the one who exercised her freedom of choice. Then my addiction made the choices for me, yet I was the one who continued to use people, places and things. Always looking for love in all the wrong places, always looking for the next fix, the next potion that would make me feel better and escape my reality. Always outside of myself, not knowing it was an inside job.

[MajestyJo]

Quote:
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
“If, however, our natural disposition is
inclined to self-righteousness or grandiosity,
our reaction will be just the opposite… We
shall claim that our serious character defects,
if we think we have any at all, have been caused
chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so,
we think it logically follows that sobriety
- first, last, and all the time - is the only
thing we need to work for. We believe that our
one-time good characters will be revived the
moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice
people all along, except for our drinking, what
need is there for a moral inventory now that we
are sober?”

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 45

Recovery is about change. Changing the old patterns and behaviors that kept me sick for a very long time.

How can I know what to change if I don't take an inventory to see what needs changing. What doesn't stand me in good stead in today. Over the years, I have developed new patterns and behaviors and they too have had to go. Just because something is comfortable doesn't mean it is for my higher good.

Defects and characteristics can block my way from the growth I search for in recovery. All I am asked to do is be the best me I can be today. I can not move on in my recovery without self-honesty. The blanket of denial keeps me in the past. My inventory took me out of my past so I could move forward in today.

Quote:
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
“The sponsors of those who feel they need
no inventory are confronted with quite
another problem. This is because people who
are driven by pride of self unconsciously
blind themselves to their liabilities. These
newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem
is to help them discover a chink in the walls
their ego has built, through which the light
of reason can shine.”

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 46

- Just For Today -

[MajestyJo]

Quote:
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.

"But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be
done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and
unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we
played the big shot, we turned people against us. We
had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned
revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves
with the club of anger we had intended to use on others.
We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need
was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we
thought caused it."

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pg. 47
At a NA meeting I shared that I had done three Fourth Steps. Two young men were shocked and one said, "My God, you must be about perfect by now!" LOL. One day at a time, I do get better. I was one of the really sick ones. God and I are still working toward it! When I got here I thought I was now that I quit drinking and using. The more I stayed sober the more I realized how much of my life was full of insanity. I have to work on my emotional sobriety (soundness of mind) for the rest of my life.

Quote:
Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover
what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We
want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires
have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness
this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what
our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their
correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this,
there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a
searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have
found that the faith which really works in daily living is still
out of reach.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 42-43

It was important for me to have the self-honesty and really look at myself. It was also good to balance the liabilities with good characteristics so I didn't beat myself up. It was important to know that I wasn't a bad person trying to be good but a sick person wanting to get well.

[MajestyJo]

So many stop or don't attempt working the Steps because they see this one and say, "I could never do that!"

The key is "One" Step at a time. If and when you do the first four Steps, then you can look at this one. I once heard a longtimer say, "When you have a strong grasp of Step Three, quickly start a Step Four, there should never be a gap. If you have the faith of Step Three you will not allow time for fear to set in before you start your Step Four." He continued to say, "There can be a gap between Steps "Four and Five", but do not hesitate and procrastinate too long because I believe that the reason people with long-term sobriety relapse is because the skimped on this Step. I believe it tells us that in the Big Book also.

The thought that went through my head as I typed this was, "Never fear, God is here!" May sound like an old cliche, but it is very true if you ask Him to be with you in all that you say and do.

As I grew in the fellowship as a result of working the Steps, I found myself, I became more honest; I did more Step Fours and Fives. I am hoping to go through the Steps again with my sponsee. The Steps are about in the now. What from my past have I not let go of and what do I need to do to heal and move on with my life.

These were posted on my sites and on sites of friends.