Didn’t We Hurt Anybody?

“Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag. We clung to the claim that when drinking we never hurt anybody but ourselves.”

Wow, were we ever self-centered??? Yet, that was what I believed and it was the point! Though I wasn’t up to task. When the time came (and it did often) I couldn’t pull the final “plug.” Thank God…

“My parents, who had been deeply hurt by my isolation from them, my employer, who worried about my absences, my memory lapses, my temper; and the friends I had shunned, without explanation. As I faced the reality of the harm I had done, Step Eight took on new meaning. I am no longer uncomfortable and I feel clean and light.”

[The book doesn't mention (in this reading) the harm I did my wife and children, those I loved the most and caused the most harm. I'll mention it to satisfy my critics.]

Post from: Blisstree

Wasn’t That The Idea?

“Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.”

Accurate and unsparing! Do you now know why the Fourth Step said “Searching and Fearless?” Oh, BTW – note it says the human wreckage we left behind. There are no mistakes. It is time to stand up and accept responsibility.

“To a degree, he has already done this when taking a moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt, and in what ways.”

I believe if you get real about this you already know that you hurt others. I knew it yet hadn’t really been able to focus on exactly how. I was about to become able to do just that. For ex. – the times I came home in the early hours of the morning and she had been sitting alone listening to the police sirens wondering if I had wrapped myself or others around a tree. I caused her emotional pain and I was wrong. Selfishly, I hadn’t given it any consideration. I was wrapped up in me.

“This reopening of emotional wounds, some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfully festering, will at first look like a purposeless and pointless piece of surgery. But if a willing start is made, then the great advantage of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves that the pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.”

I can’t say that was exactly what happened for me as anyone who has been reading would know but I can say that the advantages that have eventually revealed themselves are worth it – specifically that the obsession is gone.

Forgiveness. A tough subject in the beginning. Forgiveness is about to be brought into the light for us. Yet we’ll sometimes still be urged by old, inbred behavior, to revert back. That also lessens.

“These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, and one of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person, our emotions go on the defensive. To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he/she has done us. This is especially true if he/she has, in fact, behaved badly at all. Triumphantly we seize upon his/her misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.”

And, if you insist on this focus, you’ll continue to have a deep challenge with sobriety! This is not humble!

Post from: Blisstree

They Did “It” To Me! Oh – You Think So?