Step 5

[caressa]

What are we likely to receive from Step Five? For one thing, we shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolation we've always had. Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong. Either we were shy, and dared not draw near others, or we were apt to be noisy good fellows craving attention and companionship, but never getting it--at least to our way of thinking. There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor understand. It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenly realizing that we did not know a single line of our parts. That's one reason we loved alcohol too well. It did let us act extemporaneously. But even Bacchus boomeranged on us; we were finally struck down and left in terrified loneliness.

Never looked at myself as lonely. Was in complete denial about this person who was outgoing and thought of herself as a people person. In reality, it was a person looking to belong, looking for acceptance, someone who thought she was different and wanted to be a part of and never feeling like she quite measured up. Always trying to prove herself or thinking that she needed to and it wasn't okay to be her.

As my disease progressed, it took more and more of what ever to make me feel up to where I felt I needed to be. It was a synthetic sense of well being covering up a needy soul. When I get needy, I get greedy. That is just a true in today as it was prior to recovery.

I loved being the center of attention, especially the male variety. When I got that attention, it was generally the wrong kind with the wrong intention. Looking for love in all the wrong places. If I said you had a wonderful body would you hold it against me. You are my man, I am your woman. Country music had songs to express how I felt. I continued to drink to everyone else's health but my own.

Over the years of rejection, abandonment, and pain, I became more and more isolated until I became this introverted person who was an empty shell. Every time I picked up, I gave a piece of me away, and there was not much of me left. By sharing my feelings and my story with others, I was able to see that I wasn't alone. My thoughts were not original and that someone had alreayd lived my story.

Especially like that last line. I often said, "I don't have the answers because I don't know what the quesiton is." It was like I had been searching all of my life and wasn't sure I would know what the answers where when and if I found them.

I played many roles and wore many masks. I was who you wanted me to be. Then I would say the wrong lines and would feel like a failure. How can you fail at something you don't know? How can you know what you never learned? How can you measure up when you don't know what yardstick you are suppose to be measuring with?

Alcohol covered up all those feelings. It was a great coping tool until it stopped working. When it stopped working, my pill intake increased and in the end, I was doing both and still looking for more.

[Marcie]

My sponsor and I just had a talk about some of the reasons we used the drink. I remember, now, in the beginning being, I guess, shy. The real deal was that I didn’t know how to interact with people. I really hated being the wall flower. I wanted to be that girl that everyone rushed to when they walked into a room. But, when I found myself in the lime light, I didn’t like that either. I was not happy or comfortable. I could not accept what my Higher Power created. And then I found alcohol, or it found me. Whichever. After the drink, I became the noisy, shoot, LOUD, girl that craved attention and companionship. After many years of chasing these and making lots of messes, lots of bridges burnt, and many downward spirals, I retreated to my couch and the hole in my soul grew larger and larger.

What I got from my Fifth Step can be read in the 12 & 12. It’s the best description I can give. It’s in the last two paragraphs of Step Five.

I became one with God and man.

[caressa]

Shyness wasn't my problem but lack of confidence was. I was very self-conscious. It was dream about walking into the Legion wearing 3" spiked heeled red shoes, walking a straight line and thinking I am sober. I got a drink at the bar, walked to the table and challenged someone to a game of darts. I was one obnoxious, first class pregnant dog with major attitude. I saw myself for who I had become and could no longer deny my own problem with alcohol. Before it had always been about my dad and my ex-husband.

[caressa]

When we reached A.A., and for the first time in our lives stood among people who seemed to understand, the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting. We thought the isolation problem had been solved. But we soon discovered that while we weren't alone any more in a social sense, we still suffered many of the old pangs of anxious apartness. Until we had talked with complete candor of our conflicts, and had listened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong. Step Five was the answer. It was the beginning of true kinship with man and God.

It generally takes a person a while to be open enough to share. With me, I had a real thirst. Perhaps because it took me so long to find the rooms of recovery and to admit to my disease. As I often say, "AA got me talking and now they can't shut me up." There was so much healing from being open and sharing with others. I went to two meetings a day, sometimes three for the first three years of my recovery. I didn't just to go to AA, I also went to NA, ACoA, Al-Anon, and Nar-Anon. I also did counselling with several people at Family Services and in later years went to a therapist and sexual assault counselling.

It was great to know that I wasn't alone. It was even more rewarding to hear someone share parts of my story. I will never forget the day I heard a woman say that her motto was "Do it with style and grace!" It had been my motto for years. It was even more funny when I looked at how much style I didn't have and how ungraceful I was going through life. It was good to look at myself and laugh and not take myself so seriously. Recovery is serious. If I want to recover I need to focus on me and take that inside journey. That doesn't mean I can't have fun along the way.

[caressa]

This vital Step was also the means by which we began to get the feeling that we could be forgiven, no matter what we had thought or done. Often it was while working on this Step with our sponsors or spiritual advisers that we first felt truly able to forgive others, no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us.

Our moral inventory had persuaded us that all-round forgiveness was desirable, but it was only when we resolutely tackled Step Five that we inwardly knew we'd be able to receive forgiveness and give it, too.
Another great dividend we may expect from confiding our defects to another human being is humility--a word often misunderstood. To those who have made progress in A.A., it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. Therefore, our first practical move toward humility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. No defect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is.

Love this paragraph. I had six years in recovery when my doctor sent me to a therapist and she asked me "Why haven't you forgiven yourself?" I remember looking at her strangely and had to pause and think. I finally responded, "Well, I guess I forgot to ask." It seemed as though subconsciously, I hadn't thought myself worthy of it.

For so many years, I had listened to a lot of mental and emotional abuse and took things on and as a result had a lot of false pride, guilt, and shame. I had to determine what was mine and deal with it. I learned that I could change, that I was worthy, and that I had a loving and forgiving God. What I had done and what I had become, wasn't where I had to stay and the doors of recovery were truly opened when I learned to be open and allow the healing to take place. I had buried things so deeply that it took a long time to deal with everything. The more I vocalized and share the true me and how I felt, the more I healed. The more I healed, the more forgiveness I could extend to others and let go of the resentments of my past.

[caressa]

But we shall have to do more than see. The objective look at ourselves we achieved in Step Four was, after all, only a look. All of us saw, for example, that we lacked honesty and tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity or delusions of personal grandeur. But while this was a humiliating experience, it didn't necessarily mean that we had yet acquired much actual humility. Though now recognized, our defects were still there. Something had to be done about them. And we soon found that we could not wish or will them away by ourselves.

The self-honesty came slowly. It took a long time for me to detox let alone to get to a place where I wanted to change. At the beginning, all I could do was bring the body and the mind followed, all be it slowly.

I had a thirst for information but I stayed sick because I compared instead of identifying. I often had to pray for the willingness to be willing. I got to a year, and didn't know who God was, so I needed time to come to my own understanding and build a trust that He could do what I couldn't.

I went to a lot of discussion meetings. Listened to others, and heard how the program worked for them. Not just topic discussions but Big Book and Step and Tradition discussion meeting too.

I had tried to quit my way for eight years before I came to recovery, so I knew that may way didn't work. It was necessary to be willing to turn things over to the God of my understanding, not just my alcoholism but the characteristics of the person behind the drinking and drugging.

[caressa]

More realism and therefore more honesty about ourselves are the great gains we make under the influence of Step Five. As we took inventory, we began to suspect how much trouble self-delusion had been causing us. This had brought a disturbing reflection. If all our lives we had more or less fooled ourselves, how could we now be so sure that we weren't still self-deceived? How could we be certain that we had made a true catalog of our defects and had really admitted them, even to ourselves? Because we were still bothered by fear, self-pity, and hurt feelings, it was probable we couldn't appraise ourselves fairly at all. Too much guilt and remorse might cause us to dramatize and exaggerate our shortcomings. Or anger and hurt pride might be the smoke screen under which we were hiding some of our defects while we blamed others for them.

A lot of my healing came from hearing others share their stories and thinking, "I felt that way too." As I worked the Steps and healed, I was able to get more and more honest as to what was truly mine, what was not, things that I had taken on that had been projected onto me or I thought as my role as a daughter, wife, lover, friend, neighbor, mother, etc. were mine. Often there were things I disagreeociation, things that were spoken over the pulpit and came from parents, relatives, etc. who claimed to be in the know and the leading authority. I had to come to realize that how can the always know what was good for me?

How could I know what was good for me when I wasn't in touch with myself? I lived my life through other people, and found my idienty and truth through them or through the ideals that I thought I should live up to. It certainly was dellusional; and because I could never measure up to my or others ideals, I always felt less than.

Many illusions of control kept me sick for a long time. I thought I was in control and yet I was controlled by the substances and the people in my life. Every time I picked up, I gave more and more of me until I was this empty shell who was fragmented, bruised, hurt, and very angry because she didn't know what was wrong.

Not once did I align myself to God and what He wished for my life. I thought I had done right or had followed the rules, the orders, the dictates of law. As I got clean and sober, turned the looking glass inward instead of looking outside of myself, I found the answers.

[caressa]

Possibly, too, we were still handicapped by many liabilities, great and small, we never knew we had. Hence it was most evident that a solitary self-appraisal, and the admission of our defects based upon that alone, wouldn't be nearly enough. We'd have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about ourselves--the help of God and another human being. Only by discussing ourselves, holding back
nothing, only by being willing to take advice and accept direction could we set foot on the road to straight thinking, solid honesty, and genuine humility.

This reminds me of something that I had forgotten for a long time. A long-timer told me many years ago that guilt can take you back out just as fast as resentment. Not being willing to share our story with another and keeping things buried leaves us with unresolved issues and a sickness that eats up the soul.

My mother was in the hospital in October and the doctor told her to lose weight and if she didn't do it, the next time she ended up in the hospital he couldn't guarantee that she would leave.

She chased some cattle (which was dumb) trying to keep them othe road and had a heart attack. She went into hospital 24th of May and died the 1st of June. She would have been 41 on the 28th of June. I was working in the city and didn't realize how bad she was. It was a real shock and I had a lot of guilt because I wasn't home to look after her and yet it was her who told me to go to the city to get work when I was 17. I was told she was in the hospital so stopped by the hospital on my way home to the farm. Went to the room they told me she was in only to find the bed empty and stripped. I wasn't sure if she had been sent home or moved. A candy stripper sent me to the nurses station where I found that she had died an hour after I had left the city to come home to see her.

When I left there and went to the farm to see my dad I was very angry and was even more so when he didn't seem too upset by her death. I demanded to know why he hadn't told me how bad she was. I know now that I couldn't have done anything but in my grief, I hit out at him not wanting to face my own issues.

[Marcie]

Good Stuff, thanks Caressa!

[Marcie]

Understanding the Fifth Step

In the A.A. Fifth Step, we admit to God, to ourselves and to another person the exact nature of the wrongs we have committed as the result of our character defects. It is one thing to admit these wrongs and defects secretly to ourselves and quite anther to write them down on paper and see them in black and white. It is still more humbling to admit them to another human being. That final admission makes them more real and more painful to us, while, at the same time, removes some of their power.

[caressa]

Sharing with others releases the power and fear. For me, every time I go to a meeting and share, I am working Step Five.

[caressa]

Yet many of us still hung back. We said, "Why can't `God as we understand Him' tell us where we are astray? If the Creator gave us our lives in the first place, then He must know in every detail where we have since gone wrong. Why don't we make our admissions to Him directly? Why do we need to bring anyone else into this?"

At this stage, the difficulties of trying to deal rightly with God by
ourselves are twofold. Though we may at first be startled to realize that God knows all about us, we are apt to get used to that quite quickly. Somehow, being alone with God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical. When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God.

I had to get over the embarrassment and shame I felt about God knowing everything I did and accept His unconditional love and know that He still cared for me and forgave me. I hated the word sin and all knowledge of God made me resentful and I needed to make an amend to God. For me in today, SIN means "Soul In Need."

By sharing with others, I could bring things into the light and allow the healing to occur. It started by writing things down, but to get true healing and to allow me to truly let go and let God, I needed to share, know that I was not alone, that I wasn't the only one, and that my dis-ease that made me uncomfortable in my own skin, could be changed by continuing to work the rest of the Steps.

As it says here, I took God for granted. Most of the time, because of the guilt of my old tapes, the last thng I wanted to do was face God. I had to find that loving, caring and forgiving God that I found in the rooms of recovery.

If I haven't share with others, I would have stayed in my own denial. I wouldn't have been able to find the true honesty I needed in order to recover. I can justify and rationalize anything, and it took a lot of truth from sponsors and long-timers to see my own truth.

[caressa]

The second difficulty is this: what comes to us alone may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking. The benefit of talking to another person is that we can get his direct comment and counsel on our situation, and there can be no doubt in our minds what that advice is. Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. How many times have we heard well-intentioned people claim the guidance of God when it was all too plain that they were sorely mistaken. Lacking both practice and humility, they had deluded themselves and were able to justify the most arrant nonsense on the ground that this was what God had told them. It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual development almost always insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they have received from God. Surely, then, a novice ought not lay himself open to the chance of making foolish, perhaps tragic, blunders in this fashion. While the comment or advice of others may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be far more specific than any direct guidance we may receive while we are still so inexperienced in establishing contact with a Power greater than ourselves.

To me this is the whole crux of the matter! Two of my biggest defects of character where self-justification and rationalization. I can talk myself into anything I want to believe.

When there is just me, there is no one to disagree with me. To receive any enlightenment, I had to go to meeting, not only share but to listen to others. Often when i picked up the phone and verbalized my thoughts, I could hear myself talking and was able to detect the insanity I was in at the moment, the self-pity, the rsentment, etc. When those thoughts were bounding around and hitting the walls of my small brain, I would get a lot of echos and often misconscrewed what was really going on and missing the direction that I needed to take.

I had to learn to discriminate and learn what was good for me. What was good for others may not be good for me. It was when I took things to my God, I could find my own truth. As a relationship developed with my Higher Power, I learned to trust that He/She would put the people, place or thing I needed to be there when I needed them.

God and I are still working on things a day at a time. I know that more will be revealed. Many times, what I thought was my truth changed! Things that were good for me at one time, may no longer serve me in the moment. It is only through this Step that I get the self-honesty needed to do the next two Steps.

[caressa]

Our next problem will be to discover the person in whom we are to confide. Here we ought to take much care, remembering that prudence is a virtue which carries a high rating. Perhaps we shall need to share with this person facts about ourselves which no others ought to know. We shall want to speak with someone who is experienced, who not only has stayed dry but has been able to surmount other serious difficulties. Difficulties, perhaps, like our own. This person may turn out to be one's sponsor, but not necessarily so. If you have developed a high confidence in him, and his temperament and problems are close to your own, then such a choice will be good. Besides, your sponsor already has the advantage of knowing something about your case.

Perhaps, though, your relation to him is such that you -would care to reveal only a part of your story. If this is the situation, by all means do so, for you ought to make a beginning as soon as you can. It may turn out, however, that you'll choose someone else for the more difficult and deeper revelations.


AA's 12 Steps & 12 Traditions

My first inventory was done with the sponsor I had at the time. I chose her because she was an addiction counselor in recovery. When we separated due to my moving and her life getting busy, I ended up getting counseling with Family Services. I would go in for an hour, bring up issues, talk about them, come back the next week with them all processed, and start the cycle again. I went to deal with different issues and had different counselors although some I had twice. I later went to Women's Center for Sexual Assault Counseling.

I had a very open relationship with most of my sponsors. I didn't think I would ever tell another living soul. It is such a peace when the heavy burden is lifted. It is so enlightening when you know you are not the only one who ever thought or acted that way. I had one sponsor look at me and said, "Did you think that? I thought I was the only one!" I can't even remember what 'it' was now. It is of no consequence. "Things" just lose their power to hurt and fester when you bring them out of the darkness and into the light. Mind you, I did have a sponsor who I felt heard things in 'both' ears and was funneled through her mouth. She wasn't my sponsor very long.

[caressa]

This individual may be entirely outside of A.A.--for example, your clergyman or your doctor. For some of us, a complete stranger may prove the best bet. The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey.

Even when you've found the person, it frequently takes great resolution to approach him or her. No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no
willpower; here is one place you may require all you've got. Happily, though, the chances are that you will be in for a very pleasant surprise. When your mission is carefully explained, and it is seen by the recipient of your confidence how helpful he can really be, the conversation will start easily and will soon become eager. Before long, your listener may well tell a story or two about himself which will place you even more at ease. Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place. And when humility and serenity are so combined, something else of great moment is apt to occur. Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God. And even those who had faith already often become conscious of
God as they never were before.

AA 12 Steps & 12 Traditions

One of the things that really helped me was told to me by another one of those great long-timers who went before me:- There should be no time between a Third Step and a Fourth Step. There can be a time between your Fourth and Fifth Step. I depends on how long you want to hang onto your past and how quickly do you want the freedom of sobriety.

It is my firm belief that sobriety only comes after the Fifth Step. I may have stayed sober, but true sobriety didn't manifest itself until I got rid of the wreckage of my past. The freedom of recovery happened for me when I did my Fifth.

I have heard several people say they left pieces with different people. Some have told complete strangers, while others only felt comfortable with someone they had gotten to know well. I did my first one with my sponsor of the moment. I later went for outside help to deal with issues other than alcohol and drugs. Also, issues that lead to the use of the drugs and alcohol and I found that AA/NA's role was not that of a doctor and I needed professional help.

I feel that we do a Fifth Step every time we go to a meeting and share our experience, strength, and hope. When we do one on one with a still suffering alcoholic and/or addict, we share a little bit of ourselves so they know that they are not alone and that we have been there too. Nothing I ever did that I thought what was so horrific and unable to be disclosed, was new to me. I was not unique. Someone had already been there. I have heard my story twice, almost word for word in portions and yet our drug of choice was not the same. The drug is but a symptom of my disease. Those things that were just so big, became small in the light of day.

As it says here, I saw God working in my life. Putting people in my path, opening doors to change and to trust. Developing a faith that the program would work for me. I saw it at work, healing me and although I was generally the last to notice it within myself, I saw it in others.

This is a disease of perception. When I share with another person, it puts a new light on things and I can see them as they are not as I would have them be. When I first came into recovery and talked to my youngest sister, you wouldn't know that we were raised in the same dysfunctional family. I could relate more to the sister in the middle and yet all three of us had a different perspective and came from separate places when we viewed our past. I was the only one who became an alcoholic and drug addict. One has mental disorders and the other is codependent and lives her life through others, although they both shared that they thought if they had seriously picked up a drink, they thought that they would drink alcoholically. Because of our dad's disease, they chose not to go that route. I left home at 17 and they were 13 and 14, so they were around more of his drinking and were more affected by it in their early years. I only saw my father drunk twice before I left home, only to return to become his drinking buddy.

There are some who say it is in the genes and to some extent it may be so, but not in all cases. I firmly believe we are products of our environment. As my using escalated, my circumstances changed and my values lowered.

To be continued...

[caressa]

Many an A.A., once agnostic or atheistic, tells us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God. And even those who had faith already often become conscious of God as they never were before.

This feeling of being at one with God and man, this emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing of our terrible burden of guilt, brings us to a resting place where we may prepare ourselves for the following Steps toward full and meaningful sobriety.

AA - 12 Steps and 12 Traditions

As they say, we do recover when one addict share with another. Those feeling of being alone, of not being a good as, of being different lessen and often fade away in the company of people who finally understand us.

Whether it is a group of drug addicts, a group of drunks, a group of dependent people on others to fullfil their happiness, group of people who look for that something outside of themselves to fill the emptiness they felt inside, is filled with the love and fellowship of the rooms and they can see God working in their lives and that of others.

Many times I should have been dead and yet here I was to share my story with others. God had a purpose for me. Like the principle of Traditon Five, to carry the message to the addict who still suffers, I need to share my story with others in order to recover. To take down the barriers and allow myself to heal. To heal I needed to work the rest of the Steps. Guilt has taken so many people back out there. It is just as big an offender as resentment. When we work this Step, we can let go of the guilt and learn to accept our life as it is and be grateful for the chance to change and recover.

[caressa]

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Honesty

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

—Step Five of Al-Anon

Talking openly and honestly to another person about ourselves, in an attitude that reflects self-responsibility, is critical to recovery.

It's important to admit what we have done wrong to others and to ourselves. Verbalize our beliefs and our behaviors. Get our resentments and fears out in the open.

That's how we release our pain. That's how we release old beliefs and feelings. That's how we are set free. The more clear and specific we can be with our Higher Power, ourselves, and another person, the more quickly we will experience that freedom.

Step Five is an important part of the recovery process. For those of us who have learned to keep secrets from others, and ourselves it is not just a step - it is a leap toward becoming healthy.

Today I will remember that it's okay to talk about the issues that bother me. It is by sharing my issues that I will grow beyond them. I will also remember that it's okay to be selective about those in whom I confide. I can trust my instincts and choose someone who will not use my disclosures against me, and who will give me healthy feedback.

[caressa]

I know this is a reading, but seeing as it references Step Five, I posted it here. Step Four is about finding faith and letting go of fear. Step Five is about trust and honesty. No one can help me if I keep things a secret. I am only as sick as my secrets.

[majestyjo]

Just For Today
August 28

The Light Of Exposure

“These defects grow in the dark and die in the light of exposure.”
Basic Text p.31

The Fifth Step asks us to share our true nature with God, with ourselves, and with another human being. It doesn’t encourage us to tell everyone every little secret about ourselves. It doesn’t ask us to disclose to the whole world every shameful or frightening thought we’ve ever had. Step Five simply suggests that our secrets cause us more harm than good when we keep them completely to ourselves.

If we give in to our reluctance to reveal our true nature to even one human being, the secret side of our lives becomes more powerful. And when the secrets are in control, they drive a wedge between ourselves, our Higher Power, and the things we value most about our recovery.

When we share our secret selves in confidence with at least one human being-our sponsor, perhaps, or a close friend-this person usually doesn’t reject us. We disclose ourselves to someone else and are rewarded with their acceptance. When this happens, we realize that honest sharing is not life-threatening; the secrets have lost their power over us.

Just for today: I can disarm the secrets in my life by sharing them with one human being.

[majestyjo]

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

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

But of the things which really bother and burn us, we say nothing. Certain distressing or humiliating memories, we tell ourselves, ought not be shared with anyone. These will remain our secret. Not a soul must ever know. We hope they'll go to the grave with us.

pp. 55-56

We need to bring things out of the darkness, into the light. We are only as sick as our secrets. We don't heal and get well, until we uncover the garbage within, be it real or imagined. This is a disease of perception. I thought things were my fault. On perusal, I found it wasn't so. I didn't have the power, especially as a child.