AA 12x12…Codependency and Narcissism
It is truly awful to admit that, glass in hand, we have warped our minds into such an obsession for destructive drinking that only an act of Providence can remove it from us.
We perceive that only through utter defeat are we able to take our first steps toward liberation and strength.
Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.
We know that little good can come to any alcoholic who joins A.A. unless he has first accepted his devastating weakness and all its consequences.
Until he so humbles himself, his sobriety—if any—will be precarious.
Of real happiness he will find none at all.
The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered.
Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it.
Relentlessly deepening our dilemma, our sponsors pointed out our increasing sensitivity to alcohol—an allergy, they called it.
Few indeed were those who, so assailed, had ever won through in singlehanded combat.
It was a statistical fact that alcoholics almost never recovered on their own resources.
When these laid hold of A.A. principles with all the fervor with which the drowning seize life preservers, they almost invariably got well.
Step One requires an admission that our lives have become unmanageable
Perhaps you’re not an alcoholic after all. Why don't you try some more controlled drinking?
Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first?
The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom.
For practicing A.A.'s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking.
Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant?
Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done?
Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer?
Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.'s message to the next sufferer?
No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect—unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.
Under the lash of alcoholism, we are driven to A.A., and there we discover the fatal nature of our situation.
Then, and only then, do we become as open-minded to conviction and as willing to listen as the dying can be.
We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us.
And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one.
How does a fellow 'take it easy'?
I think I can tell you exactly how to relax.
You won't have to work at it very hard.
First, Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything.
All you really need is a truly open mind.
It wasn't A.A that had the closed mind, it was me.
Practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could.
A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith.
If you wish, make A.A. itself your 'higher power.'
They are certainly a power greater than you
Their lives unaccountably transformed
Sometimes A.A, comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all
The overconfidence of youth was too much for us.
Why should we be bothered with the state of our souls here or hereafter?
It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it.
We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons
Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone.
We saw that we had to reconsider or die.
By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil.
Defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic.
So it's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself.
More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us.
When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed.
At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be.
Belief meant reliance, not; defiance.
We soon concluded that what- ever price in humility we must pay, we would pay.
We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't.
The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession.
Some will be willing to term themselves “problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill.
Sanity” is defined as “soundness of mind.”
True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith.
There is only one key, and it is called willingness.
This is the way to a faith that works.
We saw that we were powerless over alcohol.
...faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone.
These conclusions did not require action; they required only acceptance.
Step Three calls for affirmative action.
For it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God.
Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in?
Exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of God?
We who have tried it can testify that anyone can begin to do it.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.
Every man and woman who has joined A.A. and intends to stick has made a beginning on Step Three.
In all matters touching upon alcohol, each of them has decided to turn his or her life over to the care, protection, and guidance of Alcoholics Anonymous.
If this is not turning one's will and life over, then what is it?
The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are.
We are certain that our intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us success in the world we live in.
This sounds good but how well does it actually work?
One good look in the mirror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.
Dependence upon an A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any baleful results.
So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn his will and his life over to the Higher Power?
He made a beginning when he commenced to rely upon A.A. for the solution of his alcohol problem.
He relies upon the assurance that his many troubles, now made more acute because he cannot use alcohol to kill the pain, can be solved, too.
That is just where the remaining Steps of the A.A. program come in.
Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life can bring the much-desired result.
All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness.
He is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself.
Trying to do this is an act of his own will.
All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.
It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly.
Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower.
We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us.
To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the door.
It is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three.
Creation gave us instincts for a purpose.
Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings.
These desires—for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship —are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.
These instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions.
Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives.
No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles.
Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct.
When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.
We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us.
Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us.
Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.
Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking.
We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking.
We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol.
Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people.
We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right.
The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his liabilities.
We thought “conditions” drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics.
It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.
We had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.
A list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.
There is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.
Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory a wonderful light falls upon this scene.
These are the first fruits of Step Four.
Character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of our drinking and our failure at life.
All the faulty foundation of our lives will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock.
“Just how do I go about this?”
“How do I take inventory of myself?”
Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice.
Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society.
Thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory.
In this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers.
It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal.
Scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one.
A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems
We have to talk to somebody about them.
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.
This is not only unwise, but is actually a perilous resolve.
They would sometimes accuse even their best friends of the very character defects they themselves were trying to conceal.
Psychiatrists and psychologists point out the deep need every human being has for practical insight and knowledge of his own personality flaws and for a discussion of them with an understanding and trustworthy person.
Without a fearless admission of our defects to another human being we could not stay sober.
It seems plain that the grace of God will not enter to expel our destructive obsessions until we are willing to try this.
We shall get rid of that terrible sense of isolation we've always had.
Nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.
There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor understand.
That's one reason we loved alcohol too well.
It did let us act extemporaneously.
When we reached A.A., the sense of belonging was tremendously exciting.
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.
It was the beginning of true kinship with man and God.
We began to get the feeling that we could be forgiven, no matter what we had thought or done.
It was while working on this Step that we first felt truly able to forgive others, no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us.
Another great dividend we may expect from confiding our defects to another human being is humility
It amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be.
Our first practical move toward humility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies.
We'd have to have outside help if we were surely to know and admit the truth about our- selves—the help of God and another human being.
Only by being willing to take advice and accept direction could we set foot on the road to genuine humility.
When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God.
Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous.
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.
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.
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.
Your sponsor, your clergyman or your doctor, a complete stranger may prove the best bet.
Many an A.A., tell us that it was during this stage of Step Five that he first actually felt the presence of God.
Any person capable of enough willingness and honesty to try repeatedly Step Six on all his faults—without any reservations whatever—has indeed come a long way spiritually, and is therefore entitled to be called a man.
Whether God can remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member.
I simply couldn't stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me.
When I became willing to clean house my obsession to drink vanished.
Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, why then shouldn't we be able to achieve by the same means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect?
Every normal person wants, for example, to eat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fellows.
God made us that way.
It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives.
So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives.
We often let these natural desires far exceed their intended purpose.
We willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us.
That is the measure of our character defects
In no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation.
That is something we are supposed to be willing to work toward ourselves.
He asks only that we try as best we know how to make progress in the building of character.
This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was.
We shall have to be content with patient improvement.
No matter how far we have progressed, desires will always be found which oppose the grace of God.
To think of liking lust seems impossible.
But how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds?
And even while staying within conventional bounds, many people have to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt to be all dressed up as dreams of romance.
Only Step One, where we made the 100 percent admission we were powerless over alcohol, can be practiced with absolute perfection.
The remaining eleven Steps state perfect ideals.
The only urgent thing is that we make a beginning, and keep trying.
We shall need to make a brand new venture into open-mindedness.
The only question will be “Are we ready?”
We should pause here to consider what humility is and what the practice of it can mean to us.
Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps.
Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world.
Many people haven't even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.
Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life.
But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics.
For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance.
In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility.
We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.
Most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied.
But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.
Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not.
For just so long as we were convinced that we could live exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible.
This was true even when we believed that God existed.
That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.
We began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair.
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity.
To gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time.
We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.
Our thinking about humility commences to have a wider meaning.
We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind.
Humility now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient, which can give us serenity.
Our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.
We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.
Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.
Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets.
Humility had brought strength out of weakness.
It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.
The most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God.
We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility.
A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have.
As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.'s inquire once more just what our deeper objectives are.
Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows.
We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives.
We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.
Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands.
The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone.
The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility.
It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we
did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
First, we take a look backward and try to discover where we have been at fault.
Second. we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done.
Third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.
Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women is a fascinating adventure.
Obstacles are very real.
One of the most difficult has to do with forgiveness.
To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he has done us.
We've repeatedly brought out the very worst in those who didn't think much of us to begin with.
If we are now about to ask forgiveness for ourselves, why shouldn't we start out by forgiving them, one and all?
We clung to the claim that, when drinking, we never hurt anybody but ourselves.
What real harm, therefore, had we done?
We should make an accurate and exhaustive survey of our past life as it has affected other people.
In many instances we shall find that though the harm done others has not been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselves has.
Very deep, sometimes quite forgotten, damaging emotional conflicts persist below the level of consciousness.
At the time of these occurrences, they may actually have given our emotions violent twists that have since discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worse.
Defective relations with other human beings have nearly always been the immediate cause of our woes, including our alcoholism.
Calm, thoughtful reflection upon personal relations can deepen our insight.
We can see those flaws which were basic, flaws which sometimes were responsible for the whole pattern of our lives.
To define the word “harm” in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which cause physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people.
We can now commence to ransack memory for the people to whom we have given offense.
We want to hold ourselves to the course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done us, real or fancied.
We should avoid extreme judgments, both of ourselves and others.
We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs.
A quiet, objective view will be our steadfast aim.
This Step is the beginning of the end of isolation from our fellows and from God.
The making of direct amends divides those we should approach into several classes...
Those who ought to be dealt with just as soon as we become reasonably confident
Those to whom we can make only partial restitution
Still others, which we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.
First we will wish to be reasonably certain that we are on the A.A. beam.
Against this background we can freely admit the damage we have done and make our apologies.
We can pay, whatever obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe.
Even our most justified critics will frequently meet us more than halfway on the first trial. 

In rare cases, we get a cool and skeptical reception.
If we have prepared ourselves well in advance, such reactions will not deflect us from our steady purpose.
As soon as we begin to feel confident in our new way of life it is usually safe to talk with those who have been seriously affected.
The only exceptions we will make will be cases where our disclosure would cause actual harm.
We cannot, for example, unload a detailed account of extramarital adventuring upon the shoulders of our unsuspecting wife or husband.
Suppose that we have drunk up a good chunk of our firm's money.
Are we going to be so rigidly righteous about making amends that we don't care what happens to the family and home?
We lay the matter before our sponsor, earnestly asking God's help and guidance.
Readiness to take the full consequences of our past acts, and to take responsibility for the well-being of others at the same time, is the very spirit of Step Nine.
Step 10
When we approach Step Ten we commence to put our A.A. way of living to practical day by day use.
Can we stay in emotional balance under all conditions?
More experienced people, in all times and places have practiced unsparing self-survey and criticism.
No one can make much of his life until self-searching becomes a regular habit and he tries to correct what is wrong.
The emotional hangover… If we would live serenely today, we certainly need to eliminate these hangovers.
When our inventory is carefully taken, and we have made peace with ourselves, the conviction follows that tomorrow's challenges can be met as they come.
Although all inventories are alike in principle, the time factor distinguishes one from another...
• The spot-check inventory, taken at any time of the day
• The one we take at day's end, when we review the happenings of the hours just past
• Then there are those when alone, or in the company of our sponsor, we make a careful review of our progress since the last time
Many A.A.'s go in for annual or semiannual housecleanings.
It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us.
Few people have been more victimized by resentments than have we alcoholics.
A spot-check inventory taken in the midst of such disturbances can be of very great help in quieting stormy emotions.
In all these situations we need self-restraint, honest analysis of what is involved, a willingness to admit when the fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive when the fault is elsewhere.
Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint.
This carries a top priority rating.
Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen.
We must be quite as careful when we begin to achieve some measure of importance and material success.
For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them.
Of course, people turned away from us, bored or hurt.
We can often check ourselves by remembering that we are today sober only by the grace of God and that any success we may be having is far more His success than ours.
Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill, as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means.
It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.
Not many people can truthfully assert that they love everybody.
Most of us must admit that we have loved but a few; that we have been quite indifferent to the many so long as none of them gave us trouble; and as for the remainder—well, we have really disliked or hated them.
The idea that we can be possessively loving of a few, can ignore the many, and can continue to fear or hate anybody, has to be abandoned, if only a little at a time.
We can try to stop making unreasonable demands upon those we love.
With those we dislike we can begin to practice justice and courtesy.
When in doubt we can always pause, saying, “ Not my will, but Thine, be done.”
This is a good place to remember that inventory-taking is not always done in red ink.
It's a poor day indeed when we haven't done something right.
The waking hours are usually well filled with things that are constructive.
Good intentions, good thoughts, and good acts are there for us to see.
A.A.'s agree, drinking had to come before sobriety...and emotional turmoil before serenity.
Prayer and meditation are our principal means of conscious contact with God.
We often tend to slight serious meditation and prayer as something not really necessary.
Certain newcomers cling to the A.A. group as their Higher Power.
We liked A.A. all right, but recoiled from meditation and prayer obstinately.
When we turn away from meditation and prayer, we deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support.
There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.
Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of that ultimate reality which is God's kingdom.
We will be comforted that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try do the will of our own Creator.
Meditation is our step out into the sun.
The actual experience of meditation and prayer across the centuries is immense.
As beginners in meditation, we might now read a prayer several times very slowly, savoring every word.
This much could be a fragment of what is called meditation, a flier into the realm of spirit.
Meditation is something which can always be further developed.
It has no boundaries.
Always remember that meditation is intensely practical.
Its first fruit is emotional balance.
Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God.
Our temptation will be to ask for specific solutions to specific problems.
In that case, we are asking God to do it our way.
We remember, and repeat to ourselves, a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed to us in our reading or meditation.
Just saying it over and over…
We have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question.
We discover that we do receive guidance for our lives to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give it to us on order and on our terms.
All of us, without exception, pass through times when we can pray only with the greatest exertion of will.
Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us.
We know that God lovingly watches over us.
We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.
The joy of living is the theme of A.A.’ s Twelfth Step, and action is it's key word.
It is really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it.
What do you mean when you talk about a ‘spiritual awakening’?
There are as many definitions of spiritual awakening as there are people.
A spiritual awakening...the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone.
...and who still considered his well-loved A.A. group the Higher Power, would presently love God and call Him by name.
Practically every A.A. member declares that no satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a Twelfth Step job well done.
Nor is this the only kind of Twelfth Step work...
•We sit in A.A. meetings and listen to give reassurance and support
•We speak at a meeting trying to carry AA's message
•Perhaps arranging for the coffee and cake after meetings
Now comes the biggest question yet.
What about the practice of these principles in all our affairs?
Can we love the whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small segment of it we discover when we try to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety?
Can we bring the same spirit of love and tolerance into our family lives?
Can we carry the AA spirit into our daily work?
Can we bring new purpose and devotion to the religion of our choice?
How shall we come to terms with seeming failure or success?
Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity?
Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?
We often get quite far off the beam. Our troubles sometimes begin with indifference.
We temporarily cease to grow because we feel satisfied that there is no need for all of A.A.’ s Twelve Steps for us.
In A.A. slang, that blissful state is called "two-stepping"
Our answer is in still more spiritual development.
Only by this means can we improve our chances for really happy and useful living.
And as we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes toward our instincts need to undergo drastic revisions.
Our desires for..
•Emotional security and Wealth
•Personal Prestige and Power
•Romance and Family satisfactions
...all these have to be tempered and redirected.
When we are willing to place spiritual growth first— then and only then do we have a real chance.
If we go on growing, our attitudes and actions toward security— emotional security and financial security— commence to change profoundly.
It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis;
We would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us.
When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself.
We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would.
If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows.
Alcoholics are still childish, emotionally sensitive, and grandiose.
Well matured A.A.'s...
•No longer strive to dominate or rule those about us
•No longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised
•Try to be humbly grateful
•Exert ourselves in a spirit of love and service
True leadership depends upon able example
In God’s sight all human beings are important
True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.
We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us.
"Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind".
All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness.
Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.
...character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and failure at life.
Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security and society.
The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being.
Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with anyone of those about us.
It is nowhere evident, at least in this life, that our Creator expects us fully to eliminate our instinctual drives. So far as we know, it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives.
Whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.
Until now, our lives have been primarily devoted to running from pain and problems.
Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.
Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows.
We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we could not do for ourselves.
We now see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others and upon God.
...no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands
...we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol.
If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
In many instances we shall find that though the harm done others has not been great, the emotional harm we have done ourselves has.
To define the word "harm" in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision.
We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet objective view will be our steadfast aim.
Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint. This carries a top priority rating.
Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries.
(We) repeat to ourselves, a particular prayer or phrase that has appealed to us in our reading or meditation. Just saying it over and over...
We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.
Spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel and believe that which he could not do before on his own unaided strength.
True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.
We stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us.
Some will be willing to term themselves “problem drinkers,” but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill.
By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock.
Now willing to commence the search for his own defects, he will ask, “Just how do I go about this? How do I take inventory of myself?”
Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious.
Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society.
Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems. We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering. Character building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us
As we approach the actual taking of Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.’s inquire once more just what our deeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and with his fellows. We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
We have seen that character defects based upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path toward these objectives.
We now clearly see that we have been making unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded
Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands.
The Seventh Step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
If that degree of humility could enable us to
find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone.
Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made —spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.
This mighty urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative energy that deeply influences our lives. God fashioned us that way.
So our question will be this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?
Indeed, the attainment of greater humility is the foundation principle of each of AA's 12 steps...
For without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all.
Humility, as a word and an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world.
Many people haven't even a nodding acquaintance with humility as a way of life.
In all these strivings, so many of them well intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.
That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing.
We began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair.
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity.
To get completely away from our aversion to the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time.
We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.
…our thinking about humility commences to have a wider meaning.
Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.
This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook.
Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets.
We heard story after story of how humility had brought strength out of weakness.
It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.
We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.
During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God.
We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility.
A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have.
The Seventh step is where we make the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to move out from ourselves toward others and toward God.
The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility.
It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
If that degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have
...humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay.
We supposed we had humility when we really hadn't.
True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith.
...only by being willing to take advice and accept direction could we set foot on the road to straight thinking, solid honesty and genuine humilty.
...when humility and serenity are so combined, something of great moment is apt to occur.
True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.
Humility is truth.
Humility is a byproduct of honesty.
Humility is...being honest with myself around my limits.
AA 12x12…Codependency and Narcissism
How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection.
This weak one, failing to meet life’s responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up.
Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot.
In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.
Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves—two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them.
Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot?
Or by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities?
But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.
We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them.
The primary fact we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being.
Our egomania digs two dangerous pitfalls.
Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much.
If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands.
In this way our insecurity grows and festers.
When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily.
Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate.
As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant.
We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.
Always we have tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it.
This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.
Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.
We were still trying to find emotional security by being dominating or dependent upon others.
…we still vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or dependence
After we come into A.A., if we go on growing, our attitudes and actions toward security—emotional security and financial security—commence to change profoundly.
Our demand for emotional security, for our own way, had constantly thrown us into unworkable relations with other people.
Though we were sometimes quite unconscious of this, the result always had been the same.
Either we had tried to play God and dominate those about us, or we had insisted on being overdependent upon them.
Where people had temporarily let us run their lives as though they were still children, we had felt very happy and secure ourselves.
But when they finally resisted or ran away, we were bitterly hurt and disappointed.
We blamed them, being quite unable to see that our unreasonable demands had been the cause.
When we had taken the opposite tack and had insisted, like infants ourselves, that people protect and take care of us or that the world owed us a living, then the result had been equally unfortunate.
This often caused the people we had loved most to push us aside or perhaps desert us entirely.
Our disillusionment had been hard to bear. We couldn't imagine people acting that way toward us.
We had failed to see that though adult in years we were still behaving childishly, trying to turn everybody—friends, wives, husbands, even the world itself—into protective parents.
We had refused to learn the very hard lesson that overdependence upon people is unsuccessful because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let us down, especially when our demands for attention become unreasonable.
As we made spiritual progress, we saw through these fallacies.
It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us.
We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves without demands for repayment.
When we persistently did this we gradually found that people were attracted to us as never before.
And even if they failed us, we could be understanding and not too seriously affected.
When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself.
We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would.
Where the possession of money and material things was concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolutionary change.
With a few exceptions, all of us had been spendthrifts.
We threw money about in every direction with the purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing other people.
In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply was inexhaustible, though between binges we'd sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost miserly.
Without realizing it we were just accumulating funds for the next spree.
Money was the symbol of pleasure and self-importance.
When our drinking had become much worse, money was only an urgent requirement which could supply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort of oblivion it brought.
Upon entering A.A., these attitudes were sharply reversed, often going much too far in the opposite direction.
The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic.
There simply wouldn't be time, we thought, to rebuild our shattered fortunes.
How could we ever take care of those awful debts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and set something by for old age?
Financial importance was no longer our principal aim; we now clamored for material security.
Even when we were well reestablished in our business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us.
This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again.
Complete financial security we must have—or else.
We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.'s who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world.
And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that.
This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance.
When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears.
And these were fears which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.
But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.'s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were.
We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow.
If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values.
It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was.
Money gradually became our servant and not our master.
It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us.
When, with God's help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.
We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want.
Most married folks in A.A. have very happy homes.
To a surprising extent, A.A. has offset the damage to family life brought about by years of alcoholism.
But just like all other societies, we do have sex and marital problems, and sometimes they are distressingly acute.
Permanent marriage breakups and separations, however, are unusual in A.A. Our main problem is not how we are to stay married; it is how to be more happily married by eliminating the severe emotional twists that have so often stemmed from alcoholism.
Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made —spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical.
This mighty urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative energy that deeply influences our lives.
God fashioned us that way.
So our question will be this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?
We A.A. cannot pretend to offer full answers to age-old perplexities, but our own experience does provide certain answers that work for us.
When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may develop which work against marriage partnership and compatible union.
If the man is affected, the wife must become the head of the house, often the breadwinner.
As matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child who needs to be looked after and extricated from endless scrapes and impasses.
Very gradually, and usually without any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the mother of an erring boy.
And if she had a strong maternal instinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated. Obviously not much partnership can exist under these conditions.
The wife usually goes on doing the best she knows how, but meanwhile the alcoholic alternately loves and hates her maternal care.
A pattern is thereby established that may take a lot of undoing later on.
Nevertheless, under the influence of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.*
When the distortion has been great, however, a long period of patient striving may be necessary.
After the husband joins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do.
Her husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more than when he drank.
Seeing her unhappiness, he recommends A.A.'s Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how to live.
She naturally feels that for years she has made a far better job of living than he has. Both of them blame each other and ask when their marriage is ever going to be happy again.
They may even begin to suspect it had never been any good in the first place.
Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged that a separation may be necessary.
But those cases are the unusual ones.
The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured, and now fully understanding how much he himself did to damage her and his children, nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair what he can and to accept what he can't.
He persistently tries all of A.A.'s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine results.
At this point he firmly but lovingly commences to behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy.
And above all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a way of life for him.