Sex Inventory and Sex Conduct – Big Book Workshop Retreat – Edwards House – Part 4 of 7

Okay. Welcome back, everyone. If there's anyone that has joined us since this morning, my name is Nate. I'm an alcoholic. And yes, so left off straight into sex inventory, which – so there are three – obviously three major pieces of the inventory work that we do, right? So resentment, fear, sex conduct. Clearly the founders of the program knew that that was a very, very important area, right, and for me throughout the course of really my life and my recovery, I found that as far as God substitutes go, does that phrase make sense? Does that resonate with anyone, a God substitute? Things I'm latching on to in place of reliance upon God. For myself and for a lot of the other people that I've met along the road in recovery, sex conduct can usually be the number one God substitute that's available to us, right? And therein can be some real damage, not just to other people but to ourselves, right, Because I can use my sex powers in a way that will absolutely destroy me, right? Glad we saved this for after lunch. I'm not tired at all right now, so this is the perfect place to jump off. But as far as the sex conduct goes, I think it shouldn't be taboo, right, mean it's life it's like we're all human beings were all gonna come into these topics it shouldn't be that strange yet there is almost a mentality at times where whoa let's let's not talk about that out loud right and with I'm saying 100% don't I would never stand at the top of a building and announce my sex inventory to the town square right but at the same time it's no different than anything else right it's no different than anything else and it's something that for me personally if I'm not being honest with myself about what what's going on in that that area of my life I can get very sick very quick and not even necessarily realize it at times and that could be outward that could be it doesn't necessarily have to be just the act of sex which sometimes I think you know it could be that's what it feels like right when we're approaching the inventory. Okay, what are the names of the folks that I need to write on because I've had sexual relations with them specifically? For me, it's bigger than that, right? It's about how I use my sex powers to manipulate and to leverage and to gain validation. And it could be self-abuse, right, and those are words that you throw them out into a room and it could silence the place but believe it or not as human beings we're capable of inflicting harm upon ourselves in the realm of sex behaviors with nobody else around right that's been my experience anyway is that um because what happens is if i'm if i'M leaning on that and not on god i'm looking to escape right i'm still looking to take a drink per se i still want the relief and the escape that comes from taking a drink but i'm not going to drink i'm just going to sink over into this area that leaves me feeling in a lot of ways not that different from what it felt like when i was drinking regarding guilt and shame and remorse right so to each his own and the book's very clear we're we're not to be of any the judge of anyone's sex conduct it's within you right what actually if I'm being honest with myself what feels okay for me right because again we open the door fairly wide here in Alcoholics Anonymous it's we provide a format in which we can get honest with ourselves about what's okay for me, right? How can I act in this area of my life and not want to die when I put my head on the pillow at night is really what it comes down to for me How can I live? What does my ideal sex conduct look like? And we talk about, after the inventory itself, we sit down and ask God to help us shape a sound ideal in regard to sex. So not necessarily sitting down and saying, okay, this is exactly what it will look like, but the way that I see that is I sit down and I take some time to get quiet and I ask God for help. To help me at least put some points on paper about what should and shouldn't I do in regard to this area of my life. And I'm not emotionally invested in any of these things. I'm nicht aktivly looking to run when I'm sitting down and asking God to help me shape this ideal. So I can have a relatively high level of confidence that's probably pretty reliable, right? Because it's usually pretty true when I sit down and do that. And there was a time because my sex ideal looked a lot different for me when I was a single man than it does as a married man, right? There's just different pieces of it. It's changing, right, and of course it would be different. Certain things still apply 100%, but there are other things that are different, right. What does that look like, you know? There was a times in my life where even if I was in a committed relationship, if I wasn't around that person, I acted as though I was single, right That's not okay for me today in no way, shape, or form. And that's something that came through my sex ideal, right? In a fairly – I'm going to get into the actual pieces of how to do that. But so as I mentioned, my wife and I are both in the program. We're both alcoholics. And at one point we realized we were having – this was in the earlier part of our relationship. but we were realizing we were having a really hard time filling in the gaps of what the other one's intentions were. We were basically having a hard time reading each other's minds, right? Go figure. And so what came through for both of us in continuing to work the program through inspiration, we opted to sit down and walk through what our sex ideals are together, right. What does it look like for you? And what does it look like to me? Come to find out it's very, very similar for both of us. But that's good to know, right? And not that I can rest security or satisfaction on knowing that, but again, I have my wife's best interest at heart in my ideal, right, that's without a doubt there. And that was something that was really threatening when we first did it, right. Neither of us was necessarily excited to walk through that exercise, but it's something that has continued to evolve and from that we've been able to leverage this concept of an ideal shaped with god in a lot of other areas of our lives of our marriage of our you know at one point we were just coming unglued to try to get onto the same page with having dogs i mean something as simple as that right like dog owner ideal i'm not trying to ideal the thing to death but at the same time it's nice to come together to bring god into the center of that conversation what do we both aspire to be and do here, right? So that wouldn't be the case for everyone. I would just say if there's an area of life, even outside of sex, that's proving to be very, very difficult, complicated, hard to navigate, right, just even from the perspective of I have a sponsorship ideal, right? I have sponsorship ideal that I share with everyone that I work with when we're engaging in that initial relationship. There's nothing that would be shocking to anyone in the room in there. You don't have to sign in blood at the bottom or anything like that, right? It's essentially things like, and through hammering out the experience over years, it's just like no call, no show is unacceptable, right. If we say we're going to meet, we meet. If I work harder on your recovery than you do, we're gonna part ways, right, simple things like that because I believe in transparency on the front end of those things right don't be surprised if any of these things happen and we need to readdress what's going on here but that was suggested to me at one point why don't you write a an ideal for that part of your life since it seems to be so ever-changing get your values in front of you kind of a thing so um so i guess i kind of skipped over the actual inventory piece and went beyond that but maybe chad could take us through that piece yeah yeah all right give it a shot the thing about the sex inventory that I want to say is I actually think this is a great paragraph of inventory to write anything. Because it really kind of cuts to the chase of what's going on. And I was instructed that we just answer the questions. Where had we been? You notice it says where, not had we been? Where have we been selfish, dishonest, and inconsiderate? I am very inconsiderat. I don't mean to be, but I can be very inconsiterate to my wife. I don' t think how things are going to impact her. It's not malice, it's not intent, it just I'm inconsiderate. Whom had we hurt? I was told initially when I wrote that that I'm not to put my own name down but as we can get into the mechanics of how sex inventory can flow out you can see how very quickly we don't just damage the other person. I noticed I was damaging my family? Who's this new, we liked the old girl. Who's the new girl? Right? I had a girlfriend for many years and my sister really, my half-sister really thought she was great. And it took a few years of being married to my wife for her to kind of warm up to my life. You know, because it's like how long are you going to be around? I'm a serial dater. Okay. Actually, that's not true. I don't date. We go out on a date and then we move in together. It's my experience. The old saying is, you know how you can tell an AA is on a second date, they're driving a U-Haul. and then you know how you know how you can tell an AA's just ended a relationship they're driving a U-Haul because you got to move your stuff out and that was my experience so when I got here to sex inventory and I started going through this I was able to see how it wasn't just yes I impacted the other person and I hurt them in my conduct but I hurt my family their family right I'm your mom's best friend in a relationship man love moms and uh so but but now that relationship severed and now I don't have that they're left with that because of my actions I made amends to a girlfriend one time and she was like I am so like I just walked around wondering what I did wrong and I was able to say to her like you didn't you the only thing if you want to assign any, you know, a part in any of this, your part was you said hello back. And I took it from there, you now? And I just did not show up in a way that I should have shown up. And where do we justifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, and bitterness? You know, the easiest way to do that is, you kno, oh, I was at the meeting and talked to a friend. Not I talk to Nate. I talk to a friend. We're just going to kind of linger that out there and see, you know, if you pick up on. Or I seek attention from women in ways that I shouldn't if I'm in a relationship. Or maybe shouldn't at all. Where were we at fault? And this one I love. What should we have done instead? And not what could I have done, because if I could have done something differently, I might have. What should I? Like it's literally 20-20 vision looking back. What should I have done differently? How could I have done that differently? And getting that down on paper and sharing that with my sponsor in a way that is vulnerable and truthful, because I don't want to be that way. When I first heard about this ideal that we're going to write, I'm thinking, okay, this is like my interview checklist for my next girlfriend, you know? And I'd hear people in AA come around and go, well, you know, she just didn't meet my ideal. I'm sorry, this isn't a Christmas list, right? Like, this isn't about her at all or him. It's about me. How do I want to show up? And for me, the idea of bringing God into a relationship or God into sex is taboo. It's not, that's an old idea, right? Why, like, it's funny to me, like if I have this all-powerful, all-seeing being in my life that has compassion and love and manages my life, but yet I don't want them involved in my sex relations. That seems crazy. Like how could they not be? I mean, I'm not saying I'm saying no fathers in the midst of the whole deal here, but like how do I show up? Right? How do I shows up and be the man I want to be in my marriage? And how do i be the man I want to be in a you know I have a responsibility as a older male and Alcoholics Anonymous to help protect the new women and Alcoholics Anonymous not be creeped on and that might be an uncomfortable conversation right about like hey you got no business hanging with her right and I and I have experience on both sides of that to share with that so I kind of want to wrap up what do you think I just want to share one more piece on that to take it a step further right coming from a place where you know sexual behavior or misbehavior was my number one god substitute throughout the course of my life right in hindsight I think I can probably track back that escape to that behavior before I ever found alcohol honestly but it worked right and it will still work today therein lies the danger so to come from a place where I had such a twisted, distorted, toxic view of that behavior. And to then come into a marriage, come into a committed relationship and have that be what it's supposed to be didn't just happen because we got together, right? That can be very, very challenging, you know? And my wife and I would both admit there have been times where we are like, we just don't know how to connect. We just don'T know how to be truly intimate with one another, right? And the concept that intimacy could lie outside of the act, the physical act itself was one that was novel to me and that is very, very difficult and hard sometimes even to this day, right? To truly go to a place of vulnerability and transparency with my wife in that regard is the most fragile and threatening place that I feel I can be at times on earth, right? To be that vulnerable with undoubtedly the woman I love more than anything else on earth but also to let her see into me to that level is terrifying because I know that she could cut me to shreds, right and the old me wouldn't even go there because I'm not going to run the risk of being cut to shreds, period. So throughout the course of our relationship we've had challenges. We've had physical challenges, medical challenges that have prevented us from being physically intimate so we've been really pushed and she wouldn't mind. I mean we share this jointly so I'm not sharing anything out of inappropriately here but there have been times where we've had to really lean into God for guidance on how do we love each other removed from what we both used to view as just gymnastics class, right? Because that's not what it's about for me today, right. It's not when it's a boat having such a twisted distorted view of that and trying to incorporate into a relationship with someone I love more than anything very very hard right and i think sometimes we make light of that and think we should just know how to do it right we should know how this goes we're adults or i'm married now or whatever all that stuff doesn't just go out the window because we make a change in our lives right and there should never be shame associated with working through that stuff right uh it's just so important yeah yeah and i thinking that you know for me the the thing that pops in and i don't know that this is a an appropriate piece to to go deep into this experience but at some point if somebody reminds me i'll try and share because i think it's an important on many levels experience that i had but my wife uh about five years ago four years ago left alcoholics anonymous and um there was a whole experience with my ideal kind of shattering right because we had the opportunity to be kind of this, you know, the AA power couple, you know, they're like, you know, king and queen, and what that means socially. And, and, and what that means about me? What are people talking about me about what she's what, you know, whatever, right. And there's a whole experience in that. But having that, like, again, the ideal is not about her. But it leaks in, right, it sneaks in and goes, Oh, but wait a minute, this is what you had lined up in your mind somewhere deep hidden in that this was an important thing and now that's gone. I can't force her to come to Alcoholics Anonymous. The truth is she doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong here and so she's living her truth and so that's important for her. I want to support her in that. But I have this old idea that I'm clung on to. So again, I've got to go back to how do I want to show up in the marriage? How do I Want to Show Up in the Marriage? So we get all that down on paper and then we jump into reading it. When I was early in recovery and running around in Alcoholics Anonymous I would find people and I would be like I need to work the stats and I had a buddy of mine who said go write an inventory and I'll listen to it for you and so that's a great idea and I got home and I was laying in bed one night and I thought about there was like three things I felt like at the time I did that maybe were not so good and two of those might injure someone else if I talked about it and the third one wasn't really all that important anyway and so that was my inventory and uh and I didn't end up writing it or sharing it with him and when I met my first sponsor loud I um I prayed for a sponsor and that night I got really specific and I just prayed to god that he put somebody in my life and when i met loud i knew like he had done worse things than me i knew it see it on him and uh but he was recovered and so i i was like i can trust this guy with my inventory even though i only thought there were three bad things i had done in my whole life you know and so when i got into inventory and i had a massive inventory originally we sat down and we read inventory for an entire day. And I believed in the inventory. It talks about, you know, we pocket our pride and we go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Like this is not for the faint of heart. This is hardcore stuff. You know, the guy down at the grocery store ain't doing this. and um and i believed that and he told me if i left anything out of my inventory i was going to get drunk and i believe him and i got like a block or two away from his house and i remembered this thing i backed into this car and drove off and i was convinced in the two blocks from his home to the little convenience store where there was a pay phone this is before cell phones right there's a little pay phone that i called him up And he was just like, he answered the phone and I could tell he was like, you were just at my house for an entire day. Like 13 hours. And what could you possibly have to say? And I told him about the thing and he's like, good job. Now go home and do six and seven. And I was terrified. I wanted more than anything. to not drink and so we shined light in all those areas and in the fifth steps that i did in the early days and and then again with mickey is it it comes down to is there anything we need to talk about that doesn't fall into resentment fear or sex and i had some of those things and i was terrified and I got him out there and he shared a few with me and we were able to go, okay, it took the power out of it for me. It took the power out and I was able to see it for what it was, not the shame and the guilt and the remorse that I carried with me. And so then as we go through the inventory and we just read inventory, today one of the most painful things in the world to do is read inventory to my sponsor. And the reason is, and I do it with the guys I sponsor too because there's just no other way for me to do it. But we don't read inventory on a Saturday. We read inventory an hour at a time, week by week by week. But what's amazing about it, and I don't know if this is your experience, but what I find is I read a piece of inventory on Thursday morning and then the next week leading to the next thursday i'm sitting with that inventory and having fist up that and looking at the experience and the things start to illuminate in my life of where i can be different where this situation is coming up again oh it's over here now it's here and then i read some more inventory and i'm able to just continue to go like that And what it does is instead of cramming it all into one, you know, afternoon or day where I don't remember what I said at the beginning of the day, let alone the end of the day, because it's all just this mash of emotion, I'm able to take time over the week to think about what I just wrote and read inventory on. Does that make sense? It's just kind of a different way of doing it but you know with three kids and two dogs and a wife and a full life and a job that i'm working more than i ever wanted to work and all of that i don't got time to take out a saturday it's not fair to my family for me to be tucked away listening to a fist step for 12 hours it's just not and i don'T think that there'S ANY BENEFIT IN DOING THAT ANYMORE that's just my experience and then six and seven six and seven for me are something I try and do throughout the week when I'm reading inventory I've done it a bunch of different ways I've made a list of my character defects named them essentially and then turned around and in six and ask God to remove those things specifically by name rather than just a generic prayer, which has been huge. It's huge. In my original inventory with Loud, one of the things that we would do is when we would get to a major person in my life, parents significant relationships he would ask me you know let's go to the mom's arrest store and we're gonna pick out a mom we're going to go to a dad's arrest or we're to pick out of Dad can you give me the qualities that you would pick out if you were to pick a dad or a mom or a brother or a sister or a grandparent or a wife or a husband or whatever I would give him this list of characters and at the end of my inventory he handed me this piece of paper with a long list of all kinds of characteristics attributes and at this top it said god is so what i realized in that process is that i was seeking god in you rather than seeking god and god So I'm looking to my family to be this thing for me that they don't have the capability always to be. You know, they just don't. Do you have anything to add? Yeah. Five, six, seven. i can echo what chad just said in regard to family falling short in my perspective right and what i run into often is i assign people roles in my life and when they fall short of being what i need them to be i get very resentful right um yeah come to find out they actually usually don't even know what those expectations are of them nor can i rely on anything right for some reason i had kind of uh tucked away and reserved this pocket of well family's different right family should be x y and z I should be able to rely on my family for X Y & Z that's not true right at least it's not for me a lot of the time the way that I envisioned that that my family should show up in my life through a Beaver Cleaver lens right not my experience right and in a lot ways going through the realization that my family wasn't what I thought it was after doing some work and getting some truth in my own life there was a grieving process that came along with that right wow this is really sad that this doesn't look anything even remotely close to what i would envision as being what you can rely on right but as we've been talking about all weekend i can't rely on anything outside of god not even family right i can'T RELY ON MY WIFE I CAN'T RELION MY JOB I CANNOT RELYE ON ANYTHING outside of god if i'm going to be okay um so as far as the fifth step is concerned that is also my experience that uh now i i did have some pretty lengthy fifth steps on the front end but more often than not it's an hour at a time it's and regardless i you know again as i've shared throughout the course of our conversations thus far. If I'm getting wrapped around the axle with mechanics and approach, my focus is in the wrong area, right? If it doesn't work for you, do it differently, right, or if it works better that way for you. I mean, I know people that will still take 12 hours on a Saturday with their families sitting at home to go and do a fifth step. It doesn't feel right for me, right. It just doesn't feels right. There's nothing worse than a family that's still enraged at the absence of a family member in their lives because they've lost them to Alcoholics Anonymous, right? Taboo in a sense, right. We're supposed to give of ourselves always and never ending, right, I should be self-sacrificing. Yes, that's true, but again there's gray area, right my family shouldn't suffer because of my desire to go out and feel better right in a lot of instances so um i'm not saying it's not important you know but i am saying that there you know like with the people that i that i sponsor i said you know really i've set times that i meet with them same time same place every week same thing they can call any time they want with 10 steps during the monday through friday schedule i don't take calls over the weekends i just don't that's the time that i set aside for my family uninterrupted right of course if someone is having a problem they can call anytime you know if something's really going on with anybody they know they can calm me over the weekend mid whatever right but more often than not that's not the case right uh if it comes up throughout the course of the weekend it can usually wait till Monday kind of a thing and that was a really hard boundary for me to draw for myself because I thought it made me a less than quality a a member right like what am i not really willing am I not meeting the standards of what everybody else is kind of showing but then again at the end of the day every single situation every single person in this room has a different set of circumstances and every situation is different right when I was a single man I dedicated all of my time to Alcoholics Anonymous and to giving to others. I had nothing else going on, right? I really didn't. But I don't know about you, but I love change, right, very, very deep level of sarcasm intended with that comment. I hate change, so as my life changed, I had a really hard time shifting gears from what I did at this stage of my life and recovery to what was happening now you know right back to i remember when i was in the in sober living and i went to the same morning meeting every day of the week right and then i got a job and i couldn't go every day in the week and i was mortified at the judgment that was probably happening around the table as to why i wasn't there every day of the week. Only they're on Saturdays, right? Again, this lie that I tell myself that I need to be concerned with and looking to impress people that I don't even necessarily know or like should be less important than showing up for my family at this stage of the game, Right. So and having to draw some boundaries with that, you know, I don't God will always direct. Right. There's been very few instances where I need to straight up say no to doing something. However, you Know, going and doing things like this where, you know, we have a six month old baby at the house and there's there's a lot going on. Right. So to go away for a full weekend, you know, haven't I can't say yes to everything. Right. Is it just it wouldn't be good for my family. right so my wife said if not one person leaves here change this weekend that I'm never doing it again I'm just kidding she didn't say that but she did that she did say that I that I owe her so and she would be correct but anyway so really putting it out there and I think to Chad's point you know when we get through the process of reading what's on paper what I've read inevitably the question always comes up is there anything that you didn't write down that you need to put on the table right now my sponsor asks me that question I ask the men that I sponsor that question and almost inevitably there's something that comes up and usually it's just an extended period of silence that brings that out I think there's statistics around that that if you sit in silence for 30 to 45 seconds someone will respond just to break the silence so that's not what I'm basing it on but more often than not someone has something else to say right because again I could write 200 pieces of rock-solid inventory but if I left out the one that's gonna eat my lunch and eat me from the inside out I might as well not have written a single piece right if I've got any of those things that I'm taking to the grave that's gonna haunt me right that's gonna haunts me and I just can't actually take the step forward into God's arms if I'm still hiding that one piece about myself and there were some things that I had to share with my sponsor that were I mean my mouth dried out when I was saying it I got I saw white a couple of times because I was so nervous to say what I was and I'm not you know I don't have a crazy Hollywood story like I mean it It was probably pretty run of the mill stuff to most people, but it was extremely embarrassing more than anything. The number one word that I would use to define what alcoholism feels like on a daily basis is just that, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to be an alcoholic at times, to think the way that we think, to act the way we act and to have to go back and say wow, I had just had a full-on mental breakdown right in front of you. Don't know where that came from, how it happened, But wow, that must have been really confusing to watch from that side. And there have been situations like that. There always are. And that's something that Chad and I talk a lot about and something that he and I certainly have in common. Having at times heard people in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous say that they've never spoken an unkind word to their significant other. They've never had an argument. that's not my experience. And if I'm stacking up my own experience to that, I feel like a loser, right? Because I struggle. I struggle at times. It's not because I'm unwilling or that I set out to be that. I have alcoholism, right? So that's something that's just so important. And obviously it's not all about just my marriage. This affects every area of my life. However, that for me is the one that is literally and figuratively closest to home. And I mean, if you wanna have any indication of how I'm doing real time in my life, don't ask me, ask my wife, right? She'll be able to tell you without fail how I am showing up in real life, right. Because what I've also discovered is that AA is easy, it's easy. It's life outside of AA that's really, really hard, right and really practicing these principles in all our affairs. And we'll get there eventually, but to really do that is the hard part, right? So AA, in a lot of ways, is oftentimes the safest place for me to be. I feel so normal with all of the other crazy people, right. So as far as that goes, and then going home, right, like it says, we go home and find a place where we can be quiet for an hour To really sit with God and say, did I leave anything out? To Chad's point. Again, if I sit there for 40 minutes versus 60, am I going to burst into flames? Probably not, right? Because I could get wrapped around the mechanics of it all over again. I think it's really about the intention, right. There was a time where I took everything out of here as a literal move. And I would just, I couldn't do it if I didn't do It perfectly, right, uh i would i would ask myself the question in those moments where is god in all of this right if i'm relying on execution of process still where is God in all this so then moving into still and i'll read them because it's it's great you know we we there's a lot of jokes always about you know six and seven are two paragraphs in the book right yet they're two of the most pivotal steps in the entire process right um in in the exact wording in the book says uh if we can answer to our satisfaction we then look at step six we've emphasized willingness as being indispensable are we out are we now ready to let god remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable can he now take them all everyone we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing. And when ready, we say something like this and it transfers into the seven-step prayer language. We have then completed step seven. So that's it, right? What does that look like? And more often than not, this idea of being willing, by the time I'm at the end of an inventory these days, I'm not fighting to hold on to any of the things that have come up throughout the course of that inventory, right. I'm usually very convinced that living in that is horrible and painful and it's torture, right? It doesn't take much for me to bring about that willingness to want to say, without you, God, I've got no shot. And without you I've no shot of having these things removed from me to be able to move forward and be of use to other people, right. One exercise that someone had somewhere along the line shared with me it's it's not in the book I mean it's really just a representation of what is suggested in here but as far as becoming willing what I was told to do is kind of list out my the objectionable behaviors that I had come across throughout the course of my inventory on one side of the page and draw a line and kind of to the best of my ability say what the opposite might be on the other side of page and I was just tasked to say look at both sides of the page and tell me if you're fighting for your life to remain on the left absolutely not right i mean i look at all the the the character defects and the way that i act and the ways that i rely on myself in the way they push God aside and then over here it's this life that looks like a like a bubble right looks like the best thing ever course I'd want to be on that side of the page right um so for me that that that was a helpful exercise when i was early on to be able to just see it as plain as day to say huh nope nope there's not much left on that side ofthe page that i'm looking to fight for right if anything if i had the power to change it and move on i would however i don't so therein lies this necessity of really for me begging god to remove the things that are killing me, right? Continuation of the third step prayer, right, my creator I'm now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad, good and mad. So what that tells me is that I don't get to decide the relative nature of those two words in my life, good and dad. I may see good things very differently than you would see good thing. I may say bad things differently than you wouldn't see bad things, right. So I don't get to decide what God takes away and what he leaves, right? Because there have been some things that are still with me that have been very useful to other people that I don'T necessarily love, right. My wife always jokes and says that, you know, all of the defects that were detrimental to society were removed from her on the first pass. And I can, for the most part, say the same about myself, right, but there are still other things that come up through the course of that that it wasn't a clean pass and all of a sudden everything was gone. And if I wasn't just walking on air, God failed me, right? Because that's not it. I've heard certain people refer to this experience, and it might actually be a book too, whatever. I'm not talking about the book per se. I'm talking about The Saying. But I think it's drop the rock. Drop the rock is what the whole concept is because in essence what I'm doing throughout the course of this, right, is I'm literally holding on to a massive boulder at the bottom of a river and refusing to let it go. I insist on hanging on to something that's actively killing me, but I won't let it grow. Because what does that mean for me? Who am I if this is stripped from me? Who amI if that's not a part of my makeup, right? uh mickey always uses the analogy of a mummy right a mummy wrapped in the bandages of self right self and fear and delusion all these things that i think that i am and then through the six and seven step process we start to unwind those bandages and i don't know about you but i'm terrified of what's actually inside who am i really without any of these thingsthat i've fabricated as my stage character what i want you to see what i want them to see who am i really is a terrifying task or a mission to take on and without god it's it's too much it's impossible we don't go within without is how i've referred i've heard it referred to we don'T GO WITHIN OURSELVES WITHOUT GOD IT'S TOO SCARY IT'S FAR TOO scary so uh a lot of that for me through six and seven is ongoing and continuing to unwind those bandages to find out, who am I really? Who am I really? And it was as basic when I was first getting sober as what do I like for music? What do I Like for clothing? What do i really like to eat for food? It was like I had been living in space my whole life trying to figure out who I was. It was baffling to me. And it seems so trivial in a way but I remember that very vividly as if it were yesterday that into a to a large degree I'm still always going through that some degree with six and seven finding out who I really am and who I'm not you know because oftentimes I think unlearning is harder than learning and really letting go of some of those behaviors because let's be honest a lot of those things that would come up in my inventory and through this process to take into six and seven our are self-defense mechanisms that I've used to keep me safe my entire life. But they're expired, right? They're expired at this point. They don't work. They never did and I can see that now. However, it's terrifying to look at the proposition of not being able to rely back on that behavior, right. I have this protector in me. I've heard it referred to or I think my sponsor actually coined it that he calls it the street rat in me right and I will fight to the death if I feel threatened right in any way shape or form if I feel like I need to protect myself I'll go to war with words with what you know doesn't have to be physical I mean whatever right and I'll do it manipulatively at times I just have this this unwillingness to completely let go of this character I have in me that keeps me safe tying back into the vulnerability with my wife and with others right it's really hard to go there when that character is in place for me i can't get there right but the truth is at this stage of my life if i'm going to go forward and if i'M GOING TO GO WHERE GOD WANTS ME TO GO AND WHERE I NEED TO GO THAT CHARACTER CANNOT COME WITH ME RIGHT I CAN'T CONTINUE TO HAVE THIS THIS scrappy little part of me that if it gets real tough, I'll still kick back into that and rely on myself and not on God. But it's terrifying because what I'm being challenged to do is step into a place of complete vulnerability. Vulnerability is a raw nerve to me, right? I don't trust anyone or God to keep that safe in a lot of instances, but it's necessary that I do. anything add we're actually ahead of schedule story time what's that from six and seven for step six and seven 76 yep yep I would say that my experience is very similar and um six and seven are always like this mystery right because they're so specific in the book if you know the history of the big book and at least how it was explained to me the history is that bill fought with the group until how it works was written and then he as i understand it said I'm either gonna write the book or someone else is gonna write the but we're not doing this and so we get into action and Bill goes right into what he was trying to do all along is to give us direction on what to do and how to work the steps you got rid of the aughts and the maybes and the shoulds and they'll get you know this would be neat and got right into this is what we do in six and seven as an example of that. There's really nothing more to say. We've identified, it's kind of like the idea, if I identify that I'm powerless over something, what's the next logical next step? I have to find power. If my gas runs out, if my car runs out of gas, I got to put gas in the car. Not go shopping for vegetables, right? I mean, like, but that's how we approach the steps. So So in 6 and 7, we've identified the defects of character. That's what the whole inventory process was about. Now, we don't work to have them eliminated out of our lives and relearn a new way of living. We literally ask God to remove them. But God's not going to do that. Well, then what kind of God do I believe in? If I believe in a God that can't remove my defects of character, then what kind of God do I believe in? And it's not that it's going to happen tomorrow. Some of it did. My first time through inventory, I came out. I'm not kidding you. I went to lunch with my sponsor a couple weeks after inventory and he asked me how I was doing and I was like it's amazing it's amazing like everything's different my I mean my mom couldn't be nicer to me my girlfriend I mean the people at work like everybody's it's just a it's a me it's a miracle and he said to me you know do you think we all just got together and said, yeah, Chad's been through inventory. Let's treat him right. That's what I thought. I was like, it's amazing. I was different. There were things that were just stripped from me that were gone, you know? And they're still gone. And then there's things, you know, we like to use this term in Alcoholics Anonymous, which I don't really like. I've probably said it this weekend, I try to get myself out of saying it. And that is, I did this old behavior. If I'm doing it currently, it is not an old behavior, it's a current behavior. Right? If it's an old behaviour, it doesn't happen anymore. Right. But we like to say it's and old behaviour so we don't have to really take responsibility for it. At least that's why I do, right? Because it's old behaviour. This is an old behavior it just crept its way back in so it hasn't been removed which means i'm probably haven't been willing to let it be removed our sponsor likes to say and this is like really can be a really painful way to look at this but he talks about that god speaks to us in brick walls and um and that's the analogy i have is when i run up against a defective character that's no longer serving me it feels like i just slammed right into a brick wall i have no other choice but to surrender and ask for it to be removed six and seven is something we can do every day multiple times it's about continuing to surrender continuing to ask for it to be removed and there are things in my character that like i said have just been removed they they are not in play anymore and um and that's a miracle so if they're going to happen with some of that stuff why can't it happen with all of it you know um where should we go from here i would just like to add i'm big on analogies i like drawing pictures that I can see with examples, right? And jokingly, a lot of the time when I'm on the phone with someone I work with, I'm pacing around the house and I'll get off and my wife will be like do they have any idea what you're talking about with those analogies and metaphors? Because I don't. But anyway, I think absolutely they do. They love it just as much as I do. But really this whole whole step process I really think in a way could be compared to the process of drilling out and filling a cavity in a tooth right it's painful right like there's some decay going on in there that needs to be drilled out and there's no other way to get something solid in there that will work for the long term unless you go through the painful process of grilling it out but after you drill it out, you don't feel fantastic because you're still left with a raw nerve, right? That's usually how I feel after a fifth step nowadays, you know, like woohoo. All this really, but then we have the opportunity to let God fill that in with something solid, right, we transfer into 10 and 11 and 12, we start to pack that full of something that will really work, right that will hold up for the long term but that fact-facing fact-finding transformative process because I don't believe that the step process is about relief today I believe it's about transformation right and if it's not for me I'm really just selling it short we shouldn't we're never the same people on the other end I think it'd be a great option to see if there any questions at this point what you think any questions at this point one piece too that we we didn't go over that we'll get i'll mention really quickly but is there any questions gotta be a question anything in the basket back there oh helmet guy again cool we can take that too yeah we can grab him first he's gonna get to the mic there yeah going going back to the uh fourth step um when you guys were talking about the effects the pride the ambitions all that stuff when you did inventory did you write out and list exactly how your pride was affected your ambitions your personal relationships did you list that stuff out also so you mean speaking to how right that's correct how specifically was my was my so the one thing and i've gone back and forth throughout the course of my time uh the one piece that i that i don't use today is pride because it's it's i guess it's not in the book and whatever right i mean pride is usually some different version of self-esteem for me anyway so but as far as all the other ones go uh yes very specifically this is how it affects my self-esteem, my security, my ambitions. Very, very specifically, right? Rather than, I find like there's still a lot of wiggle room in just a yes or a no or check mark kind of a thing, right. There's just so much gold to be mined in this process. Why would we sell ourselves short, right?" And I would piggyback on that, that somebody somewhere along the line wrote this actual extended third column inventory. I have it in my book, that there's actually questions and sentences that you complete that help dig into that. I don't use that format anymore, but I do write out how this has affected what my belief system around this area is. And it's hugely impactful in writing inventory, I think. I mean, it's just huge. And it just shines light on a different aspect of what's going on. And I actually, I have a package too. It's nothing. It's not some sort of secret, you know, top-secret version of how to write inventory or anything. But it's a package that I share with people that I work with that basically just extracts what's in the book and puts it right in front of you so that as you're walking through it, you have it right front of your kind of a thing, right? There's no opinion in there. There's nothing other than excerpts from the book, but it's in a way that's easy to digest. Resentments, fears, sex conduct. I'm happy to share that with anyone that would have interest in taking a look at that. uh like i said it's it's exactly what's in the book it's just in a in a pdf so yeah um i think the other thing that um we kind of didn't talk about and i think it's important because it was part of my story so i and i'll be quick i had this abusive stepfather and he was on my inventory and i was terrified of that man and uh and so what do i do with that how do I find a fourth column in that? I was seven years old. I was eight years old, like where's my part in that?" There is no part in that. There are things that happen to us as kids or as adults that are just not right. Here's where the fourth column comes for me and the third column is that I believe the lie that I deserved it. Or that that's all I amount to or all that I am worth is to be treated that way. And I lived my life that way from that position. And now that I'm an adult with a program of action, I can go in and unwind that. And how willing am I to do that? If I'm unwilling, that's the selfishness. I'm trying to protect myself from walking down that rabbit hole. rather than letting God shine the light in there and heal from it. I just recently wrote an inventory about some things that happened, some people did some stuff that I was really hurt by, and I was hurt. And I wrote the inventory, and at the end of it my sponsor asked me like what, like where are we at? And I'm like, I'm just hurt. Like I'm not angry. I'm hurt. And so what the selfishness became is how willing are you to do some forgiveness work? How willing are YOU to invite God in to change your heart around this person? Not change what happened, not change how you feel about it, but change your heart. Heal your heart and get some forgiveness so YOU can be at peace. That's the selfish, am I willing or not? So the ask it basket is how and should I do a resentment I have with God? And I think Nate talked about this a little bit. I'll just spend two seconds on it. I grew up in AA that you don't write about God, same reasons, bless you, because it's disloyal and it's God. How can you have a resentment at God? And I will tell you some of my best inventory and some of my best prayers have been, F you God. How dare you do this to me? And what I understand that to be and why that's so impactful is if I'm building a relationship, if I're building a relationship with Nate and Nate does something that hurts me and I don't say ouch, what kind of relationship is that? it same with my kids my kids are allowed to tell me how they feel about anything they can't call me names they can'T scream at me but they can come to me and my six-year-old will come to me and she'll say daddy you're mean and I'm so angry at you that's cool we can work with that. You're still going to your room. But the idea is, what kind of relationship am I building with this God if I'm not able to tell them how I feel? If I'm not able say, ouch, this hurts and I feel like, God, I feel like you're being a bully right now. And sometimes I do feel that way. And so I think it's impactful to write the inventory. I think its impactful to read the inventory about yourself write the inventory about the three-year-old like i think we get into this place where it's like oh no that's not spiritual no it is that's the truth it is the resentment is a resentment i can't manage that i have to get it out and see the truth about it and the same goes for god that's just my experience sure and i think it's valid to state out loud that we can't talk ourselves out of resentment right we're not to be the judge of what is worthy of a piece of inventory and what is not i think that in itself is very dangerous and toxic right i think the most simple way to answer how how uh and should i do a resentment i have with god uh and i'll elaborate but the simple answer is the same as you would anybody else or anything else right our format works very, very well. All you have to do is follow it, right? Why are we resentful? We know what we're resentful at. We're resentfull with God. Why? Right? What does it affect within me? And what does the fourth column look like? Right. I had, and again, I thought I had outgrown resentment with God as of late over the course of that, that rough stretch we had back in the spring that I've shared with you. I was really resentful with God come to find out that he pulled our that he he took our dog from us right in my head i could minimize that down and say that's so stupid like why would you even if you care about that whatever it's life it's a dog you know what everybody says i was resentful about it period right it doesn't need to check out by what everyone else might think i was resentment right and uh i was able to walk through a piece of inventory around that and absolutely see the truth that god isn't trying to put you know trap doors in front of me to see what i'll fall through right sometimes hard things happen sometimes bad things happen and we always will have the opportunity to say wow that really that hurt right that hurt it was a tough tough situation to walk through but here we are still today right i didn't die from having to walkthrough that you know i didn'self implode or fall apart and the truth is that again I don't know I don' t get into the business of knowing what God is doing and why but I do know without a doubt that the God that I believe in today has my best interest at heart God knows my heart even when I don''t even know what I would want or what I think to be quite honest if I had gotten what I wanted all along the road I'd be dead right now that would be my truth but really i would say the same way that you would anything else and it's kind of i find my pen moves a little slower when i'm writing with god and again or writing an inventory against god or myself because it's harder to really pull from that right where how does this affect like i'm used to looking at it as an a person out there um but it's absolutely not disloyal to take a look at that. In fact, the whole purpose is to remove the blockages that stand between me and a more intimate relationship with God. If I'm resentful with God, how am I not going to have blockage there? Resentment inventory, that's not the end-all be-all. It's not like if I do that, I'll be magically transformed and never have any kind of a stipulation or a challenge between me and God's relationship as we're moving forward. But I know that God would want me, at least I believe, I don't know, I believe that God Would Want Me to put it all on the table and to be willing to say, I'm upset. This is crap. When does it get easier? A lot of the time that's what it feels like for me. At what point do I get to actually kick back and relax and not feel like I'm suffering all the time, doing the right thing. God doesn't want that for me. That's my perspective of it. And honestly, a lot of the time it comes through glaringly in that fourth column, dishonesty. The narrative that I've applied to what it is that God's doing to me. Because it's just not true. Bad things happen. Horrible things happen Is it God? No. we live in a world full of self-will right everyone has free will anyone can do whatever they want at any given time right so again i don't i haven't cornered that from a concept perspective by any stretch but uh i do believe that you know uh to see some of the tragic things that happen on earth as a result of not having God involved in a life. I would imagine that if I were God, that would make me fairly sad to see happening, right? But I think God would always do the best with what's going on. Even, you know, it's always darkest before the dawn and sometimes real transformation and growth and strength can emerge from what would otherwise be seen as a tragedy, right. I mean, I know people that have had tragic things happen to them and they start dying from that day forward and nothing ever changes again. It's really sad to watch, right? Or you look at someone that has gone through tragedy and emerged even stronger and more reliant upon God and able to move forward and share their experience with others to help others heal from similar things. So I guess it's which side of the coin do you want to fall on, right, we all have the option on any given day to either lean into God or to embrace that victim role that is a slow death, right? Absolutely. Good. We went over, sorry. No, 2.15. Oh, 2 15? Yeah. You've got five minutes. You're kidding me. We've got time for another question if anybody has one. All right. There we go. That's great. We've been talking for a long time. We've had a lot of questions. Here he comes. I misread the thing. I have some upstairs. I should wear them. Um, so this is actually not a question. I could put it in one of those smarmy ones that, you know, like, but I'm not going to do that. Like, um, for me, so I did my four step right out of the big book for me. The most valuable, um inventory was remorse and I don't hear a lot of people doing a remorse inventory even though it's right in the, in the big books. Uh, separate from resentments. and I hear you know when people do do it they do it as as some kind of a you know all right well you know that's a resentment at yourself you know but it says clearly in the book you know sometimes we restored ourselves and then it was remorse and for me that was the most powerful thing that was what was blocking me I hated myself I felt horrible about the things I had done and having gone through with sponsees the ones that i see who are all in resentment when we do the turnarounds what i see from them is like the level of remorse got too great it got too psychically painful they had to point out at everyone else you know because it was just too much and then in the turnaronds they get back to remorse they actually you know it was in there it was just being covered with all the hatred because they couldn't handle it you know and so i that's what my i guess my question is do you you know see other people doing that having having remorse as an inventory on their on their fourth step a separate one from resentment and fear and sex conduct and you know or what are your thoughts uh personally i've never heard of that you're the first person i've ever heard mention that so that's something i'll look into um my experience is yes the men that I sponsor have remorse and self-loathing I think a lot of us do for multiple reasons and I think how I've always seen it addressed is through inventory through fear inventory a lot as well in how am i not trusting right if I'm hating myself that I'm not trusting not you know I'm not being useful and not yeah that's what I've seen I've seeing people try to push it into fear and try to push it in two into resentment but it's you know clearly laid out in the fourth step you know that that it was remorse you know I'm not, you know, and I just. Right, no, that's great. I'll look at that. Yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. Anyone else?