Michael E. on Emotional Sobriety, Character Defects, and the Next Frontier – Micheal E.

Well, welcome everybody. Thank you for coming. I don't know how everybody got here on a Monday at 5.30. We're really excited to have the speaker at 5.30. Then we're going to break and have some pizza after the emotional sobriety talk. And then she's going to tell her story at 8 o'clock. For those of you that were expecting Polly Pistol, well, she just arrived home in Jacksonville, Florida. She was stuck in Mexico. We don't think it was drug trafficking or anything like that. But it was merely, from what we understand, it was a closed airport in Dallas. So she was distraught. She was panicking. And we talked for a while over the past day or so, thinking she was going to make it. And she said, you've got to get my girl. And I said, what an obvious choice. And I called Michael, and she graciously agreed. I can't believe you weren't busy. She jumped in her car and got down here. And we are delighted to have Michael with us tonight. Michael. Hi, my name's Michael Earl, and I'm a female alcoholic. And it's a pleasure to be here. I would have liked just a little more notice, but God doesn't think I need it. So this is Emotional Sobriety Workshop, and I'm a little rusty. Polly and I used to do this all the time. We used to do this all the time together. But this is based on a letter that's in Language of the Heart. And I thought I had the letter with my worksheets, but I don't. It's in Language of the Heart, and it's called Emotional Sobriety, the Next Frontier. Talking about, obviously, potentially we're going to hopefully reach some kind of emotional sobriety. And I know for me it boils down to two things. It boils down to step 12. And six and seven. And so we'll talk a little bit about that. But Phil talks about being in a major, major depression at that time. And he just couldn't believe another one was coming on. And he kept looking at the St. Francis prayer, and he knew the answer was there. He knew the answer was there, but he just couldn't figure it out. And bottom line is what he finally figured out is he gives, and he gives, and he gives in this program. But it was always... It was always conditional. You know, it's... You want the attaboy, or, oh, you give such a good talk, or you started out with Colleagues Anonymous, and all this praise, and... And what he realized is that he needed to start giving unconditionally without expecting anything in return. And it's funny because when I was reading it, I realized, boy, I had some of that stuff in me because Polly and I, we had the same home group. We were in California. We were there for years. And Polly's my sponsor for 25, 26 years. I don't know how many years. I'm 35 years sober, but she's been my sponsor since I was 10. Anyway, she sits on one side of the room. She sits on one side of the room with all of her sponsees. I sit on the other side of the room with all my sponsees. And we really had more time together after I moved to Georgia because it just wasn't happening that much in California. But everybody celebrates their birthday, and all of Polly's sponsees would get up there and say, I want to thank God and Alcoholics Anonymous. And I want to thank Polly because if it wasn't for Polly, I wouldn't be here. Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly, Polly. I mean, I'm the one that does that. And my sponsees get up there and they say, I want to thank God, and I want to thank Alcoholics Anonymous, and I want to thank the 12 Steps. And they never mention their sponsor. They never mention their sponsor. And I mean, I get the kooky ones, you know. I get the ones that are really hard to work with. And I didn't realize that bothered me until I read that in emotional sobriety. And that's hard to admit. You know, it's hard to admit that you have that kind of a flaw. But hopefully it's a lot better today. I truly give without expecting anything in return. And sometimes the things that you get in return you don't want. And I wish you weren't getting anything in return. But I know for me the most important thing I do in Alcoholics Anonymous, besides Step 9 and Step 12, is paying attention to 6 and 7. I know a lot of people, the way it reads in the big book, that 6 and 7, you just say a prayer, you're willing to give it up, and that's all you have to do. And God will remove your defects of character. When you're ready, when he's ready. And I found that not to be the case. I haven't been struck thin yet. It's not found out for me. I have to do some work. I have to do some work and I leave the results to God. But how would I even know a character defect was removed if I don't even acknowledge that I have it or know that I have it? And I believe every defective character we have to do something. And I believe that you're not a failure unless you quit trying. And so I'll tell you a little bit about how I've been. I'll tell you a little bit about how I take people through the steps. And I came through a group that came down from Dr. Bob. And there's a story in the big book. It's Earl Treat's story. And he talks about he actually goes through the steps with Dr. Bob in Dr. Bob's office. And there were only six steps at the time. How many of you are familiar with those six steps, those pages I'm talking about? It's really awesome. So you read those first six steps, and they're the main steps of our program. But then there's... There's a couple of paragraphs that talk about at the moral inventory, which was oral. We went over character defects at great length. So this is part of the inventory process. And they went over these defects of character at great length because they really did believe that you drink over some of your character defects. And then the two of them said the prayer together to ask God to remove these defects of character. They're named. He names the defects of character. And then they talk about, you know, what we call step eight, making that list of people we've harmed and slowly making restitution. So in those paragraphs, they're talking about at the moral inventory, they do six, seven, and eight all at one time. They do it with their sponsor. They don't go home and contemplate on their own defects. If I went home and contemplated on my own defects, I would have missed the most important ones. I mean, I thought being a thief, and I thought prostituting, and, you know, those kind of things were my major character defects. My sponsor told me my major character defect was self-pity. You know, I have a really appalling childhood. And, you know, I told her, and, you know, it was pathetic the way I told her, but I said, well, I feel like my self-pity is justified. Look at my childhood. And she told me, you know, Michael, alcoholics cannot afford justified self-pity. And I can tell you that's one defect that has been totally removed. For me today, I don't have any self-pity about my childhood, my background, the way I live today. I am, I have so much overwhelming gratitude. It's just my life today is incredible. I love my life. And I love my husband. He came with me today. So I did embarrass him when I do this, but that's my husband, Ted. And we've been meeting for a long time. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I'm so grateful. And I've been married almost 20 years. That's a miracle. I've been married four times. Never made one or two years. And I left my mom when I was 15. So to be with one person for 20 years is just an absolute miracle. Okay, so on the workshop, it says, as the big book so clearly states, if we want the AA or Al-Anon way of life, we must become willing to go to any length to get it. And be ready. We're ready to take certain steps. To stop ourselves from drinking and thinking, thinking, we recognize these are symptoms. We must get to the underlying causes of our physical addiction and mental obsessions. Most of us discover that the major cause of our living problems stem from emotional immaturity. We seem to be people who have no defenses against the onslaught of misguided feelings. We tend to go to extremes. in coping with emotional pain and discomfort, usually as though some kind of attempted escape. We become aware after coming to the program that the intoxicants we need to be aware of are not alcohol and drugs, but the emotional intoxicants of anger, self-pity, intolerance, resentment, jealousy, dishonesty, self-deception, criticism, fear, depression, and blame, to name a few. To achieve emotional sobriety, we need a couple of attributes. A willingness to change and a power greater than ourselves will provide the strength we need to change. We must recognize that progress is the unending journey of perfection and perfection, an unreachable goal. And while we have a long way to go, we must make the journey. To stand still is to be stagnant. The following are some quotations that set the mood as we begin our journey to emotional sobriety. How many of you feel like you're still emotionally immature? Oh, I feel better. 35 years sober and emotionally immature is a little embarrassing. I can be by myself when I'm in a situation I like. Can I be by myself when I'm in a situation I don't like? From an anonymous alcoholic. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Obviously, page 58, Alcoholics Anonymous. Why should we assume the fault of our friend, wife, husband, father, mother, or child? Because they sit around or are said to have, Not a great deal. And having to ask all this kind of question, I feel a little embarrassed as the out should never happen. Now, for the rest of all of us, I'm a drinker inside the Tamtlo core. And no offense to my mouth, I'm a drug-drug on a foot الل And no offense to my mind about health or absilt Because I'm a drink attemptant. I am the life. And I metallic. Not a subject, but my life. I am 100 % genuine. I П Pose is a self espacio & converse power. No words. Or an adornment. Ad resonate with인을. Was left alone or a climatist. But solely дом inside your mind.dalentineTT on any other person and sooner I accept this fact, the sooner I will be able to face myself realistically. Easy to say, hard to do. If we wish to stop or at least diminish emotional slips and binges brought to the surface and aggravated by the problem of alcoholism, then we are ready to say to ourselves, half measures avail us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked his protection and care with complete abandon, 59 of Alcoholics Anonymous, when a drunk has a terrific hangover because he drank heavily yesterday, he cannot live well today, but there is another kind of hangover which we all experience whether we are drinking or not. This is the emotional hangover, the direct result of yesterday and sometimes today's excesses of negative emotions. Anger, fear, jealousy and the like. It requires an admission and correction of errors now. That's 12 steps and 12 traditions on page 10. It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. Twelve steps and twelve traditions. You know, I have to, when I come across something in the big book, in the 12 and 12 that I don't really agree with. I have to really pray about it. And the one thing I used to have a problem with, and when I close my talk tonight I'll share it, but it was the sentence in the big book that says, absolutely nothing in God's world happens by mistake. It's a great sentence if everything in your life is going well, but it's not a great sentence if something is, you know, like my daughter was three years sober, leaving an AA dance and kidnapped. I mean at gunpoint kidnapped and almost murdered. And that sentence. Absolutely nothing in God's world happens by mistake. You know, Clancy says alcoholism is a disease of perception. I'm still an alcoholic, I still get my disease of perception because I perceive that to mean that if nothing in God's world happens by mistake, then that has to be an act of God. And thank God for this man who, he was one of the old timers that got me sober. Basically what he told me is he said, Michael, God is good and good is God and if it's not good, it's not of God. He said man has free will. That man was acting on his free will and your daughter was just a victim. He said if man didn't have free will, we wouldn't all be sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. We'd all be perfect people. And all I can tell you is when he said that to me, I had a spiritual release. I had this, this flush throughout my whole body and I came to terms with my God again. I knew what he was telling me was the truth. The truth for me. But I still had trouble with that sentence. So I had to pray and pray and pray. And so in my talk tonight, I'll share with you some of my spiritual experiences I had just around that sentence, how to come to terms with that sentence. But the other one that I had a lot of problems with is it's the spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. I haven't quite hit that spiritual place with that yet because I'm very disturbed. I'm not. I'm disturbed. I'm disturbed. Yeah, that's right. I'm just disturbed. Okay. When I hear things or read things about abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, anything that's icky like that, if I see pictures, and I hate that when I'm on Facebook and all of a sudden you see an awful picture of something, it upsets me. It disturbs me. People that can do that to other people, it disturbs me. So, there's something wrong with me. This is saying here there's something wrong with me. I've got to figure out what that is. And maybe it's just the lack of acceptance. You know, I'm not real sure yet. I haven't truly, after all these years, and I haven't worked on it as hard as I worked on the one in Dr. Paul's story. That absolutely nothing works. That absolutely nothing in God's world happens by mistake. That was so in my face, and I had to work really hard on it. And so, I know today this is probably what I need to be doing now is working on this. Something always happens that I'm able to come to terms with the sentence. I have never found, even though this is in the 12 and 12, I've never found anything in the big book that wasn't true in the first 164 pages. Nothing. Everything. And sometimes it changes meaning. Sometimes I didn't know. I don't remember ever reading that. And I know I've read the book, I don't know how many times. But things change meanings. It's very interesting. So I'm admitting to you right now, I'm disturbed. It's still about the spiritual axiom. So I need work on that. Obviously I don't have that emotional maturity yet that we strive for. Thank God it's progress and not perfection. Finding ourselves locked into the intoxication of the mind. We found to the intoxicating grip of certain emotions and suffering the pain of mental hangovers from these, we found it necessary to learn which ones are poisonous and threatening to our emotional sobriety and serenity. We learned that we can avoid these emotions and their gripling effects if we can act our way into right thinking. We do this by saying to ourselves, if I were not jealous, depressed, etc. What would I be thinking, feeling or doing? We step out on faith and after asking God's guidance and we try to remember easy does it but do it. The following list is by no means the complete register of emotional mischief makers. However, our recognition and treatment of these will certainly provide strength, hope and experience to overcome the others. One day at a time, sometimes one at a time. The first thing we'll deal with is anger. A deadly poison to sanity and serenity. A special punch to those who want to be God in our own lives. Its impact succeeds in obliterating reason and self control. One can enjoy being a human hurricane while plunged into the depths of this emotional intoxicant. Sometimes the debris left after this storm is staggering. How many of you suffer from anger? And to be a true character defect, it's got to be something that really, you know, it's not just, oh once in a while I'm angry. You know, it's something that you just, you're just angry. A lot of the time you don't even know why you're angry. Um. If just one whiff of anger steps, sets us free. If just one whiff of anger sets up the compulsion to act on it, practice total abstinence. Another thing that's easy to say, hard to do. Should the compulsion get the upper hand, third and fifth step it. When sanity has returned, strength to resist taking the first drink of anger comes from daily use of the 12 steps slogans and willingness to assume responsibility for one's own self. Assume responsibility for one's own conduct. Intolerance, the emotional inebriate which fouls up 12 step work. It succeeds in blocking awareness of what has been shared with one in the program. It causes emotional bias and prejudice. And we hate to think that that goes on a lot in alcoholic semantics. It's not. It's not anonymous because this is the perfect spiritual program. Um. But it goes on a lot. It goes on a lot and you put in a little gossip with it. And um. It's just a really ugly thing. And I know, I know right there somewhere the answer is acceptance. But you have to get to that point where you're not. You have to get to that point where you can accept people, places and things just the way they are. Solution, daily doses of live and let live plus an open mind. Seek to develop compassion, the highest form of emotional maturity. The highest form of emotional maturity is compassion. Begin with self compassion. That is, be good to yourself. Self compassion means realizing the meaning, quality and intensity of one's own emotions. The emotion, the emotional identification of self enables you to feel with others. Learn to distinguish between the person and his behavior and detach from the problem but not the person. Here's mine. Self pity. Oh, I can just see me sobbing over this right now. One sip of this fairly slow acting emotional intoxicant can lead to distorted perceptions. Giant mountains mushroom out of little tiny molehills. Problems are magnified and calamities loom on all sides. The drunkenness progresses to the crying stage. And the dialogue runs. Nobody loves me. Nobody appreciates me. With all my prostituting and stealing, nobody appreciates me. Oh, let's see. Nobody cares. Nobody recognizes how hard I try. Everybody is against me. I can't do anything right. I might as well be dead. Wah, wah. Sent to mournful tune, these lines are played over and over in a half-drunk, gloomy and unswept mental hangout. At the center of self-pity is a half-grown kid having a slobbering, blubbering temper fit at God, self, circumstances, and people. As long as he can keep the drunk tears flowing, he does not have to leave or go out into the light. Solution. Hourly doses of daily gratitude, appreciation, and admission of God's love. And that's one thing I had to do, and I still do on a daily basis, is do gratitude lists. And I've also, when I was newly sober in my first ten years, I'd get into this self-pity. I'd get in the car and I would drive around to the places that I used to hang out or live and just to see the disgust. And, I mean, with that came immediate appreciation of God. I mean, with that came immediate appreciation for where I was today. Stop hanging out in mental dumps. Stop keeping company with the bad companions of resentment, fear, and selfishness. Don't flirt with self-justification and self-righteousness, which will sweet-talk you into a dive. Total abstinence is hardly possible unless the self-pity trips are replaced with being others-centered. Solution. Substitute daily contact with a higher power and group members for the frequent visit to the self-pity bars. You know, I didn't learn to, like myself, when I was taking, you know, I tried to recover through the religious effort. I tried to recover through the psychiatric effort, geographic, all these things. But I remember, and, um... I remember, and, um... I remember, and, um... the psychological effort. I had a counselor that would tell me all the time, you can't love anybody until you can love yourself. You know, the most important thing was learn to love myself. I have nothing to give or offer another person until I can learn to love myself. And I came into Alcoholics Anonymous and pushed into working with others. And over this period of time, I found myself really caring about other people. Really loving other people. Doing everything I could to help other people. And one day I realized I really liked the person I was. And it didn't come from forcing myself. How do you force yourself to like yourself? It didn't come from that. It came from taking actions. Action, action, action. And for me, it's always getting out of myself and trying to help another person. And just one day I realized I was a person that I admired and that I really liked. I was like some of those people that I used to look up to. Okay. The emotional intoxicant distilled in character defects guaranteed to impede progress in steps three and two. Drinking of resentment poisons spiritual progress. Often leads to emotional enslavement to the hated people and things. An effective way to stay drunk on resentment is to bar hop from anger to self-pity to intolerance to jealousy to fear and home to an unbelievable hangover and depression. Solution. Refuse to let one's serenity be drowned out by happenings that are in themselves unimportant. Says ODAD on page 266. Nobody can hurt our feelings without our permission. A daily step 10 keeps the system clear of clogged feelings about ourselves and about others. How many of you do a daily step 10? Really? That's pretty good. How many of you do it written because you write out your fourth step so to continue taking inventory, I mean in my opinion for myself, I write out my tenth step. So how many of you just do it in your mind? Think about it at night. And how many of you, and it's not right or wrong, either way it's right or wrong, it just means I'm sicker than you. So I have to write it out. How many of you do it in writing, actually do it in writing? Yeah, that's a few of you. Okay. Jealousy. A powerful concoction of resentment, fear, self-pity, low self-esteem, and insecurity. Drinking freely and often from jealousy allows one to lose self-control. The mental blend diminishes peace of mind, dangerously threatens faith and trust in self and others. Jealousy is brought into the program. Jealousy brought into the program hurts the group unity and fellowship. Here's another one we're talking about bringing into the program and I've seen it a lot. I have felt it a lot, especially in early sobriety. And I just hate that icky feeling. I hate being jealous. I know for me, jealousy usually stems around romance. Romance or people otherwise, I don't call it jealousy, I call it envy. But jealousy for me is kind of romantic based. But I just hate that feeling and I don't have that feeling if I feel good about myself. If I have confidence and I just like who I am and I feel good about myself, which comes from giving of myself, I don't have those icky jealous feelings. You know, I just really, I have faith that, you know, I'm not going to be jealous. I have faith that God knows what I need, especially in a relationship. And if I have jealous feelings, that's not the relationship I need to be in for me. Recovery is possible through daily attention to spiritual needs. Humility, daily injection, injected. Will you hear my story tonight? I ended up. I ended up. I was trying to recover in church and I had an affair with the minister. And only one time, only one time did I accidentally say, I was trying to get spirituality by injection. And somebody was showing a tape of mine that was, you can download off of the internet. If I knew all that when I started speaking, I wouldn't have said the things that I've said. Honest to God. I'm just horrified that those things are, somebody that's not in the program can download it. But, and the one thing I said once in all my 20 years of talking was the main thing they concentrated on when they were trying to explain the talk. You know, spirituality by injection. So that came to bite me in the bed. So I had to be careful of what I say. But there was some truth to that, I think. I thought that. Okay, so solution to jealousy. Recovery is possible through daily attention to spiritual needs. Humility, daily injected, disperses the residual effects of jealousy. Step four and a step five reveals the exact nature of ones. Okay. So, I'm going to read a little bit of this. I'm going to read a little bit of this. I'm going to read a little bit of this. I'm going to read a little bit of this. I'm going to read a little bit of this. Okay. The exact nature of one's compulsion to this green eyed monster. Step six and seven also route this insidious mind bender. Dishonesty and self-deception. Emotional intoxicants, which like champagne seem harmless, are subtly linked with rationalization and equivocation. Okay. equivocation. Is that how you say it? Equivocation. Equivocation. I'm having a tongue type. Indulgence in this pair of defects can cause one to cross over into crippling self-deceit with the greatest of ease. Their side effects make us feel sure we are not the maker of our own mischief. We cannot understand why our fringe benefits from the program are not coming to us as we see them coming to others. We cannot give up our secret flirtation with this pair of faults until we are brought painfully to the bottom, facing another surrender. That's dishonesty and self-deception. And in the big book, when they talk about honesty on page 58, they're talking about self-honesty. They're not talking about brutal honesty. A lot of people hurt people with brutal honesty, which is not necessary. So, the most important thing is that we're honest with self. Solution. Recuperation from DTs of dishonesty and self-deception require accepting responsibility for these faults. We must stop manipulating ourselves and others. We must treat this spiritual malady with rigorous honesty. A noticeable change brought about by a meticulous application of the 12 steps in our lives. Applying these principles in all our affairs. Criticism. A social contact. Social cocktail made with equal parts of rumor, gossip, and secret glee over others' misfortune. Isn't that ugly? So ugly. It feels so good to be smug. Smugly say, poor thing. That's what they do in the South. When I moved to the South, that's the one thing I noticed when they started gossiping. They'd say, poor thing. Or they'd say something you know, like, really sympathetic after they just said all this stuff about them. Poor thing. The accompanying hors d'oeuvres of self-righteousness is too good to resist. The hors d'oeuvres of self-righteousness is too good to resist. Such behavior hurts and humiliates others and can especially, in the case of newcomers, drive them away. They have come to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon in good faith and can be driven away believing that these programs are not so special after all. Those are the things that hurt AA as a whole. Solution. We need to read the directions of our own prescription. Doesn't it say we should pay attention to our own needs for recovery? The ODAT says that on page 92, the contented, well-adjusted person has no need to look for flaws in others. Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon are fellowships of equal, neither brains, money, looks, prestige, education, cleverness, nor the lack of these kept alcoholics and its effects away from us. Daily cultivate love that looks for nothing in return. And meditate on our own good fortune to enjoy the free gifts of God's grace. Fear. This is a huge one for me. I say I'm a fear-based person. And what I have learned from me and what I didn't do for the first 10 years, I let fear paralyze me. And I've learned from me, walking through fear is exercising faith. A few slugs of this emotional distress sends us off into a fit of destructive energy that can disrupt home, family, self, and affairs before sanity is restored. Spiritual progress is paralyzed and the demons move into our psyche where they live resentment, live rent-free until driven out. Faith has fear. This is the solution which I don't agree with. I'm going to give you my own solution. Here it says, faith, as fear drains away, it is replaced with faith, the inner knowledge that God is in charge. Therefore, all is well. Fear can erode our faith if we are slack about our commitment. And we must remember, this is what I don't agree with, faith and fear cannot coexist. Don't agree with that. And it's in the big book. Not that sentence. A choice must be made. On page 155 in ODAT, it says, I was looking at the time, sorry. It says, we realize peace of mind does not depend on conditions outside us, but those inside us. Okay, I used to, well, I always had fear of something. But the two main things that I've walked through is getting up at the podium and talking. At four years of sobriety, I could not get up here and read how it works. Now, maybe if we were in a circle, a little circle of people and we're sitting there and I could crunch under the table, but I could not get up at a podium and read something. And I didn't share my story until I was 11 and a half years sober. And the other biggest fear I've walked through is getting on airplanes. It took me 12 and a half years of sobriety to get on an airplane. And I found out I'm not afraid of flying. I'm afraid of crashing. So my sponsor told me I better be clear of what my fear was when I was asking God to remove it. But in the areas, a lot of areas in Long Beach, people share opinions. And opinions are fine because opinions, I mean, a lot of the time it's our extreme strength and hope. But opinions are not always facts. And the one thing that I used to hear, especially from this one man who was like a guru in our area, which we really don't have in AA, he would always say you cannot have fear and faith at the same time. That if you have fear, you don't have any faith. And I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong in my program because I had worked these steps as hard as I could work these steps. I've had spiritual experiences, but I still had all this overwhelming fear. And finally I went up to this gentleman and I said, um, um, what am I doing wrong in my program? Why do I still have all this fear? And he told me in the most smug, arrogant way, he said, well, it sounds to me like you haven't taken a thorough third step. That really upset me at the time, but today I do know I had taken a thorough third step. For me, the third step, a thorough third step is a process. It's not just saying a prayer. And people say they give it, they take it back. The process for me to do a third step, a thorough third step is taking the actions of four through nine. When I take those actions, I'm doing a thorough third step. But I went up to this, the old timer that helped me with other things. And I was crying on his shoulder and I said, he said, I don't have any faith because I still have fear. He said, I didn't do a thorough third step. And basically what Bill told me, he said, nowhere in the big book does it say you cannot have fear and faith at the same time. And he took me to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, he pointed out a page 368, and it's under the fear inventory. And the sentence he pointed out said, all men of faith have courage. All men of faith have courage. And then he pointed out to me, you don't need courage unless you're afraid. Made a lot of sense. And then the last sentence in that paragraph says, at once we commence to outgrow fear. It does not say, at once we outgrow fear. It says, we commence to outgrow fear. And I can tell you, I'm 35 years over, and I'm still commencing. And that's okay. It's covered in Step 10 and 11 in the big book. In Step 10, it says that we continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, fear. It says it's not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. And then it's reiterated in Step 11 on retiring at night. The very first question, there's like seven questions, and the very first one says, were you selfish, dishonest, resentful, or afraid? Do you owe an apology? Have you kept something to yourself you should share with another person? One of the most powerful tools for me is a sentence that says, what could I have done better? Because I can't change my behavior unless I know what I can change it to. So if I have something that happened and I don't like the way I responded or the outcome, then I write about it. I write how I could have handled it differently. So I can look at a different way I could have reacted and maybe have gotten a different outcome. That's been a very important thing for me. Then it says, it asks for the good things. Is the constructive inventory not destructive? It says, were you kind and loving for it all? If I was kind and loving toward 90%, I give myself credit for it because that 10% is covered in question one. So... And then it says, were we packing into the mainstream of life? Everybody sitting in this room is packing into the mainstream of life. Right now, you're not out there doing the things that you used to do. You're packing into the mainstream of life. And then it says, we must be careful. It says some other things, but it says, we must be careful not to drift in worry, remorse, or more reflection. For that diminishes our usefulness to others. So, once you've done the work, once you've inventoried it and done the work to the best of your ability, you need to let it go. And the only time it comes up again is if it comes up to help a newcomer. If you're sharing it with them for a reason. But to sit there and rehash it and rehash it and rehash it doesn't change it, but it just keeps us in a bad place. So, it's really important that we try not to get into that remorse and morbid reflection. I'll tell you how I used to, when I first had to fly, I had some newcomer, not a newcomer, it was an old timer that was going to take me to the airport and kick me on the plane. She was going to stay with me until I had to get on the plane. And she had an emergency and she had to just drop me off and it's six o'clock in the morning. And I'm at LAX. And that fear, and I mean, I come from panic attacks. That's how my fear comes about. And I started to have a panic attack. I knew I couldn't get on that plane. I started, I started hyperventilating. My legs shook so bad that my knees wouldn't hold me up. And I literally fell back into a chair, which aided in my being able to cry, which is good for me because if I can cry, then that panic isn't so bad. And I just started crying because, I mean, the thought of not keeping in an AA commitment was devastating. And I had a spiritual experience. I had an inner voice talk to me and it was loud and it was clear and it wasn't through the ears. And it also wasn't very kind. He said, Michael, why don't you get out of yourself and try and help somebody? And it was like a shock. You know, I just, this isn't an AA meeting. So. I noticed that the escalator, there is an escalator that you had to take up to the planes. I noticed that the escalator, there were several older people that were struggling with their baggage and that's scary, you know, and that's me today. I'm the one that's struggling with my baggage. But back then I was pretty, pretty good. So I noticed them struggling with their bags and it just, just natural instinct. I ran over there and I started helping these people. You know, get their bags up to the plane and I'd go back down and I helped some more up. I mean, it was, it was so successful that every time I had to fly, I reported to the escalator like I worked there. And one time this woman hit me with her purse cause she, I was trying to steal her stuff. That was a little embarrassing. She just wanted my clothes. But it was neverось started ln помощью deowon. We float around. You know, when I read this, I feel this darkness. Okay. Depression plunges us into an abyss of remorse, regret, and rejection. We float around in an eternalÜ and able to sense balance or touch solid ground. Our emotional vision is blurred. We cannot see the helping outstretched hand. Our emotional hearing is dulled. We cannot hear the words of encouragement and strength. Our emotional touch is deadened and we cannot feel love. Our emotional taste is that of isolation and melancholy. Our emotional smell is weakened and we are unable to perceive the essence of harmony and fellowship. The whole being is so drugged by depression that realistic contact with self and others is suspended. I'm not one who has suffered depression at that difficult time. I'm not one who has suffered depression at that difficult time. Well I used to say that I never suffered depression at those depths until I went through menopause and it was not good, was it honey? It's right after we got married. He thought he married this circuit speaker that really had her stuff together and then he realized I was a nut, huh? He wanted to leave, I wanted to leave, I just want to go back to California. I left my whole support group there. Georgia, anything I know about animals is Bambi and everybody shoots Bambi and there's trucks hauling Bambi off and the man next door shot the squirrel in my tree and my husband had to point out to me the pecan that the squirrel had was the man next door. It was his nut. So he had reason to shoot the squirrel. But that's the reason I'm here. I mean with this depression, this menopause and not right thinking, I mean it just had me crazy. And so I'm on the phone with, and Ted wants me to leave, believe me. I couldn't sleep at night, I paced back and forth like a caged animal and I got on the phone with Polly, a secret conversation in the bathroom, and I told Polly, I said I want to come home, I just have got to come home. And she said you can't come home, you're married. You can't come home, you're married. You made a commitment to marriage and we're not talking about those commitments you make it one year, two years or maybe four years. She says you're 15 years sober and you work a good program. You cannot bail on your marriage. And I said, but Ted wants me to leave too. And she said, I don't care, if Ted wants out of the marriage you tell Ted to leave. And right then Ted walked into the bathroom, unsuspecting I'm on a信 Screeper phone call . Ted walks into the bathroom and I was just like stunned and I said hold on, I put the phone down and I said I am not leaving this marriage I'm going to work the 12 steps in this marriage, I'm going to work the 12 traditions in this marriage, I made a commitment as a sober woman and I'm keeping my commitment, now if you want out of this marriage, you go and he said in the most sheepish way, he says but this is my house and I could hear Polly on the phone, even though the phone was down, I could hear her laughing her butt off and her laughter made me laugh and then it made Ted laugh and it's just laughter is healing, it's really healing and we really recommitted to our marriage, we started having a meeting in our home for couples on applying the 12 traditions in your relationship, we had that for about five years and I can tell you the first year was hard but the last 19 have been beyond my wildest dreams, it's just unbelievable sponsorship is a good thing to have, it really is so otherwise I'd probably be on my 7th marriage by now okay, huge doses of an attitude of gratitude this is the solution to depression to aid, a solution to aid huge daily doses of attitude of gratitude we need a willingness to surrender this unique pain sobriety follows quickly when one can be grateful for pain rather than struggling with it excuse me thanking God for pain relapses is back into his care thank God for pain relapses is back into his care we are saying that we realize we are not perfect enough to manage our own affairs and that we recognize also that his principles provide us with protection and guidance gratitude brings release release brings experience, experience brings hope hope brings faith and faith brings freedom from fear a spiritual awakening takes place a rebirth occurs and one is free from fear. Thank you. never the same again. Blame. A need to assign blame is an attempt to evade our part in the adventures of life that goes wrong. With blame, our defects are assigned to others, those imperfect, faltering creatures who, although they may mean well, just can't seem to get it together. If I can convince myself that my troubles are of your making, I am learned into believing that you are to blame for my misfortunes. The other side of that coin is that if my problems really are your fault, I am in real trouble. In order for me to grow and to recover, I have to get you to change. What Paulie says is that if my problems are of your making, I'm screwed. That's how she puts it. She just lays it out there because we can't change anybody. Solution. A relentless inventory process must go on in our lives. Though this process, if we are honest, we will not, through this process, I'm sorry, if we are honest, we will not lose sight of our part we play in our problems. By accepting responsibility for ourselves, we are no longer at the mercy of any ill wind that blows. Total abstinence from blame brings miracles of tolerance grace, rich spiritual rewards reflected in a life of real fulfillment. On page 347 in Odette can be found this statement. Most of that which happens to me, good or bad, is self-created. So emotional sobriety enables us to carry heavy emotional burdens with relative ease. The more gentle the environment, the less need we feel for self-protection. The more threatening the environment to our feeling of well-being, the greater the timidity the greater the timidity and need for self-protection. Our altered perception of reality, due to our exposure to the disease of alcoholism, can be a tremendous obstacle to emotional growth. Our protection fences became walls of isolation, cutting off experience with people and things. Most of us were convinced we had not succeeded in winning at the excessive competitiveness found in the affairs of our lives. If we felt we had to succeed, if we felt we had succeeded, then we were really confused at why we could not beat alcohol. Either way, we could not get emotionally comfortable. Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon offer a way out of this dilemma. One given to emotional slips has no way of knowing when the compulsion may assert itself again. Emotional sobriety isn't a sometime thing. We can recognize the emotional binges are often involuntary but always forgettable. We begin to recover from emotional vulnerability when we understand and accept emotions instead of fighting them. When we find constructive ways to express feelings, and when we keep our sense of humor, if you don't have one, get one, emotional sobriety comes when we accentuate positive emotions. How long was I to do this? Do I end now or do I have a few more minutes? I think I'm going to stop. Okay. I'm going to just share with you how I take people through the steps on especially healing the six and seven. And we do it after step five. You know, they do their fourth step and they read step five. And any defective character that I see blaring, I just kind of write it down and put it off to the side as I listen. And then we do step six. But first of all, in the big book under step five, it says that we're to go home, take the book down from the shelf, hopefully your book isn't on the shelf. If you want to, you can put it back up there so you can take it down. Some people are so literal. Take the book down the shelf, look at the first five proposals, and see if we've left anything out. And I believe that hour, that time with God is important. But I believe home is in the heart. And so what I do is we do take that hour of time, whoever I'm sponsoring, takes that hour of time in what I call my AA room. And afterwards, we get together again and anything they might have left out, they bring up and we discuss. But when they feel they're ready for six, then we start six. And we have a piece of paper, we draw a line down the middle. And on one side are the defects of character, and on the other side, we're going to list the things we can do to help God remove the defect. So we get this list of character defects. Anything that I saw that was glaring, I bring up, and if they don't agree with it, they don't have to put it down. If they agree with it and they really see it, then they put it down. And then they bring up character defects that they believe are interfering with their lives. And so we get this list of character defects, and there are usually quite a few of them. After we get the list, we say, I believe God listens to you. If you're laying down, sitting on the toilet, whatever you're doing, you don't have to get on your knees. I believe God listens to you. But just to be a little more spiritual, a little more humble, to humble ourselves, we get on our knees. Join hands, and we look at that list of character defects, read the defects, and then we say the seventh step prayer, asking God to remove those defects. And then we go to the other side of the paper, and every defect, we list something we can do to help God remove the defect. So if we are, if it's self-pity, the one thing we can list over there is gratitude lists. Every day, maybe put a number down, or just gratitude lists. Resentment, you know, what we can do to help God remove the defect is practice acceptance. What's another defect? Sloth? What do you do? Practice motivation? Or just do it? I don't know what you put the sloth, you have to talk it over. Intolerance, and this is another thing, if you find on the right side of the paper, you have five things that say, practice acceptance, practice acceptance, practice acceptance, you know that you have really got to practice acceptance. It's showing up everywhere. And there are several things that will happen to you, not with the word acceptance, but practicing the same thing. So say you have sexual problems, you're over-sexed. Then on the other side you put, frigid. No, you put healthy, healthy sex life. But you put these things down, and most of these things you're going to practice, because they don't come natural for you, that's on the other side. So you've got a list of defects, and you've got a list of things that you can do to help God to remove the defect. You've addressed, yes, that's a defect, and these are things that you want to put in your life. Then you take that piece of paper and you fold it in half. And you don't look at, you don't look at the, you don't look at the character defects anymore. All you do is look at the side and the actions you want to start doing in your life. So maybe the action is just practicing acceptance. Maybe the action is doing gratitude lists. Maybe the action is working with others. I mean self-centered would be other-centered, which leads to God-centered. So these are the actions that you just want to incorporate in your life. And that's what you focus on. So that's basically how we do six and seven. And it is, it's pretty effective. It's very effective. Right now I'm having to address the fact of an IED disorder. I've had several surgeries. I've gained a lot of weight. But in California it was a major thing for me. My mom had bypass surgery for her obesity. My daughters had bypass surgery for her obesity. And the fact that I was a size six for all those years is, you know, it's amazing. And it's a direct result. And I'm acknowledging that I have a problem. I want to apply these principles in all my affairs. And I have to apply them to that. Because I don't want to be like that. I don't want to live like that. I don't want to have health problems. So that's all part of the 12 steps. Anything that might be you might have another program for. You might go to it. Or you can do it under step six or seven. That's been my experience. So basically that's how we do six and seven. Which helps tremendously in emotional sobriety. Because when I'm out of kilter with my food, angry, lonely, tired or hungry, I get out of kilter. And it brings about emotional immaturity. And so I need to work on these things so that I can feel emotionally stable. Thank you.