Step 6 — Ready for Change – Sarah M. – Wilson House Big Book Workshop Retreat – 2025

so we do have, we have like some ask it basket questions. We had some comments, some more like procedural questions. Um, I'm just going to kind of address the ones that are to the speakers. And, um, so we had two like more kind of, I guess like lighthearted funny ones, but I do want to remind people that they're also there just, you know, if you have like, um, you knowserious questions about, you their programs, spirituality, things you might've missed from their stories, things like that too. So, um before we have our reading in ground in six and seven. I think maybe we could do the ask it basket questions, if that's okay. All right, I have asked, hello? Yeah, it's on, all right. About the guy who, it says jumped off the dock but he actually jumped off a boat into the water to deal with the net being caught in the wheel with the sharks and how he did that because he didn't want anyone on the boat to think he was fearful And it asks if he lived. Yes, he did live because I heard that story in the rooms and we're good friends. He's been through the steps. He no longer does things that he's afraid of to prove he's not fearful. And he continuously shares the crazy fears that run through his life today in meetings. So he's now held prisoner to them anymore. Thanks, Fed. Where's Drew? Who's Drew. Did you ask me this question? This is super important. Who got the top bunk? That's what he asked me. The bunk beds, I told you when I showed up and saw my future husband's apartment there were bunk beds in his living room and they were for his kids. yeah it was a studio yeah so that was good enough for me awesome thank you guys cool so we'll periodically check the basket so um yeah and then we will pass the credit or the collection for the Wilson house that basket again when we get back over there um so yeah and we did bring snacks over here and water so again feel free to grab snacks and water and we will now get grounded in steps six and seven with taylor taylor alcoholic step six and seven passage page 76 if we can answer to our satisfaction we then look to step six we have emphasized willingness as being indispensable 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, every one? If we still cling to something, we will not let go. We ask God to help us be willing. Thank you so much. Okay. Hey, everybody. Hope lunch was great. um we are gonna just like i'm gonna just do a couple of things around the fifth step um just because we didn't really wrap that up or we were there's always more to say like you guys know um so i was just going to read this paragraph i know friend will love this on page 75 we pocket our pride and the word i have written on top of this is freedom we pocket our pride and go to it illuminating every twist of character every dark cranny of the past once we have taken this step withholding nothing I love this sentence we aren't delighted we are just delighted like I don't know a lot of people felt delighted during their fifth step frankly and a lot of people have felt worse so don't think you have to feel delighted we felt delighted. We could look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. I think that's pretty idealistic and sounds like utopia. I will share my experience with you guys about the fifth step. And what I think is super important is this. When I did the fifth stop, and when I actually afterwards, and we're going to talk about six and seven, it says go have an hour with God, right? And at the time in my life, things were falling apart shocking. so I had been engaged to that guy remember who kissed the woman right broke up the engagement so that was no longer happening and we had moved here from California and we had had this nice we're renting this big house in Shirley Mass and you know moved out this was in the middle of it I'll never forget my sponsor who came to our wedding said are you sure you want to get married before you finish the steps oh my god I was like of course I do of course I do I want to do what I want anyways so I end up in a basement apartment in Ashburnham Mass I don't know if you guys know where Ashburnam Mass is out in the middle of nowhere because McLean Hospital I worked at McLeans and we opened a place out there called Naukeg I don' t know if any of you guys were there so I moved from california to open that place so um we break up i um i'm still writing and stuff and um i finished the writing and i moved to this basement apartment one of the nurses at mclean owned this little place on a lake out there i think it was i don't know if it's like knock egg but it was a little place out in ashburnham and i went in my little place this basement apartment and like no windows, right? Like one little window, I think, you know, up there. And I spent my hour with God. I took the book down from the shelf and I have literally never felt so free in my life. So the thing that's really important about that story is my life circumstances were kind of nutty. Do you know what I mean? I had just broken up an engagement. you know this guy had kissed someone i had you know we had to give up our rental i'm living in the space in our apartment like but i felt free and so that's the message really i wanted to get across today is that doing that fifth step and i wrote down trust freedom and a new beginning and these are the things that i think it actually says in the step book and i'm not sure if i wrote these are, I saw these. Number one, a new attitude towards life. Number two, a relationship with yourself. Number three, a relation with your creator. Number four, freedom, liberation and hope. And number five, losing some of the guilt and shame by exposing who we are to another person. And so those are just some of things I got out of the fifth step. And I also want to say there's this theory of depression I don't really know who created it and I don't remember the name right now but it used to be that if you took the degree of the discrepancy between who you're presenting to the world and what you truly feel inside the greater the depression so meaning if I'm presenting as like a happy person and yet I'm dying inside and I'm full of shame the greater the possibility for depression so to me this is what i call the integration step it's where those two things really start coming because now i am putting my past behind me hopefully and i don't have to live in that shame and that guilt and whatever and even just saying all that stuff to another human being there's a liberation that occurs so now i'm integrating and i'm becoming more of the person that is deep inside, and I can express that more freely. So that to me was such a huge part of the fifth step. Freedom, and it is just a beginning. Bud? Yes? Take it away! Yeah, I know you wanted to tell one other story, I thought, oh no. No, I was just gonna say when I did my fifth step I forgot to mention that I had read one of my resentments out, and it sounded like I was a real jerk. So I just tweaked it a little when I read it. I just changed one word so it didn't sound as bad. And I ended up staying up all night stressing about how I changed it. And as soon as I knew my sponsor was going to be up at 6, I called and said, oh, I changed this. It was a huge deal. I stayed up all night freaking out about it and my sponsor said okay we'll read what you wrote so I did all right talk to you later click right you know I had created like such a huge deal out of it I don't know but I just wanted to share that because I make it sound like I read my fifth step and it just you know and I was completely honest about everything but that really wasn't true I did tweak and it's funny because all the stuff that was in there this was not a big deal but it just for some reason I had this idea that I would sound like a bad person. So I just changed a little bit of it, just one little word. Well, yeah, I mean, I know, I don't know if your sponsors say to you after the fifth step, if you remember anything else in the, while you're sitting with God for that hour, please call because you don't want to go to bed with that on your mind. And there are some people I know that didn't make that call and that stuff, That's what we're talking about today, like freedom. And that's the stuff that literally, and I know I say this all the time, someone else has done it. Believe me. Believe me! We always think we're the only one. I have a friend right now, so sad because he refuses to do this work. And it's because he says, I'm not telling anyone the stuff that I've done. And yet he doesn't see that all his behavior is just this adaptation. He can't sit still. It's just so tragic, because he could be free. But he thinks that he's the only one that spent their whole retirement, which is one of the things, or whatever. So yeah, anyways. Yeah, I think if we all throw our fourth step in the middle of the room and just pick parts out. You'd be like, oh that could have been from mine or not. There's very few things that were significant to one particular person. Yes, absolutely. But it's so huge. Yes, yeah. I know when I went back, did my hour, and did my, you know, I was ready. I had said everything that, you know, I shared everything and I did the seven step prayer and I literally, I cried like a baby because I had never felt so, I would say empty, right? Free. I was so clear and, you Know, and that's the thing today, like I know this is 10th step, but my sponsor always says like, even if you don't think you have anything to write, sit once a week and see if anything comes up and something always does because we could just fill up gradually and not realize it, you know? And I felt so free. And I remember the next day, it was right around Christmas, and the next Day was the Christmas Alcathon at Carlton Hall in Dennis. And I was walking across the hall, and I could tell you exactly where it was where I got stopped dead in my tracks. And I Was like, and I felt love for the first time. and it wasn't like love of another person I felt love inside it was so mind-blowing I don't even know how I knew it was love but I just did and I think you know for me like doing that and you know really saying have all of me good and bad you know that I didn't realize um that that was the case for me always turning stuff over to my higher power was like here's the bad stuff you know like confession kind of thing you know like take the bad and the fact that I was both and in that moment, I felt so pure. And I remember exactly where I was walking, exactly where I was standing. And it was like, boom. I mean, it was, like, a lightning bolt. And I know that sounds so hoaxy because it really wasn't like a lightningbolt. But it just became so clear to me that what happened for me was all the crap I was carrying around was gone and now there was space for my higher power to enter me. And that's how I really feel. Like, I hear people say, I'm praying to something. For me, it's not like that. It's in me. And I believe it's in everybody, whether they're paying attention to it or not. And I floated. I was like, I had this big book. I was going to save the world because I couldn't believe how good I felt. I didn't have a resentment. I was feeling so free. And two weeks later, I got mad and I was like I did something wrong. And I remember that's when I started that whole path of I've got to keep it a secret because I didn' do something right. But those two weeks were beautiful. You could have done anything to me and I'd been like, I love you man. I was just feeling it. Anyway, that's all I'm gonna say right now but why don't you? Ah, okay. So yeah, I mean the practical part of six to seven what I was told to do like you're saying is go sit for an hour with God. There wasn't much happening, right? I'm to take the book down, I'm treat it see if there's anything that I missed say the seven step prayer, ask for my character defects removed, connect with a higher power, and see what comes up. And that's how I did six and seven. And of course, what happens? Like Finn's saying, for that hour maybe we feel pure. Maybe we feel like, jeez, nothing's really happening. I feel all the love. And then the real work begins. It is the beginning. Well, I thought the defects were removed. I really did. It never occurred to me after listening over and over again at every big book step study talking about 10, you know? Again and again. It just never occurred to me that they were going to still be there. Right. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. So I was going to just talk a tiny bit about, and again, it's all my opinion, right? Just to warn you guys. The idea of defects. And this whole step is about willingness and honesty, Right? And I have this thought about, and I'm going to talk about fear again. I'm warning you. That so many of the defects, really the source is fear. Meaning if I have, I'll just say it this way. If I'm arrogant, I might have a fear of looking stupid. So I've got to be arrogant, right? If I am angry and I act out at you, I might be scared, I may not want to be seen, I might not want you to know something about me. If I'm impatient, maybe I don't want to feel my own feelings. Maybe I don' want to be with myself. So I look a lot at, I mean obviously if you're hungry, angry, lonely and tired and you yell at your kid in the morning, yeah, there might be a reason for it. It might be because you haven't gotten any sleep. But in general for me when I look at things that I do, and a huge one for me is controlling behavior. Like my kid is my spiritual practice, he's 25 right now. And whenever I start wanting to manage his life, I'm fearful. Is he doing the right thing? Is he gonna get the job I want? Is he going to be happy? Is he gunna have a girlfriend? Is he this, is he that? And the next thing I know I'm, geez, have you called so-and-so that I gave you the name of a couple weeks ago? Mom, I got it handled. And that kind of management behavior, controlling behavior is my go-to and the source of that is fear. And it could be, you know, I wanna say it's fear of what's happening to him but it's really fear of feeling my own feelings about what's happened to him. You know what I mean? It's usually the case. So again, so much of this stuff, if you think about it, when you look at the opposite, It's looking at, gee, why am I... Say your character defect is I can't stop talking when I'm in a social interaction. Why can't you stop talking? Are you afraid of the silence? Are you scared of saying something stupid? Are you worried about the silence or are you afraid of letting someone else talk to you? Like really, when you notice something, which again doesn't happen all the time because a lot of times the character defects just happen and then we realize it later but if you're able to notice something at the time, like, geez, I'm really impatient or I'm intolerant or I snapped at that person in the market because I was worried about something. You know, just say, geez. What fear is coming up right now? I was just going to say that. Well, I was taught that my defects of character were my self-centeredness, my selfishness, my dishonesty and fear. And the behaviors that you're discussing are how I... Around that, yep. I absolutely agree around the... But I mean, my selfish and self-centered behavior is based in fear. Everything for me is fear. Hands down, like I came in here not thinking I had fear. Everything that I do that isn't consistent with what my higher power wants from me because when I'm centered in my higher power, I don't have fear. As soon as I'm managing things and I'm not like thinking about my higher power that has my back, I know it's fear. It's all fear for me. Yes. 100%. Yeah. No, no, no. You're absolutely right. I'm lobbing it back to you. No, yeah. I was taught that too. The selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking and fearful. And I think the thing is it manifests for all of us in so many different ways. It could be like, this is awful to say, but a certain diagnosis. Someone could present as a depressed person and be sleeping all the time and be quiet. someone else could be depressed and be really agitated so to me it's that it's like yeah when we're looking at our character defects and like how i always thought the things were short in shortcomings so they taught me a treatment like if you're impatient you're short in patience or whatever you know those things is how it manifests in our lives which i think it's important to identify those i mean again it's important to identify like that's why when i work with client i mean sponsees at the end of our fifth step what i do with people is i go through it and i have them identify their three to five top fears because when they identify the three to four top fears then we can identify what are the behaviors now because we can read a fifth step and go out the next day and do all the same thing. But I want people to really know what are your behaviors that are getting you in trouble? Are you going to meetings and flirting with men every night? You know, because that's just what you do to feel okay. Are you, you know, going home from work and yelling at your kids? I mean, again, the first step is always the awareness. And believe me, awareness takes time. You know? You can be aware of one behavior and not aware of another, but why I really drill down with them so they can really get clear about what the behaviors are. Okay. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to not read from the book, but this is where my higher power really has a sense of humor. I will be complaining about someone else's behavior in under two weeks. I'm doing the same exact thing. And it's like right between the eyes but you know I one of the things I was taught about the seven step prayer is it ends in amen because it's a continuation of the third step prayer which doesn't have an amen at the end and you know that they go together because I was just thinking a minute ago about six and seven and like we're we're asking for these character defects to be removed you know we've turned our life over and now we're asked for them to be moved so for me it's not like six and seven when I did it to be honest with you I felt so free after um and I cried and everything but when I when I originally did it I was like ah no big deal you know um now it's like two paragraphs and it's so important to me today like because I will I love to play with play with the fear and the self-centeredness you know it just keeps coming back So I have to continuously remind myself that in order for me to, you know, live and be the person I want to be and, you know, continue with parts of 12 where I'm practicing these principles in all my affairs, I need to stay out of that. You know? I need just keep turning it over. Yep. Yes. So one thing I was thinking about too, and this is the hard part for us to think about. You're probably not going to like this. sorry about that I think we get very attached to our ways of being and even though some of them cause us pain I think we don't want to let go enough and it goes back to that thing I keep saying that it's like a safety thing so right so my controlling behavior for whatever reason makes me feel a certain way like, okay, it's managed when it's a delusion and it doesn't get me what I want. But what happens when I stop being controlling? So if I'm at home and my kid starts telling me a story about what happened yesterday, geez, the third roommate isn't going to show up. And now we got to, you know, my first thought is, okay. How much money does he need? which of course I don't want to give them and it's like so it's like to sit with myself and not do an old behavior it's like do I really want to get give that up because you know what now I have to be with me now I have to deal with me in a variety of ways they have to build me in my fear after be with me and like oh my God my kid doesn't live here anymore got to maybe feel some loneliness maybe feel like wow am I going to still stay in this place. I mean, there's so many possibilities when you really are truly willing to give up a defect or give up the way of being that you've been doing your whole life. I often say this about people who are angry. All of you know someone who's just pissed off all the time, right? And yet, who would they be, right. There must be so much fear around that defect and that way of the being, Sandy. like someone I know Sandy and I know her protection mode has been this like you know to kind of jump at people but what's underneath that I know the person underneath there you know traumatized vulnerable fearful all of that stuff so it's like who are we out in the world in a way to protect ourselves and really it's having compassion for ourselves and that person underneath all that and others because that's the thing when other people's character defects are coming at us again compassion because like i always say around this stuff it's always their automatic way of being they don't know what any other way of doing it it may stink and we may have feelings about it but it's not personal can we speak up and say something about how they're relating absolutely so yet it's just really looking at too why am i afraid to change i mean this is a big thing i was going to read that too i know you're going to love this but it it's a big thing to start this transformation and to start actually doing new behaviors i mean the fact is the old ways someone was talking about it uh at lunch the thing is you always feel comfortable right i mean if i'm gonna just be the same person i've always been it feels pretty okay sorry you guys let me just find this but to change and have new behaviors I was thinking about that go ahead I was talking to Moe and Tara this morning about how my story for the longest time as, like, my drunk, violent mother. And it wasn't until I went through the steps and, you know, I started getting... You know, I got a lot of relief from dealing with my childhood stuff that I would start to have memories that were joyful. And my mom passed away in 2001 and she never saw me sober. She had been dabbled with sobriety. At least she would say she was dabbling. You know? She was in and out. I think I explained that last night. And part of my story is like this abused kid who had these drunk parents. You probably heard a little bit of that yesterday, you know? And I, that's how I relate my, relay my story about my life and about my mother. And when I came into the program and mothers that got sober and talked about what it was like to be a drunk mother gave me my mother back because I started to see like this person, she didn't want to be the kind of mother she was. and today she's my hero and I just recently started trying to give up on that whole thing where I need you to like know how hard I had it and for me that's like my self-centered fear and my defect and it's how I always relate to people like this abusive mother that I had when my mother was amazing and the qualities I like in myself today, I learned from her you know, I, I earned that you love everybody no matter what, you don't judge people, she was just so accepting she was a hard worker, I mean And she was a single mom when my dad left that raised three kids, worked her butt off to give us things like put us in sports, do everything. And I forget to tell that part of the story because I'm so attached to having the drunk mother because won't you feel bad for me when you know how hard I had it? And this is something new for me to realize. I'm doing this group called Soul Matters and we're looking at one particular thing our life every month and one of them was what's a story that you failed to tell and that's what I came up with about my mom but you just made me think about it I was talking about this morning like she is my hero like this alcoholism aside so you know also thank you to the mothers that came in here and got sober because I really feel like you guys are the one who gave me my mom back and I get to see her who she was and not just the alcoholic person thanks yeah absolutely I mean think about that we're talking about you know you do this work you look at your whole life you look the resoundments and fears of sex obviously but you're what you're doing a review of your life and you're trying to let it go you're reading it to someone and simultaneously part of us is super attached to that story you know what I mean I mean being a victim blaming the rest of the world I mean look at the world now let's you don't have to even say anything right it's like everybody's in conflict and it's like why i think it's because everybody's afraid and everybody's codependent trying to change everybody else but um yeah it's Like we're so attached to that history and so what does it mean to give it up and that's why this this part actually is around the spiritual experience this was in step two once in a while alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences to me these occurrences are phenomenon they appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements right what is that I'm gonna respond differently to the world I'm not going to be acting out emotionally I'm necessarily be having all the same activations I've always had. I'm going to have awareness of when I get activated, what is it about? By the way, that is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself if you know why you get activated because everybody still gets upset but to know why you're upset is huge so you don't have to take it out on anyone. So this is saying through this work we're going to change we're gonna emotions attitudes, ideas emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of our lives so we have this way of being which we thought worked even though it didn't but we were pretty committed to it right suddenly are cast aside and completely new set of conceptions and motives begins to dominate us so think about that my entire way of operating I'm putting aside so I'm taking my history and I'm putting it to the side and this new way of operating new behaviors like we talked about in the fear list you want to identify what am I gonna do instead because if you don't have something to replace it you're gonna go back to the old stuff right so you go ahead well I would also say that you don t even have to do this consciously I don't know if anybody else has had the experience but at this point in my steps I started responding to things and wondering who said it like I was like whoa I don't know how I just you know I didn't react to that or things are coming out of my mouth and I'm right well like you know So if I do the work, this is what I learned I do work having no clue that I must start responding differently My old way has just disappeared because I've given that up not even knowing I've giving it up I've just gone and done the prayer You know yeah And I did the work, and then all of a sudden a whole different me. I literally at times would be like, who just said that? Yes. And my mind, I would say I was hijacked, which is also something I would Say if I got triggered by somebody, I get hijacked and goodness knows what's going to come out of my mouth. But this is like my higher power hijacking me, and all of the sudden I'm responding to situations in a completely different manner. So you don't have to even consciously decide. I'm going to put that aside and now I'm going to respond differently because I really feel like what's happened I'll say from my experience is doing the work is what put it aside and then all of a sudden something else is coming out and it ain't me yeah and it's definitely a practice and it is a trust and I want to go back to Sandy again because I've seen someone transform their lives and I've see someone go from old behaviors to frickin new behaviors and say how did I even do that I mean so that's the magic of this work is that we were once doing these behaviors we worked through some of the steps and we can do new behaviors and we could be free you know again it's changing ongoingly do I never get upset no I think I told you had a fight with Finn like two weeks ago but you know it's like but it's few and far between and it's like you know I could honestly say that raising my son two times I got upset with them where I raised my voice I mean that's pretty freaking amazing raising a kid so I mean where it was really working in my life you know what I mean and that's where you see it and I will say I was just gonna check the time I will save this too is I've seen people finish these steps finish the ninth step and are still crippled by guilt and I think to myself what happened you know you're supposed to hopefully when you work through the ninth step and make your amends move beyond that and what I see is this same kind of phenomenon that sometimes we get extremely attached to our identities and that person that kind of did x y and z and feels bad about it doesn't matter how many amends I make I'm going to still feel shitty about it because maybe feeling good is uncomfortable I know that sounds crazy but maybe feeling open and loving to people feels uncomfortable maybe it's easier to feel negative and shut down so it's really looking at in this step how is fear manifesting in my behaviors and what am i still doing that may feel just automatic but really isn't working for me anymore anything else well my sponsor always said that i would be like first i'm amazing and i have no resentments and no fears and i'm fine and loving and kind and then i'm the worst person on earth once i started right i'm like oh look what i did look who i am you know and then I started getting attached to being like the best worst alcoholic and my sponsors like that's just ego but no it's right in the other direction and yeah I wasn't tolerated yes I just didn't have you know I could I guess I could act that way everywhere else but not around my sponsor but yeah I wasn t allowed to you know right be extreme see all or nothing I'm the worst of the best yeah yeah and so humility is really the I think it's the principle of seventh step correct anybody and so really that's what we're looking at we're hopefully taking some of our ego away hopefully we're much more okay with this kind of new person and our vulnerability and the newness and we're going to allow ourselves now to kind of work with this new person and now hopefully we have a higher power we can rely on rather than being full of fear and we can navigate this stance now becoming an evolving because that's really what it's about it's always becoming and evolving what go ahead i was just nodding becoming and evolving um let's see i one of the reasons why i said earlier that i stopped the fifth step was because i didn't know you know i was gonna have to change right and that's really scary it is scary you know I don't think we're all running around choosing to act in our defects of character I think that's just the only thing we know. And, you know, for me, either being told, you know, I play sports. I'm an athlete. That's what I do. You know? I didn't even, like, I don't even know if I consciously chose to do that or I just heard that story be, were not just the stories we've created, were the stories We've Been Told, were who We've been told. And then all of a sudden, you're sober, you go through the steps and you're like, oh my God, I don'T even know what I like. What am I supposed to do? Who am I? You know, and I think the idea of, you know, turning over ourselves to our higher power gives us the opportunity to play with that. Like, I'm going to have fun figuring it out, you know, as opposed to just staying attached to the old story. Right. I literally would have, every year I would sign up to play hockey and I was done competing. Once, like I said, I was really neurotic before I got sober. Everything was like type A OCD in my house. I also was very competitive. As soon as I got with a higher power, I wanted nothing to do with competition. My hockey team was like, what is wrong with you? Because I was the one out punching everyone out and, you know, very aggressive. And now I just, you Know, I didn't have an interest in that. And I would have to get injured every season to not play because I couldn't figure out that it wasn't something I wanted to do. You know, did you have a question? Yeah, Dick Alcoholic. Hey, Jack Dick. You guys have brought up a lot for me today. So I'm the guy that's been working with people for 32 years or whatever, and you're talking about all these feelings and bringing these up, and the observation or the thought that I had was that I can be so into helping other people in the work that I ignore my own deal, and you just brought that out in me in a very strong way. You know, it's like, you know, I think my ego tells me that, well, I don't really have to look at anything because I got this figured out and I'm helping people and so forth and so on. And yeah, you Know, this has been good for me. It's bring up a lot of emotion about maybe some things that I need to look at and, you Now, how do I go back and do that after so long? You know? So anyways, I just want to put that out there because I'm sure there's of other people who have been in this thing. You're self-included, where you would be, you know, you're a psychologist, you're master of this, you've been doing it a long time, so how do you take a look at your own feelings in an objective manner and really get honest with some of your own behaviors? And that's what I'm thinking about. I'm going to tell you a quick story. She does a lot. My favorite is getting to point it out to her. you know what i'll i'll tell you quickly what happened to me later which you know when i've talked about having numerous bottoms and recovery and it always brings me back to the work or therapy or whatever so when i married my second husband in the early 2000s he was sober 15 years and very shortly after we got married he relapsed on opiates and he had never done opiats so my life became a shit show and here i am i'm a psychologist i'm seeing 30 people a week i've been going to al-anon for 15 years i've an aa for 20 years and my husband is relapsing in my house and my life imploded so really you know stuff happens to us and the thing is when we're afraid which is that time in my life was one of the most terrifying times of my in my sobriety my life where I was so ashamed I mean are you kidding me right I'm an addiction psychologist living with a guy who's relapsing like who can I tell so yeah my life imploded and I actually said to a gal earlier today I said that was the worst time in my life and it was the best time of my life because that pain brought me to my knees again and out of that experience my life was transformed totally transformed and i learned more about myself more about the disease i ended up writing a book i mean my entire life opened up because of that and he's not on the planet anymore he passed away and it's like so i get it we can have these incredibly deep awarenesses you know i remember just at a few years of recovery having memories of childhood stuff and being like are you kidding me like i gotta deal with this now so i mean i think it's ongoing and i also think it'S A REAL YOU KNOW RISK WHEN YOU'RE WORKING WITH ADDICTS TO PUT YOU KNOW THE CO-DEPENDENCY LIKE WE PUT EVERYBODY ELSE FIRST WE PIT OURSELVES LAST and then the next thing you know we're imploding so super super important to do our own work ongoingly to take care of ourselves all that stuff and i'd love to talk to you about it yeah go ahead on that subject um i talked about my wife and her ex-husband and he's the one that started like the hyannis big book he was one of the guys and she um her sponsor a few years ahead her started the hyenas women's big book and that was her sponsor for what 36 years before she died and um my stepdaughter said to me when i came into the picture who's also in the program i'm so grateful that there's someone else on the planet that knows my parents aren't the king and queen of aa and that they're lunatics at home but they had gotten so tied to being the helpers they took tons of people through the steps and um i literally the second time i was writing I would say, I'm going to work on my fourth step because I wanted my wife to write again because she hadn't written in 36 years. And it was, you know, here's a woman I'll just share with you. Like everybody, if they would talk, I don't know if anybody knows her name's Margaret. Everybody would talk about her like she was the most comforting, loving person on earth. And what I was dealing with at home was her getting upset and getting triggered and grabbing a knife and saying, what do you want me to do? Kill myself? you know like that's how she was living and um it was because she didn't feel free to share what was going on and she and you know we talk about it and I was newly through the steps so it's easy for me right nobody has an expectation of me and um what happened Sarah and I had done a group and my wife and her sponsor were on the group and they started to share things that were going on in their lives and this is supposed to be like one of the most intimate relationships right 30 something years. And my wife's sponsor came over and they're crying in the kitchen that they can't believe they had shared stuff on this group, codependency group we were doing about what was going on in their life that they didn't feel comfortable even sharing with each other. They were keeping it a secret. And you know, how, what an awful way to continue to live, you know? And I think that's the thing. Like it is easy to, my wife really identified with being like this big book guru and same with her ex-husband that they, they were miserable when they when I came into the picture and they split up people were shocked they were like we've been miserable for 20 years but we couldn't deal anything about it you know and and it's a you know I'm not saying that's an excuse like you know but it definitely had you know i watched the stuff like i knew this woman from aa my wife who i was like wow you know and then i'm living with inside i'm like what is going on at home and you know there were other of things going on with her health wise that you know contributed to that but it's just you know when my stepdaughter said to me I'm just so grateful someone else knows because people will go up to her when she came into the program and say oh you're Margaret and Dawn's kid and you know and she'd be like yeah you know but they're not the people that I know you know what I mean and um yeah so I'm I'm grateful that you had that realization because you know you you were there too you heard like yeah the two of them and i remember sarah saying to me i can't believe they're not like talking about this stuff right now oh go ahead malcolm and i'm just asking you guys a little bit about the seven step prayer and your personal experiences with the prayer itself i'm not a good person to talk about the prayer because it doesn't really do do it for me but you can go ahead um i'm Not sure what you want me to share about the prayer I mean I I still use it today when I see things cropping up um I did it primarily once after um you know it was really quick for me you know I just kind of went through it and I read is everyone familiar with the prayer well yeah we just read it beforehand um uh I'm sorry Taylor read it but I for me it at the time that I did it it didn't really mean much you know um I knew like I was ready it was weird because do you remember um I said that when I came into the program I didn't want to be born again and I didn' t want this and that that's really what it felt like for me when I read this like I'm turning my life over to higher power it wasn't a religious god it was the higher power that I understood but for me it was literally like, you've got my life. It's in your hands, you know? And I want the defects. I really wanted to be a good person, you know? And for me, having those defects of character mattered. Who I wanted to be and who I was acting like were two totally different people. Now, I was telling Sarah the other day that in high school I was up for a scholarship and the teachers at the school submit three names and then there's a committee that interviews you and decides who. all the teachers refused to give anybody's name for the scholarship except me fast forward in law school same thing happened it was supposed it was a very similar citizenship award I was so full of shit like every I was I'm the epitome they say like a you know a drunk will steal your wallet an addict will steal you while it helped you look for it that was me I mean I had quite the game going on and people were like oh we love you you know you're so and everybody thought I was such a good person and I wasn't. So when I came to that seven step prayer, I really wanted to be that person I had to present. Like I presented the person, but I really wasn't that person because I was stealing from people. I was talking behind their back. I Was doing all these things that really, you know, it was corroding. I mean, I was suicidal. I didn't know how to act. But I knew what i should be like i knew i shouldn't have all these defects of character and when i did that um seventh step prayer i was turning all of me over to a higher power which is funny because until you ask that question i never thought about it as in because i have been through church where i've given my life to you know you know to jesus and everything like when i was younger and i never though about it until you asked that question that that's pretty much what it was like for me the higher power wasn't defined through a religion but my higher power itself is what I've given my life to and um you know I'm it's it's amazing I don't know what what has come from that I have showed up as a person like I never imagined way better than I could have ever imagined I could be you know um and I could also show up as the old me too because if I'm in those defects of character and my self-centered fear I'm only thinking about me you know but I had really good I had a few sponsors I'd really good sponsors that when I would call them with the fear they'd be like you selfish blah blah how about you show up and see what you can do to be of service to people and that's where it comes in again like oh I'm being self-centered you know and I need to ask for help and do it really you know third step and seven step to show up be of service to other people my my stepdaughter who I was close to who introduced me to her mother who then became my wife when we when her parents split up she didn't want anything to do with me she said I love you it's not you I don't want my parents to get divorced as crazy as she thought they were and it took her a few months and then she wanted to go out to breakfast with us and I freaked out I'm like oh my god what am I gonna do and I called my sponsor my sponsors like how about you go and help a family heal why don't you show up and see how you can be of service to help their relationship heal it never occurred to me never occurred to me to think of somebody else in those situations and that's what the seventh step prayer does for me I know but I need to be reminded it's not this stuff isn't a one-and-done for me i am the self-centered freak who is fearful about everything and I need people because I will get on my knees and I'll ask and sometimes I just go through the motions but I other people to tell me that I'm being self-centered I don't how do you how many times in like my first like four years of sobriety I gotta call somebody and have them say did you ask for help I'm like how stupid do I have to be like it's not my go-to it still isn't right yeah I'm not a good person to ask about that I did the sixth and seventh and said the seventh step prayer and I have this whole bad reaction to it to be perfectly honest with you guys so i have a whole set of my own prayers and my own spiritual practice that i do but i don't do everything that you know the certain prayers in the book if they call to you excellent um that particular one didn't for me so it wasn't something i use a lot my sponsor told me i could rewrite the prayers as long as and it does say that in the big book too we said something like this yeah we prayed something like this but as long as you're getting the gist of it like you know to understand what you're actually asking for or what you're turning over yeah and the what what you guys have been talking and if anybody has any other questions obviously but i think what's so important is when we're talking about humility and willingness i think about vulnerability and authenticity because i really think in this step it's really making an acknowledgement of kind of where you're at right now and what's happening and for me working with lots of people as other people do in recovery work even if you do the steps it can still be super hard to ask for what you want ask for what you need speak up in a relationship tell the truth you know all of those things that seem so basic human we still have a lot of fear at being ourselves and to me that's literally when we say coming home to ourselves and knowing what we want to need to me that's critical and obviously communicating with a higher power but so many people I see are still afraid of just speaking what they want you know whether it's with an intimate person their boss or whatever so fear is still operating with us as humans because we're still afraid of saying exactly what we want not everybody but it's pretty common anything else you guys well I keep talking about my sponsor and I was thinking about what you were saying you know and how my sponsors always taught me this and that but I had a sponsee once who went to NA and I never went to NA at the time because I was like, NA doesn't work. And they had gone through the steps through NA and wanted to do the big book. And I was taking them through the steps in the bigbook. And i made a comment like, oh you know whatever. Just like my first sponsor told me there was no reason to read the 12 and 12 but if I wanted to I could. But it was for pointless book. There was a lot of comments and it was very strict big book, like you don't look at any other books. And so you know I had an issue with the twelve and twelve. I had an issue with everything my sponsor had an issue with, because that's what I was taught. And so I made an offhand comment about the steps out of the workbook in NA. And my sponsee said to me, have you ever done them that way? Have you ever been to NA? And I was like, no. And my Sponsee says, well then maybe you shouldn't comment on it. So when I was done taking my sponcee through the steps out of the big book, I had my sponesee take me through the steps in NA and you know for me that you know it's like the people always put the stuffery back in my face because I believed I knew everything when I came in here and the longer I stay here the more I realize I know absolutely nothing I just have my experience and when I don't have experience I shouldn't be commenting on it but I still do I have this mantra, there's nothing to defend. Like really if we can be in like that space of like it's not personal. You know, there really is nothing to defect. We can just be who we are. And I also know that like to me the most important thing about being human is continuing to grow and change and evolve. And I often say that's the most important thing in a marriage or a relationship. Because if you're with someone where you're growing and changing and evolving, they're not. It can be tricky. Or if they don't have the willingness to grow and change or evolve. You really need partners who have the same willingness. Or else it could be tricky What else you got? I don't know. I think I'm wrapping up seven. Questions? I think, Finn, yeah, you know. I'll get to you in a minute. So, I'm sorry. No, go ahead. The Carolyn alcoholics. The Carolyn. It's left the building now, right? Hi. So as far as the character defects, and you were talking about people not wanting to let them go, um how exactly do we address that in attempting to let our character defects go the ones that we want to hang on to that we really don't want to hand on to anymore i would say for me that was the next step because i was still engaging in certain behaviors that i didn't think i needed to make amends for and my sponsor said you know if you go and make amens for that behavior on the people you know i was talking behind people's back at work i was i still would catch myself doing it. And, um, it, you know, it was a manifestation of my fear and I would talk behind somebody's back to make myself look better. And there was a lot of, you know, I'll get into this more later, but there was a lot discussion about like, do you, do you cause more harm by going to people and saying, I talked behind your back and you don't make an amend for that. And so I use that as a, oh, I shouldn't then, you know? I wasn't really listening to my higher power about that. So I continued to do it. And when I finally decided to go through everybody at work and make amends for the stuff I started, and talking behind their back, it was very freeing. And I don't do that behavior anymore. So fear still creeps up, which is what I was taught the defective character is. But that particular behavior, I don�t engage in anymore. My sponsor was just like, �There�s a good way to resolve that.� And it still requires, when you make amends that you're relying on the higher power to show up and give you the strength to do that because it was really hard to go to people at work that i was still working with and talk to them about it and um some people i hated at work are now like i'm really close to them i don't know i would also ask yourself a couple of things i would ask yourself what i'm afraid of Like, why am I afraid to give this up? Who am I afraid of be if I give this out? And the harder question is what am I still getting out of it? Because we don't like to look at that part. That's the harder part. Like, wow, actually, this makes me feel better than or this makes you feel this or makes me so powerful or, you know, I can look better or whatever. Like, what is the part that really we're still getting a hit from? as a friend of mine calls it you know we still get hits from stuff so it's like what am i still getting out of it and what is the fear underneath that that keeps me doing it like what is left unresolved and the fact that you know it says that our higher power will remove them sort of continue to go to there you know um because for me like a lot of times i always think like oh did that prayer you know but the thing is if they're still there they're going to be removed in our higher powers time and sometimes they show up to teach us more lessons you know because they're necessary for us to still live the life our higher power wants us to and it sounds like an excuse but i think that sometimes when our defects of character continue to manifest and show up it doesn't really make our life easy but there are a lot of lessons that come from it right so you know it's not an excuse to say oh they haven't been removed yet i'm going to continue to engage in them. But for me, what I can very easily forget is that where I go to have anything resolved in my life needs to be my higher power and to keep asking. And I think if we keep showing up in a sincere way with the seven step prayer as those things show up, that eventually they do get removed, you know, because we don't, we can't do it ourselves. I think we can stop ourselves from maybe doing the behavior that that character defect manifests, but it doesn't mean that underlying thing. Other things may pop up. Like, I may stop talking about people behind their back, but I could be expressing that defect character fear in a different way. Yes, and talking about 8 and 9, which we're going to get to too, I think the more we clear out our systems of all the guilt, remorse, history we get complete with people in our lives, the less need we have to do that stuff. So... Oh, what time is it? Okay. so this is an exercise that you guys are probably going to freak out about but um it's not something you have to do right now but it isn't it's a step six and seven exercise and i'm gonna just throw it out there and maybe think about it while you're here this weekend one of my sponsors created this and she's done groups with this and she doesn't drop the rock groups and she freaking loves six and seven. She could talk about six and seven forever. So this is the assignment. Ask six people you know. You're ready? What about me needs improvement? I'm good. So this is the thing with that question, is some people are gonna you know have their own stuff it's going to be about them right but I think we're all the same people in a just drink you might not have enough time to hear the response from people in a sense of defects like you know and again if six people say the exact same thing then it's something to look at if people don't you know I mean obviously there want to be people you trust and people you actually respect their opinion this is the trouble with people in a is we're all codependent so people don't want to be honest they don't wanna hurt your feelings so if you can say it to someone and say look this is I really want you to know is there something is there a character defect that I don't see that you think I do with other people and I and I really should know like and obviously you don't to be mean to people but it's just this kind of helpful thing oh my god i just i'm going to tell the story about the video but um yeah it's a helpful thing to just maybe if three out of the six people say the same thing it might be something to look at that's all it's just a thought and then this is question two the first one is what about me needs improvement and this is really around character defects like do you see me angry all the time do you seen me full of self-pity all the time am i complaining about my ex spouse 24 7 you know am I like angry at my divorce all the time or whatever right all right so question two is this and this is really the crux of it what gets in the way what gets sin your way of being close to me so am i doing something am i doing a character defect that's keeping us distant because really that's what character do defects do, right? They keep us separate. If I'm always pissed off, if I'm always full of self-pity, if i'm always whatever flirting with your husband or whatever the hell it is you know no more those days are gone so yeah it's just something to think about and again don't give everybody in our power it's just this kind of gentle way to get some feedback and again we are so I remember when my sponsor came to me and asked me this and I was immediately terrified to tell her immediately terrified can you repeat the questions yeah sure what about me needs improvement and what gets in the way of being close to me I would suggest if you have someone who's constantly telling you what's wrong with you not to ask them the question yeah and if anybody wants there's also I have this kind of six seven exercise sheet with some other questions on it you can take a picture of it if you want to do some work around it says usually alcoholics struggle with defects until they become so painful that we are willing to ask our higher power for help. The pain equals the pain of drinking in most cases, and it becomes unbearable. Choose from any of the character defects you discovered in your fourth and fifth step. There is no right or wrong answer to the questions. Only honesty matters here. You may not be entirely ready and that's okay. The purpose of the exercise is self-honesty asking a higher power for health and moving forward with recovery. And then it says, ask your innermost self some of these questions, you know? So there's a few questions to ask if you, the other thing I would suggest, if you haven't done the steps, it might not be the exercise to go jumping into. I just want to point that out. Cause I know like if somebody gave me an exercise when I was five minutes sober, I would have been working at home. She did say it's six and seven and they go in order for a reason good point okay yes great point thank you what was the thing you're gonna say about the film oh it really was totally tangential and really doesn't apply yeah yeah yeah So this is kind of directed more at Sarah, but so again, I don't know if I'm going to phrase it exactly as I'd like to, but it sounded more like you had a much more clinical approach for like Seven. So Finn had that experience, right? You know, Montague and Seven. And for me, I'm Pavlovian in a sense, right. But I have a character defect response to some kind of fear. Yep. Just like you very well articulated that. So it's like, oh, that's great. So that's me. You know, I'm trying to work through that. And, you know, I've never experienced white light experience. I have, you Know, a higher power working through people in me and in moments. um so but i i tend to look at it more like uh you know maybe my higher power is a guiding force because yeah give me a little bit of of enough zeal or like a little strength to walk into my fear how from more of a it sounded again it sounded like you took a more critical approach to it on addressing your issues of it was that true well i guess i'm just looking at I'm putting fear as, like, a base for a lot of our issues. And I don't think that's just alcoholics. I think it's human beings. We happen to drink over our stuff, but other people do all kinds of other things. So I guess with the fear part, like when we talked about the fear part of the fourth step, I don'T know how you did your fourth step in the fear exercise. That, to me, really helped me to see where they came from, what they were about. and then i'm still up they still get activated so yes we ask when they get activated i pray to have them removed and sometimes it really helps me when i can identify where it came from so let me give you a quick example and we're going to wrap up but i'll talk about an activation like say someone says something to you and it totally pisses you off right and you get activated right and that happens all the time to us right we and how you know it's an activation as I say it this way when the reaction is way more than what it should be like say the woman at Dunkin Donuts gives you the wrong coffee and you lose it right it's not about the copy right so the question then is what fear did she activate is the first question so maybe fear of not getting what I want fear of not getting my needs met, fear being late at work, blah blah blah. But then the deeper dive is what is this situation reminding me of? Because it's not about the Dunkin Donuts girl. It's about when you were five and you were waiting for your mother at nursery school and she never showed up and you felt like you were gonna die. And that's what's crazy about the human experience is you could be activated at a Dunkin' Donuts and it's about an incident that happen at five but if we don't have that awareness and we don t have that consciousness like this activation is about me nothing to do with the dunkin donuts girl or my ex or my this or my that then there's no freedom to work through that and get to the other side so yeah to me it is doing a little bit of a deeper dive i mean the steps definitely set that platform up but beyond that it's like well yeah the fear originated here but it's still happening in my life now and we will be talking about that a lot in the tenth step this also happens like we do YouTube channel together and I always share my experience my feelings and you know in a different way and Sarah does talk more clinical because that's her career as well but what I watch in our interactions Sarah goes through all the same stuff hmm where she gets activated She prays, she cries, she deals with it. She goes away and writes and then comes back, meditates on it and says, oh, you know what I realized and gets to that deeper issue and turns it over and takes responsibility for it and doesn't blame me or whoever else in her life. So she's still doing the same stuff. She relays the information differently. And what Sarah has taught me with the way she does speak is teaching me how much the history is important, you Know, because I don't know about you, but that coffee being wrong. Today, if I'm up with my work and my 10th step, it's just a pain in the neck. If I'm not doing the work or before, it ruined my whole effing day. Like how could the, you know, whatever, a person riding, driving slow in front of me, like sends me right over the deep end. Then I know that there's like something's already gone on that I haven't addressed. It might not be like oh when i was five i was in a car it could be that over the last two weeks little things and this is what happened to me is i would say and why i ended up having to do another uh writing was i would go oh i shouldn't be upset about that you shouldn't get upset about that you should be upset about that next thing you know yeah i'm just disregarding how i really am that's why um you know my sponsor suggested just sit once a week and write because things start to come out that i don't even know i brushed aside and I know what resentment means like it comes back, it's bothering us but I think we can come to a place in our sobriety and our connection to our higher power with meditation that we're pretty chill and it feels pretty good and it takes a while for stuff to build up before we're like that effing coffee's wrong and then we're all like what's wrong with me and I have to wrestle that to the ground to finally surrender again but it really is that I've been brushing things aside you know yes and you don't do that you get on stuff pretty much right away and I know you gotta go one thing if you guys can do just one thing I'm telling you you just mentioned it one of the biggest things that we do that causes us the biggest trouble is dismissing our feelings okay that is like across the board oh that's okay no it didn't bother me believe me recipe for disaster so if you just take away one thing just even when you dismiss it go oh maybe I am upset maybe I do have a feeling about that that would be huge all right go ahead we're rambling thank you guys so much and it's awesome