Steps 4 and 5 – Wilson House Big Book Workshop Retreat – Part 5 of 25 – 2023 – Jessica S.

So welcome back, everyone. Come on in and find a seat. There's a whole row of seats up here if you're sitting on the floor and you need somewhere to sit. We're going to open this with a set-aside prayer, so repeat after me. Dear God, God, please help me set aside everything I think I know about myself, about my disease, the big book, the 12 steps, and especially you, God, so that I may have an open mind so that I may have an open mind and a new experience with my disease, the big book, the 12 steps, and especially you, God. Please help me see the truth. Amen. We're also going to start with another two minutes of silence because that really helps me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so now in this next session we're going to talk about steps four and five four made a searching and fearless moral inventory Jeff alcoholic so I'd been an alcoholic synonymous for a couple years and I had come around to the fact that the people who I thought had wronged me in my life really hadn't wronged them. My dad was being the best dad that he knew how to be. There's no playbook for being a parent. If your kid acts this way, the book doesn't say do this and everything's okay. You're giving these children, and it's happened to me today, I have no playbooks, I have three kids. like you do what you think is best at that point in time you know and that's how my dad did it and you know my mom she bought clothes at Bradley's and she thought she was doing the best thing that she could and that is what it was you know. My friends acted the way they acted because that's the way friends act. The lady at the DMV made a decision based on the fact that I was a delinquent. I had three DUIs, and like, I really didn't have any reason to have a license at that point in time. Right? So I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous for a couple years, and I've really come to the fact that these resentments that I had really didn'T hold any water, didn'T really have any basis that were in fact. so when I came to the fourth step for me it wasn't this profound eye opening experience with my resentments that I had but it says we launched out into a vigorous course of action so after I did my third step prayer with my sponsor on our knees which was interesting for a man like myself to do with another man because my ideas of what a man was at that point in my life, that was not it. And men don't do that. Okay? So that was interesting in itself. And next we launch into a vigorous course of action. That doesn't mean right after that prayer I've done a lot of work in understanding that I'm powerless over alcohol. I've conceived this idea of a higher power that has that has allowed me to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to it, whatever it is. It doesn't mean that I've done all that work and I'm just going to pump the brakes for a little bit because this has been a lot for me. This has been a lot. I'm going to bump the brakes. We're going to let this power do its thing. I'm not doing a step a year here. I'm launching into a vigorous course of action. It's the funniest thing because when I did it, I was just doing the next thing that my sponsor told me to do. He said, we read and he said write a list so I write a list. And I do the same thing with my sponsors. I say, alright what now? Just write a list. That's it. Just write a list. It's all you need to do like alright I guess and it's like that's all I needed to do was write a list. I didn't need the grand scheme of the fourth step. I didn' t need to know everything that was going to happen coming fall. I just needed a list of people, places and things institutions of what I was angry at. But I looked at my sponsor and I said I've really come to the fact that these people didn't wrong me. you know and do I really need to do all this stuff I mean I kind of know what's going on here I've been an a-hole for a really long time and I drank a little too much and he said yeah you do need to because we're going to do this is an exercise this is a exercise for your entire life going forward and we need to look at why these resentments cropped up and what happened, what caused the resentment, what's causing them now. Because I had all those prior resentments, but I'm also still getting resentments on a daily basis. And the funny thing about a resentment for me is I could not like you today and I'll like you tomorrow and the day after and everything else. And I might see a person on the street and they might do something to me or I have a situation at work and I could be fine the next day. And then a month later, something happens and that resentment pops into my mind and I immediately start thinking about how I'm going to harm that person, place, or thing or how I am going to get back at whatever it is that happened. And it completely consumes my life. I'm blacked out. I'm driving down the road. Something happens. The resentment comes to mind. And all of a sudden, half an hour later, I end up at my destination. I don't even remember how I got there. Right? I haven't been drinking. This is just I'm drunk on a resentment. You know, and that was what I needed to work on. That's really what I need to find out and figure out and see how I look at the resentment and how I turn that around for what I did to cause that resentment and what I needs to do to correct that resentment. in that action here in the fourth step right and um so for me i went to big book step study with my sponsor i had no idea what it was don't really i'm just going through the book right you go to this meeting on friday nights we go out to eat we go to this meeting they bring you through the steps i didn't even know there was another way through the steps and this thing called big book step study i was just like all right and i'd sit in these meetings and i often heard in the fellowship that the fourth step was the big step right it's the boogeyman and i'm like okay you know and i've been looking at him and i hear everybody share and the fourth step was not the boogeyman for me it just wasn't like that for me um it was just something i needed to do it was just work like i said i i when work work is in front of me i get it done you know so i i had to get it down um you know but it goes says on page 64 resentment is the number one offender it destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease. For we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. And that was true for me because I think it says it's the number one offender because when I get in those places when I gets in those dark places where I black out from a resentment and I don't know how I ended up in places I'm driving down the road, I don't know how I got where I got to. Or I'm having hour-long conversations with myself and nobody else is in the room. I'm blocked off from my higher power. I don' t know how to let God in. And more importantly, I'm not helping anybody else. I'm no helping another alcoholic. and if I have that peculiar mantle blank spot that they talk about in this book I can drink again you know that resentment will make me drink again and that is the most dangerous thing that's why we launch out into a vigorous course of action because it can come at any time but it was very it was very simple very simple to me um you know you have you have three columns you write your three columns resentment the cause and the effects my sponsor it wasn't some big crazy thing that we were doing bullet points right you get down to the facts like what caused this resentment and like it says here mr brown his attention to my wife told my wife of my mistress brown may get my job at the office. My dad treated me unfairly, made me do work around the house, didn't let me go play with my friends, made be play sports. Sports I didn't want to play. All these things. What did that affect? My personal relationships, my security, fear, all that stuff. Very basic it doesn't you know I think sometimes we get lost in Alcoholics Anonymous and the fellowship and the steps being some big idea that we have to create and write and do different ways and different things and have different spiritual experiences. We don't. We have to get down to causes and conditions to clear away way the wreckage of the past, to open ourselves up so we can have an experience to let God in. Like Jess said, she's done the steps several different ways and what that does is allow us to let god in in different ways. Like this isn't the end all be all of spiritual experiences in step four. No, I'm just getting rid of some stuff that blocked me off. It doesn't allow me to help you doesn't allow me to see different things when I talk to my dad and I'm working and I talk to him these days it's very different from when I used to talk to them it was I was sober for a couple years and uh he I don't know I don' t know what we were doing but uh he used to be very tough right he had this he had us when we was real young My mother and father got married when they were in their young 20s, and my mother might have been 19. So he was like this tough, funny, early 30-year-old guy, you know? And everything was hard, right? We'd be breaking leaves. I'm like, oh, I'm thirsty. He's like, you can get a drink when you're done breaking leaves I'm just like, what? Like, I can't, I don't even, why? I just want a drink, you know, and tough like that. Like, just ridiculous things. And then I'm a couple years into sobriety, and we're doing something, and he's soft. And I'm like, don't mean soft like that, I mean like, he's soften up around the edges. And I am like, where is my dad? You know, where's this guy I did all this work around, You know, so that I could have a father that was like a dad figure to me. Not this evil person that I saw, you know. And that's through the work of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's through The Work of the Fourth Step. I could see him as a different man, you now. And simple. Simple stuff. Don't make too hard terms of this. It doesn't need to be. It's a list, pause and effects. And then we move on. I didn't have a lot. I grew up in a small town, not a lot of people, and I'm not really an outgoing person. I'm very quiet, shy, introverted, deep to myself. So when I had resentments, this list I made, I didn't have a lot. Didn't need to have a lot, you know? I go back to my sponsor and I'm like, I got 30 names. I really can't think of any others, you know, and I'll try, you know? And he's like, that's enough. That's a start. You don't need it, you know? That's your experience. Whether you got 30 names or 300, it's whatever your experience is. And, you know, so I write these things and I do this exercise. And he, you know, towards the end, I get through and we move on. So he gives me the directions for the turnaround and selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and afraid. You know, and I got a worksheet and it spelled that out for me. You know, self-seeking, dishonest, afraid. And the example is for everyone. So I went through everybody in my notebook and I wrote it out straight across and I started to see these patterns in my life. I didn't get selfish. I didn' t consider how the other person felt. I didn''t consider the other persona's point of view. You know? Dishonest. Where was I to blame? How did I cause the situation? Self-seekings. you know when they when they've wronged me or i felt that a person wronged me what did i do to get back at them who did i talk to because usually what i do right is somebody wrongs me and then i i go to my friend and i get them on my side and i start talking can you believe they did that that is absolutely ridiculous and then they you know they're not an alcoholics anonymous so they start cosigning it And I start feeling better about the situation, and now I'm right. I'm correct. And then what am I afraid of? I'm afraid I'm not going to get what I want. I'm worried I'm going to have something taken away from me that I already have. I'm scared you're not going accept me. And for the most part, that's every one of my resentments. Those fears right there. And I needed to see that, to see what actually ran my life. You know, I pointed out that I made that decision earlier because fear ran my life, but I didn't know like where that fear came from. I didn'T know. I've talked a lot this weekend about fear of acceptance and being accepted. And I talk about that because I did the fourth step, because I saw that fear of acceptance. That's the only reason why I talk so much about it because it was such a driver in my life towards what I did. And I learned that through the fourth steps. You know, and I got to the end of that work and my sponsor said, you forgot something. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I didn't. And he's like, no, you forget something. You forgot to do yourself. You need to do your self. And I'm, like, okay. So I did all these things on myself. One of the biggest things that came out for me was that I resented myself because I didn't grow up to be the man that I thought my father wanted me to be. That was so tough for me to see. And the reality of it is my dad just wanted me to be me and that's it. and I pushed him away for so long because of that you know and uh that's what caused that relationship when I walked in the door he was like when the F are you going to learn and uh changed changed my view on who my dad was and who I was, you know, and now I view him as like this soft older guy, the soft older dad that he seems to be now that he always was. You know, he just wanted to, he was doing the best that he did, that he could with what he had. That was a great experience. But you don't get that experience if you're not doing this work. You're not going to have an experience like that. You know, you're just showing up to meetings. Like I am, I'm a meetings maker makes it kind of guy. You don't drink no matter what kind of guy and uh but if you're not if you are not doing the work the way it's laid out like I can starve reading a cook book right I can starve in alcoholic synonymous if I'm just showing up and I think that's one of the craziest things that I hear is They just told me to show up, just keep coming. Yeah, just keep coming and do all this other stuff. Right? Like you missed the second half of the message. Like you heard the word just, we're so literal in here. I hear just and I'm like okay, path of least resistance, easier softer way. What do I have to do to get what you have but with the least amount of work? Right? it just doesn't work that way you know and um the fourth step was was eye-opening for me like i just described and you know those resentments have come to lead to a lot of other experiences in my life because I did those turnarounds and I was able to see a whole bunch of different things you know different people that I haven't made amends to different defects of character that I've looked at and that I've had to turn around different fears you know because it says fear is an evil, corroding thread. Our lives are shot through with it. And that's a lot of what happened to me. I don't know why. It doesn't matter why I have a whole bunch of fear in my life, but that's why I did what I did because I'm just full of fear. Anything, you know? And God's so funny because, like I said, I'm an introvert. I don't like to talk to a lot of people. I just don't know how to, right? I just Don't Know How to walk up to people and be like, hey, how are you doing? My name's Jeff. What's your name? Can we be friends? You know, like we're on the playground. Like that's not my life. And so God saw fit for me to be introduced to this man outside of a meeting in South Boston at one point in time. And now I have this job where all I do is talk to other people. All I do is speak to groups of people, you know? And not people like men, right? A lot of men who I'm fearful of for whatever reason because I feel like I don't fit in. You know, I feel that I'm not fit in and I feel they're not going to accept me, you know? And And that's just what my life was like, you know, due to fear. Because it was based on self-reliance and self... And I did it as long as I could. I relied on myself as long als I could, but it only takes me so far, you know, and after I had done this for a while, and I got some great friends, great friends that I still have from when I was younger. I got a buddy, he's been my friend since we were about four, I'm 40 now, so we've been friends forever best friends forever you know and um he's not he's not a religious guy he's not a spiritual guy you know he's seen some things where that makes him believe there isn't a god right but here on 68 it says we never apologize to anyone for depending upon our creator because he knows what's going on. We're very open, but he likes to make jokes like, oh, where'd you find Jesus? Was he hiding behind the couch or something stupid? He's always jabbing me a little bit, but he sees the transformation. And we can laugh at those who think spirituality is the way of weakness because for me, I know it's been the way of strength for me. If you want to think I'm weak because I depended upon something else to get what I have, that's fine. This is my story. This is My Way of Life. Paradoxically, it's the way of strength. The verdict of the ages is that faith means courage. All men have faith. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead, we let Him demonstrate through us what he can do. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be at once we commence to outgrow fear. You know, I don't apologize for what I believe in and how I work my program and what I do. I know that my sobriety is my sobpriety and I have it because of the faith that I've built through experiences that I have had and through other people's experiences that have had this same kind of spiritual awakening and all I do is show up on a daily basis and I was talking to this kid a little while ago in the AA and he's like it just seems like things just roll off your back And I'm like, that's great. It's great you see me like that. But I can tell you that that's not what happens. You know? I do a lot of work with my higher power. And that's why it looks like that's what's demonstrated. You know, because I let God do that for me. That's not how I feel. Right? How I feel is like the fourth step is going like this. Right? it's starting to turn, it's starting to work as soon as that happens whatever it may be and I start to feel better about it you know so what isn't demonstrated is resentment, fear, hate pushing people away it's faith understanding facts, truths you know what am I afraid of you want to get somebody that's really having a hard time ask them what they're afraid of it's like, what? wait, what are you saying? no, you don't get it, this is what happened yeah, what Are You Afraid Of? because fear drives my decisions that's the experience that I have so with that I'll pass it over to Jess I think she's got great experience on the fourth step for you I just have to tell you how I got to my fourth step work so I I came in and right out of the rip did like an AWOL at the Tynan and Southie because in Boston that's what everyone does we do AWOLs it's like 14 weeks through the steps like a spreadsheet moving on and then I did one in Brighton at St. Elizabeth's and then I did like some lady in my home group had like a meeting in her basement we did like a woman's way through the 12 steps and that was great and then we were fortunate enough to have friends that were starting a workshop meeting in Boston called the living room group and so we went through the steps we're in one-on-one with the sponsor and the workshop and then he starts doing this writing and can speak at these meetings and I can't speak at them and I have an ego bigger than this room and I'm like I've been to the steps now like four times why can't I speak at these meetings you know and I'm wicked competitive and his writing looked different than mine so now I have to do what he's doing but my sponsor didn't do step study so I go Jen I need you to go do step study and take me through because I'm not getting a different sponsor and she was like what and I was like I have To be able to do with Jeff's doing so I can go over the meeting with him and I can talk too and she Was like oh my god she's like okay so she went cuz she's like Jesus and got a step study sponsor went through the process if she could take me through because she was a rock star and just so that I could be in competition with my future husband and but I'll tell you it was the best thing that ever happened for me because each time I went through the fourth step I just learned a little bit more and more and you know I believe that everything happens for a reason and I think that you know, I went into a step study meeting in my first year of recovery I went into this meeting and Newton and they had like the chairperson at a light bulb on the table and when your time was up they'd turn the light bulb off and then when you were like you need to be cut off should start flicking the life off the first time she flicks the lightbulb I'm like these people are I'm out so I leave like 15 minutes into the meetings I couldn't handle the light bulbs going like this I was like this is crazy and so that was it like closed mind I'm oh you know and then but then he's doing it now I'm competitive so I have to have like what he has you know there's no way he could be speaking and I can't I've six months more than him so anyways I'm a wicked sick alcoholic that needs to do a lot of work and what I learned going through the steps multiple times was that you know this my like I talked about last night like I came in here with a broken brain you know and it needed to be rewired. And this step, like it's so repetitive and so redundant when you get into those turnarounds. I mean, it is so brutal to be reading the same stuff, like writing the same stuff over and over and ever. You're like, how much, like, when am I going to move on with fear of other people's opinions? Like when, at what point am I not going to care what you think about me and what I learned was this the whole reason we do this is not to shame ourselves it's not to blame yourself it's to clear space for God to get all this yuck and baggage that we carry around out because like when I have an interaction with you and it triggers something from my childhood and I act like a jerk back and I think it's because of you but really it's Because of Something That Happened To Me 20 Years Ago It's Not Your Problem It's My Problem And I'm Carrying that around in my life on a daily basis and projecting that on everyone that has an interaction with me. I don't want to live like that anymore. That's a lot of work to live like that. And the only way I'm not going to live like that is if I clear all this crap out and give it to God and start with a blank slate. You know, so it says it's a fact-finding and fact-facing process. This is not about shame and it's not about blame. It's about clearing space and getting the yuck out. And so I need to get it out, out all on paper. And that pen and paper method works really well for this alcoholic, you know? And it talks about like resentment being the number one offender. And it talked about like fear being that evil corroded thread. And when I came in here, I talked last night about how I had rage when I come in here. And I remember my sponsor Jen saying to me, like, you know, like that anger and rage is just like frozen fear. And I was like, what? Like, again, that doesn't even make sense to me. But I hadn't written this out in a way that I could understand that, like literally all this anger and resentment, like underneath all that is just fear. Like I have the thousand forms of fear operating all the time. And when I feel threatened like I have a reaction to that and unfortunately the only emotion I know is anger because that's what's easy for me but it's not really effective when you're sober to be walking around like a crazy person yelling and so like I had to get it all out on paper and um what I learned in doing my my writing and doing my turnarounds like you know after you write over and over and over like you where was i selfish like what what did i want or not want to happen you know like i wanted somebody to act in a way that they just weren't capable of being you know i wanted them to act differently that's my selfishness is i'm expecting you to be different than who you are i have no acceptance for who you are as a human being i just want to control you and where's my dishonesty you know with a lie i'm telling myself you know the lie I'm telling myself is like you know I have an unreasonable expectation on you or who knows I'm calling myself all sorts of crazy stuff all the time that's so distorted from reality you know and then I look at like where's my self-seeking behavior and this is where it's like what am I doing what like when you upset me how am I reacting in those situations I'm obsessing I'm staying in my head and obsessing, I'm not able to look you in the eye, I'm being passive-aggressive I'm taking like jabs at you you know how am i acting out I need to look at that stuff I want to see these patterns because I want to stop doing this stuff day to day and the freedom I've gotten from that is the minute a familiar situation starts to happen right like I learned through this writing that like my eye the toughest relationships for me similar were with my you know my parents my father and my mother and those like personality types would appear in my life at work or wherever like all over the place and I started to see this pattern where my bosses I would always have these male bosses that were just like my dad and so every time they would like say something to me that felt like an ounce of like shame or blame I go right back to little Jessica you know and felt like it was my dad shaming me for not getting an A on my report card or not being what he thought I should be. And then I'm acting like a nut at work because I feel like, you know, and then I am putting an incredible amount of pressure on myself to perform for a job where I am just there to earn a paycheck, really. You know what I mean? Like I am making no money and it is just a job, but I am killing myself because I go back to little Jessica and I feel like I am disappointing my dad, but really it is like this boss that really doesn't care about me as a human being. and so I had to like let all that go but you can't see it without writing it out you know so I Had to see and I had To see like how I would realize this is from those self-seeking behaviors because I wrote over and over and Over that like you know when my boss like yells at me or gives me feedback that I'm not ready to hear What do I start to do? I immediately shut down. I don't want to hear what you have to say anymore I look away because I can't look at you in the eye because I'm mad and I don't want to flip out And I don' want to scream, but I don''t know what to do with all that feeling in my chest. So I look away right and then You know I start to obsess in my head and I start shame and blame and so now when these things happen as soon as I feel myself Close my mouth and look away. I'm like I'm I'm stuck in a resentment right now in this moment I can feel it happening live time now and that's only because I've done so much of this stupid writing and reprogrammed my brain like nobody hates writing more than me let me tell you and I had to do it twice because I burnt my writing because I used to go on Sister Maurice retreats and she'd be like let's burn all your notebooks and we would burn everything and my sponsor died in the middle of my fifth step and so I came back and burnt all my notebooks and then I got a new sponsor and she's like let's meet for coffee bring your notebooks and we can kind of like you can kind give me the highlights of your fourth since we didn't do a fifth together I don't know you that well and I was like I don t have them. She's like what do you mean you don't have them? I go I burnt them all. She said why would you do that? I was because I don' t want Jeff to read it you know I can't have him knowing all my secrets and she was like I gotta call my sponsor and see what to do I've never had someone do that before and i was like oh and she called me back like a couple days later and she's like you have to write again and i Was like what no thanks no thanks and then it turned out like it was that period of my life where my dad had died and all this stuff happened and like you know when my dad died like everyone in my family's coping mechanism was like don't talk and we're not going to talk and we're gonna be drunk like not take a sober breath and like so the amount of resentments I had coming out of that was I had plenty to write about and um so I ended up writing again so that you know the her point being that like when you take a sponsee through the work and you don't have a notebook to refer to like how do they know you did the work I'm like I don't know I've never had a sponcee ask to see my notebook and she's like someday you might and you won't have a notebook because you burned it so I ended up writing again but at that time it was so monotonous and so tedious it was like some of my resentments literally were like I'll never forget this one because it was such a long time ago but it was just so stupid um this woman in my office like we didn't get along I worked in an office like 15 women and one male boss so it was like bananas the level of drama that was going on in that office and like I remember like I requested hot pink post-its and she refused to order them. And I was so mad at this woman and I was not spending my own money on hot pink posts. It's like, this bitch is buying me hot pink posts, you know what I mean? And like, she wouldn't do it because she didn't like me. So then I'm like being the director, the master manipulator talking to her co like her, you know, her supervisor, like I need the pink post. It was like, you're like, who gives a shit what color they are you know what I mean but like I wouldn't let it go and like it got to the point where I I wouldn'T look at this lady I if we were having lunch as a group like an office I wouldn'T sit at the table with this lady like this is like six seven years sober I'm acting out like a banana head like this in an office with all these ladies because I hate this woman because she won'T order pink post-its for me like there's no God in that situation let me tell you and so I had to see like my fear is like that she doesn't like me you know like I'm not being accepted and it's I gotta let all that go because really like she's just like an office administrator trying to live her life and I'm ruining it and uh it's all my ego that blocks me you know what I mean it's like that that ego is so strong so anyways I this whole the whole point of this work was to reprogram my brain like my thinking is broken and I need a new way of thinking and you know normal people just their brain just thinks like this so like as alcoholics we do all this writing to reprograme our brains just to think like non-alcoholic people that's the thing that's kind of crazy and um now I know like it's it's none of my business when someone has like some kind of weird reaction to something I'm saying like I have no control over how you react to the way i say something that's not my problem and i can't worry about it you know there's no need for me to be acting crazy about it but i had to do all this this practice over and over and over you know and there's so much in these few pages and how it works like they give us a lot of tools in here they give us you know on 67 they give up the sick man's prayer you know we realized that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick though we did not like their symptoms in the way these disturbed us they like ourselves were sick too we asked God to help us show them the same tolerance pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend when a person offended we said to ourselves this is a sick man how can I be helpful to him God save me from being angry thy will be done I mean I had to write this on a postcard at one point because I worked in another office with all women it's funny how God kept putting me in offices filled with women and I had like such a problem being with all women and um I was in another office with all woman and I I remember being so crazy about my boss like I had no respect I really had problems with authority it's no wonder that I own my own business now and uh you know I had to write this sick man's prayer on a postcard and keep it on my desk because every time this woman would walk into my office, I could feel my heckles go up. Like I was ready to argue anything she said, which is a tough way to work every day. You know what I mean? Like there's no sense of ease and comfort, like no peace when you're like on playing defense like that all the time. And I had to learn that like, there's just some people out there that are just sick and I'm not going to change it. And there's nothing I can do about it, but I can take care of myself today all I can control is myself and I can invite God into the situation I can pray for that person and then I can put a safe little bubble around myself like I don't have to spend a lot of time any more time than I need to with this person you know what I mean but they're here too and we have to interact and me being a psycho at work is not helping that relationship it's making it so much worse you know so I needと put the bat down and I need to pray for this woman, you know. And this was one of the tools that Mara had taught me was to say the sick man's prayer for this woman every day. And another tool she taught me was to read the story in the back of the book called Freedom from Bondage and pray for This Woman. For everything that I wanted for myself, I was going to pray for her to have it for 10 days. You know, and at the end of that 10 days, hopefully I would be free of that hate for this woman that I had, you know. And then we get into the fear part, you know and it's like Jeff talked about like this this part of the fourth step for me was illuminating you know like we reviewed our fears thoroughly we put them on paper even though we had no resentment in connection with them we asked ourselves why we had them wasn't it because self-reliance failed us self-reliance was as was good as far as it went but it didn't go far enough some of us had a great self-confidence, but it didn't fully solve the fear problem or any other. And so when I got to the fear inventory and I've heard like, I've seen like through sponsoring people through the years, like I've seeing a lot of people do the fear inventory in different ways. And I'll tell you the way that I, that my sponsor had me do it was really helpful to me because she had me go back through my fourth step and look at all the different fears I'd written down and start to make a list and then every time we wrote she had me light a candle to invite you know for god and that was my visual cue for god and i was going to say the third step prayer and invite god in and be quiet and ask god to reveal to me everything that needed to be revealed i did that when i was making my list and every time i wrote and when i Was doing my fear turn around and then i would add any fears that i missed from the turnaround part you know and then she had me um go through a couple different questions and one of them was when was the first time I remembered having this fear and how did I react when I had that fear like what happened like what was the fear and what happened when that fear happened and then how did I react or respond in the situation like what were the behaviors I was displaying you know um and then it was how was i keeping it alive like what what was i doing to keep this going this fear going in my life and then if i had trust and relied on god like how would this be different and i'll tell you what she taught me was i was creating a blueprint for my life because the reality is i'm a human being right these fears are going to come up no matter how many times you do a fourth step or how thorough you think you are we're humans fear happens all the time these things are gonna come up but it's how i deal with the fear today that's all the difference right and so what i did in my fear inventory was create a blueprint for myself so what that last question was you know when this happens again how do i want to react or how do i want respond when this fear comes up and i'll tell you thinking about it in that light like the first time I did my fear inventory every single time I just wrote trust and rely on God invite God in pause and pray like that was how I did it the first time the second time when Mara was like I want you to think about this as a cheat sheet so the next time this fear comes up you're going to refer back to your writing and read the cheat sheet that you wrote for yourself I was more thoughtful about what I wrote when I was like what would I do you know if God was there you you know, and it was like, I want to pause. I want sometimes it was I want to remove myself from the situation because sometimes I don't need to. You know, some when like when a fear of someone else's opinion comes up and I feel like someone's being judgmental, I don'T need to sit there and take it. I'm not a doormat today. You know? I can stop the conversation and leave today and I never knew that was an option I had. You know I never KNEW that. I thought I just had to take the beating because that's what I did at home. But I DON'T have to live like that today. But I can do it in a really kind way. I can be kind about it. And so that's what that last part of the fear inventory did for me, was it gave me a solution to when these fears come up on a daily basis, how does adult Jess want to respond and react? And I didn't... It was amazing. And it's amazing to be able to go back and look, and I do often go back and look because they do come up a lot. And then when I was writing, it was right before we got married, so I was on... It was funny, I was telling a sponsee this the other day. I was such a master procrastinator, like so bad. Like my sponsor would be like, we're gonna meet on Thursday, bring six turnarounds. I would literally be in the parking lot two minutes before she jumped in my car banging all the turnaronds because that's just who I am as a human being. I have to have a deadline, you know? And I remember like we were engaged, I think we had just gotten engaged And I was just like stalling out. I had just run out of gas and we were on a retreat in Gloucester and she was like, you're skipping the next session. You're locking yourself in your room and you're getting this sex inventory done because you're not leaving here with us continuing on. And that was exactly what I needed because I'll tell you, I was writing for two and a half years the last time and in like two hours in my room, I finished writing. And she was like, dude, you could have been done two years ago. Koda shodowara. But what she had me do, which was really helpful, and my sponsor now has made this suggestion more recently to me, is when I got to this part of the sex inventory, the first time I did my sex inventory I had a lot to write about. I had all these past relationships I need to write About. But when I wrote the second time, I had already been with my future husband. And so it was like, I don't have anything to write. Like there's nothing to go on it. And she was like wrong. She was like you know it's fancied or real. So it could be people you thought about, people you flirted with, people you stole attention from your partner because you weren't getting what you want and it was hard to look at that. Like we were in a relationship and if I was mad at him my way of getting back at him was to give like one of his friends more attention. That's not how I want to live today. That's not being spiritually fit. But I couldn't see that until I did this writing, and I couldn'T see that until she had me look at it like that. Like, if I'm, like, watching a movie and I'm getting obsessed with Chris Hemsworth, like, that steals attention from my husband. Now we do the Chris HEMSWORTH workout together. But, you know, like I never looked at it like that, like... I'm stealing attention from My Partner. And it was eye-opening to see that. you know and then at the end it talks you know it talks about the ideal here you know it talks both we all have sex problems would hardly be human if we didn't what could we do about them we reviewed our own contact conduct over the years past where had we been selfish dishonest inconsiderate whom had we hurt did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy suspicion or bitterness where were we at fault what should we have done instead we got this all down on paper and looked at it And then it says here, In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test. Was it selfish or not? We asked God to mold our ideas and help us to live up to them. We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathed. Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow toward it. We must be willy to make amends where we have done harm. and so what my sponsor had had told me to do was she had told me to write like an ideal for myself of what I wanted to be like in my relationship with my soon-to-be husband like what's the kind of like wife I want to be in this relationship you know but then you know my latest sponsor had me do you know I've been in this marriage now for 12 years and so now when you get to this part it's it's how do I want to be not just in relation with people you have sex with but in relation to any relationship it's like any relationship how do i want to be in relation friends and family you know with my partner and it changes as we're married longer and we add more chaos to the life like how do wanna be you know because I'm a selfish and self-centered person you know and so I want think about myself first time and so it's hard to put others above my my own needs you know and now we have these like three beautiful children as you know it's this blessing in our life but it's harder to put their needs above my own sometimes sometimes I'm like I'm gonna get tired I don't want to cuddle with you right now I want to rest you know but but I have to put there needs first you know they're my kids they depend on me and so it's good for me every once in a while to to take a look at this right and like look at what when I grow up what do I want to be like you know and um with God's health like what can I grow towards being like and uh so for me like I got so much out of this step you know. And the most important thing you know as I work with other women is to remind them like there's nothing to be afraid of, there's something to shame yourself about or blame yourself about. we have all done horrific things there is like nothing i've ever heard that shocked me you know what i thought when i shared when i you know it kind of leads into the fifth step like five as we admitted to god to ourselves and to another human being the exact natures of our wrong right and um at the end of on page 70 it talks about the four-step promises here in the last paragraph it says we've we have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience, and goodwill toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and are willing to straight out the past if we can. In this book you will read again and again that faith did for us what we could not do for ourselves. We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from him. if you have already made a decision and an inventory of your gross or handicaps you have made a good beginning that being so you've swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself and so then you lead into five which is now that i've written all this caca yuck now i'm gonna get it out and share it with god and another human being who's really just a witness and it says here like can be our sponsor could be a wife could bea priest whoever you feel comfortable with sharing your writing with and I've had experience doing it with a priest I've experienced doing it with the sponsor when Jen died I ended up going to meet her sponsor who I'd never met before I met her one time and I drove to her house down the Cape and I brought my notebooks I had been writing for like a year and a half or something and I sat down on her couch and started to do a marathon session of reading started at like 7 a.m and just started reading ad nauseum this all this writing that I had done with Jen and um you know she was like misting plants and petting her cat and folding laundry and I'm like she's not listening at all this is such a waste of time you know and I I might as well have been reading your fourth step I was not connecting to it at all like I was really detached I disassociate on such a massive scale it's really hard for me to like be present and be mindful and be in the moment when I'm doing things that feel painful for me it's just a coping skill I learned as a kid was just shut it down I don't want to cry I don'T WANT TO BE UPSET and so reading that fifth step like didn't really feel I didn't Really feel anything you know and at the end when I finished I was like all right thanks head out now and she's like whoa whoa whoa she's Like get out you know go flip to an empty page and get out a pen and she started to to recite back to me themes and patterns she had seen in my writing we talked a lot about the expectations I was putting on other people and how that was causing me a lot of harm and she had talked about how I couldn't let go of this um I had you know I just was so hung up on my parents and how they had wronged me but like jeff said like my parents did the best they could with the tools they had and both of them had alcoholic parents alcoholic siblings like to a level that's hard to even i mean my mother's all she's one of five and like four of them are like really bad alcoholics and addicts like really Bad Heroin Addicts and her parents were addicts all you know and then her parents got divorced and remarried to more addicts and then I expect her to be like I don't know like the mom you see on the Disney movies you know what I mean and it's like she did the best she could with the tools she had and I couldn't let go of this and so you know this woman talked to me about how I needed to learn how to make peace with that or it was going to block me you know I had to learn how to make peace with that and um she had me do this exercise where she told me to write uh I won't have you do it now but if you feel willing in your free time she had me do a letter to myself when I as a little child and to tell myself all the things I wanted to tell myself, you know. And it was such a weird exercise. And, you know, and when she had, when she was telling me, I was like, I'm not doing that. No thanks, you know. But I'll tell you, I did do it. And I got a lot of healing from that exercise because I was carrying around so much shame and blame. And uh, it was so freeing in doing that and then when I did my fit my last fist up with my sponsor Mara it was so different I told her we're gonna do a marathon session she's like we're going to do whatever God feels is right and I was like okay so we like block out like half a Saturday I had our first child at that point and um I had a babysitter and so we go off in the woods with two camp chairs and like both of us are from Razi like we are wicked city people so like why we thought sitting the woods on camp chairs was a good choice was who knows what we were thinking so we're like sitting in the woods and walk like watertown like on a trail where people are walking dogs and i'm like trying to read to her and we're laughing and we were crying i think we got through like five turnarounds and she's like well i guess we're not doing a marathon session you know and so then i can you know then we started to read and i think read for like i don't know six months we would would meet like once or twice a week and read in two-hour chunks because I learned like that was enough for me because she was she was making me stop like I would read a turnaround and then she would be like I want you to stop we're gonna talk about that because that was really painful and I'm really sorry that that happened to you and I was like you know and uh to make someone pause and realize like we all come in here with trauma our and everyone has it like i've been blessed to help a lot of women i've never responded someone that doesn't have trauma let me tell you we all come in there with our own trauma and this work takes that pain away or at least exposes what you need to go to therapy and work on and that's the other thing that Mara taught me that was life-changing for me was when we started reading she was like you have to go back to therapy and we're gonna flag things as they come up and you're gonna take your notebook to therapy and you'RE gonna sit down and youRE gonna talk about this and you'Re gonna work through this stuff with a therapist and I was like I've been in therapy for 15 years it doesn't work and she was of course a therapist and um it's funny how like my higher power works in my life at one point in my wife my best friend was a social worker and did counseling my sponsor was a socioworker and a therapist. And like all these women in my life were like therapists and social workers and I was like this is terrible and I'll tell you though that saved my life taking that notebook into therapy and pro like because she's just another drunk on the bus she couldn't help me unpack some of this stuff that was in my writing and breezing through it didn't work for me because I had to write again because I was still full of bondage of self and going into therapy and processing that trauma stuff like changed my life you know because today it's like tears of gratitude you know it's not tears of shame or like you know I don't feel like I have to hide anything of myself you know my first sponsor Pauline used to say all the time you're only as sick as your secrets and I had so many secrets I was so afraid to share you know and I don't have them anymore today you know there's nothing that I have to hide today what a gift to be free of all that you know and you get that from doing this work and same when I finished with Mara she went over the common themes that we saw come up and it helped me so much it helpedme so much to see like two years of writing what I got out of it was like I needed to stop worrying about what other people think of me because it's none of my business you know there's no God in the situation if I'm not pausing and inviting him in I wasn't practicing three which is why after I finished a fourth word a first fourth step I had to do another one because I wasn'T practicing three I wasnT inviting God in all the time and so like anytime I had any kind of awkward interaction I had no coping skills for even though I'd already done all this stupid writing and so the last time I did it I was able to see all this you know all in black and white and I was able to share it with someone who was able To help me process it and what a gift for her to share so much time on it we pocket our pride and we go to it I wasn't telling anybody anything that happened in my life. I felt like I didn't need to. I lived by these ridiculous ideals that I created when I was drinking because I was a gangster, you know? And so I needed these ideals to live by, you know, so I wasn't telling anybody anything ever, you Know, especially what was going on with me. But I had this wonderful sponsor, who it doesn't really matter if you like that, you're telling them stuff anyway. You know, he was just that type of person. And we would sit down on a Tuesday, I think it was Tuesday night. It was a day that ended in Y anyways. and he'd light a candle and we would sit there for an hour and we'd go over my resentments it was no different than what Jess talked about we'd stop and talk about what happened what went on there what the fear was what the character defect was because that's really what I need to pull out, right, of my fifth step. It's about letting somebody else know what's been going on with me so I can open up and I don't have these things weighing myself down anymore. And it's also to have somebody else tell me that you have a problem with you. It's this little thing right here, and that's causing the resentment. We're going to use this later on, all right? We'll use this leader on. And we'll be able to help you get through different situations in your life. And it was a long time sitting there, one hour a week. But it allowed me to open up to another alcoholic, somebody. And this is a gentleman who couldn't be further from who I was. You know, a professor at a college. He was in his 70s, old guy, I'm a carpenter. I'm in the union in Boston. I'm In my 20s. Like, I never made it to college. Never bought a house. I didn't have all these things that I thought he had. You know, and but he was the right person to share my fifth step with. And it was an eye-opening experience for me sitting because like I said before, I'm not interested in really talking to anybody to begin with, let alone letting them know my deepest, darkest secrets. Like, I can write it down on paper and talk about it and look at it myself, but I can't talk about it with you. I can really let you know who I really am, because who I am is just a scared little kid, and if you knew that, you wouldn't like me. If you knew that you'd be able to use me. You knew that and I couldn't get validation from it says 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 and that's because I let go of all those things that I was holding inside and shared them with another man and he was able to tell me that my deepest darkest secrets weren't that bad like you're not as bad as you think you are and even if you are really that bad there's a way out of this darkness that you're in you know and you're gonna be okay it's going to be alright for you and just to sit across from another man and have a discussion like that is really powerful for somebody like me because I wouldn't share that stuff with my father, I wouldn'T share it with my best friend but when it comes to another alcoholic we can just sit down and we can tell each other things that we wouldn'T tell our closest person in our life and they can look at us and say it's going to be okay you're going to move on from this thank you guys for listening to four and five we look forward to seeing you after lunch and continuing our discussion