Steps 8 – AA SA WORKSHOP – Part 2 of 3 – Tim M.

I don't know if I want to call it a theory. This idea, let me get my timer going. This idea of becoming unblocked from God so that I can recover from my addiction. A very important part of that is my guilt and shame over my past behavior. So what AA says, what 12-step recovery says is for you to be free of your guilt and shame and for you to achieve a contact with a power greater than yourself, for you to get the power you need to recover, you have to go out and rectify the wrongs of your past to the best of your ability. So if I can give and that's the general approach so what do I need to do? I need to go through a list of people I've harmed, and harm takes many forms. I mean, specifically, to know whether or not there is a harm, I ask myself three questions. What did I do? What should I have done instead? How was the other person worse off based on what I did or did not do? Hmm? How was Alan Pinson more? Third question. Worse off. Sorry? He just said, how was the Other Person? He didn't catch the word. How is the other person worse off? How have they suffered because of what I did? So if I was going out, if I were in a relationship with Susie and I broke up with Susi because the relationship wasn't working and she may have been harmed by that because she wanted to stay with me, is that a harm I need to make amends for? What did I do? What should I have done instead? How did Susie suffer? Well, Susie may have suffered, but I did the right thing. I would have done the same thing if I had to do it again. So there are going to be cases where the amend is not necessarily required or there is no harm that's been done or I would not have changed what I did. But most people who end up in 12-step recovery have, I don't know if you remember those cartoons growing up where the Roman emperor would have a list and the list would be on a papyrus, on a scroll and the scroll would be so long it would roll across the room and start going downstairs two miles away and the sprawl keeps rolling out of the paper. That's the list of amends I owed. Those are the numbers of people I harmed. so I make a list I write down what exactly the harms were sometimes I can't see the harm directly and so I need help and I need a sponsor to review that list with me now what I want to say is steps 8 and 9 are very very important because in my experience this is where the magic happens This is really where the magic of AA takes place, of 12-step recovery. This is where we become free. I do believe that. And so I'm walking around three months sober. I've just finished steps 5, 6, and 7. And I'm starting to feel this guilt and this shame for all the bad stuff I've done and so what it says to me now is if I want to be sober and to stay recovered, I have to go straighten out my past. I have to go clean up my mess because I've made a mess. If I don't clean up my mess, I'm not going to recover and I'll go back to drinking. So I harmed a lot of people. I harmed ex-partners. I harmed my parents. I harm my siblings I harmed doctors because I would play games with doctors to get prescription tablets. I harmed, there were financial amends I owed. There was money I had to pay back to people. And what happened is, here's why it's important. I'm walking around every day with my subconscious, a running register, like this device that records this is what's going on in the background of my head and what it's speaking to me subconsciously about is my bad behavior and all the bad things I've done to people because my subconscious doesn't forget my subconscious knows whom I've harmed my subconscious know what I've wrong to get free of that so that it doesn't come out in strange areas so it doesn' take me back to drinking I have to go and apologize to these people um so let me give an example with my employer I landed in London in July of 2009 I was in mid relapse and I was here to take a new job and I showed up at that job after having four or five vodkas ten diazepam tablets a few lines of coke and an oxycontin narcotic painkiller and that was how I showed up for my first day at work here in London. And that behavior went on for 13 months. They hired me for this job, they took a chance on me, it was a job that they needed filled and there were tasks that had to be done in this role. And a lot of people recommended me for the role. And so I show up and that's what they get, and they get 13 months of that, and 13 months somebody who can show up maybe three days a week calling in sick twice a week when he shows up he's not there really I couldn't work very hard I couldn t do very much I behaved inappropriately because I was under the influence of various substances in the workplace and these people were paying me for that um and I was manipulative too because they'd get right at that point where they were going to fire me, and I'd go off to rehab. Then on my way home from rehab, I'd get a few beers. I'd be drunk again. And then they would give me a chance after rehab, and then I would screw it up again, and i'd scoot back to rehab that went on three times. So when I got sober, the amount of guilt I felt for how I treated this company, and this had been my employer for 13 years. I moved from New York to London for a job in London and this company had treated me very, very well and I treated them like crap in that period. I had to make amends for that if I was going to stay sober because I felt a lot of guilt and it took me a while to recover from that shame and that guilt and so I had go make ammends for that behavior And what that looked like, there's the actual amend and then there is the living amend. The actual amend was my first day back from my last rehab, Human Resources walks me up to my boss' office. They reinstate my ID so I could get back in the building. They reinstated my password and login details for the system. And then they sat me down in my boss's office and he looked at me and he goes, you know, the John we hired was never the John that we got. Who is this coming back now? And all I could do in that moment was to say, I deeply regret my behavior and the lack of value I have brought and the work I've done and the harm I've done this company I'm back I'm sober and I'm gonna do my job and then a couple people in recovery told me go in every day and and they said this very carefully they said listen very carefully keep your fucking mouth shut and do your job so that's what I did four months later the boss came to me and said I don't know what you're doing but you're a different person somehow and we like this person that you are now much more than we liked that person so whatever it is you're doing keep doing it and and this is what they call a living amend on now I have left that company a few months later when another job opportunity came up but when I left I left on very good terms and I cleaned up the mess there I don't think they'd ever hire me again but I left with as clean of a slate as I could possibly make it. Now the freedom I got from that, the release from that self-hate and that shame by making that amend was immense and I became free and there were parts of my life every area of my had landmines like that. I caused chaos in East London during the tail end of that relapse. I would be disruptive in meetings, they'd ring the bell when I'd been sharing for too long and I'd yell at the person who rang the bell. I'd fall asleep and almost fall off my chair like this in meetings. So I owed a lot of amends and when we clean up our past the freedom it gives you is beyond anything that I've experienced and I do believe that that is if there's any one reason why I'm sober six and a half years later it's because I made every single last amend I could possibly make so that's me who wants to go next I'm going to suggest because of the time that we go straight to questions and answers and use that as the opportunity for you two to speak so why not fire away okay people that are no longer alive question number two there's a very big difference over here between AA and sexual addiction that there's a lot of stigma, especially in the religious community. And it does say in number nine, you make amends unless, what's the unless? Unless by doing so would harm others. And I feel like a lot of the real amends that I would need to make would be, let's say, to people that also not many people don't know. Most people don'T know that I'm an addict. And let's my parents they don't know and if I would be making amends to them I feel like it would harm them more than not and therefore I feel like I'm kind of getting a cop-out by kicking off and say oh most of these people that would cause them more harm by telling them and making amens and therefore i'm left basically with just doing the small stuff okay except when to do so would injure them or others. There are three clauses for that. The first one is on page 77. It says, our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. So when I'm thinking of apologising for something or making up for some sort of harm the question is will this put me in a position where I'm more able to help and be useful or less able. The second point is we don't involve other people so rather we don'T do anything where a third party would become involved I'M just saying that for technical reasons because it's one of the three but the one that's really relevant is towards the end where it talks about basically on pages 81 and 82 there's a long story but it talks about not revealing new information. Now if as a result of addiction you have harmed people in a particular way by not pulling your weight, by not showing up, by being bad tempered and unkind or all of those things you can make amends for those without saying oh by the way the reason I was like that was because I had this out of control addiction they don't need to know the the out-of-control addiction if anyone does know the out of controlled addiction it's probably a good idea to mention it in the amend so they know it's being taken care of so my rule in step 9 is don't tell someone something they don t know already now if you've harmed them if you have harmed them the harm that you have done them they will know about so that's the bit you make amends for if they don't know about it then where's the harm how where's the harm they don know about so that why I don't think it's a cop-out it in step 9 what I'm saying very specifically here is the action I took which affected you and I regret taking the action, what can I do to make it right? And it's all about the action which they're aware of. So I don't think there's any cop out there because the mentioning, I know in the big book it talks about you mention your drinking, you mention recovery, blah, blah. I think they're assuming that most of the amends you make are to people who knew about your drinking and it was your drinking which caused the harm. I mention AA, alcoholism, steps, recovery, God, all of those things only if it's going to help. If it's not going to help I don't mention it. So my feeling is when I've harmed people that it's always, I can always make amends with the stuff they don't know about. Why do I think they've been harmed is the question do you want to cover the death i just have a question yeah follow up on that what if you have defrauded someone and they don't know that you've defraud them but they've suffered financially um the best story i heard on this was one tom told of a sponsee of his who um worked for a petrol station and every and he stole huge amounts from the petrol station over a course of a number of years. And for various reasons, it was decided it would hurt the old man who owned the petrol station. It would hurt him to know that the person that he trusted behind the till had been stealing from him the whole time. That that was actually far worse a harm. That would create huge harm to reveal the betrayal of trust. But he still owed the money. So he mailed him $10 a week anonymously and the man never knew where it came from until it was paid so there are ways of uh there are ways of when it's individuals there are ways of paying them back that's one way of paying them back anonymously there are other ways of paying them anonymously there are others situations i've seen with friends of mine who've had to make amends to family members for stealing within the family and you grill them very carefully is there any way they would have known if they'd known you have to tell them that you're making meds but if not how about you work out how much it was and you find ways of treating them and spending that money on them and making their lives more comfortable helping them here helping them there my father i took i i didn't take money from my parents but i accepted gifts which i asked for because i needed it for drink and i my parents wouldn't ask for that they didn't want the money back. But in my father's last few years, some inheritance money that he had inherited ran out and he completely ran out of money. And he just did not want to tell my mother. And he said, can you lend me some money? And what that meant was, can You give me some money? But we never decided. And I gave him quite a lot of money over the last few years and it was never decided, I just quietly gave him the money. And it settled the account. So often, if it's placed in God's hands, there are ways of the account being settled without it having to be an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, a formal this for that. It gets balanced. Dead people. I had two people who died to whom I owed amends. One was my brother and one was a friend from rehab that I drank and used with after rehab. What I did was, and there are different ways of doing this. With my brother, I wrote down the harms on an index card and I went to his grave in Westchester County, New York, and I stood over his grave and I read the amend. And then I stayed there for about 15 minutes and I prayed. Some people will sometimes take a helium balloon, go on the top of a hill, read the amend card and let the balloon go there was a guy from rehab he was Dutch so I went to the Dutch church in London and I went on the steps of this church on a Sunday night no one was around and I read the amendment card it's as much as you can do if there's money that was taken from a person who died I might give it to the charity that might represent the cause of their death. The point is that that amend has to be made somehow. It can't just be avoided because they're gone. May I ask another question? I brought in, I'm very afraid of this immense process and generally one is especially threatening me. I have brought in another magazine into a school of mine and somebody found it And I know he got messed up afterwards He wasn't the same He's now probably suffering from it I don't know what's waiting for me That night He don't always come for me I've been doing a lot of talking So Well You want to ask yourself what was the actual harm that you did and there's a, you know you might find there's a break in the chain of causation so you brought the magazine in he found it so did you harm him in creating a situation in which he could have found a magazine perhaps so there might be an amend to make on the basis that you put it in his way but what follows on from that It's not necessarily going to be your responsibility. But I would look at that carefully with my sponsor when the time came, and if my sponsor didn't have specific advice on that, I would ask to be referred to people who had experience with that kind of thing. Let me add... There are ways to make amends and to get clean with a harm we've done, to set a harm right without doing something that will have us ostracized from our communities or put in jail if it's because a lot of people in AA have criminal pasts and they support families and they're not in prison. Does it do any good for them to put themselves in prison? Does it do any good for you to have yourself ostracized from your community? And the answer is no. So what you need is to talk with your sponsor about what is a good way to make an amend that's for the best of all people. So if you have a wife and children, it's not going to do any Good for them if you end up in prison or if you wind up having to leave where you live. Family name is relevant too. family reputation so you know there are ways of making amends and sometimes it takes creativity so you might do volunteer work for a school where you caused harm right, you might become a mentor to somebody as a charity there are ways of doing these things where you don't have to, this isn't about putting yourself as a martyr to your past harm. Can I just add on top of that, I think like a big take-home message from all of this is it talks about in the big book, good generalship. I think when we're looking at the list of harms that we've done other people and then how we approach those people to make direct amends wherever possible. As the questions and comments have demonstrated, there are lots of complexities and there are lot of nuances. so this is one and it says in the 12 and 12 here good judgment a careful sense of timing courage and prudence these are the qualities we shall need when we take step nine um so you know i think a take-home message from what we've been talking about is we have to think very carefully about each amends that we're going to make and work very closely and carefully with our sponsor on the best way to make that amends and i speak from experience on that both receiving amends and giving amends. I once had someone come up to me and they took me aside after a meeting once, and they said, Johnny, I'm really sorry but two weeks ago I had such a resentment against you. I mean what? How did that make me feel? I felt guilty about what I'd done. That wasn't really a skilful way of making an amends, to tell me that they were angry at me. On the other token, I've been in a situation where I've gone to make an ammends to someone and in the back of my mind i've really wanted them to perceive me in a certain way and i've wanted something from them i wanted to go say i'm so sorry for all the harm i did you and for them to turn around and be john it's all right you're amazing now i love you let's have this relationship again and actually funny enough that did you know as a result of my amends we did form a relationship again because i wasn't ready because i hadn't properly spoken it through with my sponsor i ended up hurting that girl again um and i was back in there you know she was back on my on my step eight so the take-home message for me on this is good generalship being very very careful about how we make these amends and speaking through them with our sponsor thank you and i think i'd add as well that the freedom comes not from making the amends but the willingness to go to any length to make the amens and if you've gone through the process of carefully analyzing the harm or the action you've taken and then the harm and you've carefully analysed the options how could you make amends here are various direct ways here are diverse direct ways and you have agreed with someone who is not personally invested in the situation so they can be objective and unbiased if you have reviewed it with them and you agree a path and you've prayed and your spirit tells you that this is the right path then you can be at peace but if you're but it requires being systematic in process if you'll systematic in progress you can sleep and and later on if five years later as i've done with some of them five years later you think i need to do more you can go and do more so just because you've finished the finish the amends doesn't mean that if you've made a mistake and you need to make further amends, you can't come back to it. You're always allowed to come back. And I think a lot of this works indirectly. Again, another story of Tom's, a friend of his, there was a woman who for many years in her drinking harmed her three daughters. And she tried on numerous occasions to make amends to her three daughters the three daughters weren't interested they were grown up by this point but this woman says to her higher power show me opportunities to make amends to my daughters even though they won't talk to me and so she does her work in AA and she sponsors some women and sponsors some young women around the same age that her daughters had been when she was harming her as harming them as an active alcoholic and she dies and there is a funeral and as is often the case with aa funerals hundreds and hundreds of people turn up most of them the the sponsees and the grand sponsee's and the great grand sponcees of this woman and the three daughters could see the amount of good work that had been done by them and it was then that the healing took place so you if you're willing god will work through this to heal the people that you've been harmed and you may have no idea that it's happening i think that's how this works thank you and as you said before if god's if god here in the picture he makes things happen twice yes The one big experience I've had in recovery is that the more actively I seek God the more of God I find I don't know why but the more I pray the more I exert my raw willpower to find God the more I find it It's just been one of those weird things I've found should we cover step 10 briefly have a little break and then do 11 and 12 all right so i just said one last thing on step nine that john alluded to i had no idea how blocked i was until i got through halfway through the amends it's like being a hiker with a backpack filled with lead i have no idea that i'm even wearing the backpack and as i go through the men's weight is being taken out of the backpack and I feel a lightness. And self-loathing that I had lived with for 10, 15, 20 years was removed from me. It was genuinely miraculous and well worth doing if for nothing else than that. Thank you. Who wants to have a crack at step ten? After step nine, I've got a relationship with my creator at this point. And it says my next challenge is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. And it's hard to talk about this without briefly mentioning step 11. Step 11, in the morning, I make conscious contact with God. So I've Got Contact With God Anyway because God is all around me. In step 11, I actively seek that contact and I set myself up for the day and ask God, what shall I do today? In step 10, I then go through the day. And as I come off track, I ask God to bring me back on track. And it says in the book, you know, we watch for resentment, selfishness, fear and dishonesty. so I'm actively looking for those things as I go through the day and as they crop up I mean there are some instructions there you know I ask God to remove them at once um I make amends if I've harmed anyone I mention it someone if necessary and then I turn my attention to someone I could help and as I said earlier gradually as I practice that day in day out um my behavior my conduct um over time seems to improve and um that's pretty much all i got to say i mean certainly you know for me when i wake up in the morning continue to take personal inventory and when we were on promptly admitted it as nico said you know the daily basis of maintaining that that spiritual connection and when i awake up i'll do my my step 10 step 11 work connects with god um more often than not particularly if i'm going to work i'll then leave the house then get on the tube and people are annoying me i'm getting angry resentful that slow person in front of me you know the anger builds up i get to work my boss demands that i do certain things i'm kind of annoyed at her right you know begin working and you know before i know it i'm totally disconnected from god i'm totalmente disconnected for me it's so easy for my self-will to come back in for that script that I have about how people should behave to remain entrenched in my life. I lose flexibility, I lose connection with God, resentment, fear permeates me once more on a daily basis. Now for me step 10 it's so helpful and it's so practical because what I try and do to avoid that process of all very well in prayer getting out and then the resentment and fear kick in, is throughout the day I try and connect with God. I try to remind myself of little prayers throughout the days, thy will not, not mine be done. Constantly bringing God into my life on a daily basis. And if I'm really practicing step 10, it's almost like I kind of have a sort of a critical friend in my mind that's observing my conduct. and if I'm speaking with someone or I go to a meeting my friend is sort of observing me and if a fear kicks in it's kind of there it says oh fear quickly you know can it be removed get it out get it out of the system someone says something to me that upsets me rather than festering in that resentment I can't believe they said that what a bitch what a bastard I can't really said that you know the little critical voice the step 10 voice says resentment get it out bring god in let god take it away and so when i'm really practicing step 10 throughout the day i'm i'm aware of when my fears and my resentment start kicking in and i can quickly turn to god god please take these away um and he does and that for me that's so so important because if i start getting a resentment or if i stop getting a fear and i don't let god in instantly it kind of festers it sticks it might go to the back of my mind but it's there and it sort of plays away, it festers away and even if by the end of the evening I'm again doing my step 10 and writing it out it's more entrenched in my mind whereas with step 10 it allows me constantly to try and catch it catch it the second that fear comes in please can it be removed so I found step 10 a really really helpful sort of daily practice that kind of keeps me clear if I practice it the one thing that I wanted to say about step 10 um there are some there are promises associated with step 10 in the big book so with each of the steps it says if you take this step these are the good things that will happen if you don't these are the bad things that Will happen and one of the good thing that happens from step 10 it says sanity will have returned we have ceased fighting anything or anyone even alcohol and it says we will see that our new attitude towards uh liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part and so uh if we replace alcohol with acting out we have seized fighting anything or anyone even acting out if tempted we recoil from it as from a hot flame we will see that our new attitude toward acting out has been given us without any thought or effort on our part and i've tried to battle um compulsive behavior with intelligence and common sense and willpower I've tried all the sorts of fighting I have available to me. And it says, no, well actually the solution will involve no thought or effort in that direction. But then two paragraphs later, it says every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. And here's the important line. We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will. Now, when, I don't know about you, but funny little, I have 10,000 thoughts a day. Funny little temptation thoughts, they float across my mind very gently. I have to remember that line, the solution involves no thought or effort on my part. I mustn't even start to think about the temptation thought that I've just had. when the temptation thought comes in my instinct is to say well I need to work out why I must not follow the temptation so I needと think through all of the bad things that will happen if I act out and as soon as I've done that the little temptation thought which started off as a tiny little piece of fluff is now this great big cannonball of temptation because anything I think about, I give power to, whether I think about it positively or whether I fight it. When I fight a negative thought, I'm giving it as much power as when I'm agreeing with it. So that's why that whole fighting thing is a complete disaster in my experience. But you've got to do something. This is not to say, oh well, I might as well just act out. It's not that. It's saying, right, what's God's will? What's God'S will for me right now? Well, if it's ten past two, little temptation thought or when I did step 11 this morning and I considered my plans for the day and said, this is what I'm going to do at one o'clock, two o'clock, three o' clock, four o'lock. It's ten passed two. I look at the task for two o´clock. Let me pour my energy into that. So step 10 is not about fighting the bad stuff, the temptations that come into my mind. It's exercising all of my willpower instead to do the thing I agreed I was going to do at that time of day regardless of how I feel. It doesn't matter how terrible I feel. It doesn'T matter how horrible the task in front of me seems to be. If that's what I agree to do, that's What I'm going to do. And I find that solid effort on right action, it burns away those temptation thoughts. And I get to the end of the day or the next day and I think, I'm so glad I didn't act out today. But it doesn'T come from fighting. It comes from redirection. that's all I've got on that any questions on step 10 yeah how does the living in the spirit of the program and especially living step 10 on a daily basis how does that fit with having boundaries in order not to be stepped upon and taken advantage of by others I want to give just an example that happened to me yesterday we had guests invited over to my house and my mother-in-law she thought it wasn't appropriate the setup of having this person with that person in my house and said and she kind of mixed in and told me that she wants to rearrange things I should you know whatever so at the moment I'd actually had just come from doing my step work I'm like listen it's not I don't want to be egotistic gotta be humble and I accepted what she said willingly and like you know give her the probably she's right and just be humble and then after that I started thinking like hey this is not you know she's just you know starting to control my life hey i would like to you know tell her in a very respectful appropriate way that i will not you know have her telling me who i should have in my house or not but then if i some right now i haven't done that yet and i'm seriously considering doing it but i want to make sure that i'm not doing something that is um negative and against the spirit of the program if you respond are you going to respond in anger or in peace first of all I would answer I would respond by texting as opposed to in person because I know that in person it's more difficult for me to be calm and I would probably not do correctly with text I can think my words and make sure that it's really really done in a very, you know, respectful way that doesn't, you know, harm her? I start from the premise that if I am angry, I am wrong. Now, I know that that sounds weird. It means I miss I am perceiving something incorrectly. So, the practical event that has to happen from for the best for all people involved That doesn't change. How do I execute that? What spirit am I bringing to it? I mean, the only way I can think about this is somebody at work that reports to me is abusing their expenses and they're taking money from the company. So my job is to stop that from happening. so if the point is I need to stop it I can stop it with rage and indignation and self-righteousness and yell at the person how dare you do this or do I just look at them calmly and cheerfully and say if you continue to do that we're going to have to fire you so it's always a question of the spirit that I bring to it if I'm responding in anger If I'm angry, it's better to not reply. It's better to not respond. So that's one thought from my end. Nico, did you have anything? Well, I think that's definitely the starting point and we pause when agitated or doubtful and ask for the right thought or action. So the first thing is pause and if you've got a resentment against your mother-in-law then you deal with that resentment appropriately and that might require you to talk to someone else about it and ask to be shown ask for their their view someone who's going to talk to your sponsor about it someone who is going to give you a clear view if that doesn't work then you know put it through the step four machine and see what areas of yourself are being affected because the true you isn't being affected here it's part of your ego that's been affected. And then the next question is, you know, is this a situation that's going to recur or is this one-off? And if it's your mother-in-law and you frequently have guests around, then it may be something that recurs. And one of the very helpful things that somebody suggested to me was when it comes to boundary setting, he said, let God set the boundary. and what did he mean by that he meant look at the situation and ask how you can be of maximum usefulness and if you've got a an occasion where you've Got guests in your house, you've got a number of different factors to consider. You've got the guest you've got your mother-in-law. You got your wife and you think yourself. How can I be to be of maximum usefulness to this group of people? And you pray and you ask for the right thought up and then when you've got an answer you speak to someone in in recovery who you trust your sponsor or someone else and whatever action flows from that is I would suggest going to be most effective for that situation that's what we try to What if it affects some people? Let's say you have a group of people. I have my wife, I have other people involved, I have mother-in-law. So let's say some people it would affect more positively to do one action and the other people it will be different actions. How would you choose which action to take? It's intuitive. If you're at peace, the right answer comes. If If you're furious, you can be certain that the outcome will be worse than it would have been had you been peaceful. But we're still human. We're still going to fly off the handle. I still get pissed off, in which case I have to apologize. I don't go off on emotional tears as much as I used to. I don' t know, Tim, what do you have? my sponsors his second sponsor's sponsor would say that dealing with your higher power is very much like dealing with your wife and your wife's family which is thy will be done so whatever they say so be it there's a slogan in Al-Anon which is this how important is it? How important is it really? And 19 out of the 20 questions which I think are so important they need me to put my foot down are not really important. I find that if I concede 19 out of 20 times I can put my foot down once without causing a problem. Third point, tricks I've learnt from people in AA. If I want someone to behave differently, I don't criticise what they have done. When a future opportunity comes up, I say this is about to happen, would it be okay if blah blah blah so that you're not criticising them, you're making a request about a future action. And the fourth thing, and I only realised years after he'd been doing it to me very effectively, someone in AA who got me to do what he wanted me to do by always prefacing the request with, there's something I'd like you to help me out with. Would you be able to help my out with this? And in most situations is a way of getting the difficult person to help you in a way that they're happy because they're now involved so they're important plus you get the job done the way the job needs to be gotten done so that thing where you break I've never been a big a very big fan of boundaries except in cases of violence and crime and when there's something very serious going on I get much better results by including people in what I'm doing which is the tradition one idea of unity should we have a little break and then we've got enough time just to do steps 11 and 12