Why the Mode of Communication Matters in Step 9 – Tim M.

To set the tone for this meeting, I will read an extract from Chapter 1, Bill's story, page 13. My schoolmate visited me and I fully acquainted him with my problems and deficiencies. We made a list of people I had hurt or toward whom I felt resentment. I expressed my entire willingness to approach these individuals, admitting my wrongs. Never was I to be critical of them. I was to write all such matters to the utmost of my ability. The topic of tonight's meeting is working step nine with a sponsee and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim. Hi, Tim Alcolic. Can you hear me all right, Alistair? yeah good so i haven't drunk since last week which is a very good thing so i must be doing something right not even beer um so by the time you've got your little sponsee to step nine they've either completed their step eight list or they've had they've made a start on it and they've processed enough amends um enough step eights to be able to start making amends as i said last week um uh a bit of insight and reality really helps in step eight and a lot of that insight and royalty comes in step nine so uh it can really help with a lot people to get them to do a few amends before completing everything in step eight uh there may be a willingness in principle to make amends to everyone of course that must be there but uh in terms of the detailed processing of these relationships uh the reality the contact with reality in step nine is immensely helpful and it's much quicker to get people to get some experience for step nine first and then start to look at the rest of the detail in step eight so we're now at the position of starting to make amends and i get people to um go through their pile let's say you've got a pile of amends to make you go through the pile and you assess each one on with reference to two criteria in the first one am i able to make this amend and this means you're clear you're clear on what to say uh where they are how to contact them it's all tickety-boo uh unwillingness means you'll be you're internally prepared to if someone handed them the phone would you be willing to make the call right now to go through and to so to sort all of the step eights in the pile between ones you're able to do, ones you are not able to do, and to start with the ones where you are willing and able. The reason to do this is no point in hitting yourself over the head with amends where you feel unable or think you are unable for some reason or you're unwilling if you make the ones where you're able and willing you'll find all sorts of amends appear now to be within grasp in terms of either understanding what to do or being internally prepared to do it so so pick the low hanging fruit first if you're cleaning clearing a cupboard you clear the items at the front first you don't reach past them and try and scrabble things from the back so start with the easiest ones or what you think are going to be the easiest one um and what i get people to do is to do a mental walkthrough of the amend so how they're going to approach the person what they're gonna say what um spirit they're going to do it in how much detail to go into and a lot of questions come out of this and often people think they're unwilling and they're not unwilling it's just they anticipate problems arising very specific problems arising if they make the amend as they're anticipating to do it and those are very often legitimate and need to be dealt with and so the answer there is not to work on willingness and to pray for willingness but it's to look at what the concrete objections are to work through those and then you suddenly discover you're willing so they do a walk through now I'm going to be terribly rude about speaker tapes I hope you don't mind uh there's rather a sort of a disagreeable tone that people sometimes take in speaker tapes on step nine uh a little bit sarcastic when they talk about their relationship with their sponsor and they say well i went to my sponsor and said well can i make this amend over the phone and the sponsor says well did you harm them over the throne and you've got uh you know if you if you it says made amends directly so and it doesn't I've heard people say it doesn't count unless it's physically in front of them. Now, I'm not going to go into detail why that's all deeply unhelpful, but I'm going to say what is helpful. First of all, let's look at what it says in Steps 8 and 9. It talks about making direct amends. Well, that means very clearly from the literature, given that in the step nine reading in the big book, it talks about writing letters to people. What it means is you somehow address the topic with the person rather than just generally trying to be a nicer chap or chaps. so direct means to the person not uh with the universe in general the phrase in person was available in 1939 but was not chosen if what was meant was in person they would have said in person uh so direct meaning you're dealing with it with the situation with the person now the question of mode so the mode of communication is relevant here and there are all sorts of different categories so I walk people through these first of all you've got people you're seeing on a daily basis or a weekly basis or regular basis and with those because you're seeing them the whole time anyway you might as well just grab them when you see them say you know Susan do you have five minutes and approach them that way because they're used to interacting with you but frankly a lot of people that I had to make amends to well I wasn't a very nice person when I was drinking I wasnít particularly mean except when I was trying to be funny but I was horribly negligent with people and they were having none of it they didn't want anything to do with me and the last thing that would have been right to do mit these people is to insist on a personal audience with them uh as though you know i i'm in a position to command such a thing and i'm absolutely not what it talks about in the book which is the reference point, is tact and consideration. And on page 90 is a brilliant line. It says, and it's on step 12, but it's pertinent to step nine. It says you put yourself in their shoes and say, how would you like to be approached if the tables were turned? And a number of people have very kindly made amends to me in AA over the years. none of them needed to but that they that they I showed up on their step eight list so that they wanted to make amends and well what did I want as someone who is an amendee most of all I wanted the process to be over as quickly as possible and the phone would do a text message is frankly good enough I just a little acknowledgement that you were wrong doesn't go amiss but really I don't what you know people have phoned up and said hey like people I barely know say hey do you want to meet for coffee no no I don't want to meet for a coffee I'm not sure who you are and also like I don'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO HAVE COFFEE WITH SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS so no i did can we what do you and then it turns out oh they want to make amends fine so um or will you be at this meeting or willyoube no no what you do you say to the person i would like to make a match i would like to making amends to you you don't go in with let's have a coffee let's go for dinner you you up front first out of the gate you say i would like i've treated you badly i would like to make amends to you ideally i'd love to be able to see you face to face i totally get you won't have the time or even necessarily the inclination so i'm going to put it in your hands you know um face-to-face video call telephone call whatsapp message raven skywriting you pick you pick it's the person that is being made amends to that gets to pick the mode uh i don't have absolutely don't have the right to insist here now as i said we've got two types of people here. People we're in regular contact with and who we see the whole time, and then people we've lost contact with. I've already dealt with the people we're regular contact, but the ones that we're not must be approached. The initial approach must be in writing occasionally a phone call will be appropriate. I don't know about you, I don'T like phone calls out of the blue particularly. I'm always in the middle of something and if some if it's a phone call out of the blue from someone I haven't spoken to for years my defenses go up yeah I had a slightly tricky childhood my defenses grow up I'm like what's going on here it's not my ideal mode of contact and a lot of people are like this maybe it's British thing I don't know you know maybe we'd all prefer just for people to take out adverts in the times if they want to contact us you know that might be the best way so I approach people in writing I get people to do the same so and it's basically a sort of two move maneuver so the first move is the approach in writing to say I would like to make amends here are the options I'll wait to hear from you and then if I don't hear from you within a couple of weeks I'm going to send you a letter on whatever the channel is if it's whatsapp on whatsapp if it'S on messenger on messenger if it's email by email I'm gonna send you an amend contained in a document and you can read that Or you can just delete it. The marvellous thing about this is that there are there have been some some tricky people in my life. Now, none of them have made amends to me and I don't need them to. fine but but if they were to I'm not sure I would want to read a letter even with some of them because I wouldn't necessarily I'd think very carefully before reading material from certain people uh I don't know if you've ever received an email or a letter and four lines in you know you should delete it straight away and you wish you hadn't read those first three or four lines just the first three of four lines totally set you off so the the brilliance of this approach which was given to me so i pass it on to other people is if you're warning them that the next communication is going to contain the amend letter with all of the tricky stuff in it It gives them the option to delete it without reading it and without discovering any of the content. And also, if you're warning them that you're going to give it two weeks and then send it, it saves you having to pester them. It means there's a maximum of two communications and then you're done. A lot of people just don't want to be heard. They don't wanna be contacted. message can be an intrusion uh two as long as you've warned with the first it's going to be fine now back to this in-person business frankly ideally from despite what i've said ideally uh in person is of communication takes place um in person which doesn't take place in other channels um so it's good to lead with that I would love to meet you but I have to say there are lots of situations where other modes can actually be better and it's very interesting as a course in miracles teacher in America who does one-to-one sessions and he identified what his position is now historically he would only do this was over Skype so before the whole age of aquarius or zoom or whatever um on skype he would only do audio calls he wouldn't do video calls he said the video is distracting you hear a lot more what's going on in people's voice over the phone there's more communication over the bone than face to face very interesting i think there's a lot in that so um by letter as well um i suggest to a lot of people that they put the amend sometimes to put the amendment a letter but in the letter say i would love to meet to discuss further now what this is doing is it's opening the door if the other person wants to uh make to be spoken to face-to-face to have a discussion it's reopening the door to that but um i don't know if you've ever had conversations with tricky people where you're very clear before the conversation begins what you want to say but as soon as you start speaking they take over and take the conversation in another direction and even if you manage to say like physically you know pronounce the words you want to stay the other person is already set off they're already in their own little fantasy world and they're not going to hear it anyway so the point the point of them is not the form so if you've said the words in person you've done the job no the job is to communicate the question is which mode is going to communicate most effectively uh letters can be extremely intimate forms of communication they are not necessarily avoidant sometimes the avoidant thing to do is to have the face-to-face conversation uh whereas putting it in black and white uh it it also when it's in writing it gives the endeavor a sense of gravity your gravitas you're pinning your colors to the mast so it's a very brave thing it's braver sometimes to do it in writing because they can show the letter to someone whereas if you have a conversation with someone if they report it to someone the person will think well maybe they said that, maybe they didn't. I wasn't there. So it's a very brave thing to put it in writing. It has a tone of formality. It means I'm serious about what I'm doing here. So there are all sorts of advantages to doing it inwriting and it's absolutely not to preclude a phone call a video call a face-to-face conversation a meeting if they jump you say how high but it's getting the message across if you do it in writing you can be very sure that you're wording it correctly I'm not going to name any names but I'm in conversation with someone at the moment that is needing to apologize to various people in their life uh for some some events shall we say and i've said to him uh start off in writing um and it's all gone terribly well so far so that the method is working uh startoffinwriting but i want you to send me i want you to sent me the draft whatsapp message before you send it and I get the first draft oh Jesus you can't say that and it gets reworded and sent back and all the ones which have gone out have gone down I think they've gone down there's one I haven't heard back about they all seem to have gone damn very well point being um unless someone is a very good actor and learning lines that that who knows what you're gonna say in the heat of the moment things can come have you ever had something come out wrong I have whereas when it's in writing you can put it past someone else and they can they can suck their teeth I wouldn't say that so you can make sure that you're absolutely communicating what you want to communicate and a second reason why a lot of amends need to be in writing have you ever had a whatsapp community a whatsap conversation with someone where you say something and then the other person reacts in a whats app message and you look at the reaction and you're like did you even read what i said and you go back and you say oh can you reread what I said, I think you may have misread it. And they go, oh, I'm so sorry. You're totally right. Now, if that's an oral conversation, have you ever tried to say, no, you misheard what I said? Or they said, no I didn't. I know what you said. I knew what I heard. And then all hell breaks loose so if there is a miss if you've got someone who is prone to hearing things their own way do not have a conversation unless it's absolutely unavoidable put it in writing because they can read it and reread it and re-read it and show it to their friend sally and sally can say actually i think that's a pretty reasonable message i just that they've at least got if They want to look at it sanely. They've got the evidence in front of them. If it's an oral conversation, the way it goes into their memory is their first interpretation of what you said. It is not the words that you said, so even if they try and process the conversation afterwards with a friend, they won't be reporting accurately what the amending person said so in writing is a super way to do it uh as i say it's not to preclude some sort of face-to-face but you want to edge back into people's lives not launch on some self-important expedition knocking on the door without knocking on the door without warning um until people are confident with their amends approaches the written approach and then maybe the written amend if if the written amend is going to be the beginning of the conversation with the person uh i get people to run all of those past me until they're kind of it's like things in the washing machine until until the water's running clear until the clothes are coming out clean if there's any sense that things are going off tangent on a tangent then absolutely you know bring them back again and again and again um because it's bad enough to get the harm to do the harm it's doubly injurious is to get the apology wrong and i can tell you in my life and the people around me i see people more upset by bodged apologies and amends than by the original offense uh people are pretty forgiving about things done in haste or passion or in reaction, but badly thought through amends. And in particular, when you're getting someone to do the walkthrough and particularly if you're reading the message, what you want to do for your sponsee is put yourself in the shoes of the person who is going to hear the amend or read the amended and say if you were that person and you were really suspicious and difficult and having a bad day what would you what would YOU find wrong with this what would if you would just that there's a there's a sketch many years ago where uh someone is in a restaurant and the waiter deliberately misconstrues everything that the uh diner says and uh so the for instance the the uh the diner will say uh does the chicken come with vegetables and the waiter says it doesn't come we bring it and so what and the whole conversation is like that so you read the amend letter as though you're like as though you're that waiter as though you're just the most difficult person difficult and touchy and prone to reading things into statements so you want to read it from that point of view and if you do it like that if you imagine yourself at your worst then you'll what again you want it to be rewritten and rewritten until you would not be able to find a problem with it as the recipient, legitimately find a problem with that as a recipient. And that's a really good way of a really good way doing it. But you're also testing against the three principles of step nine, the accept when to do so would injure them or others. Don't reveal new information, unless the new information reduces the injury um don't uh involve a third party without their permission and don't take any action which is going to impair your ability to be useful but with the new information uh occasionally there are situations where new information reveals an action to be far more innocent than it was thought to be at the time and that can be helpful but the danger of going into any explanations about why the bad thing happened is as soon as you're explaining it you're pointing the finger away from you towards the explanatory circumstances so well it wasn't really me that said the bad thing or did the bad things it was the bad day that I was having that's the real culprit here and nothing aggravates amendees more than unwanted and unnecessary explanations what people want to hear is generally is this um i should i did x y and z it's taken me far too long to apologize for this i was wrong for doing it i regret doing it I would like to make things right with you how can I do that anyone that does want to know all the gory details of the person's state of mind at the time is probably not a good person to share that stuff with anyway why do they care usually it's because what some people are very intrusive at receiving amends or if they're intrusive back in relation to the person making the amends it's usually because they're minded to retain the grievance and they want more ammunition and you don't want to give them the ammunition so to watch out for it when reading the draft amends now if someone is going to even when someone is going to make an amend face-to-face i get people to write out what they're going to say and read it out and again all sorts of stuff comes out when they read it that you think you can't say this you can'T say that and in general the whole thing gets compressed down the one thing people need training on as well uh is how to write a letter um in other words how to top and tail the letter how to talk the tale top and tell the amend um sometimes people's first draft amend letters um are like it's like opening a door and an elephant charges through the door like you're just not expecting what's coming a boo and then it's all gone it's like within two lines the whole thing is over bye um and so the letter has to be topped and tell with some kind of introduction like um uh you know it's been many years since we've spoken my approach to you may not be entirely welcome but i've got a legitimate reason for contacting you um uh in the past i treated you very badly and I'd like to set things right. And specifically, the details of this are as follows. At the end, you know, I hope there is some way I can make this right. I'm available for contact on the following details. If there's anything you would like to add, if I've done my best to analyze the past if I've missed anything uh uh you know feel free to let me know because I can be very dense about my own behavior I can miss even very major things so I've done my best but I I know that often falls short so so please feel freeto tell me anything else I've done and if I don't hear from you I quite understand a lot of people will not want to respond to a letter like this in any case i wish you well in your future endeavors so nicely topped and tailed um this again gives it a sense of gravitas there's nothing worse for amendees especially if they're savvy about 12-step recovery friend of mine made an amends to a bloke in aa always the worst oh you'd think you'd thing people in aa would be great at receiving amends I'm reasonably gracious these days I'm brisk but gracious uh but some people are mean just so my friend made amends to someone and they said oh you're making amends I see at last what am I number 37 on the list so it it mustn't seem like a dead exercise it's got to have some humanity to it and something personal to it so that's got to be in there as well these are very very difficult things to do and people can't do this on their own they need a lot of hand holding with this and they get better during the process usually usually by the end that they're pretty much you've heard of the self-basting chicken while most people are self-based chickens by the ends of the process but not everyone is people come in with different degrees of damage in aa and that's fine and we have to work with that um with the money i'm going to say one thing about the money so we touched on the money situation last week what i get people to do is uh tot up all of the financial amends and these or schedule them out somehow and these fall into three categories. Number one, legal debts, debts which if not paid will legitimize someone making a claim against you through the courts or a collection agency coming and taking your flat screen or your hug or something. So legal debts. Second category is debts which people know about but they're not really legal debt so friends and family or uh debts where as far as they're concerned it's written or you haven't paid it back but as far as they are concerned it is water under the bridge and they're not going to come after you for it in any way. The third category is debts which no one knows about now um there isn't a sort of standard algorithm for this but you you want people to they need to know the worst of the financial ones before they even uh start to let people know they're paying back money or start to pay back the money because the last thing you want to do is for them to sort of pay you know 10 000 pounds back to their auntie janice who isn't even asking for it whilst the bailiffs are knocking on the door and the children haven't got anything to eat so you you you've got to look at the legal debts first basically and the best way to do this uh is you point people in the direction of debt consolidation agencies and similar and and uh find a way to get everything consolidated into a single affordable monthly payment most of those are corporate so although it has to be paid back it the pain that it affects individuals at the end of a chain but they don't feel the pain the same way that individuals friends and family do so although it needs to be dealt with very urgently it's not necessarily what you want to pay off entirely first you want that to be on a reasonably long tail whilst you deal with category b so you get the the the courts and the collection agencies and the banks and the credit card companies off your back for uh off your back first and then you can breathe then you've got time to consider the other things carefully um if there are any particular egregious financial um amends or financial harms which require particularly urgent do need to be addressed very very quickly then obviously they get those go to the top but a very good way of doing the financial amends with the second tier with the friends and family and acquaintances and so on is to work out the total work out the monthly payment you can make without making yourself destitute but nonetheless making it hurt. And then you divide that proportionately across all of them so you can contact all of them at once because i don't think it's right to make to be the one to decide to make certain people wait there are exceptions to this is a very very you know there are endless variations of this so well there are these are general principles um when all of the friends and family and acquaintances are paid off then you're going to have that freeze up your finances and then you can accelerate the payments to all the corporate ones and start hacking down the list of ones that they don't know about. Anyone who rejects the finance, the repayment, then the amount still needs to go out of my pockets. This is what I did. i would ask the person to nominate a charity and then that goes on the third list the list of ones which who are not expecting the money because obviously you don't want to be paying money to a charity which is not expecting it or needing it or wanting it right now whilst your auntie janice is waiting for her money back but that's going to affect your relationship with auntie Janice the charity it's arm's length so uh but something needs to be done because and the principle is it's not my money uh the other thing you need to help people do because most people will not think of this and if they think of it they won't know how to do it to go to a website where you just google something like what is 100 pounds in 1971 worth now and to add inflation into it so whatever you're paying back now reflects the change in value of money over time um and say one thing about are living amends I'm slightly allergic to the term because often the notion of living amens is used or rather such living aments are used as a substitute for having a conversation with anyone at all now there are situations where the conversation can't be had for a myriad of reasons and one has to revert to this rather indirect way of making things up to people but my take is step nine is completed when you have made all of the approaches and had all ofthe conversations that you can have after that point there may be follow-up requested by the other person and that could be a lifelong thing now one mustn't feel that one's under some lifelong burden it should be a lifetime privilege frankly to be able to do something good in return for all of the harm that one has done but one mustnít see it as that one hasnít completed step nine so with those follow-throughs what one can be is permanently current you can be current with the payments you can be current with the other follow-through actions so you don't feel as though you're constantly paying a debt because i don't think that's that's right i i think your debt is paid morally when you're current as of today um as to sort of behaving well with people the long period of reconstruction it talks about in page on page 83 i think one's supposed to be doing that in step 12 anyway practicing these principles and all our affairs so i think it's already covered in step12 the danger and this is very commonly done in the uk i think is changing last few years but historically people will basically not make amends and then say well i'm making living amends and by that they meant not being a jerk on a daily basis which is already covered it so you're taking step 12 that not being a jerk bit of step 12 and then you're double counting it and saying well that's also my step nine so hey i've done two steps at once just by being a normal person and i don't think that will do in most cases um uh oh last thing uh that on some american tapes uh is very common for people to say to for it to be suggested to say someone uh what can i do to make this right uh um or something to that effect i think one's got to be careful with that to say that to people who are morally and psychologically sound because if you say that people who Are not morally and Psychologically sound And then you have to not do what they've asked. You've now caused a further harm. So one must be extremely cautious about that and deploy that tactic with only with people where it's reasonable to do so. So I think that's all the basic stuff on step nine. So, Alistair, I don't know if you want to go over to questions now. thank you tim yes uh tim mentioned this uh meeting the meeting is now open for questions uh which could be done by the raised hand function in zoom or you can message me through the chat function i'm sure that's open and um or if nothing else works just wave violently at the camera and i'll i'll call on you and with that for questions thanks angus hi thanks um thanks tim how do you deal with amends to people that are no longer living dead okay so this is this is standard procedure uh you write a letter as if they're still alive you find an old person in aa that's someone my age or older to hear you read out the letter um preferably someone that but it has to be someone that's basically completed all their amends themselves understands this process someone kosher you you you can't go to just anyone you've got to be careful with this because it can set people off like firecrackers if they haven't made their amends or if there are any amends they haven'T made they will react badly to you wanting to do this with them um but you know what one tends to find over the years you know people in in recovery who've been sober a long time people in their 60s people in Their 70s I don't know why the age thing makes a difference it's like reading things to your grandparents they can be a sort of safe uh recipient so you read it to them um and it's as though the person is standing in the stead of the person you're making amends to it gets termed by some people a proxy amends uh the other thing you can do and this is an and or uh is to uh write a letter and go to a place which is significant for you and them in your relationship or significant to them or somehow reminiscent of them so a friend of mine was making amends to someone who's Dutch who he had known in America or I think in America and somewhere in the Caribbean and when he went to to make amends the chap had died and um he went to the Dutch church um in London which is a lovely church by the way if you're ever in in that part of town lovely uh they often have exhibitions in there um but he went in there and he made he read out the letter he had a very powerful experience and the third thing you can do you can say right god i need to make amends for this uh i will need to make indirect amends to the universe somehow uh you show me how and i'll give you one example of where this it's not just dead people sometimes you can't find the person because you don't have enough of a name to go on and there was a chap from Cardiff who I when I was 15 I treated very very badly I met him on a on a orchestra course I've never been able to trace him a very sort of stat very very common name and I'd never been unable to trace Him uh and I did my absolute best I tried I've tried repeatedly he's on the list of can't finds um and i pushed the whole thing up to my higher power and then through a curious set of coincidences uh someone in aa in cardiff uh who knew a friend of a friend called me and said look i've got a problem that i need to talk to someone about from my childhood um and he was he was still very upset about a particular thing that had happened when he was 14 or 15 now if the story is not going to be oh and it was the same kid no it wasn't the same just in case you want one of those you know podium end uh it wasn t but the point is i was able to help him through his to process what had happened to him at that age and that's maybe as close as i can get to making amends in that particular case maybe it would be too incendiary for me to make amends directly to that person which is why i haven't been able to find him who knows what the universe is doing there but you will be offered an opportunity by the universe to make a meant to redress the balance to settle the accounts with the universe if you keep if you're willing and you keep your eyes peeled and your ears if you can peel ears i'm not sure if you feel it is but you know what i mean you pay attention and the universe will provide you with an opportunity thanks tim harry you have a question hey everyone i'm harry alcoholic thanks tim um so on the phrase you just used settle the uh settle the score with the universe um so i understood that in my mind i have the amends as an expression of regret sorry plus an attempt to put something right so stolen the money i'm going to repay the money i've drunk your wine i might have to repay that you know i'm gonna replace the thing i took and on but on emotional harm when I've been a real terror with someone um most of most of the people I went out to were in that category I've just been incredibly unpleasant and rude and like you know and for most of them I did actually say is there anything I could do to put it right and maybe in some cases that was misjudged and almost no one took me up on it no one said oh well you can wash the car to make up for you being rude but a couple of people who I'd been incredibly unpleasant to expected as a result of my amends that we were now going to be besties and that we i would be making amends by now being their friend for example um so i wondered if is is the is the apology and then sincerity of coming out to someone the putting right itself like i've given the opportunity to forgive me now i'm straight with the universe or is there something i go beyond to do to put the emotional harm right does that make sense yeah i i think this goes to what the one of the core difficulties of amends which is most things you can't put right per se so emotional suffering can't be uh reversed uh except on occasion i mean there There is such a thing as healing. And often the other person's acknowledgement of what they did wrong is the missing ingredient which permits the person to heal. But the problem, it's as though that the real harm is not the emotion at the time. It's the sticking of that emotion in their crawl. um and what the amend does is it removes that little bit of grit stuck in the crawl so that everything can flow again uh i can't tell you how often i've seen situations where someone said i don't care i just need them to admit they were wrong and then we're good then we because it's a matter of etiquette if there's been some very bad behavior um with old friends i'm sure there's a sondheim song about this somewhere with old friend yeah there is the most that there is the most frightful risk of being lumbered with some crazy person because you know you've made amends to them now you've you've really opened the door um i think it's wise to scan your amends for higher risk individuals and to make sure that those amends are done with the greatest possible formality um uh i think this is true with a lot of x's that in order to avoid one must make amends to the exes somehow um i i believe uh as long as it fulfills all the criteria in eight and nine uh but one mustn't make amends in such a way that you cause you know a flare-up of their you know romantic gout and you know you set them off for another six months because that can happen so one must be sort of very Jane Austen about certain types of amends in order uh and also um some people actually say in the amends my sole purpose here is not to reinitiate a friendship or try to recapture the past or to try to launch us on a new adventure I simply want to set right the past and you know at the end of the letter and I wish you I wish your well in all your future endeavors which me by the way i mean you know the way the english always means something else by what they're saying what that means is i never want to hear from you again i wish you well and all your it seems so nice and it is but it's a very clear boundary as well it means we're not going to be chatting much there might be a couple more exchanges but we're pretty much done here so i think uh as long as one's wary of that um i think it all comes under the the category of with a with emotionally tricky people then you you have to be especially careful in terms of tact and consideration how you're making the amends so i don't know if that helps oh by the way just want one thing on people reacting badly um yeah again if if you're like my i was so unpleasant difficult um i don't blame anyone for not wanting to have anything to do with me after none of my first round of amends resulted in you know being cozy with anyone again but i was cordial with afterwards which is about as good as i can get so there we go anything else Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Good. Yes. Thank you so much for that, Tim. It chimed a lot of what i've come to believe it was nice to have have those instincts confirmed um where just how do i frame this as a question um starting with the text in in in the big book so it has a lot to say um on step nine more i think than virtually anything else um when you've got this series of uh of case studies there which I think around here, good old fashioned AA was when I first came around, was regarded as, you know, you've got to be kidding. Might have applied in 1930s America, but not really relevant right here, right now. Connected with I think there's a kind of immediacy to it that everything the big book is described as being happening very quickly. and the white heat of recovery um and that wasn't the way it was around here i mean i myself didn't get to step four until i was about three years sober um when i did get there i i did the work fairly quickly but it was a bit patchy um and i did it um mainly because the sponsor i was working with at the time was about to leave the country i didn't want to start again with somebody else so when he did leave the company and became severely unwell i was kind of stuck on the cusp of the cusp of step eight I had the list um and I had done I did the did the analysis but the actual execution of um of step nine was was rather hit and miss um I was flying by the seat of my pants um the results of that were actually surprisingly good um which makes me think that maybe one shouldn't over plan these things in the main people were presented to me and my responsibility was not to duck the opportunity when it came I needed to rise the challenge I needed to know what I'd done so that I could um be sort of nimble on my feet and say look you know I was an arsehole I'm really sorry I hope I won't be doing that again uh and in the main that went quite well but after about seven years or so I was back in the doldrums I was back on page 52 I knew I neededと do a retread on all the steps and I suppose my question is when it's no longer in the white heat but you're doing a retread perhaps 10 years after the event okay there'll be some new ones some new offenses have been caused that certainly were in my case actually but also some festering things from the first time around um what does that mean is it a good idea you know to dig up old bodies that may be sort of well decomposed um and uh and exposed them to the um to the light of the day i mean in my case some of these people had actually died in some some of my loose ends were people who had been alive if i addressed it quickly enough but by the time i you know finally got around to it they they were they were dead um so what's to wrap all that up so what what can what considerations apply what variations if any might apply um when you're coming back to it um 10 years after the event you haven't been drinking but you may have been an arsehole uh once in a while um and you've got some new things and you're not going to be able to do anything about it so I think that's old things which remain unamended from the first time around have you got any thoughts on that yeah I do it's all very interesting um I think the first thing that situation is very common uh to have a rough and ready first steps eight and nine and then have to revisit the whole question later on now certainly that if the as it were the hatchet has been buried you leave buried hatchets buried so if you've actually made amends to someone no you don't dig it up but the thing is about the amends that haven't been made then this is the point there has been no funeral the body hasn't been buried it's decomposing in your living room you know between you and the television so every time you watch Netflix you see the pile of decomposing bodies in front of you the point is to actually now bury them they should have been buried a very very long time ago so I think the actually the urgency is even greater after a number of years um very often people who say and this this is not to talk about you because i i don't know you very well at all but it's very common for people who are sober a long time to experience um uh what does chuck chamberlain call it obsessions of the mind and as we know obsessions of the mind can sometimes tip over into the material world and we can find little behaviours which are exciting and interesting to divert us for five years or so. Behind lots of serious acting out with sex, romance, gambling food, those are the main ones there are very often unfinished amends And the unfinished amends very often match the areas of dysfunction. So I think the urgency is very great, really. What's different about it? So the passage of time does not diminish the necessity or the urgency of the amend. In fact, if anything, the reverse happens. what is different is the approach to the person one's making amends to i think must acknowledge the outrageous amount of time it's taking to get around to this uh because they're going to be outraged anyway so you might as well take that on the chin up front so the first thing you're apologizing for is is for taking so long to get back to them um but otherwise i think it's pretty standard i don't i don' think there's any difference that what does happen though the longer you're sober i think the more morally punctilious you get so there are certain harms not at not every amend is uh you know some grand apology for a terrible wrong done sometimes it was a an expression of thanks which was not given at the time but with but which was definitely due or we were there was a teacher at school that was enormously how I was very troubled uh there wasa teacher at the school who was enormously helpful and when I left this it was a boarding school when Ileft there it was very clear Iwas heading in the wrong direction you know that the pundits would would not have had me uh recovering and having a you know a reasonably successful happy life and I'd never got back to her to tell her that she had helped me and that things did work out in the end um and she came into my consciousness after many years sober and it needed to be dealt with and I dealt with it and through a very very strange set of coincidences I managed to find her and uh it was a wonderful thing to do so i think one's spider sense increases over time that must be listened to all sorts of things will come up in one's consciousness which need dealing with and the your model for this is an american aa from riverside chicago illinois called paul m paul martin who wrote extensively for the grapevine he was brought in uh by uh into aa by i think the first aa in chicago he died with about 62 years of sobriety not actually that long that long ago uh but he talks about the enormously beneficial effect of really going back and dotting the i's and crossing the t's with amends even many many years later and how when he was in his 60s going back and things which had come up in his consciousness from his childhood which he went back and dealt with and I think in the last in my my own program the last five years the most apart from sponsoring people the most important things I've done have in terms of clearing my consciousness this have been um uh what looked like relatively small indiscretions or oversights or or whatever that i've had to make amends for so i think it's an ongoing process you remain spiritually open and all sorts of things will continue to call out woodwork and when they do you deal with them so that's my answer on that thanks tim anybody else my name is dan i'm an alcoholic sorry alistair i'm just going to come in to might just ask you something to qualify a statement you said i hope i heard this right because i was i was um dealing with the screaming child at the same time but it's something that really stuck with me did you say that the area that the problem was coming up uh when i think you were talking in terms of uh sex money food was related to the area where you needed to make amends is that what you said and if you did say that can you sort of clarify what that means for me thanks yeah so i mean it's a it's it's big subject this um but if you'll allow a story which is about a minute and a half there is an episode of buffy the vampire slayer i think it's somewhere in season two or season three you'll have to watch both seasons to be sure where there is a but you're going to be doing that anyway um that where there was a school where uh whenever at night two people would come into a particular if it was a boy and a girl were alone in this particular corridor they would start to play out like a script and a gun would appear and one would shoot the other one and it was like they were possessed by something and then afterwards they couldn't work they had no idea what had happened there's a vague recollection and the fact is unresolved psychic situations will seek a way to re-manifest in order for me to deal with them so the reason why i would recreate for years disastrous friendships and situations and sponsorship relationships and jobs is because I hadn't resolved the past not fully I hadn'T fully forgiven or I hadnT fully made amends when I fully forgave and fully made Amends the bond was that there was a resolution there so there was no need for me to create the situation Earl Purdy talks about in relationships like the unholy relationship so unhealthy relationships where with each new unhealthy relationship you're taking the prime features of all of the previous relationships bundling them into this new scenario in fact looking for someone to perform a historical a composite historical reenactment of all the past relationships in order to get the ending to change but because the setup is the same because the frame of reference is the saying the ending can't change so it all turns out the same until the reason for the sick dynamic is eliminated then that sickness stops so it's a very it's not a straightforward issue to understand you've got to see it a lot playing out in your life before it becomes clear but I I think that's the explanation for it in brief. Thanks. Thanks, Tim. Anyone else? Okay, with that, I'll hand it back to you, Tim, closing with serenity yes so if you could help me close with serenety prayer using words God as you do or don't understand it God grant me the serenty accept things I cannot change encourage change things I can and the wisdom to know the difference thanks everyone thank you I only have eyes for you for the Buffy fans out there brilliant thanks Evan thank you bye-bye thanks Tim bye season 2 episode 19 that's straightforward you're never going to watch it Alistair there's a chance I might find that episode but there's no way when Tim said he's either in two or three there was no way I'm going to watch them all to find it right sorry everyone I actually have to close this off we um close this meeting down