The Fourth and the Tenth (Steps)

This is on my mind.  I have a friend who, with a few years sober, keeps doing fourth and mini- fourth steps.  She said that none of her sponsors ever talked to her about steps 10, 11 and/or 12.  Another woman I know has repeatedly slipped over several years, and has had two sponsors, and though the sponsors talked to her about a fourth step …… well, the way she put it is that when she asked them what she’s doing wrong, they couldn’t tell her.  Yet her fourth step remains a huge mountain her mind that she has yet to climb.

I was listening to a “Clancy” CD on the way home from work and he said that repeated and constant fourth steps are a socially acceptable way to stay completely self-absorbed.  He also said, as I guess we see every day, that many many people who climb the first three steps fail to do a fourth step and beyond.

As for my personal experience, I’ve done three formal fourth steps over 27 years of sobriety.  This has worked for me.  I anticipate that if I live long enough I will do another many years hence.  I wouldn’t call these constant or repeated.

My understanding of the tenth step is that there are two distinct and important parts of it.  Continued to take personal inventory is one part, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it is another part.  Often the parts go together, but not always.

It was a great relief and revelation to me to promptly admit when I’m wrong and I know that, compared to the way I was before the program, it has saved personal relationships, especially at work.  It was a freeing proposition when I first employed it.

But the continued inventory is almost more important.  If, for example, I am jealous, this is a character defect and I want to list it on my daily inventory.  If I fumed and stewed and made myself miserable with my jealousy, I don’t think I necessarily have to apologize to anyone, depending on what I did that day, or failed to do.  But for the sake of my argument say I had no responsibilities that day, and rather than enjoying the free time, I made myself miserable feeling jealous.  No harm done to anyone but me.

But say in my jealousy I snooped somewhere I shouldn’t.  Then I might owe an apology and and amend (a change).  Now I could wonder if the person I snooped on is better off not knowing I did that but that is beside my point.

I try to look out for excess negative emotion and in a daily (or more frequent) inventory think of which character defect is at play resulting in my excess negative emotion.  If the problem is bad enough or frequent enough I also try to think about how to do away with the defect, how to ask God to remove it and be able to let it go.  I don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, expecting and getting the same result.  All that, to me, is tenth step, not fourth.

Now all that confused me but I think I’ll go with it and move on to something simpler . . .

Pride in Reverse

That random post thing is awesome.  I hit it, and I ended up here and I revisited my self-righteous anger issues from one day in April, 2008.  More than a year ago.  I can’t say I’ve come very far since then.

Taking pride as a sin and character defect of having too high an opinion of ones self, pride in reverse would be having too low an opinion of ones self.  This concept appears in Step Four as part of the moral inventory.  The character defect (and isn’t it fun that we all have both pride and pride in reverse?) is not believing ourselves to be the same as every other person.  The right size.

I have a very deep feeling of inferiorty in many ways.  An easy one is that I’m short.  I’m sorry but in this time and this place, taller is better.  Not freakishly taller, but nicely taller.  I had no say in the matter and it certainly does not say anything about my character, still I feel inferior because of it.  And I can imagine that someone could be “proud” of their height, even though they had nothing to do with that.

When I first stopped drinking, I felt like a real waste of space and truly I was one.  And also a menace.

In sobriety, I have a few moments I look back on with intense guilt.  These mainly involve my kids, my work and my dog.  All care-taking roles and a few times I failed terribly to protect.

Last night, the topic at the meeting I attended was “we will not regret the past.”  Honestly I don’t fully understand that promise, and from the way the discussion went last night, neither do the people I was with.  This not understanding (and because I love AA) makes me look forward to the future when I do understand it better.  There are still keys to serenity I have yet to use.

Generally, I don’t think I wallow in guilt and self-loathing.  I’m glad that today I have a chance to recognize these things when they’re small, and not to help them grow.

Surviving a Spiritual Crisis in Sobriety (my story continued)

My son was born in February of 1988.  After a scare with the chicken pox, he surivived and recovered and aside from some mild colic, he was and still is as good a son as anyone could wish for.  My ex eventually became happily and gainfully employed.  I read and studied (in the 12 and 12) Steps One, Two and Three to make sure I felt them as whole-heartedly as I possibly could.  I started going back to church, which was not easy with a baby and a toddler, but I did it.  I decided to do a fourth step at four and five years sober.

I don’t remember much about what that fourth step actually said.  I worked with only the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve as guides and I just got on with it.  While all this was going on, I attended a Christmas party at my ex’s place of employment.  I saw on the company video that they would be opening offices in a city less than 150 miles from my home town.  I asked my ex to enquire about tranferring.

I asked a woman I liked to hear my fifth step.  This she did.

The company said transfer was possible, and then they offered to pay for our move of about 3000 miles.

After hearing my fifth step, my friend took the Big Book off of her own shelf.  Or maybe she had it on the table all along.  Either way, she apprised me of the part that instructs me after the fifth step to go right on along to Step Six.

Ten years later, visiting Dr. Bob’s house for the first time, although I’d worked all the steps for many years, I did not feel that I could fully say I had “taken” Step Six.  And actually, I did another fourth and fifth step in between times.  But that’s another story.

And a lot of that is why, when I started this blog last February, I started with Step Six.  I’ve been through it twice, greeting a crisis with a renewed fourth and fifth step.  And while that certainly isn’t a bad thing to do – in fact, it’s a very good thing to do – it hasn’t gotten me much farther down that road, so I’m trying it this way this time.

My First Fourth and Fifth Steps (my story continued)

To reiterate:  I know that I am beyond lucky to have made it this far.  When there are parts of the program of AA that I have worked imperfectly or incompletely, I record that with a knowledge that I’m just lucky I made it at all.  Every day people die from this, they really do.  I would never suggest that anyone skip or skimp on anything.

To recap:  I had gone to my first AA meeting just before my 17th birthday.  I had gotten sober finally just before my 22nd birthday.  I quickly got married, had two children and moved very far away from my  home and family.  I moved several times, and I kept attending meetings wherever I moved.  When I was 26 and 27 years old, during the time I was pregnant with my second child and after he was born, my ex lost his job and hopes of being able to move back home were slim.  I developed a fear of flying over the years as well as a fear of my house flooding and a fear of death.  None of these crippled me, but they sure did make life difficult.

What comes next is a very important part of my story, and a key to my success.  All those outside factors (where I lived, my ex’s lack of job, having a toddler and a baby) amounted to severe psychological pressure for me.  What I decided to do in response it to work the program.  I am so very grateful and glad that’s what I did.

I had attended meetings for ten years at that time, and I had been sober for four years.  I hadn’t done a fourth or fifth step.

I backed up, and I took time to really read and think about Steps One, Two and Three.  Having been around the program and relapsing for so long, switching sponsors, moving and whatnot, no one had been overseeing my steps and I just hadn’t done them.  Today I know that nothing but luck kept me sober.  I would never recommend anyone do it the way I did.

So I read and thought about the first three steps, and thought about it until I could say a whole-hearted yes to them.  Then I set about doing a formal fourth step.  Next time I write about my story, I need to record what happened with my religion during that time.

Economic (and other kinds of) Insecurity (my story continued)

When I was pregnant with Nicholas, my ex lost his job again.  I don’t remember the details, and I don’t think it was because of anything he did, but the guy that told him about the job in the first place, who also moved far to take the job, got fired, and the ex along with him.

Now I was living very far away from home.  I had bought a house, I had a toddler, and I was pregnant.  I was frantic not to leave the babies to go to work.  I think I would have lived with relatives before I did that, or tried to go on public assistance.

That didn’t happen.  He got unemployment and he looked for a job.  At one point, after Nicholas was born, he took a job, and it was awful.  It paid less than unemployment, and although they had lied about that, he couldn’t go on unemployment.  They treated him badly and of course, moving back home was out of the question.  We couldn’t afford it.

I’m a little fuzzy on the timelines now, but around this time, I developed an intrusive fear of death.  My fear of flying was peaking around this time also.  My fear of my house flooding that I wrote about was at its worst also.  I was worried then that Erika was depressed, at two and half.  It doesn’t take Freud to see that so many big, important aspects of my life were out of my control, it’s no wonder I was afraid.

What I did became instructive for the rest of my life, up to and including now.  I was four turning five years sober then, and I had never stopped going to meetings.  Through all that, though, I hadn’t done a fourth and fifth step, so I decided to do them formally then.