Living the Steps, particularly taking inventory and making amends, helps us to stop taking what others do and say personally. Because we do not know how to validate ourselves, we try to regulate others so we don’t feel anxious. Because we do not know how to support ourselves, we manipulate our environment to provide us with support. We manipulate the world to give us what we don’t give to ourselves. This was the direction that our lives took when we rejected our real-self (higher-power) in favour of a false-self (lower power). Our false-self tried to soothe our anxiety by controlling and manipulating others to get what we thought we needed.
The way we treated others is determined by the direction in which our anxiety propels us to find a solution. We needed an admiring audience, to be right and make others feel wrong, to triumph by dividing people into our followers or scheming adversaries, to hurt someone because they deserved it, and to minimize ourselves while turning others into giants. We did not see people as they were; we see them as we need them to be to fulfill our purpose. We impose our script on them and cast them into the role we need. This doesn’t mean we were bad people; it means we are human beings who have taken the wrong turn in life. The Steps help us find our way back. They are correcting the veer in our personal development. The Steps help us undo our objectification of others. The Steps teach us to be more personal and present, to make full and alive contact with another person. They are teaching us to drop our expectations and meet people where they are at.
The Steps help us develop a better relationship with ourselves. Without a better connection to ourselves, we can’t have better human relations. If we do not experience ourselves lovable, then it will be impossible to believe that anyone else could love us. We must get right with ourselves. We must straighten out our stinking thinking and develop an understanding of the forces within us that influence our behavior. We must get honest with ourselves and learn how to use the best in us to look at the worst in us. Living the Steps helps us reconstruct our understanding based on reality, instead of the distortions of reality caused by our anxiety. We now have a more positive self-concept because of our efforts to find a solution to our addiction. The Steps change our relationship to ourselves and prepare us, mentally and spiritually, for better relationships with others.
Living the Steps has helped us learn that the best in us operates the rest of us. We have become aware without the interference of shoulds or ought tos. Sometimes we must assert ourselves and sometimes we must admit we are wrong. We realize that it is our responsibility to set healthy boundaries. Our false-pride no longer interferes with our choices. Our actions are guided by the best in us instead of the worst in us. We recognize that emotions such as pain, disappointment, conflict, grief, anger, shame, and guilt are part of the human experience to be accepted, understood, and valued rather than suppressed or hidden. We no longer reject or disown a part of ourselves, because it is perceived as incompatible with the rest of us.
Living the Steps has helped us recover our true-self. By weakening the destructive forces of addiction and the false-self, we have seen the constructive forces of our real-self growth. We have a new understanding of ourselves and our potential. We are no longer shackled by the performance demands placed on us by our false-self; we are we have liberated ourselves from its tyranny. We have a growing pride in being our real self: in being sensitive, open, teachable, curious, loving, assertive, passionate, realistic, autonomous, authentic, self-supporting, honest, trustworthy, alive, responsible, and creative. When we have problems with others, we are committed to finding mutually satisfying solutions. We enjoy balancing togetherness with individuality, letting the best in us operate the rest of us and honouring our spirituality. (by Allen Berger, expert on recovery)