by Sally Rosa | Jul 2, 2014 | Addiction Articles, Recovery
Written By: Katie Schipper
Privacy vs. Secrecy & How They Relate To Honesty
The Importance of Honesty
Honesty, Open Mindedness, and Willingness – if you’re in any sort of twelve-step recovery, you’ll hear about these virtues over and over. All three are vital, but honesty in particular presents many road bumps to the addict or alcoholic.
The most obvious and undeniable fact about addiction is that in order to maintain the lifestyle of a junkie or boozehound, we have to be in a perpetual state of denial. Denial is the ultimate act of lying to ourselves. So, right off the bat, honesty is a virtue that throws some curveballs.
If a woman in early-recovery is willing to be honest, it doesn’t so much matter whether she’s actually honest. As long as her intention is to be honest, she’s on the right track. To put it another way, when she’s first getting sober, the woman in early-recovery is still going to be in enough denial to not even recognize that she’s still lying to herself and others, but if her aim is to practice honesty, then in time, and with help, the practice of honesty will grow and progress. In order to become willing, she must first distinguish the differences between privacy and secrecy.
Read about the importance of accountability
Privacy Or Secrecy – Which One Keeps Us Sick?
With that mouthful about honesty being said, there’s another big concept in recovery we need to look at – the idea that secrets keep us sick. This concept, coupled with the necessity of honesty on the spiritual plane, stirs up a whole debate on secrecy vs. privacy.
For a group of people who’re notoriously secretive, always to our own detriment and demise, what does privacy even mean? In a program that demands “rigorous honesty,” are we expected to share all the details of our private life? How far do we take the spiritual inventory that we do during our fourth and fifth steps?
Read more about the Fourth Step
Being Open to Truth and Honesty
The difference between privacy and secrecy is often subtle and sometimes blurred. The problem of distinguishing the two is that intention plays as much of a role as the actual practice of being honest.
To give an example, imagine a woman in early recovery (or any point in her recovery) who goes to the store and decides to steal lipstick. She may do this for a variety of reasons, but ultimately she knows and understands that stealing is wrong. At this point, she can go two ways. She can keep this secret out of shame. She can hold on to it, believing that in keeping the secret she’s minimizing the act of stealing and therefore doing herself a favor. Or she can, knowing from past experiences that keeping things like this hidden leads to worse shame and secrecy, share what she did with someone. Maybe she’ll tell multiple people. Maybe she’ll bring the lipstick back.
The key lies not in who, or how, she tells, but rather in the fact that she’s willing to achieve truth and honesty over secrecy. By this line of thinking, privacy is how the woman recognizes what she did is wrong, but not shameful, unless it’s left to fester in some corner of her mind. This is the same corner where everything she believes she shouldn’t have done goes to rot.
Secrecy, on the other hand, is the belief that we can do things that are so shameful that we must, at all costs, keep them to ourselves.
When looking at privacy vs. secrecy, we see that privacy is the recognition that we have a right to a personal life, but that there’s no shame in our actions. Privacy is when we’re willing to fully accept who we are, in all areas, without feeling compelled to hide some part of ourself. We might not talk about our battles with depression and anxiety to everyone we meet. Most likely, we aren’t going to broadcast our sex life or relationships everywhere (unless you’re a special breed of Facebook over-sharer!), but knowing that none of this carries any shame allows us to live a private life without the mask of secrecy.
by Sally Rosa | Jun 30, 2014 | 12 Steps, Addiction Articles
Articles are the sole work of the individual author and do not express the opinion of Sobriety for Women
You Want Me to What?!
I came to a halt at step three. “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understood Him.” Sounds like a bunch of bulls**t to me. Now, I’m not saying those who have a god of their understanding are bulls**t, so just hear me out.
Some of us grow up with our family’s conception of god. Some of us find our own. Some of us just simply don’t have one. Can we get sober without finding god? Why do we get so hung up on such a small part of the program?
Many questions, from all different types of people, may arise at this point.
The traumatized adolescents – “If god was real, he’d have never let those horrible things happen to me.”
The smarty pants scientists – “I prefer the theories of evolution.”
The Catholic school survivors – “The priests at my school touched my little brother!”
The metal heads – “If my favorite band, Slayer, is anti-god, than so am I!”
The logical thinkers – “Seeing is believing.”
Here’s the scapegoat us addicts have been searching for. Once we see the word “god” in step three, we run for the hills. We just assume the program isn’t going to work. We finally have an excuse to say f**k it (not like we ever really needed an excuse). Well, you don’t have to run anymore because sobriety is possible for all.
Atheists and Agnostics Can Get Sober Too
The program can work for anyone who actually has a little self-will. This s**t is not rocket science. If you don’t want to stop, you’re not going to stop. Plain and simple. Nothing is going to just miraculously push you into recovery if you honestly don’t believe you have a problem with drugs and alcohol. Believing you have a problem with drugs and alcohol is more important to getting sober then believing in a god. If you want to stop, but don’t believe in god, it’s going to be tough, but possible.
The AA Big Book actually has a chapter dedicated to people who don’t believe in god. You can’t pray away an illness, but having the faith that everything will be okay certainly does ease the mind of some people. You’re not doomed to an alcoholic death just because you don’t devote your life to a religion.
As for all you bible-thumping, god-nazis who think you have some sort or minor in grammar, you’re probably critiquing my usage of a lowercase “g” in the word god. Just a quick clarification to avoid dumb comments about it (that I probably won’t read anyway) – I’m using a lowercase “g” because god isn’t a proper noun. Unless “God” is the actual name of your god, it’s lower case. It’s funny because I bet you googled it rather then having “faith” in my facts. Yet most of you have faith that there’s a man who lives in the sky, who built the world in seven days and took your addiction away. Makes a lot of sense. Now, moving on…
I Have A Problem
A few things bother me about the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings I’ve attended. Anniversary night, the celebration of yearly milestones of one’s sobriety, the same things gets repeated and I can’t f**king stand them!
People get up to make their Academy Award speech and always say “This wouldn’t have been possible without god.” That immediately makes me ask myself, “if you didn’t have a god then you wouldn’t have gotten sober? What kind of message is that sending to our newcomers?” Why are there even twelve-steps if the above statement is true. Why not just go to a church and get cured?
I feel like people don’t even know what they’re saying anymore. They’ve just heard the same regurgitated s**t over and over again. They think it’s what we want to hear, so they say it, but I see right through all that nonsense. I know for damn sure god didn’t get me sober. I believe I did a lot more work then god did, when it comes to me and my sobriety. Guess what else? I’m a very spiritual person. It took me a while to find my own conception of a higher power, but the work I put into my recovery is what ultimately saved my life.
I’ve also heard people say, “I had nothing to do with this, it was all god.” Really? You had NOTHING to do with it? Are you that f**king ignorant to truly credit all your hard work to god? I think back to my personal sobriety and god played a very small role in my life. Yet, we have these narrow-minded people telling all our newcomers that god did the hard work. They then b***h at their sponsees for not getting involved or for not doing step-work. In their minds, god’s going to take care of it all and cure them, because that’s what they heard some moron say in a meeting. That is, if they stick around long after they hear the word god.
Yes, I understand faith without works is dead. Let me tell you, you can work without faith, my friend, because at the end of the day the task gets done. Another thing I despise in the rooms is the Lord’s Prayer at the end of meetings. We preach day-in and day-out about how this is a spiritual not religious program, yet we’re reciting a Catholic prayer at the end? I refused to say it the first nine months of my sobriety because I was tortured in Catholic school my whole life. There was no way in hell I was going to utter blasphemous words against my will again. I don’t support organized religion and I shouldn’t be made to say religious prayers at a meeting that has nothing to do with religion.
Credit Where Credit’s Due
I do believe that god has done a lot of good for people. I do believe god has inspired many. God has done a lot for me. I pray often and give thanks to my higher power, but should we really be giving god ALL the credit?
Addicts already struggle with self-confidence and when they accomplish something as big as staying sober for a year, they have to hand over success to an invisible being? Have a little faith in yourself, people. After all, you did most of the work. Maybe this isn’t the case for some people, but I feel like if I took the god steps out of my sobriety, I’d still have been able to get sober. It’s not right that we tell people you can’t move on to step four (the important work) without finding god in step three. If someone gets discouraged from not having a god, or because of resentments against god, and they turn back to a drink or drug, we’re robbing them of a beautiful life.
Own your sobriety! You did it. You came this far. You worked hard for it. You made changes. You mended relationships. You’re self aware. You’re f**king awesome for all that! Take credit for it! Don’t downplay your hard work because you heard someone say a corny line like “If you didn’t drink today, thank your higher power because you had nothing to do with it.” Guess what? You had a lot to do with it.
by Sally Rosa | Apr 28, 2014 | Addiction Articles, 12 Steps
Made a Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory of Ourselves
“A business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking commercial inventory is a fact-finding and a fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about the stock-in-trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsalable goods, to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values.
We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our make-up, which caused our failure. Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us, we considered its common manifestations.
Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.”
-A.A Big Book p.64
How Do You Do a Fourth Step?
Well, to get to the fourth step, you must have done the first three! Once we admit we have no control over alcohol, we can come to believe in a power greater than ourselves. Then, we can become willing to put our will and life (thoughts and actions) into that Higher Power’s hands. Then, and only then, are we ready to do Step Four.
There are a million ways to work a fourth step. Each sponsor does it differently. The important part is that we follow some basic guidelines.
First, there are three sections of the a fourth step: resentments, fears, and a sexual inventory. While thinking about and writing each section, we need to always to 100% truthful. That’s the hard part! It’s scary to write everything on a piece of paper. It’s even scarier to think about sharing this with another woman! It’s also necessary to overcome alcoholism and addiction.
What Does a Fourth Step Look Like?
For the resentments section, we
- List all the people, places, or principles we have resentments towards (I’m resentful at…)
- List the cause of our resentment (what happened?, why am I resentful?)
- List how we were hurt or threatened in the following categories: self-esteem, pride, emotional security, finances, ambitions, personal relations, and sexual relations
- List how we played a part, using: selfishness, dishonesty, self-seeking, fear, and inconsideration
- List the exact and specific nature of our wrongs for each resentment
For the fears section, we
- List the people, places, and principals that we fear
- List why we are afraid
- List the parts of our lives which have failed us and resulted in our fears. We use the following categories: self-reliance, self-confidence, self-discipline, and self-will
- List the parts of ourselves that specific fears are affecting. We use the following categories: self-esteem, pride, emotional security, finical, ambitions, personal relations, and sexual relations
- Pray and begin to have faith in a Higher Power. We then pray for our Higher Power to help remove these fears
For the sexual inventory, we
- List all the people who we’ve had sexual and romantic relationships with
- List what happened and what we did
- List the exact nature of our wrongs, faults, mistakes, defects, and shortcomings. We use the following questions: Was I selfish? Was I dishonest? Was I inconsiderate? Was I self-seeking? Was this relationship selfish?
- List who exactly was harmed
- List what we should have done differently
What’s the Point of Step Four?
The Big Book says, “Resentment is the number one offender.” Through working a Fourth Step, we’re able to begin to let go of resentments. Now, losing resentments is a lifelong process, but a thorough fourth step is a great way to start!
Through working a fourth step, we’re able to examine ourselves objectively and honestly (with the help of our sponsor, of course!). We learn the roles we’ve played in our resentments, fears, and sexual conduct. Once we know where we’ve been wrong, we seek spiritual strength and a spiritual solution.
Does it work?
By discovering our emotional conflicts, dependences, displacements, disturbances, scars, complications, appeals, disorders, binges, balances, and insecurities, we’re able to fix them and change. Through change, we’re able to fully connect with a power greater than ourselves and grow in its likeness. Without willingness, courage, and honesty there’s little success for alcoholics like us.
Without Step Four, sobriety is impossible. We may remain dry from booze for periods of time, but we’re unable to live a happy and meaningful life. So, get off your a*s and start writing!
