Guest Post by Alcomum. ” Alcomum is a self-described ’33 year old, self-employed, single mum tackling life without wine via the Alcoholics Anonymous 12 step recovery programme.’” You can find more written by this recovery blogger from Northern Ireland at her home blog http://www.alcomum.blogspot.com
Today at my AA meeting, I was reminded of how ACTION is the key to this programme. GO to meetings. READ the Big Book. WORK the programme. DO what is suggested. CARRY the message.
Lately, I have certainly fallen down on working my programme. I started Step 4 a few weeks back. Step 4 is where we make “a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves”. Right. How?
Well, like everything else in AA, it has been tried and tested many times before. In short, there are sheets for idiots like me to fill in! You can see examples at this link: http://www.royy.com/step4.pdf
Basically, we have to examine our resentments, fears, and sexual conduct (yes, really) and also make a list of our character defects.
I made a good old start on my resentments list, because the Big Book says “resentment is the number one offender”. I catalogued 50 active resentments against actual people, and I’m nowhere near done. And I would have told you I was a “forgive, forget and move on” kinda gal… For me, considering the first 50 of my resentments dragged up a lot of feelings, emotions and experiences that I had buried. I’m learning that moving on means facing a resentment, dealing with it (appropriately, and so not usually involving any sort of homicidal crime), putting it in its proper place, learning from it, and keeping going with your life.
So far, I have dealt with a lot of resentments by literally RE-SENTING. Get ready, because I’m about to tell you something Latin… The “sent” part of resentment comes from the Latin word “feeling”, the same root that gives us words like sentiment, etc. “Re” means to do again. I have re-felt, re-lived, re-hashed, and re-written all of my re-sentments at some point. Going over and over and over things. Analysing them. Re-analysing them. Imagining what would have happened if I had said or done something differently. Fantasising about will happen the next time I run into that so-and-so. And how fabulous and skinny and perfectly groomed I will look…
I continue in that vein until I decide enough is enough. Then I try to bury it. Distract myself. Move on. But the resentment hangs in there like a squatter. Quietly, not trying to attract any attention. Knowing well that if it can hang onto it’s turf for long enough, it will become the owner (see, I did pay SOME attention during my law degree). Well, since this building is under new management, it is time to serve my resentments with an eviction notice.
Which brings me back to a few weeks ago, when I started drafting the bones of the eviction notice and then never quite got around to finishing the job. And certainly was nowhere near brave enough to go and actually face the resentments to serve the notice on them (hoping I could eventually pay someone else to do that like when I’m at work?).
So, back to square 4 for me. Action is required. I am committing to spend at least 10 minutes each day working on some part of my step 4 inventory. I’m starting this tomorrow btw. No, REALLY – ask me tomorrow and every day after and see! And yes – I will be sure to add “procrastination” to my ever growing list of character defects when I get to that list…
