supadave3

I'm a 39 year old struggling alcoholic and have been working through the steps with my sponsor. We've done steps 1-3 and I'm starting on Step 4 tomorrow. Any advice? I've been told to follow the example in the big book, so I know the format to do it in, but in my brief brainstorming I can only come up with a handful of things.

Fears? I'm scared of snakes, should I put that? Not trying to be an smart aleck but I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with things. Has anyone else been in this boat?

ANY and ALL advice will be helpful. Please pray for me to complete this step as thoroughly and completely as possible.

sleepzoo

Some questions my sponsor asked me for my fear inventory were: Are you afraid of dying alone? Are you afraid of disappointing people? Are you afraid of being embarrassed? Are you afraid of getting seriously ill? Are you afraid of losing your job, your family, your significant other.

Questions like that really got the ball rolling for me.

As for the resentment part, no resentment or reason is too small. Just be brutally honest!

Good luck. There is no perfect fourth step.

Grungehead

Here's what I started with:

Family
Friends
Employers/Coworkers (past and present)

I seemed to have a lot of resentments with these groups of people and that really helped to get me jump started. I also found that carrying around something to write on helped. It seemed like when I sat there and tried to remember things I would draw a blank, but then when I wasn't consciously trying to remember things they would pop into my head and I would write them down. Then later I would fill them into my formal columns.

Also when it came to fears--once I had my list of resentments, I found that almost all of them seemed to have some type of fear attached to them.

Gottalife

Make a time with your sponsor and sit down with him to do it. I never would have got sober without direct help in the form of discussion and explanation of terms, in a way that I could understand. Make your sponsor earn his keep.

Tommyh

column 3 of the resentment inventory mentions fear
thats where you can get a lot of fears from the resentment list
column 4 is where I identified those fears
scared of snakes or heights?
Put it on the fear list when you get there
if there is any doubt about a resentment or fear,put it on the list.It will
take care of itself later on.

welcome to SR

Boleo

How about "anything that disturbs you".

That should give you a plethora of material to work with.

skg

the best advice I ever got was, "Just do it."

Don't over-think it, don't complicate it, don't put it in a spreadsheet, don't dwell on it, don't drag it out, don't wait, don't compare, don't pity yourself, don't expect perfection, and don't make excuses.

The best 4th step you can do is YOURS. Just DO it!

Any help?

Boleo

I agree. Don't worry about quantity or quality at first.

"If you build it, he (it) will come."
(Field of Dreams)

keithj

I've always done a fear inventory after the resentment inventory is complete. There is a reason for this, I think, in that the resentments are almost always driven by some fear. Until I really see what it is that I think is threatened (3rd column), I don't really see the fear.

For resentments, I was shown to ask all kinds of questions around the 'who am I angry at' idea. Who do I feel better than, less than? Who would I rather not bump into? Who do I judge? Who/what do I disagree with? Who/what rubs me the wrong way? Who/what do I feel uncomfortable around? Who do I think about or concern myself with? Things like that help me see the resentment.

Fly N Buy

dave - Glad you're here, welcome!

I know for me it took some sober time to clear my head so I could even begin to contemplate the resentments I had and really what that all meant.

Not long ago, I went to a back to basics weekend seminar. It was really good and we did a 30,000 ft view of all the steps in one day.

This is a link to their 4ths step info. I found it helpful, maybe you will as well.
http://www.aabacktobasics.org/


Good Luck and keep working at it!

Gottalife

I was just thinking. I still have my fourth step. Even though I had a sponsor to help me understand and find correct meanings, it still looks like it was written by a twelve year old. In terms of my emotional age at the time, of course it was

It didn't matter. It Still got to the root causes and conditions, still pinned down the major handicaps, still served its purpose. When I look at it now, I am still amazed at how accurate it was, and how much progress has been possible since, through the grace of God.

barefootjunker

Something that helped me a lot in sitting down and writing out my 4th step was listening to the Joe and Charlie big book study on xa speakers. They spend a good bit of time talking on this and are very good at clarifying what to do and not do.