Starting 4th Step Work Today
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Thread Starter
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 741
Starting 4th Step Work Today
This Wednesday night I and fellow participants from my CODA group are starting to share the results of our 4th Step work from the CODA green workbook.
I'm scared. I'm excited. I'm sad that I need to do all of this work, and there seems to be a lot of it. I woke up with a headache after a nightmare about my XAH being emotionally and verbally abusive to me.
Sigh.
I know I need to do this. I know. But I am just friggin' scared. I already know a bunch of awful things about myself. What if I find even worse stuff? I already feel so bad about myself anyway. This is just gonna be hard but I have to press on.
Just need some love today. Thanks.
I'm scared. I'm excited. I'm sad that I need to do all of this work, and there seems to be a lot of it. I woke up with a headache after a nightmare about my XAH being emotionally and verbally abusive to me.
Sigh.
I know I need to do this. I know. But I am just friggin' scared. I already know a bunch of awful things about myself. What if I find even worse stuff? I already feel so bad about myself anyway. This is just gonna be hard but I have to press on.
Just need some love today. Thanks.
Engineer Things; LOVE People
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 3,707
SUPER!
do not worry about what you will find.
Anything Good . . . you get to keep.
Anything Bad . . . you get to toss out.
Pretty Good Deal.
And remember there is a whole lot of Good you are going to keep, and when you toss out the Bad . . . it gives you more room for more Good.
Ain't nothing but Win in this deal.
do not worry about what you will find.
Anything Good . . . you get to keep.
Anything Bad . . . you get to toss out.
Pretty Good Deal.
And remember there is a whole lot of Good you are going to keep, and when you toss out the Bad . . . it gives you more room for more Good.
Ain't nothing but Win in this deal.
Member
Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Iowa
Posts: 3,050
Love to you PW. I felt the exact same way starting my step four inventory. Just dreaded it. But I also wanted to get it over with, lol.
It helped me to work on it for a set amount of time each night. I started with twenty minutes a night, and that worked well for me. Some nights I'd get on a roll and say, "I'll just finish this section." That was OK. Even if it went over the twenty minutes. Other nights I would have to close the book early and walk away until the next day. That was OK too. Even five minutes of work is progress. Some of the questions will dredge up memories, things you never knew you were carrying around.
What I found was that for all my fear, the thing that stood out most was that I am essentially a good person. I remember the section on Honesty had the question- Have you ever stolen anything? All I could think about was one time when I was twelve or thirteen I shoplifted a t shirt from the mall. I was a thief, a horrible rotten person and it was going to come out in this inventory. Then I answered the rest of the questions. And I remembered all the things I had forgotten. The times I had returned found wallets with all the money still inside, given change back to a cashier when they gave me too much, returned to a store to pay for something that didn't get rung up.
It was a revelation. The negatives were so prominent in my mind because those were the exceptions to the way I normally behaved. And once you admit to something it is easier to make amends. Step 4 lifted a huge weight from me. The hard work is worth it.
It helped me to work on it for a set amount of time each night. I started with twenty minutes a night, and that worked well for me. Some nights I'd get on a roll and say, "I'll just finish this section." That was OK. Even if it went over the twenty minutes. Other nights I would have to close the book early and walk away until the next day. That was OK too. Even five minutes of work is progress. Some of the questions will dredge up memories, things you never knew you were carrying around.
What I found was that for all my fear, the thing that stood out most was that I am essentially a good person. I remember the section on Honesty had the question- Have you ever stolen anything? All I could think about was one time when I was twelve or thirteen I shoplifted a t shirt from the mall. I was a thief, a horrible rotten person and it was going to come out in this inventory. Then I answered the rest of the questions. And I remembered all the things I had forgotten. The times I had returned found wallets with all the money still inside, given change back to a cashier when they gave me too much, returned to a store to pay for something that didn't get rung up.
It was a revelation. The negatives were so prominent in my mind because those were the exceptions to the way I normally behaved. And once you admit to something it is easier to make amends. Step 4 lifted a huge weight from me. The hard work is worth it.
Member
Join Date: Jun 2014
Location: MD
Posts: 658
I started on mine in June, its been fascinating. I like the "searching and fearless" angle.. means I get to seek out all the old stuff- good bad and ugly, and own it all. The process may dredge up old attitudes and emotions... which is fine, now you can understand. People may make fun of "inner child" stuff- its fun to laugh at caricatures of the lingo, but the real work of finding that wounded teenager inside and this time NOT judging or interpreting or being consumed by anger or fear is a far more important and profound exercise.
But do please be patient & kind with yourself.. theres no telling if/how things might come to you... Whatever bad stuff thats there is already there, now you can bring it to light... share what you can with those you trust- I've had to really push myself to share in my last few meetings but doing so seems to free me from the debilitating reserve.
Good luck!
But do please be patient & kind with yourself.. theres no telling if/how things might come to you... Whatever bad stuff thats there is already there, now you can bring it to light... share what you can with those you trust- I've had to really push myself to share in my last few meetings but doing so seems to free me from the debilitating reserve.
Good luck!
Member
Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: W Washington
Posts: 11,589
This is an excellent bit from NA regarding our Step Four Journey:
Searching and fearless
Step Four calls on us to be searching and fearless. We are asked to look carefully at ourselves
and to get beneath the self-deceptions we have used up to now to hide the truth from ourselves.
We search within, as if entering a dark house with a single candle to guide us. We move ahead,
despite our fear or resistance to the unknown. We need to be willing to illuminate every corner
of every room of our minds as if our lives depend on it, because they do.
What we are searching for here is a complete and total picture of ourselves. We have found
that this requires honesty—honesty to examine our behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motives,
regardless of how unimportant they may appear. Our self-honesty is most important since it
will lead us to discover how our disease has affected our lives. We have operated with a
distorted self-image, never fully looking at the whole picture all at once. Now, possibly for the
first time in our lives, we will begin to see ourselves as we really are, rather than as we
imagined or fantasized. The more accurate and complete this picture is, the more freedom we
will gain.
At this point we need to emphasize that being thorough is not the same as being perfect.
There aren’t any perfect Fourth Steps. We do the best we can to be as thorough as possible. With
diligence and perseverance, we write as honestly as we can. Expecting perfection from
ourselves can sometimes be a way of putting off writing our Fourth Step. We may also have
heard people say “If you don’t do a thorough inventory, you’ll use again.” But here we have to
go back to our Third Step and trust God without any reservations. If we focus on our fear that
our inventory won’t be good enough, or worry about what our sponsor will say when we share
it, we may never get going. This won’t be the last inventory we write. It’s not necessary to write
a best-selling novel; it’s only necessary to make an honest beginning and be as thorough as we
can be. One of the things we learned in the Third Step was to trust God. Now we can be fearless and write the truth.
This Fourth Step is a freeing process as well as a healing one. We put our
faith in a loving God and trust that whatever we write will be exactly what we’re supposed to
write if we are truly searching and fearless.
Searching and fearless
Step Four calls on us to be searching and fearless. We are asked to look carefully at ourselves
and to get beneath the self-deceptions we have used up to now to hide the truth from ourselves.
We search within, as if entering a dark house with a single candle to guide us. We move ahead,
despite our fear or resistance to the unknown. We need to be willing to illuminate every corner
of every room of our minds as if our lives depend on it, because they do.
What we are searching for here is a complete and total picture of ourselves. We have found
that this requires honesty—honesty to examine our behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and motives,
regardless of how unimportant they may appear. Our self-honesty is most important since it
will lead us to discover how our disease has affected our lives. We have operated with a
distorted self-image, never fully looking at the whole picture all at once. Now, possibly for the
first time in our lives, we will begin to see ourselves as we really are, rather than as we
imagined or fantasized. The more accurate and complete this picture is, the more freedom we
will gain.
At this point we need to emphasize that being thorough is not the same as being perfect.
There aren’t any perfect Fourth Steps. We do the best we can to be as thorough as possible. With
diligence and perseverance, we write as honestly as we can. Expecting perfection from
ourselves can sometimes be a way of putting off writing our Fourth Step. We may also have
heard people say “If you don’t do a thorough inventory, you’ll use again.” But here we have to
go back to our Third Step and trust God without any reservations. If we focus on our fear that
our inventory won’t be good enough, or worry about what our sponsor will say when we share
it, we may never get going. This won’t be the last inventory we write. It’s not necessary to write
a best-selling novel; it’s only necessary to make an honest beginning and be as thorough as we
can be. One of the things we learned in the Third Step was to trust God. Now we can be fearless and write the truth.
This Fourth Step is a freeing process as well as a healing one. We put our
faith in a loving God and trust that whatever we write will be exactly what we’re supposed to
write if we are truly searching and fearless.
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