The Essence of Recovery Step Nine - Listening

What if Step Nine isn’t about delivering the perfect apology, but about finally hearing the truth you’ve been dodging? We take a fresh look at amends and uncover why listening, not speechmaking, is the hinge that turns shame into repair and distance into connection.

We start by challenging the urge to control outcomes—no more scripting how others should respond or rushing toward instant forgiveness. Instead, we break down how to take responsibility without the “but you also” trap, and how to open space for the other person’s experience. You’ll hear real stories with a partner and parents that reveal a hard lesson: the deepest wounds are often the small, repeated breaks in presence—missed moments, phones at the table, emotional absence—rather than the dramatic blowups we obsess over. When we ask what hurt most and stay quiet long enough to truly listen, we finally learn what repair looks like to them.

From there, we get practical. We walk through a simple framework for Step Nine conversations: set intention, acknowledge harm, invite their perspective, reflect back, and co-create specific repair. We talk about boundaries, restitution, and how technology supercharges secrecy, making transparency and daily structure even more important. And we connect the dots across the steps: moving from self to others in Seven and Eight, practicing empathy in Nine, and then carrying that growth forward through Ten, Eleven, and Twelve so peace, freedom, and serenity stop being slogans and start becoming daily realities.

If you’re ready to make amends that actually heal—rooted in humility, accountability, and genuine listening—this conversation is your map. Subscribe, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review telling us one way you plan to practice listening this week.

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome And Core Principles
• 0:46 The Recovery Growth Scorecard
• 1:38 Reframing Step Nine
• 3:15 Responsibility Versus Defensiveness
• 4:07 From Self To Others In The Steps
• 6:15 Listening Over Control In Amends
• 9:15 Girlfriend And Mother Amends
• 10:55 Father’s Apology And Reconnection

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

We are getting to the core of the new you, the essence of step nine. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day. To work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, business, school. Just work. And to love unconditionally. Put, put, put, put, put more love out there and watch more love return. Just love unconditionally. Remember, recovery is beautiful. Your EQ is your IQ, and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. Now, what we're encouraging people to do is to download the recovery growth scorecard. It is free. Utilize the scorecard to start changing the neurotransmitters, the neuroplasticity in your brain as you recover, or if you're already in recovery, short term, long term, and you keep generating natural dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin. That way you heal, you stay healthy. LifeisWonderful. And just keep watching your recovery get better and better. Now let's jump in to this week's episode, The Essence of Step Nine, which is listening. Now, part of a lot of part of when people talk about step nine, they want to talk about, oh, I'm gonna make amends. I'm gonna go before the people that I have hurt, which is going to include the loved ones, the spouse, the boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, the parents, the siblings, the kids, the best friends, the employers. Those are the people that usually hit the list. And here is the thing people always talk about, and it is about responsibility, taking responsibility for what you have done, how you have hurt, not how they hurt you. Because I'm assuming, and especially you're dealing with family or dealing with some love lover, that they've hurt you. That's not your problem. Right now, you're trying to kind of grow up. What we're doing here in the steps is growing up, gaining that maturity. Like we talked about, step eight is truly about maturity. If you truly love people, you are gonna put them on a list. Step seven is when you really, the essence of step seven is you start thinking of others. It's that turning point where you move away from self and you start thinking of others. Because the 12 steps, six about self, six about getting outside of yourself. And so step nine really gets to listening. Because when you actually make an amendment, it's not about taking responsibility. It's actually about finally, finally listening to the person that you had hurt, that you have avoided. See, when we're an addict, we're very immature and we don't want to take responsibility. Because these people are probably willing to tell us for years things that we needed to hear about ourselves or things that we were doing. But because we're addicts, and if you're like me, you're gonna get very defensive. You're gonna start to feel hurt, you're gonna start to shift the blame, you're gonna think that it's the hot potato, we're gonna have it in our hands, nope, we're gonna throw it back at you. And we were so good at deflecting. We were so good at never listening to our own bad behavior, to our own hurtful behavior, to our disappearance, to our not being in the moment, always being on our phones, even if our bodies were physically at, let's say, Thanksgiving or at a birthday party or at some type of school event for the kids. And so finally, we can first tell a person how we have seen our each relationship and what we feel, how we have damaged it, and how we are willing to repair what we have damaged, what we have destroyed, and how we can move it forward. But the key piece and the most important piece, because look, if you're like me, and you're like a lot of addicts that I have heard, gamblers, alcoholics, druggies, we all wanted to control how a step nine was going to work. We all wanted to know exactly how they were going to respond, how they were going to just accept our apology and everything was going to be gravy. But it never works out well that way. Because they have a totally different perspective. They don't think the way we do. They're usually either very codependent and they've always been enabling us, or they've been kind of distant and they're void of their either their own feelings, so they weren't truly aware of what we were doing, but they did see how they were being neglected, so they did have their point of view. So even though we thought that certain things would go well, and this happened, you know, with me, uh, when I did, you know, my main step nine was with a girlfriend that I'd already been with for years. And I had to first tell her what I thought went wrong. Same thing like with my mother, I told her exactly what I thought went wrong. But my girlfriend, she at that time, she had told me different things that I thought were very minimal, but that were very impactful to her. And that's where I really realized step nine is truly about listening. I have to listen to how I hurt them. Because sometimes when we're in, even in current relationships, I've got to be aware of how I am being perceived. Even though I think I may be doing everything correctly, they may be receiving a totally different message, or at least partly different message. So I think the beauty of the step nine is we start listening and realizing, man, man, oh man, these people have a totally different way when I was either on the phone or I had to escape, or I'd run to the bathroom, or I'd go outside, or I'm in my car, or you know, there's a thousand things that, especially as gamblers, checking scores and calling bookies and thousand things. A little different nowadays, because everything can be manipulated at your phone, and you can pretty much almost do it in front of people on your phone, pretending you're texting and you're actually making certain bets. So it's a little easier to place bets, but it's also commit more, you can have more destruction quicker because it's on your phone. But let's get back. So she was telling me about things, and I just had to really sit down and listen. And I I stopped being defensive. I stopped trying to shift the blame. I s I started to take responsibility and hear her and hear how I could make it better from her side. My mom was trying to kind of deflect everything that things weren't so bad, and I had to kind of remind her certain things, certain monies that I had taken and lost, gambling, speculating, uh speculating on oil, you know, just doing some dumb shit. And they kind of reminded her how I hurt her feelings, even though she immediately didn't want to admit it. You know, like with my dad, it took like six months before I could actually do an amends. And then, you know, the he his was the biggest surprise because he apologized for things that happened in our family. And so that was enlightening, and it just really strengthened our relationship from going to one to being really less communicative for the last for about 10 years to one that was actually a lot more uh communicative for his final 10 years of life. And you know, things like with brother or friends, you know, there's things that just kind of just uh got clearer on either how they thought of me or what was going on. So I encourage people to really tap into listening because I think the listening helps us to be empathetic. And that is where we need to get to. We really truly want to have better relationships. We have to be more empathetic, we have to listen. We have to be aware of what we may be doing. So I want people to truly embrace step nine. There is so much value in it. And you know, it kind of keeps moving us forward. And we're gonna go into step 10. Like I said, there's no such thing as maintenance steps. That's all stupid words that are used in meetings that make zero sense because there's no such thing as maintenance. You live the steps, you work the steps each and every day. And all the steps matter at any point in time. I'm a believer in trying to do each step thoroughly the first time so you don't have to keep repeating steps. But the key thing is that step 10, 11, and 12 keep moving us forward on how to be a better human being, on how to be there more for others, on how to really, really get the most out of life because what we're gonna cherish is our relationships. So when we do these right now, steps seven, eight, and nine, think of others, gain that maturity, and listen to others. Man, we're growing. We are growing and we are making something better. We're making our lives better because all of that is gonna in turn go back to the big goals. The big goals are we want more peace in our life, we want to have that total freedom from addiction, and we want to have that serenity now. And that is the way to live. So, with that, I want to encourage you to listen, be empathetic, realize life is wonderful, and with that, we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.