Step 9: A Very Particular Part Of Recovery

There is a specific part of Step 9 that I always feel I need to address when working with people working on recovery.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

It's time again for Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jock DeBerker, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. I wanted to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, Please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light. All right. Have a good time. Learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional.

UNKNOWN: 1:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:51

Step 9 in the 12-step process is a very specific attempt to make amends, to try to right the feelings of wrongs when it comes to the things that you've done. So step 9 in the 12-step process says,"...made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." I wanted to address a very, very specific part of step nine, except when to do so, you know, when it would cause injury to those people or to others. I have an interpretation of that when it comes to the injury part. There are a lot of times when I'm dealing with people and I'm walking them through the steps in my therapy and they're It's funny because they want to try to do step nine right away because when they start getting clean or they start getting sober, they immediately want to go to fixing the problems. And especially with men, men have a real problem with that because they're very linear. They see a problem. They want to pick one of the solutions that are out there, implement it, and then move on. And that's not how recovery works. First of all, that's not how a lot of things in life work. And then you lay that into an addict brain where I want it all and I want it right now. Thinking would lead you to that point where you're trying to do everything immediately. and just to get it over with. But the specifics of step nine that I find interesting, and I have an interpretation of it that is perhaps a little different than maybe you have thought of, certainly it is more different than I've heard, and that is that the injury part to the individual that you're trying to do the step nine with, right? So you're trying to, but whenever to do so would injure them or others. But who does that include? So the person, obviously the person that you're trying to make amends to, right? So you meet with somebody and you're talking to them. You're trying to go through the issues that you had and you're apologizing and trying to figure out a way to make it okay for the person. But actually what you're doing is you're trying to allow them the opportunity to relieve themselves of the anger that you gifted them. In your addiction, you act crazy and you chaotically and you cause problems for people. And when you're making amends, what you're doing is you're saying to that person, listen, I gave you anger as this horrible, unwanted gift, and I'm trying to give you the opportunity to give it back to me because you shouldn't have to carry the burden of that problem of the anger or the upset or the resentment or whatever it is, the sadness or whatever you've given that person. So you're giving them the opportunity to be relieved of that pain. Now, if they want to hang on to it, they can, but you're offering that up. So when you're meeting with people and you're trying to make amends, except when it would cause injury to them or to others, I believe, it is my belief, that when you're making amends, sometimes the situation can be so catastrophic to you, the addict, that making amends would cause injury to you. And this is a difficult problem for people there are people who because of situations or how it kind of played out in their lives making amends would be going to that person saying I'm sorry that I injured you I'm sorry that I did these things to you I want you to know I now know how wrong that was but being in the presence of that person may be so so injurious to you injurious in a way that causes you to to feel um pain that you're you just you've spent maybe a year two years three years four years working through that pain so somebody who um is a trusted loved one and you know your addiction had caused them to uh to lose things or to have to changed their lives in such a way that they were trying to take care of you or resolve issues, and it caused them a huge amount of problems. But at the same time, perhaps that was somebody that was abusive to you. And that happens with parents a lot of times. The parents become the ones who are the perpetrators of these, not crimes, but these times of injury. They were abusive to their children, but they The children stayed with them, and they stayed with the children until they finally were getting into the ages where they were teenagers or maybe later, and they became destructive. And you have, as an addict, you have this tremendous amount of resentment and anger towards that parent for being abusive. And yet, later in life, you cause them pain by being destructive. I've had that happen in my family. and uh you know with my with my um aunts and uncles um i've seen that happen and it so when you approach somebody that has been an abuser of you but you then caused problems for them maybe going to them and making amends would cause injury to you because you've never been able to maybe they just the person who was doing that to you never stopped really doing it And so you get this weird dynamic of you love them, but you can't stand them. You have contempt for them, but you have maybe child parental respect. And you just don't want to go back to that place. Boundaries is what recovery is all about, having boundaries. And if it means you have to cross that boundary to go do that, and that would cause you problems, that's something to think about. Now, here's the part that that I want to make sure that people understand is that if you feel like confronting that person and trying to make amends with them would cause you harm, you need to have that discussion with somebody else and you need to discuss it for a while to come to the determination as to what that actually means to you. Because, you know, a lot of times we are our worst, best counsel. We only listen to the voice in our head, and we're not listening to others' voices. And so my suggestion is that you work through that issue thoroughly, and if not completely, in the presence of a counselor or therapist that would be, you know, or your pastor, a trusted, a very close, trusted friend who has a lot of respect for you and you for them. but somebody that has a position of understanding and or authority that you respect. Because if you decide that not making amends to that person directly, when you know where they are, you could find them. And you may not have contact with them on a regular basis, but you know where they are. You need to make sure that what you're doing is actually correct. And you can't do that by making your own decisions. because like I said, we are our own worst counsel when it comes to the really tough things. So my hope is that if you're considering yourself as being in a position where making amends would cause injury to you, that's what you feel in your heart, like I can't do that, that you have worked through the understanding of that because not confronting people, and I'm saying that in a positive way, confronting, Being, approaching that person and making amends is something that is, that you do for you and you do it for the other person. But if you are going to try to figure out a way to get out of doing it, that's not a good choice. And that's what I see some people doing. They kind of chicken out, right? You're just going to be a little bit of a coward in that and that you don't confront the person. with the things that you've done that are wrong and try to make amends because it's easier to just avoid the whole thing. There are a couple of people that have done things to me and I know they have moved towards recovery and they've never done step nine with me. And, you know, I know other people have experienced this. I mean, maybe you've experienced this. You see the person, you see they were a train wreck, they were abusing the relationship or you somehow, And then you see them get better and then they never try to deal with the things that they did in recovery to you. And it can leave you with some resentment. And perhaps it's a little bit worse for me because I know this whole process inside and out, backwards and forwards. I teach people to do it. I walk people through it. I see them go through this. So for somebody to not do a step nine with me when they should be doing it, for me, it raises a lot of suspicion about where they are in their recovery, even though they, you know, appear to be recovered. But it also makes me wonder about their inner strength, right? That courage, you know, being courageous to be able to do that and maybe being a little bit of a coward in the process of not being able to do it. That's certainly in there. So when you're trying to decide... Is this going to be an injury to me if I do this? Is this going to be a problem for me? Should I do something about that? You know, my own inner working of my problems? Yes, you absolutely should. So should I do this? Yes or no? I don't feel like I have the strength or I don't want to put myself in a situation where I'm going to be... Abused by others or I'm going to go through all the stuff that I just spent the last two years or three years or four years working through and now I'm going to go see that person. A really good example of that was I had a client who was severely alcoholic. Very nice woman. She was in her mid 30s, late 30s, early 40s, somewhere in there. And she had been sexually abused by her father when she was growing up. And she was in a position where she had to, in her recovery, she had caused a tremendous amount of damage to the relationship she had with her two parents, who were still together. Because being somebody who was as old as she was and as much of a train wreck as she was, she had to be cared for. A lot of alcoholics do that. They lose their jobs. They lose their housing. And they need a place to stay. Well, she was graciously given a place to stay. by her parents. And so she's living with them and now she's in recovery. And she needs to make amends to her father. Well, she had moved out of the house. She was there for, I don't know, a few months and then she left. And this is a really conflicting kind of thing because her father had never acknowledged any wrongdoing and the sexual abuse that he had committed against his daughter, nor had he ever um apologized for it he didn't he just it just it went on and on and on and he never apologized he never did anything to to rectify the situation so for his daughter who now is an adult to come to him and say hey i'm sorry that i was such a you know a burden to you as an adult um this was going to cause her a lot of problems and the sexual abuse was severe in her case and then her alcoholism and the acting out she did as an adult was severe and we had very long discussions about this because going to her mother was one thing she had some resentment towards her mother about not doing anything about you know what she knew her husband was doing to his daughter or her daughter and that was one thing we talked about that quite a bit but We had these very intense sessions for weeks about this because to do the amends would cause her harm. And she was very conflicted by that because she felt a tremendous amount of guilt about how she had been conducting herself. with her parents and forcing her parents to be worried and concerned and to have to put up financially as well as physically for her well-being, knowing that that was a problem. And then she says she was extremely conflicted about this. And the discussions that we had were around, well, what does it mean to you if you have to look at this man and make amends for something you've done and he has never made amends or made an attempt to make amends for what he's done. And I, you know, we talked about it from every angle possible. Like, well, if you do that and he says, you know, I appreciate your apology and then that's it. And, you know, now you've made amends with him and he does nothing. He doesn't say anything about anything he did. That's one thing. Or perhaps you make amends and he turns... At that moment, and then he breaks down and apologizes and makes amends or tries to make amends for what he did to you. There's that possibility. What if he just brushes it off? I mean, all the possibilities that were there, we talked about it from every possible angle until she finally came to the conclusion that this amends that she would try to make with him would cause her too much harm. And her alcoholism was a direct cause from the severe trauma she suffered as a child with sexual abuse with her father. There was really nothing else, but she was so paralyzed by this. It destroyed her marriage. She ended up getting divorced. I think she lost her job, if I remember correctly, in the process with the alcoholism. And all of her drinking, it was all... based on her being very, very unhappy and upset about the relationship that she had as a child with her parents and the abuse she suffered. So it was a very difficult thing for her to realize that this, coming to this point where she would say that this would cause harm to others, and that includes me, meant that she would not be able to make amends to him directly even though he was still in the place where she lived. in the town but um she had kind of moved on at that point she had moved on with her life she had been able to stop the drinking get herself together um you know find ways to to uh to live a healthy clean sober life and that was great because that's you know that's what she was trying for was sobriety but the peacefulness and sobriety escaped her um Because of the issues around the issue with her father and trying to make amends and trying to figure out what to do. So in the end, what we did was we made amends. I'm saying we. She made amends to her father as if it was somebody that you can't go to. They're either dead. You don't know who they are. You don't know where to find them or they're refusing to meet with you. And she made amends in that way. And there was a little ceremony around it that was created that we did that allowed her to get to that place. It was very tough for her to go through that. And witnessing it was very hard too because it's difficult when somebody is– neglected or abused or abandoned or assaulted in some way that's that leaves an indelible mark that's always going to have a little bit of scar tissue around it it's the injury that you know it's so deep that for life you'll have a little bit of a scar um and that's the situation with her but in the end she had to and and she also had to practice that amends several times and we did that several times um over over the next few months because it was difficult for her to she would go back to it let me put it that way she'd go back to that feeling and she would revisit it and then we'd have to go through it again um so the part that i wanted the whole point of that story is the the ability to um make amends except when to when to do so would cause injury or harm to that person or to others. You need to consider what that means. It's a very, very important thing. In the big book, the steps are, it's a single sentence, and I read it to you. It's a single sentence, but it's a very potent, powerful thing. And it has a lot of potential for healing as well as destruction. And you need to make sure that you take into account every bit of it before you enter into something like making amends. It's a very challenging thing. You're confronting your own stuff and you're doing it publicly with the person that you harmed. And it's very tricky. There are a lot of things to consider. Going to somebody and addressing it is a challenging thing. It takes a lot of bravery and courage to do it. And when you do try, when you do it, And if you do get rejected in the process, it can be hurtful. There are times when people I know, and I've done this myself, when I've apologized and the person says, I can't forgive you. That hurts. It hurts in a way that you can't really fathom how much that's going to injure you. at the time so having the the courage to be able to do that is a great thing if you're able to do it and if you did do it and then the know that what you're really doing is you're trying to make it right for yourself and for the other person that's you know it's a scriptural thing forgiving others how many times must we forgive these people that keep yelling at us or attacking us and how many times do we have to do it seven times five times seven times how about seven times seventy how about every time those are jesus's words too um you know how what is the purpose of forgiveness forgiveness is teaching and showing what we are and what we would like other people to be treat them with fairness treat them with um consideration that's what jesus was trying to tell uh the people that were against him and against the uh the 12 apostles and um you know we're trying to be better people and in recovery certainly we're trying to be better people but boy we come from a really low dark place to get there um And so trying to understand how to forgive is one part. The action of forgiving is another part. But the consideration involved in the forgiveness process is the third part of it. And you have to consider yourself. You can't not make amends with somebody directly simply because you are being cowardly, right? You're less than courageous. That's not a reason for doing it. You must... Make amends, either with the person or without them, because what you're doing is you're making it right with God. That's the whole point of the 12-step process is I have to make this right because I have to be the righteous person. So finding ways to be able to do that with courage and with consideration is a really important part of the 12 steps, and in particular, Step 9. So if you're in that point where you're doing step nine, be courageous, be fearless, and know that when you're confronting others, what you're doing is you're dealing with the problems that you've brought them and you're relieving them of the anger that you gave them. It's the unwanted gift. Well, that's this episode of Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard. Hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if you have, please like, subscribe and tell others. Send me a message and let me know what you think. I appreciate the comments, but I really do appreciate the feedback that we get. I read the feedback and consider it in these podcasts. If you're trying to get help for your addiction or you're thinking about getting help, just go do it. Go to rehab. Go to the hospital. Get a counselor. Go to meetings. Step into the rooms. But do something. Don't just end your life in the process of getting high or getting drunk and thinking that that's the solution to the problems. It's not. Go get some help. Get some support. Until next time, this is Dr. Jacques saying, see ya.