Balking

This podcast is about what to do when you find yourself balking at a particular step with AA's twelve steps.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

My name is Tom and I'm an alcoholic. Most likely, you're not stuck where you think you are. Now maybe sometimes when you're stuck, you're just stuck. If I drive my car into mud, I can get pretty damn stuck and I am stuck right there in that place where I think I am. If I can move my car out of that place, then life is good. But unfortunately, the twelve steps don't work that way. Let's say I've gotten into the four step and I've stopped writing. Well, why am I stopped writing? Likely I'm seeing other things as being more important, at least more important for today. We get sober and then we get busy. We get sober and then there's so many other things we need to do. And it feels like when we get stuck, we forget what's most important. For me what's most important isn't not drinking. For me what's most important is putting my higher power first. Being able to feel the sunlight of the spirit, being able to stop playing God, and being able to help others are absolutely what I need. And all that is a reflection of my spiritual condition. If I'm stuck and I've stopped writing, the first solution is obvious. There is no writing problem that has ever been solved by anything other than writing. Doesn't matter if you have a fountain pen or you're dictating into your phone or you're writing in a perfectly organized binder with everything in its place. You solve writing problems by writing. So the first solution is to start writing again. Except that may not work. If it doesn't, then I'm balking, and it's a little more complicated. Anytime I'm balking, the key is to stop doing so. So what's going on when it seems impossible to muster the will which is required to get back to it? Here's the key idea. In any process, when you have a problem on a particular step, it's likely that the problem originated not in the step where you're stuck, but in a previous step. Once more, when you have a problem in a step, likely it started before the step you're in. So I look backwards. If I won't pick up a pen in the fourth step, then maybe my conception of my higher power in step three had some problems. Maybe I said I wasn't going to play God anymore, but what I really meant was, well, not all that much. Am I going to play God? And if that's the case, then the problem might originate before step three. Maybe I'm talking about a higher power, but I'm not trusting that higher power. Just because I have something that I'm willing to call my higher power doesn't mean that I trust it enough to let it help me with my problems. Nor does it mean that I'm absolutely convinced that this higher power has my best interests in mind. If that's the case, I have a problem in step two. If I'm not trusting God, then I have to ask myself why. Maybe I don't really need my higher power. Maybe I can get along without it. After all, I stopped drinking, didn't I? And I stopped drinking without having had an effect of step one, right? So maybe I really did have the power to stop drinking. Maybe I'm not alcoholic. Or maybe I'm convincing myself I'm not that alcoholic. Scary thoughts. I hope that's not where you are, because if you are, then you have a problem with step one. And if you do, you may need a good humbling talk with your sponsor. Now let's be perfectly clear about what I'm not saying. I am not saying that if you stop writing in the four step, you should start over in the steps. Fuck that. But I may need to go back over how I got to this place so that I can take a little bit of action. Prayer works. Now why do I resist praying so much? Why do we resist praying so much? Beats the heck out of me, but I do and we do. Sometimes it's as simple as my aversion to starting any fucking thing. I don't like getting started. Long before I got sober, I knew this. I knew it because what I did for a living would involve a session with a client for two to three hours. And I didn't like getting started. At the beginning of that session, as the two of us got engaged in what was ultimately collaborative work, the quality of our output would suck. I mean really suck. Sometimes embarrassingly so, because it was taking us a while to get started, and it was taking us a while to fully commit. Because it takes a while to get out of one's head and keep into being in the moment. Anyway, I hate starting. To be fair, it didn't mean that I didn't like doing what I was doing because I did. It was just the starting that I disliked, and that would go away of its own, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But then inevitably, a time would come in the session when I was connected, felt a part of, and was doing solid work with my partner. And I loved that. Were there exceptions? Of course. Every once in a while everything would suck, but that was rare, and afterwards there were usually pretty obvious reasons why it happened. So that's why I hate starting. Starting is an obstacle to overcome. Funny thing though, there's a weird momentum that happens right after starting. If I need to hang a picture, let's say a somewhat heavy picture in drywall, I don't have to force myself all the way through the job. If I just fetch the tools I need and get them to where the picture is going to hang, I'm going to be just fine. Or maybe all I have to do is put my hands on the frame I'm going to hang, and that's enough. Once I start even a little, I may well continue to not like starting, but to get over my own damn self and move forward. Sometimes I need to pray. Well, parenthetically and off topic, frequently I need to pray for all kinds of reasons, but that's a different story and we won't go there. Sometimes in order to get started doing something I'm avoiding, I'll begin with a prayer. Sometimes I can begin by putting just one dish in the sink. Other times it begins with deciding that I'm going to write one resentment right now. I only have to write one, but I'm going to write it right now. And that's where I'm coming from. If I have a problem in the ninth step, it doesn't mean I have a problem with the ninth step. And in fact, if we are talking the ninth step, and I'm not making amends, then clearly without a doubt, the problem isn't the ninth step at all. It's at least going to be in the eighth step. It might be earlier. If I get stopped in step work, the problem likely started before the place I got stuck. If I find myself not doing something that at least I think I want to do, then I have to look backwards. Maybe you do too more soon.