Episode 242 -- October 13, 2022

Step Ten: How to Sober up to Your Humanness

If we are in a 12 Step program, there's a time when we eventually make it to Step Ten: "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." As we approach this Step, we are keeping our emotional triggers in check. We are becoming aware of these triggers and watching out for them daily. We know that there is more to recovery than abstinence. This Step invites us to continue working on our character defects, building healthy relationships and making the most out of our life.

In his book, Drop the Rock: The Ripple Effect, Fred H. helps us explore Step Ten, and how the habits and practices that we build in a program of recovery create positive effects in us that ripple outward into our relationships and beyond.

The following excerpt discusses the subtle changes that happen as recovery deepens. As we keep practicing Step Ten, our focus shifts from self to others. We turn ourselves towards being of service, while also noticing and acknowledging our own needs. Fred H. introduces the concept of emotional sobriety. We can let go of pleasant and unpleasant as ways to think about our emotions and consider instead whether our life of recovery is sustainable or unstainable.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

As We Cross the Sea of Life

As beloved AA speaker Chuck C. has observed, when we first began working the Program, we thought that alcohol (or drugs, or overeating, or whatever) was our problem, because we have a body that can't tolerate it, coupled with a mind that can't leave it alone.

But when we first used alcohol, it wasn't a problem for us—it was an answer. That's why we drank—or shot up, or overate, or gambled away our savings. This means that our foundational problem existed before we began drinking or drugging or overeating.

By the time we reach Step Ten, we clearly understand what that foundational problem is: overreliance on self. That was our single biggest character defect, and for much or our life, it blocked us from having a spiritual experience.

I smile when I hear people refer to the Twelve Steps as a self-help program, because it's exactly the opposite. Our "selves" need help. The Twelve Steps teach us how and when to ask for help from a Higher Power—not how to rely more on the self and self-centeredness.

When we reach Step Ten, we are no longer drinking or using or overeating. But something much greater has also occurred: we've sobered up to our humanness—to our limitations. We've also sobered up to our need to grow and serve on an ongoing basis. We know that we cannot simply settle for chemical relief. We know that if chemical relief is all we focus on, we have taken the first step toward relapse.

As we work Step Ten, we also come to understand some subtle aspects of the Program that are not generally visible to newcomers. Our attitude toward the Steps has shifted—and continues to shift—in profound ways. Let's look closely at some of these shifts.

From Dependence to Service, and from Domination to Assertiveness

As we work Step Ten and it becomes integrated into our life, we let go of trying to control the world—or other people.

We see that our former strategies of demanding, dominating, manipulating, wheedling, flattering, and people pleasing were all forms of overreliance on self. We also come to see that these strategies were the source of most of our (and anyone's) defective interactions.

Now, as we practice Step Ten, we stop looking to others to fulfill us. Instead, we focus on how we can be of service—while also noticing and acknowledging our own needs.

Being of service doesn't mean becoming a doormat. It's exactly the opposite. We learn to become assertive instead of aggressive or dependent. Instead of trying to get others to do what we want, we do whatever is compassionate, or just, or most appropriate for the situation.

We also speak the truth about who we are and what we're feeling. We learn what our real needs are, and we learn to express them clearly and directly, without trying to manipulate others into fulfilling them. We understand that assertiveness is our perfect right—as well as the antidote to the demands we used to make of others.

We are also aware that we can never know exactly how others will respond. When we express ourselves and our needs clearly and directly, they might happily accommodate us. Or they might say "Not gonna happen" or "Not interested" or "Screw you for asking" or even "Screw you for needing that."

Throughout my drinking years and during the first few years of my recovery, I was a compulsive people pleaser. I would do whatever I felt would make others happy and comfortable, in the hope that they would think favorably of me. This was one of my biggest character defects. It was also a subtle form of domination, because I was trying to get everybody else to do my bidding. Through my people pleasing, I demanded that others meet a need in me, which was to be liked. I was focused on myself, and I compulsively tried to get others to focus on me as well.

Bill W. had the very same character defect. In his 1958 Grapevine article "The Next Frontier: Emotional Sobriety," he observed that his own painful dependencies caused him to demand that other people in AA meet his needs. Repeatedly, he tried to get others to do his bidding and depend upon him. Eventually he recognized that he lacked emotional sobriety. From an emotional standpoint, he was still acting like an addict.

During those years when I too lacked emotional sobriety, I radiated an essence of neediness and unsteadiness that blocked me from having a spiritual experience. Now imagine the essence you radiate when you simply show up as yourself in a spirit of compassion and service, and let other people know exactly who you are and what you feel.

Over time, as we work Step Ten, one of the things that changes is the essence of what we radiate. Some people call it a vibe or an intangible influence. This is the energy behind the Ripple Effect.

Sustainable and Unsustainable Emotions

As part of working Step Ten, we learn to pay attention to our emotions as they arise in each new moment.

When used properly, our emotions help us stay alive and healthy. Fear keeps us safe. Guilt prevents us from repeating a harmful action. Awe keeps us humble and grateful. In a balanced life, our emotions serve as valuable and faithful indicators of how we're living and how we're using our free will. They often also point to what we're planning to do next—and, sometimes, to what we need to do instead.

Before we began working the Steps, we viewed our emotions as a posse of friends and a group of enemies. Our life consisted mostly of wanting to experience pleasant emotions and avoid unpleasant ones.

Now, however, we realize that this was a hallmark of our lack of emotional sobriety. We also understand that simply trying to feel good is a road that leads to relapse. In working Step Ten, we let go of the distinction of pleasant and unpleasant, and instead we focus on whether an emotion points toward a sustainable or unsustainable recovery and life.

The emotions that point us toward a sustainable life are themselves sustainable. No matter how much of them we experience, they continue to support our lives. Sustainable emotions include peace of mind, connectedness, love, compassion, joy, serenity, and peace.

The emotions that lead us toward an unsustainable life are themselves inherently unsustainable. The more they grow, the more they can get in the way. The most common unsustainable emotions are the unpleasant ones: shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, anger, rage, irritability, and so on. Quite a few are forms of fear, such as anxiety, unease, panic, and terror. When we feel these emotions briefly, we pay attention to them, identify their source and whether they're cues to some action we need to take to regain balance in our lives, and then we let them go. Treated this way, they're not a problem. However, if we cling to them and keep feeding them, eventually they will harm us—and, often, allow us to harm others.

But there's another group of emotions that are equally unsustainable—yet they feel pleasant, at least at first. These include arrogance, overconfidence, excessive pride, superiority, self-righteousness, and hubris. Others include the relief we feel when we avoid discovery or punishment for acting badly and the pleasure we take in someone else's pain or failure. (The German language actually has a word for this: Schadenfreude.)

We work Step Ten with the unshakable knowledge (faith) that we can't live a sustainable life with a primary focus on self. Knowing this, we carefully observe our own emotions on an ongoing basis. We nurture those that, in turn, will nurture a sustainable life and recovery. We also notice those that will not; we take the appropriate actions if needed and then let them go. All the while, we keep in mind that the more we sustain our recovery, the more it sustains us.

About the Author:
Fred H. has worked in the field of addiction and recovery for thirty-nine years and is the director of the retreat center for a leading addiction treatment program. He is a popular international speaker on the Big Book and the principles of the Twelve Steps.

© 2016 by Fred H.
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