Making Amends: Moving Through AA Steps 8 and 9

However, making amends doesn’t always have to be a nerve-racking, dreadful or joyless experience. There is freedom that is gained by cleaning up the past, a freedom to live peacefully in the present. At this point in our step work we may be trudging the road to happy destiny, but we’ve reached the point where we must repair what we left behind us on a path of shattered relationships. As active addicts and alcoholics, we likely lied, cheated, or stole in order to get, use (and hide using) our drug of choice… because addiction creates absolute moral wreckage. This can lead to a breakdown in communication, increased conflict, financial strain, and a profound loss of trust within the family unit.

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Step 9 is about living amends aa restoring peace through self-forgiveness, forgiving others, and making amends, which is essential to recovery. Undoubtedly, you, too, have a list of ways in which you want to live out your living amends, and that’s great! The more personalized your lifestyle changes are, the more they’re going to resonate and stick with you.

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Essentially, don’t make promises that you can’t keep and do everything you can to live up to the promises you do make. The unfortunate truth is that we’re all human and we all fall short sometimes. However, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed at your new, honest and sober lifestyle. You can still be true to that by making an honest apology and not making excuses for why you didn’t follow through. You cannot strip someone else of their agency to choose any more than you can eternally carry the pain of a decision you can’t change.

Restoring Relationships: The Transformative Power of Making Amends in Recovery

• If you aren’t able to make direct amends, then you can volunteer your time or help someone else out.
• These actions demonstrate a new way of living and help develop accountability, paving the way for Step 10, where amends are made immediately upon realizing harm.
• When discussing our amends list with our sponsors, if we are open-minded, we can start to think about these kinds of situations in ways we haven’t thought about them before.
• Other individuals who have completed Step 9, such as your sponsor, may be able to help you choose a meaningful way to make indirect amends.

Some of us do this by writing about how it felt to make the amends and what we learned from the experience. Guilt and shame are the unnecessary chains that bind us to our past. By practicing these spiritual principles we can break those chains and achieve the freedom from our addiction that we have yearned for. Humility is the freedom from pride or arrogance and having the quality or state of being humble. In the Ninth Step, we will focus on the spiritual principles of humility, forgiveness and love.

Life is complicated and not always straightforward or black and white. Therefore some Step Nine amends may take a little creativity and patience. Working this stepshould never lead to the further harm of others. While apologies and making amends may seem similar on the surface, there is a critical distinction between the two. Apologies primarily focus on expressing remorse through words, whereas making amends involves a more profound commitment to translating those words into tangible actions. Resolve to work at making things better between you and keeping your promises.

AA Step 9 – Amends are more than apologies

AA’s step work has been adjusted for use in other addiction recovery programs, such as sex addiction or drug addiction. Overall, the step of making amends in AA encompasses the program’s mission to heal the emotional and spiritual aspects of alcoholism while also diminishing the physical and mental side effects of addiction. It is important to note that just https://ecosoberhouse.com/ because you have made amends does not mean that your relationships will be completely healed or return back to normal. Addiction is a complex and pervasive disease that extends far beyond the individual struggling with substance abuse.

• The root of many fears and feelings boil down to guilt and shame.
• Repairing previous harm also assists in helping you rebuild important relationships which may have been impacted by addiction.
• From the steps leading up to nine, recovering alcoholics begin to develop tools to handle stressful situations without liquor and believe in a Higher Power greater than themselves.
• We do not receive any commission or fee that is dependent upon which treatment provider a caller chooses.

Start apologizing

Making amends is a key to releasing the emotional shackles of the damage you carry, whether you own it or not. Just like each person needs an marijuana addiction individualized approach to alcohol addiction treatment, your approach to making amends in AA may look completely different from someone else’s. Making amends fosters clarity, self-forgiveness, and relief from guilt, which is healing. It also offers others a chance to gain resolution or a deeper understanding of your recovery journey.