If your actions match your intentions and you reach out in person, you are doing the next right thing to right past wrongs. And remember, if you are feeling ashamed about mistakes made and damage done during your using days, you are not your disease. No matter how much we feel the need to make things right, forcing another to meet with us or hear from us is not part of the Steps. When those we’ve hurt are not able or willing to accept our amends, we can still move in a positive general direction by taking intentional steps to be of service to others or making living amends.
The Value of the Principles of AA
It’s one of the 12 steps that every AA member needs to complete. Not only does making amends help you get over past mistakes, but it also helps repair your relationships with other people. However, some people are afraid of making what is a living amends amends because they don’t know what to say, how to start, or how others are going to respond. While everyone’s journey is different and you cannot control how others will respond there are ways to approach this step appropriately.
How Living Amends Positively Impacts Recovery Outcomes
In Twelve Step recovery, your pace is your own to determine. No doubt you will experience challenges and setbacks along the way. But by prioritizing your recovery on a daily basis and doing whatever that next right thing might be for you, you will keep moving forward in living a life of good purpose. Talk with your sponsor or others in your recovery community about what has worked for them.
Join others on the road to recovery
We have to see how our emotions have gotten the better of us if we wish to grow and remain sober. It is noted in “How It Works” that we will only be successful in this endeavor if we leave no stone unturned. We must be thorough, or else we may as well have not bothered with the list at all. By making direct amends to the person harmed the temptation to skirt the issue because of embarrassment or pain is avoided.
- It’s important to remember that making amends is a process.
- By working through the list in Step 9 and making amends to each person named there, you will restore a piece of yourself with each conversation.
- Being specific also makes the amends that you offer more achievable.
Having made this realization, we will be ready to embark on a journey of reflection and self-improvement. And this is when recovery will begin truly https://ecosoberhouse.com/ elevating us to new heights. I tend to hide the memory of past transgressions under the ever-handy umbrella of “Didn’t do it if I don’t remember”.
Patient Care Network
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions ASL – Step Twelve
- It takes courage to continue the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
- I always thought that I had been making direct amends whenever I had injured others.
- To find out, it’s important to carefully explore the principles of AA.
- For example, if you neglected or mistreated your children while you were using alcohol, a simple apology may not repair the damage.
- Just like each person needs an individualized approach to alcohol addiction treatment, your approach to making amends in AA may look completely different from someone else’s.
- So, to truly make amends, we have to offer more than words.
