Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 44 (Exploring Step 5 of the Twelve Steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics)

In today's episode, I discuss the fifth step from Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization's 12 Steps.

Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

What is the purpose of this step?

Do you need to believe in God to do this and the rest of the steps?

Why are we doing these steps anyway?

Can I just zip through the steps quickly and get this over with?

Why self-reflection is necessary and the power of being able to see our faults, but also not to then to peseverate on them.

In this episode, I answer these questions along with sharing why I believe the 12 Steps are a great framework on how to learn new skills and break the cycle of dysfunction.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Let Go and Be Free podcast, a podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of the Let Go and Be Free: 100 Daily Reflections for Adult Children of Alcoholics series. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, letgoandbefree.com. And with that, let's get on with the show.

Welcome to this week's episode, took a little bit of time off over the holidays. So I'm recording these right after Christmas, and it's given me a little bit of time to do some reflection myself, you know, with 2023 right upon me, by the time you hear this, we will have been through the New Year.

So to give you a sense of my recording schedule, I tried to get a couple, as they say in the bank, you know, in the can, that way, I have some episodes, so you know, for you to listen to, in case something comes up in my life. And you know, with the holidays, where I'm reflecting on is, you know, it's the new year is upon us going into 2023. And trying to get a sense of what I'm going to do moving forward with this podcast. It's like mid March or so will be my one year anniversary.

This is the 44th episode that I've recorded. And you know, looking back and reflecting, just seeing the progress that I've had, and picking this styles, the themes, what I'm focusing on, I did want to get back into the 12 steps. So for this week, we're going to focus on reading through step five, and kind of breaking it apart. What does it mean? What does it mean to me? And what would it mean to you, if you were to reflect on that step?

I've decided that I do think it's important with all the challenges that everyone's been having. With, you know, mental health throughout the world, there's just a lot of stress, a lot of angst, a lot of anger, a lot of hate on a suffering. And my hope is that this podcast will help some people out there that you can listen to this and know that one, you're not alone.

The two, you know, there are support networks that you can reach out to that maybe you were not even aware existed. You know, I remember when I first went on this journey, you know, my early 20s, I felt lost, I felt confused. I didn't understand, you know, all that had happened to me as I was a kid and tried to put that into perspective of well, now what do I do with all these things, you know, my thought was, get a good education, get a good job, you know, fall in love and have a happy family and everything was just going to magically be alright, by not necessarily avoiding, you know, my paths, but not really stressing and focusing on that.

And I fail miserably hidden hat because what I realized is in moments of stress, I fall back into dysfunctional behavior patterns that I learned as a kid growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family. So I took on those characteristics, especially under stress, you know, when there's money problems, or fighting in in a relationship or difficulty at work or difficulty within the family, like everyday challenges. I didn't know, I didn't have a toolkit, for lack of a better word on how to overcome some of these challenges. So I just did what I knew.

And that was not effective, meaning I didn't, it didn't help me, it didn't help the person I would be with in a relationship. Things were just a mess, things would just fall apart. And it was just all around miserable for everyone. But when I did find about going to therapy and going to adult children of alcoholics meetings and doing readings about, you know, aspects of growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family, you know, self help books, things that I could do in a positive way to help myself. I realized one I'm not alone to there are lots of resources out there.

And in parentheses, what that means is there are lots of resources, many of them are free. There are you know, the adult children of alcoholic meetings, you know, may have made a couple donations here and there a few dollars to help out that keep the group running but it was It was never something lots of money that I had to spend. And I found that to be a great source of help. And then again, with books, there's so many books that you could buy, you could borrow from your local library, there's just tons of stuff.

You know, there. And of course, now with podcasts, there's a lot of podcasts you can listen to, you know, the, the back list that I have, you know, 44 episodes now, you know, being able to listen to you can go back and play them again for free. So hopefully this will be helpful. So moving forward, and 2023.

Again, I know, you'll be listening to this toward the end of January, I'm hoping that now that you're past the new year starting to settle in, into what 2023 is going to be for you, it can be very challenging the beginning of the year, there may have been reserved air, you know, New Year's resolutions that you have made, that you're struggling with. And I'm here to say, one, let's just say it's been a rough year, the last year, there's been a lot going on in the news in the world. And I can say even within my own family, it's been a very challenging year.

As I wrote this, my wife's uncle just passed, and we were just at the funeral yesterday. And, you know, it's just a been a difficult time. For, you know, not only my my own family, but for many as well. And I'm here to share some news, in that there is help, you're not alone. And you can find path, and skills that will help you move forward. Again, I am not a professional. So if you do, you know, need to speak to a therapist, please reach out, get some help.

After the New Years, a lot of people go through severe depression after the holidays are over. If you're really struggling, reach out to a suicide hotline, get the help that you need, there are resources available. So with that, I'm going to start off, just talk about the the step five, of adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. And just to recap, if you're new to the podcast, you know, I had decided that I'm going to do all 12 steps, kind of break it apart, take a little bit of a break in between some of the steps, and that that's what I had done.

Last episode I focused on, you know, different topics about worrying. Now I want to get back into the 12 steps with Step five. And in talking about that, and reflecting on that, you know, I've looked back at the 12 steps, and they're not for me, and this is just my opinion, they're not something that you just, you know, rush through and you quickly check a list, you know, like, Okay, I'm gonna do in the next 12 days, I'm gonna knock out the 12 steps and who under two weeks, it's all done.

And wow, that was easy, put it behind me and onward and upward, and I'm going to live the rest of my life, being happy and free of all the troubles I've had in the past. You can try that maybe it might work for you, I don't know of anyone that it has. The 12 steps, in my opinion, are fluid and can be done out of order. You might have challenges with one over another. You may not want to do one and might skip it come back later it you know, in my opinion, it it's a very fluid thing. Because at the end of the day, it's you and your thoughts. And it's how do you want to focus on those thoughts?

So when you when you look at the 12 steps, and you say, Well, what the heck is the purpose of all this? Why would I even do this? This doesn't make any sense to me. You might be right, this may not be the path for you. If you're willing to listen, you know, I can share that with what I've learned. It's not the words that matter. And that might seem strange, like, well, how is it not the words because there's the steps? And are these the rules? The it's to me, it's more the the the exercises, the reflections that come out of the 12 steps, the thoughts that I have about them that helped carve and set different boundaries within myself within the relationships I have with other people.

And it allows me to do that self reflection in a healthy way. That then puts me on a path that gives me the sky Gil's to be able to navigate through stress, stress challenges, and the normal difficulties of life. So that, to me is the purpose of the steps, it gives me a framework to overcome the dysfunctional behavior that I grew up with. And for me, that's a powerful tool, that's a powerful thing, that at my fingertips, I can have these 12 steps that I can memorize, or I can have them written down. And I can use anytime, any day or night, anywhere in the world. at any particular time, I can wake up in the middle of night and be stressed out about something.

And then I can focus on saying the 12 steps and then say, You know what, this particular one, I really want to focus on right now. And that will help me to kind of calm me, you know, to relax, get back to sleep. So, for me, the framework is what's important. It's almost like a program. And I don't mean that in the sense of, you know, being controlled. But what I mean by that is, there is a set of ways of thinking that allows my brain to align with that helps keep me steady, and calm, and know that I have a foundation that I can fall back on. It's going to help me doing, you know, the hard work of self reflection. And so, before we go any further, I guess, I realize I'm like 11 minutes into this, and I haven't even read the fifth step yet. So let me read it to you.

And then we'll break that apart and talk a little bit more why this is important to me. So step five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. So again, I've said this in other steps before, you know, I've mentioned the word God, if you don't believe in God, you can skip through that. And just say, admit it to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. I know people who have gone through the 12 steps, and they are atheistic, and they've done fine.

So the steps might have a spiritual tradition, where you need to focus on something greater than yourself something outside yourself, whatever you want to call that the power of the universe, God, it doesn't matter, whatever you want to call that. In this particular step, what I believe is happening here, can I read the full step one, one last time, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. So for me, I've always thought that this step was easy. And I'll put the easy in quotes.

And the reason for that is I'm really hard on myself, like, it's very easy for me to be like, here's all the wrong wrong things with me, here's all these things that you know, that I've done wrong. And I think that's where that boundary line is, for me, in this particular step.

There's a difference between, you know, going through and admitting the exact nature of our wrongs. But then saying, Okay, I'm gonna put this line in the sand now. And instead of perseverating, and only thinking about these things that I've done wrong, to list them, put them apart, and then find a way to separate yourself.

And that's what the future steps are setting up for you is how to grow beyond those wrongs, how to create healthy behaviors, how to act and be functional, in a relationship and in society, instead of falling back onto dysfunctional and unhealthy behaviors. So, again, this is that framework. I use the framework as it's a guide. It's a means of words on a page that help us to think and reflect where we have come from, what we our nature of our wrongs are to let go of them, to learn healthier behaviors, to make amends for what we've done in the past, and what we will make amends for in the future because we're imperfect people, and then to move on with our lives. Instead of being stuck in a cyclical, destructive pattern that we say to ourselves. Oh my god, I see I do this, get into an argument and I act a certain way. And then you know, I withdraw, and, you know, I shut down.

And then, you know, you say, Okay, I see that, and then you forget about it. And then you go through another problem, again, you do the same thing again, and again and again. And it's a cyclical, destructive pattern. And though you may crave intimacy, you can't find that intimacy because you keep withdrawing.

Because every time you're put against a difficult problem, Your natural reaction, and that might be because of how you grew up, was to just kind of roll yourself up into a ball, you know, and try to protect yourself and say, no one's gonna hurt me, like I was hurt in the past, emotionally, physically, whatever it was. And that thought may have helped you when you were a kid. But now that you're older, it's acting as a boundary, a barrier for you that you cannot find the love and true intimacy that you've longed for.

So this step is saying, you know, again, to some person, and someone beyond yourself, like you got to admit to yourself, and to the universe, and then to some person you trust, here's the exact nature of your rocks, and the example that I just gave, you know, you would say to somebody, you know, when I'm in a difficult situation, and let's say you're talking with your spouse about this, if you're able to have this type of relationship with your spouse, I shouldn't assume.

But you could say, you know, when we argue, when we fight, my natural reaction is to withdraw. Because I'm afraid that if I let you see the true me, that you're gonna hurt me, you know, that you're going to see my weakness, and come at me, and that's what happened to me, you know, when I was a kid, and I, you know, learn this being and having thick skin was a way that I could survive.

And I can, you know, kind of move on. But I realized, that's not helping me now. So, I am admitting these nature of my wrongs, because I want to grow beyond that. Again, that's an example of, you know, to me breaking apart that fifth step, you may be in a relationship where you can't talk to your partner this way. You know, you might need to talk to your therapist about this, or talk to people, you know, and admit to this, when you're an adult, children of alcoholics meeting, it could be a sibling that you can talk to about this, or a parent, you know, it could be any number of people.

But the important thing is, it's someone that you trust, it's someone that you're able to grow with, and be able to share this with, without being ridiculed, or without this knowledge being used against you. So, you know, I say this, and break this step apart. Because it's one that for me, again, I find it easy to do to put my faults down and say, here are all the things that I see that I've done wrong, you know, I've done that I've been able to do that.

The challenge for me, and this may not be for you, is then to say, Okay, enough is enough. Stop picking up the wound. Now, just, you know, put that boundary up of these are the things that I've struggled with and nature of my wrongs. And I'm now looking to move past them, beyond them, to think of a moment where I'm not going to be caught in this cyclical, dysfunctional inter personal drama.

And the way I say that, the way I think about that is, you know, I'm recalling a lot of arguments that I remember my parents have in my grandparents having the cyclical, you know, there'd be everything's fine. One person would blow up big argument, and to the world, horrible time. And then it would just pass like a ship in the night. And then everything was supposed to be normal the next day, and you'd be like, walking around, like, you were just like, you were traumatized. And you're in shock. And you're just like, I don't understand what just happened.

People were screaming, like bloody murder at each other, like it was the end of the world, and people want to kill each other. And now suddenly, everything's fine. And we're supposed to just, you know, move on with our lives and forget that that happened, you know, whatever, 12 hours ago. And, you know, for me, it's easy to look at my own faults and to reflect on those things, the harder thing for me is then to set that boundary line and say, Okay, I've done this, now it's time to move on to another step, maybe a previous step, or the sixth step, whatever that is, for me at that particular moment in time. So that way, I don't get caught in that cycle of, you know, oh, woe is me, here are all the horrible things that are wrong with me. And I'm always going to be this way, that's not the purpose of the step, the purpose of this step is to kind of have that foundation of, I can self reflect, and I can do this reflection, share it with a power greater than me, again, whatever you want to say, the life force of the universe, whatever, to yourself, and to another person, and then let that go. And then focus on what are you going to do beyond this?

And I think that's the unspoken word. In this particular, you know, step, I should say, words, plural, what's next? It's not, let's focus on the past, and then just always be stuck in the past. It's what's now in the present, I've omitted these things. What's next? How do I grow beyond this? What skills do I need to learn conflict resolution, how to clearly communicate, how to listen better? How to, when I'm stressed not to, let's say an example I gave to withdraw?

What if, you know, I worked on ways of healthy arguing, you know, setting the ground rules of an argument, you say to somebody, we will not whatever cursing at each other, we will not yell at each other. If we get to a certain point that we feel like we're going to lose our cool, we agree that we're going to say whatever, some kind of a phrase to kind of break us out of the moment, and say, we're going to take a break.

And then we're going to go our separate ways, and then come back again, at a later point to kind of finish the conversation. And that's the tricky part that I found in growing up in a dysfunctional family, there's no way to solve the whatever the problem is. And I don't want to want to focus on that. It's the same type of arguments would happen again, and again, and again, often it was because either someone would had was struggling with addiction, someone was struggling with all sorts of personal problems. And what they learned was to yell or scream, or shout or hit or whatever it was. And then that would blow over. And they would move on how sorry, they were, but no behavior would change. And so the pattern would happen again and again.

Over time, there wasn't a framework, that a person had to be able to run through their thoughts and be like, hey, wait a minute. I see. I'm self reflecting here. I'm getting into this argument. And Philip gonna blow my gasket. And I'm having this problem. Because, yeah, again, just using an example, the the person that I'm arguing with, they just, you know, drank to excess, and their addiction, they're struggling with that.

And I'm angry at them because they didn't go to work. And so, you know, how are we going to pay the bills if they lose their job, and there's big arguments that or going forward, and again, the same problem, same things would have it again, and again, and again, again, and at the end of the day, what is necessary is for you to take ownership and accountability of yourself, you know, draw that boundary line, you cannot save anyone, you can only help yourself. And with this framework of the 12 steps, you put your thoughts through, and you can then have healthy responses within your brain to say, okay, instead of me going through that same dysfunctional, you know, situation again, how can I do something different this time? How can I be healthier this time? What does that mean for me?

And it could be, you say the Serenity Prayer, you go to a meeting, you know, you talk to your therapist, you talk to a close friend, you write in your journal, there are certain things that you learn that are healthy for you skills, and you take those skills, and you grow them and use them and build on them. And then what you realize over time is well wait a minute. I'm not always doing the same thing in that destructive, cyclical dance like the dance of anger or the I'm withdrawing, I'm realizing that there are other paths for me to go down, once I practice and start using the skills that I'm learning.

And I think that, you know, to me is the hope of these 12 steps, that it's not just, oh, Let's memorize these things and say them, because oh, it talks about God, and God's going to take them, you know, my worries away from it that no, that's, that's not how I see the 12 steps. The 12 steps, again, are a framework to learn behaviors that allow you to do self reflection, and then share that with those that you trust and build on the skills of better ways of communicating better ways of getting yourself out of situations that were cyclical, and unhealthy and dysfunctional, in how you communicated and interacted with people in your life.

The difficult thing is, if you're, I'll just use the word stuck in a dysfunctional relationship, you might start changing, and the other person is going to sense that, and they're gonna really rebel against that. So case in point, if you and another person get into a situation where, you know, the one person blows up, and you withdraw. If you talk with that person and be like, Look, I know you're angry right now, and I'm not going to do what I normally do, I'm going to, you know, I need time to just process a little bit, I need 15 minute break, I'll come back and talk with you, you know, and they're screaming, and this and that, and, but then you might, you might kind of just stop them in their tracks, because they're, they realize, like, whoa, something's changed.

Now, of course, I've said this in the past, depending on the circumstance, some relationships are extremely destructive, and harmful. And if you are ever in physical danger, please go and get the help that you need. I'm I'm using, I guess, several examples of, you know, an argument, rather than if someone is in a situation where there's violence, and, you know, you feel like you're physically being threatened. If that's the case, do your, you know, I would say, Go get the help you need, go to a shelter, go to a family members, you know, take care of yourself to be safe. And I know that's not an easy thing to do. And it may not be possible at this particular time.

So in looking at this, in these reflections on the steps, the skills, the words, the tools, the framework, the foundation, when you put that all together, and now we're you know, we're up to step five, you can look back at the earlier steps, re listen to those other episodes that I've recorded. And you might have a different perspective on them now. And you might say, You know what, I zipped through step one, because I thought it was easy.

Let me go back and listen to it again, let me see what I can learn from that different perspective that I have now. And again, that to me is the beauty of this is that there's insight, there's growth, there's different perspectives that we gain over time, because we're not static and stuck in stone. We're growing. We're listening, we're learning.

And as we use the skills, these skills are so helpful, because at the end of the day, we're learning how to set boundaries, how to communicate effectively, and how to do conflict resolution. Because you're realizing, you know, if you've done something wrong to somebody, you got to admit it to yourself.

And then you got to work toward making that amend with some other person. Like, think about that. Imagine if everybody in life did that to people, what a better world we would live in. If someone owned up when they made a mistake, you know, and said, I'm wrong. I apologize. This is what I'm going to do, to kind of move forward to change my behavior. So it doesn't happen again. And again, we're not perfect. It's not like, it's not like you say this, and you're never going to make a mistake. Again, that's not the point of this.

But you will have learned something, and you will look at this from a different perspective. And then that cyclical dance starts breaking apart because you realize it's never been helpful for you. It's never getting you what you really want, which at the end of the day, most often. People just want to be loved and want to feel connected with others most of the time. That's something that if you're using dysfunctional behavior, you're Protecting yourself where you're trying to get something that you're never going to be able to get.

Because it's like you have a bucket, and you're trying to get water from a well, and there's a hole in the bucket. And he keeps going again and again and again. And you're like, I don't understand why is this not working? Because you have a hole in the bucket. And sometimes it's important to stop and look at the hole in the bucket. And to reflect on that to write about that. This step, you know, what is the exact nature of our wrongs? Sure, it's easy to say, it's because I grew up in a bad family, and they treated me XYZ, and you throw everything on the past of how miserable everything was for you.

But in time, you might look at this step again, and reflect and say, oh, wait a minute, I may have grown up in a dysfunctional family, and I learned the skills. But here are the things that I have done, I need to take ownership and accountability on and then put a light on those. That is an entirely different way of looking at this step. When you first run through this step, you might look at the past and be like, here's all the things that happened to me.

Whereas you might look at this stuff later and be like, here's all the things that did happen to me. But here's all the unhealthy things, behaviors that I've learned. And I'm, I kind of keep perpetuating these things. Meaning, these are the things that I want to change and grow beyond bingo. That's where the light goes on in one's head and says, Wow, I didn't think about it from that perspective before. This is something that I can really learn from.

And as you can see, you know, I haven't used God, as you know, necessary in this step. If you believe in God, wonderful, if you don't awesome. What is this mean to you, when you read these steps?

Again, that's, to me the power of these. So again, I hope you found this helpful. If you have, I'd ask please share this podcast with others in your group that think could also get some help from this. If you listen to whatever platform on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, wherever you get this podcast, please leave a positive review that helps others find this podcast so we can grow the listenership.

And if you want to learn more, visit, let go and be free.com. You can find more resources on my website. So again, thank you so much for taking the time to listen, as we're now you know, getting toward the end of January of 2023. Let's think about what each of us want to do moving forward with the rest of this year. What positive things can we do to kind of move forward and grow beyond what we learned when we were kids when we grew up in addicted and dysfunctional families. So again, thank you so much, and as always, be well.

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