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By Rita Argiros, Ph.D.
AAs fourth and fifth steps are often misunderstood. When I was first introduced to them they evoked feelings of fear and anger in me. All I could see was the potential for humiliation. I didn’t believe that people told me that these steps would liberate me. I was 14 years old, living in the Bronx, and going to Alateen meetings once a week.
How much could a 14-year-old have to feel guilty about? Plenty, I guess. Each time the fourth and fifth steps were read at the beginning of the meeting, I got the same sick feeling in my stomach as things floated to the top of my consciousness. I expected to feel much worse if I actually went through with a 4th and 5th step.
I left Alateen a year later. Returning to the program at 19, I had the same bad feelings whenever I thought about the fourth and fifth step and with 4 more years of living I had even more to feel guilty about. But, this time, I took the chance and worked the steps.
Bill Wilson’s metaphor, “inventory,” or, “housecleaning,” really does capture the emotions you feel as you go through the process. If you’ve ever had a really messy office and taken the time to clean, sort, throw out, and organize, you have an inkling of these feelings. Getting started is very hard. You feel a great deal of resistance. You don’t really build up a head of steam until you’re almost halfway through. Then you start to get a feeling of freedom. The inventory or cleaning metaphor only goes just so far however. Because you’re processing things that make you feel guilty, or embarrassed–instead of last year’s junk mail, the positive feelings at the end of the 5th step are much more profound.
I recently read an anti-AA diatribe (http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-cult_q1.html#cq_induce_guilt) attacking this process. Framing AA as a cult, the anonymous author charges the fourth and fifth steps with being designed to invoke and create guilt, shame, humiliation and embarrassment in order to make the participants more tractable. When a sponsor asks us to suspend our thinking temporarily and trust theirs, this author sees manipulation, and the creation of lifelong infantile dependency. That’s not how I see it.
A few months ago I read David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, the Art of Stress-Free Productivity. In that book he describes the way un-done tasks can nag at you to the point where they impact your effectiveness. All those little things that you have to do, schedule your mammogram, pick up the cleaning, write the review for that person that you supervise, etc. You’ll be in the middle of dinner with your husband and all of the things that you have to do tomorrow start percolating up to the top of your brain. Robbing us of life in the moment. Worse, we live with a subtle but perceptible sense of worry. We fear that won’t have time to get done all that needs to be done. Or, my favorite, that we must do that thing right this very minute because if I don’t do it right now, I will forget to do it all together. It doesn’t matter what “it” is. It is the worrying and the repetitive wasting of attention the robs us.
The very first step according to Allen is to write down everything that you have to do. In other words, inventory. And just like alcoholics and their moral inventory, people who are swamped with work will avoid taking stock. So hotshot executives and CEOs pay David Allen good money to come to their home or the office and coach them through the process. To me that sounded more like my experience with 12-step sponsorship. My sponsors have been guides, mentors, coaches. Not somebody on a power-trip.
I see other parallels between working the steps and Getting Things Done (GTD). Both programs reduce stress. Allen reduces the fear and worry that sabotage focus and productivity. Like the title says–his focus is on things. The AA program targets fear and worry too, but I think it does an even better job reducing negative emotions around our relationships with people–guilt, hate, resentment, embarrassment, distrust, contempt, disdain and pride. By the way, the same guy who criticized sponsors criticized AA for its seemingly incessant focus on the negative–all that talk of character defects, and seven deadly sins. Selfish self-centeredness is the root of our disease we are told. And, “resentment is the number one offender.” How can that help us to live better happier lives. Seems like we’d all get depressed thinking of ourselves as a group of permanent losers. But my experience is that the opposite is true. A good look at the habits of thought and feeling that have gotten us in trouble is essential if we are going to develop all the things we really want: atonement, love, gratitude, self-confidence, trust, empathy, approval and humility.
After I read Getting Things Done, I put it down. Listing everything I had to do seems overwhelming and then you have to organize your to-do lists in a certain way. And, get this, it never ends. He wants you to develop life-long habits. That seems like a bit much, when all I was looking for was a way to get just a little more control over my work. But I am reconsidering. Because I have seen what a good accounting will do for me emotionally and spiritually. I am going to give the Allen’s program a serious try. I’ll keep you all posted.
