The topic of step 4 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

Thank you

to set the tone for this meeting. I actually haven't picked a reading for today, but I'd like to suggest we open with the Serenity Prayer in the WE form if you would like to join me.

God

to accept the things we can't change, encourage, change the things we can, and the wisdom, wisdom to know the difference. Thank you.

The topic of tonight's meeting is working step four with the Sponsee Part 2 and we're on to fear and text part inventory. And Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic, after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that, I will now hand over to Tim. Thank you.

Right. So I'm just going to share the screen or a screen.

There we go. Hopefully the big book has appeared in front of you

and we're on page 67. So I think we've we've finished the resentment inventory, haven't we, Alistair? Yeah. OK, so the fear inventory, I'm not going to read out all of this, but look at the practical side of things. So we review our fears thoroughly. So what we do here?

We've already listed a whole bunch of fears

in one of the answers in the answers to one of the page 67 questions. So you can take the fears from there and just transfer them onto a new sheet of paper and then brainstorm. In other words, So what am I frightened of? And I, I find when I do this, I suggest this to other people, in half an hour you can really come up with everything. If you really scour your mind and something doesn't come up on the first half hour, it's not

important.

One of the important things, and this is a good point with

Step 4, generally, I think

a lot of people in AAI think have got obsessive compulsive disorder and express that and how they work the program. And so there's this this notion that it has to be sort of thoroughly exhausted. The point here, we're going to be getting rid of fear completely or or at least starting to grow out of it. And so all of the tiny minutiae are not are neither here nor there. What we all we want to get a sense of here is

the fact there is a whole load of fears and people normally don't have much trouble getting a handle on the fact there is a whole load of fears that

so you've you've got a list from your page 67 questions you brainstormed complete it. Then there's a simple question we asked ourselves why we had them. Now the great thing about this instruction is that we don't need to

that really come up with an answer ourselves because it gives us the answer and the next time wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Now you could just let it go at that

and and start to examine, as I will do in a moment, what it means to say that self-reliance failed us. But what I've found useful in unpacking my own fears, so I help sponsees do this, is to to When you're frightened of something, it's very rarely the thing itself you're actually frightened of. It is what lies behind it, in other words,

that if you tip, if you flick a domino over in a line of dominoes,

one by one or the other, dominoes topple until the last domino falls, and then the domino toppling ceases. And we're after what the final domino is.

And

I sort of hate to give you a spoiler here, but I think the spoiler it it it almost always boils down to feeling bad. Basically, feeling bad because you're lonely, feeling bad because you're worthless, feeling bad because you've wasted your life.

The fact of emotional pain itself, The fact of

physical pain, the fact of death is not really a great number of these. And everything boils down to one of those. So if you're frightened of being criticized at work, why? Because I might lose my job while So what? While I wouldn't have any money, So what? Well, I'd, I wouldn't have enough to live. So what? I'd be. I'd have physical pain, I'd have inconvenience.

What else? I would be thought of as a failure by others. Therefore I think of myself as a failure

and as soon as you get to the thing which is bad in itself, you found the last one. And people normally come up with a list of somewhere between 4:00 and 10:00 of these.

The point of that exercise I explained to people is that you want to see that although it looks as though you're scared of 47,000 things, if you can,

if you can capture the idea,

capture lots and lots of different fears and single ideas. Like I'm frightened of being a failure, I'm frightened of physical pain, I'm frightened of emotional pain. You discover you don't have 47,000 fears, you've got 7 or 4. And that suddenly immediately easier to deal with because, well, first of all, you know the nature of the beast. When you're frightened of 47,000 different things in your life, it feels like you're, you're it, it. It's like Helms deep being overrun

in the two towers. It's it's you know, the orcs are everywhere and there are more coming. Whereas if you've got, if you if you manage to corner the four, you know, the the four main culprits or the five main culprits, you've got a chance of doing something about it. And I mentioned this wasn't it because self-reliance failed us. Now this is a terribly important line. Bill doesn't

put this line up for discussion or debate. He states it as a fact in the form of a rhetorical question to which the only acceptable answer is yes, Of course it is, Bill.

That's the only possible reason. And so I think one has to proceed as one does in contract law on the basis of good faith. You you, you proceed assuming that Bill is writing in good faith and the what he says is true.

So we've got to find an understanding of wasn't it because self-reliance failed this, which is true for all fears

and not just some of them. Otherwise it's no good. It's no good having an explanation for some of them Now,

um, very clearly, if you've got a person that refused, as I did when I was younger, I refused to accept help, as if you helped me do something, the resultant achievement was not attributable to me. It was attributable in part to your help, and the only reason for doing anything was to be impressive. So I mustn't be helped by anyone or I'm defeating the purpose, which is to be impressive through my own efforts.

And of course, if you refuse to be helped, your results will be terrible because you're having to reinvent

things which other people are succeeding at because they're willing to be helped and guided. And it's pretty clear if you, if you try and make all of your decisions in your life without any guidance, you're going to make some pretty crappy decisions. Terrible things will happen and you're going to be frightened because you're not so stupid as to believe that the same things are not going to continue happening. If you if you keep having catastrophe after catastrophe, it makes sense you're going to continue having catastrophes. So fear is an obvious consequence

of relying on yourself in the sense of not,

not accepting helper guidance from others. But, but there are all sorts of situations where you, you're a good boy or a good girl and you keep your nose clean and you do everything right and you manage your affairs in an accomplished, effective, efficient, harmonious way. And yet still the world can get you. Disease can strike, tragedy can strike. All sorts of things can happen.

One, I certainly most of my fears are around security. They're not around ambition. They used to be around ambition and pride. Now that if I have them, they're about security. There is no way you can be effective enough to secure yourself against any possible event in the world. As my as my best friend reminds me on a regular basis, if the son decides to emit a major gamma ray burst then we're all toast anyway in a matter of seconds.

You you can't stop the fact that universe is expanding and is at some point going to reach absolutely. There's something near to absolute zero spread with everything spread out at infinite distances from everything else for the whole thing collapses. There's Woody Allen film where a kid, 7 year old kid refuses to do his homework because he discovers that the universe is endlessly expanding and he finds it such a depressing notion that he

his whole life is, is rendered impossible.

So being a, and this is, I think, the big mistake that people make. I certainly made it and most people, I think make it in the first few years in a, a of using the program to become competent and effective and accomplished in order to keep the wolves at Bay. Like if, if I handle life successfully enough, I will get rid of fear. Of course it it doesn't work.

I mean, I've been and I've met people who are, you know, married and comfortable

and have a good income and you know, you make a whole list and still you wake up in the morning frightened. So it's very clear that sorting your life out doesn't get rid of fear, however well you'll rely, even if you're relying on God and other people. There is something else going on here and I alluded I may have covered it briefly last week, but I'll reiterate, reiterate it. So I think it's important. What is self? Well this my sponsor talks about self with a capital S which is who we

are, which is extensions of spirit. So if God is the source, we are the extensions of that, and being spirit, we are non corporeal, we are consciousness,

we are love. We cannot be hurt in the material realm, but we happen to be inhabiting physical bodies for the time being,

with a role to perform which is given to us by the higher power, not which we have derived ourselves. What is self?

The book on page 61 equates the word self with ego. Now, I'm not going to I don't think we want to talk about ego in the Freudian sense, because that's different. But ego in the spiritual sense are either Eckhart Tolle, Eckart Tolle, right? I think it's he who describes it. Thus, ego is

false mind made images of self, false mind made images of self.

There's any concept of me which is something other than spirit. Now what could that be? It could be identification with. So it is basically self which is The problem is when I identify myself with my physical form, the circumstances of my life, my virtues or defects, my accomplishments and failures,

my popularity or lack thereof, who I construe myself to be

as I discern it in other people's reaction to me. I'm in 100 things outside of myself. A friend of mine made amends to a girl for pouring vinegar on her sofa and then drinking her champagne, which she kept for a special occasion.

And the girl said with regard to the vinegar on the sofa and with regard to the champagne. I can't believe you did that to me. And what really struck me, it's a perfectly ordinary

turn of phrase. I can't believe you did that to me. Whereas what's very illustrative is those actions were not done to her, they were done to her sofa and to her bottle of champagne. So in order to say you did that to me, you've got to have confused yourself. You've literally confused yourself with a sofa. You see the sofa, you think it's you. So if someone comes along and does something for the sofa, they've done something to you. This is a state of profound confusion.

Yet which of us, when we get some sort of splash of spaghetti sauce on our white shirt, doesn't feel embarrassed? What a fool that we look. People are looking at us and they're looking at you. They're looking at the splatter on your shirt and you think it's you. Or if the splatter is further down, it's even more embarrassing.

So the the the problem if I rely for my identity, my value and my purpose on anything outside myself. In other words, anything in the world,

I'm going to be frightened because the world is volatile and unpredictable and mercurial and dangerous. So the only way to be rid of fear is to be rid of self. In other words, to be rid of this false mind made image of self. Which means I still get to have all of those things. I still get to have a job and a inverter comms career and a house and family and people and so on. But I cease to

identified with those. So although I would prefer not to lose them, if anything is lost, so be it. I'm fine. Like if you lose your mobile phone, your ability to communicate is not diminished by that. It's just inconvenienced. And there's a big difference between the two.

So that that's how I take people through the the fear inventory. It that the about 5% of the benefit comes from writing it and about 95% comes from trying to understand that line. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us?

Now to the fierce solution. And just with the as with resentment, when we looked at resentment, we use that as a springboard for the solution. So it's terribly important. A lot of people in a a write about resentment So often you, you, you know, someone will phone you at Clive, will phone you up. And, and so I've got a terrible resentment and you say, well, what are you doing about it? Well, I've written about it as though the mere fact of writing about it is supposed to eliminate it. And of course it doesn't.

It may go some way, but it's the spiritual actions on the top of page 67 which eliminate the resentment. And it's the same with fear. And it's got some ideas here which pretty much speak for themselves. But we've got an instruction here.

They trust their God. That's an instruction. What does that mean? That means I trust

in the the notions that I spoke about before,

which is that if I'm an extension of spirit, I'm perfectly safe. I'm I'm kept safe by God.

We asked him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be And what I get people to do, well, it's just what I do myself is simply to take the thing that I'm frightened of in the world or the situation, usually a situation, it's best to do it on situations and say, right, God, what would you have me do in this situation? What would you have? What would you have my attitude be?

What would you have my actions be? And as soon as I flip to consciously, deliberately adopting and reinforcing the corrective attitude and I throw myself wholeheartedly into the corrective behaviour, my experience is the fear starts to go.

I'm sure you've had sponsees who are, oh, I don't know, one to five 10/15/20 or 30 years sober who phoned you up very plaintively, say

one full of resentment and I'm full of fear. As though, as though the individual is a sort of great big vase or, or, or a, or a, a punch bowl into which some unkind soul has has poured this sort of viscous liquid of resentment and fear such that one is now full of it. I'm now full of it. The truth is, I'm the one that's doing it.

The the actual A, a program

we get to practice in terms of solution starts on page 63.

By page 68, middle of page 68, which is what, 4 1/2 pages in? It has given us a total and adequate and sufficient solution both to resentment and to fear. So from this point onwards, I'm now given back a choice as to whether I let resentment and fear into my life.

The temptation to think resentful thoughts, to think fearful thoughts, to engage in either the temptation will keep coming because the ego is pre-installed. It's factory installed software. You can't get rid of it off the hard drive. It's going to. It's like McAfee, it throws up. You know those. Have you done this? Have you done that? What about doing it? You know, it's going to send you suggestions the whole time, but it

the one that's responsible for whether or not I pick up on that. So it's, it's very important not to, I think not to view oneself as a victim of, of resentment and fear not letting them in and then expelling them if one accidentally lets them in. Of course that happens like vampires, you know, we, we, you vampire knocks on the door. They seem so charming and within a few minutes, you know they've been let in. They're biting your neck. Someone went to a therapist

and told them about a situation that the therapist said, didn't you see the red flags? And the person says, Oh yes, I did. I thought it was a carnival. So there are times when one accidentally

gives in to the temptation to either resent or fear. Of course, I still do it. So the question is not, Oh my God, I've got a new resentment. I have a new fear. I don't know what to do. It's the same resentment and fear as before. It's just wearing a new hat and it's it's got different wonky makeup. That's all that's going on. It's the same solution.

My job is simply to practice it. So what I want to impress on people at this point in the program is they now have a solution to resentment. They now have a solution to fit. It's simply a matter of getting muscular in implementing these solutions.

Now, about sex.

I'll get to the end of the sort of presentation stuff, and then we'll do the questions on the remainder of Step 4. So this is obviously the most distasteful of the three

inventories so far.

And I said, but actually I think it's the most straightforward of the three.

We've reviewed our own conduct, so we're not interested in internal narrative or, or, or analysis or anything like that. We're interested in behaviour only for a practical point of view. I get people to write a list of people they've had relationships with

STD clinic. Sometimes they have a form for you to fill out. It's how many partners have you had since your last visit? And it's like nought 123 to five, six to 1011 to 100, a hundred and one to 1000 more than 1000. So sometimes people have have got

a lot of time on their hands and get up to a lot of mischief. Now people obviously very

alarmed at this point that they're going to have to rehash the gory details of of of endless escapades.

Now, of course, the major relationships need to be looked at individually, although the, you know, boss level hack is that probably all the same. In terms of conduct, people's playbook usually doesn't vary very much unless you're extending over a very long period of time.

But then you know to to to bundle together the one night stands, to bundle together the colleagues you've mistakenly flirted with, the people whose sexual advances you have rebuffed, how you behave in terms of how you look at people in public. You can you can group the behaviour under categories so that there aren't that many things to write about. And this is simply this is a good straightforward inventory.

Where have we been selfish? That's where I put my interests ahead of someone else's. Dishonest. That's outright

deceit, telling lies, misrepresentation, omission or delusion, or inconsiderate, outright failure to consider someone else's interests. Who would we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? That's interesting.

The reason it's unjustifiably is because there are times when innocent action will arouse jealousy, suspicion and bitterness in people who before we met them were already jealous, suspicious and bitter and are and and so

a typical thing is when someone you know goes to a a meetings and there are the half comes back sort of sniffing their collars to see who they've been cavorting with at the a a meeting. So we're interested in unjustifiable arousing of those things. Where will we at fault? What should we have done instead? If you don't know what you should have done instead, wait till you finish the Step 4. Deal with that and the Step 5 says people can't figure it out. That's fine. Most people can't. So if the

important point was Step 4,

nothing counted but honesty and thoroughness, which means you know, accuracy and lots of other wonderful qualities. Well, if you can make it accurate, great. But if you if, if, if it's the best you can come up with, that's OK too. Which I think is an interesting take. My job is to systematically ask myself a bunch of questions, and having asked the questions and listened quietly to the answers that my own mind gives me,

writing them down, if you ask the questions, you're sick. Quietly, you listen for the answers, you write them down, you've done a good job. Even if it's a dog, even if it's actually a dog's dinner. You've done your part. Yeah, You can spend the rest of your life getting it kind of accurate and neat and tidy and categorized and alphabetized and the Harvard outline. You don't need to do that at this point. The main job here is to be thorough and accurate.

Now the next bit is the

uh, we're really hitting gold here. In this way, we tried to shape the sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. We subjected each relation to this test with its selfish a lot. And and here's the key. We asked God to mold our ideals for what attitudes and actions or beliefs, thinking and actions. Sometimes attitudes and actions A A is the simplest way of doing it.

We asked God to mold our ideals and help us live up to them. We remembered

always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly, nor to be despised or loathed.

Then it talks about a very intra couple of interesting points.

Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to create, award it, and then in treating, in other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. Now it hasn't told you in the book so far, this is how you handle a problem,

but now it tells you how to handle sex. Is it? Or by the way, in other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. In other words, you can reverse engineer this and say, oh, oh, so this is how I handle a problem. I go to God. I ask God, what is my ideal here? What attitude should I adopt? What action should I take? I'm not going to get it right straight away, but I'm willing to grow towards it. And so

we're now, what are we Page 69,

we're now 6 pages into the program and we have an adequate, sufficient and complete solution A to resentment, B to fear, 3 to problems where 6 pages in and there is never any need to ever really have a resentment, a persistent resentment fill problem again, 6 pages in. It's it's, it's not hiding this anywhere.

And it's the reason I, I'm harping on about that is because

the ego casts a sort of spell of amnesia. I don't know if you've ever been in a conversation with a sponsee where you explain something very carefully and then 30 seconds later they say something and they understand it. They totally get it. 30 seconds later they, they say something to indicate that the the the information has already been deleted, just got, it's just gone.

And you're like, Oh my God, you've totally circled back to the original problem

and it's like nothing has been said. So whilst you're like building structures, the ego is on the other side of the structure. Whilst you're putting bricks and mortar, the ego is on the other side with this little team of munchkins.

No disrespect to small people, I'm pretty small myself. The month the egos, munchkins were on the other side, hacking away at the mortar, removing the bricks. And so unless you're working really hard at this, your ego is just going to delete everything that you're learning.

You've really got to work hard to keep the structures that are being built in place

now. I was like this at many years

sober, not basically forgetting I already have a solution to resentment. I already have a solution to fear. I literally already have a solution to problems. Now exactly what the ideal is in a situation that's different. That can be complex sometimes, but the basic structure is there. Write this down somewhere useful. A friend of mine in a A used to write everything on post it notes and they were around his whole flat in the bathroom

kitchen just reminding him to do basic things because of the egos perpetual deletion mechanism.

What else is it important to

talk about? I don't, I, I mean, one could talk endlessly about those. I think those are the basic instructions I give people for these step for the Step 4. The last thing I'd say is this is a very important line on 71. If you've already made a decision and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, whatever they are, you have made a good summer grosser than others. You have made a good beginning. And I think this is really good evidence that they didn't want

to take four years doing this and to have ring binders full of material. You want to get a basic handle on what the problem is so you can get an out in Step 5,

and Step 5 is going to be the next topic. I've got a couple of corkers, but I'm going to, I'm going to leave them for them, so I'm going to stop there. On the presentation side of things, Alistair, would you like to field some questions?

Thanks very much, Tim.

Yeah, with that, I'll now open the meeting up for questions, which can be done by raised hand function in Zoom or you can message me through the chat function. I will ask Tim directly. If all else fails, please wave your hand at the camera and I will try to come to you. And yeah, with that bot list, James has a question already.

Thanks, Alistair. Thank you, Tim, for that presentation. It was great to hear you. And the thing that struck me when you were talking about at the beginning

of of the meeting, when you were explaining this idea that we are spirit, we are not physical beings. We have,

we are not our body, but we

begin to realize that we have a body, but we're not a body, that we're not that our identity has been in the physical world, in the material world. And what the book is beginning to or is explaining to us is that actually we are spiritual beings. And my question is this, I've had experiences why I've gone through the process with with a person and they maybe will look at this

and I'll try to discuss this with them. And I kind of,

they just don't understand what I'm talking, or they just look at me blankly or they'll say yes and then just change the subject and we'll go back to it. And I think the reason I'm asking this is because for me, and I think for quite a lot of people, it's quite a revolutionary concept. It's a pretty different way of looking at reality from when we're drinking. And my question is,

do you think it's useful to suggest things like Eckhart Tolle or to our other spiritual literature to help people begin to realize this? Or do you think it's best to just keep going through the process? And like you said later on in the in your presentation, we need to remind ourselves of these things because the ego just will, just will just forget them.

That's it.

There's there are lots of questions in there.

So I'll deal with them systematically if I can. So first of all, to see things differently, you've got to want to see things differently. If you don't want to see things differently, you're not going to, you're going to resist. Why would someone? And so the question is

with the willingness side of things to see things differently,

there's a there's a little basic set of corrective measures going to fly.

So you save the person. Do you like how you feel? Well, no, I don't like how I feel. OK, good. We've got that one sort of. So you don't like how you feel.

Is it safe to say that how you feel is coming from how you view the world? Because, well, other people see the same world in a different way and feel differently? So, so yes, it's, it's people can usually are usually down with that. They, they, they can usually come up with some examples of situations where different people look at the same situation in a different way and have a different experience of it.

You know, you know when you go to a hotel

and you have a lovely time and then you read the hotel reviews afterwards and you wouldn't recognize the hotel from the description or the other way around, you have a terrible experience and all these wonderful reviews.

So if you can establish that the way the person feels, the way I feel is to do with the way I'm looking at things,

you don't, well, look at it like this instead, now you have to go there bit by bit. You say, first of all, wouldn't it be to your advantage to look at things differently? Wouldn't you want to look at, I'm not saying you're willing to look at things differently, but don't you kind of hope you could look at this differently? I mean, because you might be happier then. Do you want to be happy? Remember you said you wanted to be happy. Yes, still want to be happy. So you gradually edge towards it. And then you say,

well, do you think maybe there is a different way of looking at this? And then maybe you do want to have that. Do you actually want that different way of looking at things? And then what can you hurt? What could it hurt to ask how to look at this differently? And then when it's presented, what, how about you just try it for a while,

Try looking at things differently for a while and see what results you get. So you don't with these ideas,

you don't analyze them as, as Earl Purdy says, analyzes anal lies. You, you, you don't want to. I know, sorry about that. I don't know if you've had your tea yet. But you don't want to analyse the ideas. You want to see if the ideas are understood in principle. But often these spiritual ideas, although they're radical, they're actually remarkably simple.

They're just unwelcome.

Make a distinction between that which is not understood

and that which is not. Welcome.

Now, to move from having this sort of theoretical understanding to lived experience, you've got to then do it. If you described

France to someone who has never been to France, there is no way you could adequately describe it. You've actually got to go to France to experience what Parisians are like to actually,

if you've been to or lived in Paris, you'll know what I mean by that.

I say that having a Parisian side of the family, Needless to say. But the point is, you can describe something to your heart's content, but the person won't understand it until they experience it. So trying to get it fully understood before they apply is not going to work. Do you understand the idea? There are ways into this idea that you are not your body,

that you are caught. You, you go in via the notion of consciousness. So you look at the fact that you get someone, for instance, sit for a few minutes and just observe their thoughts from the outside, the thoughts of their mind throws at them from the outside. So, so you say, OK, so you you're now describing the thoughts that you've just had and the experience you had of having those thoughts.

So who is the you that is observing the thoughts? It can't be the thought

there's something else going on here. You look at the fact that and this, the triple notion of identity, value and purpose. Who are you? How much you worth and what's your purpose?

The value thing is a good way that's usually the most the the simplest way in is it's very common for people to to report having low self worth or or to report their their opinion. Other people are of inferior worth one way or another.

And then you get, and this example always works. You give an example, you know, when you're out and about and you see a little little class of primary school children being sort of led and shepherded on some sort of expedition somewhere where they're little jerkins all holding hands. And they're, it's always completely delightful up to a certain age. Of course after that age it becomes obnoxious, but so

I said primary school children, not 15 year olds.

So, you know, when they're 4567

and you say to the person, well, do you think those children each have a different worth or do you think that all of infinite worth, do you think they're all infinitely valuable? And everyone? I've never met anyone that has a problem with that idea that all of those little children are of infinite worth, that to lose one of them would be an appalling tragedy and that you couldn't choose between them. They're all, they're all extraordinary, wonderful creatures.

And you say, well, so you know the truth already.

You just don't want to apply it universally. You're fine to apply it to children and maybe kittens or puppies or, or or what are those? South America, Kathy Barras? But you're just not, you're not happy to do that with people that vote differently than you. OK, so so that what we've established is you already know the truth, you're just applying it inconsistently.

As for getting different angles, you have to remember an early a A. They said

they didn't have the big book in the first four years. And even after that, yes, they used the big book, but boy did they use a whole load of other spiritual resources. It was basically you're buying up.

You're buying in to aware of living, which is #1 spirit, as it says in the doctor's opinion, spiritual and altruistic. Now you can't impose someone's spirituality on them, but you can, you can legitimately say you need to do some exploring, Buster.

You know, if you're a novice in this area, you need to put some time in, read some stuff, listen to some stuff, read some, watch some stuff, see what investigate. You know, if you've got a little bit of religion in the past, maybe investigate that religion, investigate another religion, go to the local Buddhist centre. And most people, if they start down that path, pretty soon

these ideas, the notion of

alien ideas which are actually helpful, becomes acceptable pretty quickly. But it's it all goes back to that original willingness. If people are willing to look at things differently, then frankly, they'll swallow anything.

So there we go. Does that answer your question, James? Yes, thank you,

Harry. Hey, everyone. I'm Harry. I'm an alcoholic. Thanks, Tim, and thanks James for that question. Is it maybe this is kind of a counterpoint to what James said or extension?

So the the, the most I've taken a few people through Step 4 now and the most persistently difficult thing about guiding someone for it for me is most of the most of the people I've taken through have some level of likes, let's call it sophistication, right? So, and you said before, the difficulty we're going through Step 4 is not only are you doing the Step 4, you also usually learning the step four while you're doing it. That makes it hard. One of the hardest things about

SO

trying to get this done to concise question. My observation is that the difficulty in learning the technique is because people try to apply lots of pop psychology or psychology and therapy talk as we start to get into it. So the, the idea will come in that we need to be starting to peel away. They need to be starting to peel away layers of the onion. There'll also be other things about how we can't this idea that we're selfish actually isn't very helpful at all because I've got such low self esteem that we need, you know, we can't be doing this. So I think actually my, the core of my question is

I'm always reluctant to try and persuade or convince people of things. Yeah. And so, but when I get into this part of the program, I'm like, they get stuck because they want to do it their way. And

I think there's enough questions. You're going to pick out some questions from that. Tim, is that. Yeah,

Nightmare. OK, so one thing. OK, therapy let's. I don't know if we should turn off the recording for this. Maybe not.

I hope I'm not going to say anything too controversial. The best,

the best advice I've ever heard given

as to what you say to a sponsee that is about to do therapy.

Great, go and do it. And what we will do, all the things you learn, bring them back here and we'll use them as information to plug into your step four and your step 8.

So you're integrating the two. You're integrating the two things.

That covers most things actually. So we'll take what you learn from therapy and we'll work the steps on it. How about that

where you have? You do have an occasional collision and the low self worth one is a good example.

And this can take, I suppose there are two ways of coming this, one way of coming at this. And sometimes you have to do this. You say,

look, you're trying to, you're trying to adopt two systems for so solving your whole life at once. And that's not going to work. You might want to pick one for now. So doing the steps for six months just which is it takes. If you do just do the steps and you really put your back into it. You get up early on Saturday and Sunday, you get up at 6:00 AM. You spend a few hours on step work you've done. By 10:00 AM you literally still have the whole day left, but you've done 4 hours of step.

You can get through it in three months. That's not a huge sacrifice to put a pause on some other process, frankly. Like you've been fucked up for 40 years. Another three months is not going to another three months delay. Oh, you're worried about that now? Or why didn't you go into therapy 30 years ago? Seriously, now it's urgent. You can wait three months while you're doing this process and hopefully not dive alcoholism in the meantime. Or maybe go and do therapy. And if it doesn't work,

come back here fine. It's this. I'm not, you know, do whatever you want, but try and do one thing. Don't try and ride two horses at once.

If if therapy is treated as a now want a friend of mine then this I think was super valid. The way into the

inventories is through emotion, resentment, fear under sex imagery, guilt and shame.

If you can't feel anything because you've so successfully dissociated for a decade or two, you know the last thing you can remember feeling was in the middle of the first Gulf War, That kind of thing. Then therapy can be super helpful in getting you in touch with your feelings so that you can even start to do the inventories in the first place

if you want. Sometimes people go to therapy for a very, very specific, detailed purpose,

a particular event or situation, and that can be integrated very, very easily. But I think the difficulty with therapy, and it's not because the therapy is wrong or bad, quite the reverse. But where does therapy? Is it attempting to inculcate a worldview and belief system? That's where you have a problem

because you're going to have a, because you're trying to adopt A new world view and belief system with the program.

You can't do 2 at once unless they, unless they're sort of interlocking like Meccano pieces or something. And, and sometimes they are. Sometimes people go to a therapist who's like super spiritual, super 12 step, He'll go to therapist to a course of miracles practitioners. People go to therapists who are Christian or or rabbi to a therapist. There are all sorts of things that people will do

where it totally interlocks. But sometimes people go to therapy and I've had friends who've

been told this. All the people in your life that upset you, you need to tell them what they're doing wrong to upset you.

Now that's a legitimate approach. Except what results are you getting from doing that? How's that going down? Is that working out well for you? Is that improving your relationships? Maybe it does. Some people report that literally helps but that's not been my experience