Step Five

[bluidkiti]

NA STEP FIVE

"We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs."

Our inventory does not automatically deliver us from the bondage of addiction. There was, and is, a long way to go, but it certainly begins the process and gives us hope for the future. We gain acceptance of our natures with hope for positive change. We are often very surprised to find out exactly what we wrote when we share our Fifth Step. We often feel a great sense of freedom after doing our Fifth Step. We may still be concerned when we find fault with ourselves and despair that we'll ever gain "real" recovery. Addiction surrounds our entire life with walls of fear that have kept us prisoners much of our lives. By working the Fifth Step and exposing all of the negative feelings, we have the opportunity to demolish these walls once and for all. We will finally be free to begin building a whole new life based on a solid foundation of truth, self-honesty and trust. The process of recovery has helped us to find and trust God, ourselves and another human being often for the first time in our lives. We cannot do this alone. The difference of not feeling alone is the basis of our courage. Through writing and sharing, many of us feel forgiveness and acceptance. The Fifth Step can be so upsetting for some of us; we may still be physically vomiting while sharing our inventory. The bondage of our addiction has had a physical hold on us. This Step will be a positive affirmation of our new feelings of trust both in our Higher Power and another human being.

One member shares, "Before I even began my 4th step, I had shared with my sponsor my fear of even admitting to anyone even some of the things I had done in my walls of fear. Whenever I think about working the Fifth Step, I think of the walls of fear that have kept me a prisoner of my own life. I think about working this step and ridding myself of all of the negative feelings that have ruled my life. These walls will finally be knocked-down and I will be free to begin to build a whole new life based on a solid foundation of self-honesty, truth and freedom from fear. My entire life has been lived inside walls of fear. Negative feelings kept me back in the prison of my disease."

For some of us, building trust bonds is one of the hardest things we have ever done. For as long as we can remember, we would never allow ourselves to trust anyone because to trust someone meant you had to get to know them and let them know you. Trust is an empty-handed leap into the void. We cannot prepare ourselves for trusting. There is no way to defend ourselves against the risk of acknowledging who we are and letting other people and the God of our understanding into our lives. To get to know them meant letting them get to know us and we always believed that once they got to know us they would reject us and that would hurt. The experience of sharing the contents of our Fourth Step inventory awakens us to the reality that we can change from the people we were into the people we want to be. Some of us heard when we were kids, "confession is good for the soul." Confession defined as ‘telling everything’ has nothing to do with the Fifth Step. We seek rather to unblock the channel to God, to our own spirits, and to the rest of humanity that has been clogged up by our fear, denial and ego. Admitting who we are and what we've done doesn't amend the record, but it puts us on the record for owning our past decisions. The principle that we learn here is integrity and we must first accept that the disease had corrupted our personal moral structure.

By looking at and sharing the record, we seek to integrate the fractured lives we have led by trusting the healing process of the Steps. We admit to our wrongs more easily because, thanks to the previous Steps because we are no longer afraid that saying it will bring it back. We aren't the people we were but we aren't fully recovered either. Some feel that the fear of returning to our old ways keeps us eager to recover but as we re-integrate more of our lives, hope becomes a greater motivator than fear ever was. Trust comes from acceptance; remember that we learned this in the Second Step. With the self-acceptance we gain through the process of our Fourth Step inventory, we come to self-trust with the admission of our role in our difficulties of the past and our personality problems in the present. Further, we act on our acceptance of a loving, supportive God and live our trust of the Spirit. Best of all, the mutual acceptance that we experience from sharing our Fifth Step becomes mutual trust, as we grow to love and respect ourselves by experiencing love of and love for another. That is what we mean when we say, "God - grant me the courage to be searching and fearless". The members of our Fellowship teach each other to care and trust. What we think we know about trust is full of flaws. Trust used to be an immediate thing in our active addiction: We trusted each other to an extent because we each got high. Today, we learn to practice letting the process happen. Instead of assuming someone has learned to be trustworthy, we open ourselves to others knowing that trust is something that we need to practice. No matter what the other person may choose to do with the things that we entrust to them is why we say, "Trust is earned and rightfully so." The way we earn it is by being ourselves so others know what they are dealing with. The fact that we addicts all suffer from the same disease helps us build trust bonds.

There are no different addicts. We have differences as people and degrees of sickness but underneath we have similarities that are far more remarkable. This knowledge helps us begin to trust one another. Our powerlessness and our defective personalities actually give us something in common. As our increased understanding of ourselves helps us understand each other, compassion grows. We don't have to get it right from the start. Sharing involves some skills and practice improves our ability to enlarge our world by sharing. Once we establish trust with even one person, we may have difficulty until we know what the ‘rules’ are. Being able to give and receive with trust allows a bond to exist between us. Many of us feel that we have gained much from this Step. Through prayer, willingness and our ability to share on this Step, we gained much trust. We begin to feel like we aren't alone. We see some of our worst fears lifted from us. There were things we opened-up and choked-up and got out that we never thought we would share. We felt the benefit almost immediately afterward. We feel freedom from simply releasing the wreckage and garbage that we had kept pent-up inside. We found the willingness to share our deepest, darkest secrets with another human being. We gained insight as to how to push aside the fear and walk through that opening.

A member shares, "The meaning of courage has changed as I have grown in Narcotics Anonymous. At first courage was an illusion that I put on. I never knew the exact meaning, only that the opposite of courage was cowardice. I remember how much of my life was full of fear, how I felt like a coward but I could not let anyone know how terrified I was. I always put on an illusion of how courageous, uncaring, and ruthless I was. I always considered courage a physical quality. Today I am aware of the spiritual and emotional aspects of courage. I have learned that it can be easier to run away to avoid life's trials and tribulations but true courage is walking through the fear and learning to work through the pain and the problems. Courage today is walking through the fear, putting one foot in front of the other, working towards the solution, and having the courage to let fellow addicts help and guide me."

Paralyzing fear is a reality. We learn to trust ourselves to become vulnerable enough to walk through the terror. We had always thought that the only antidote to fear was courage. Not so! Fear dissolves under any spiritual principle! This is because spiritual principles are based on Faith and Faith kills fear. Sharing our inventory with another human being opens the door to sharing with others. This is the first step involving another person as far as out working the Steps go. It provides a basic building block in our reconciliation with the human race. Human beings would have died out as a species if simple errors were ordinarily fatal. Most of our errors have the effect of curbing or preventing our growth, restricting us to know only limited pathways where there is seemingly little fear of failure. Fear of failure can 'lock us up' in permanent isolation and ineffectualness.

We want to reconcile ourselves with this reality if we are to go on with our lives as healthy people. The moment before we admit the exact nature of our wrongs, they still have great power over us. A moment later, the truth is out and we know the first moments of freedom. It is the end of the struggle to continue the denial. It is the beginning of our emotional development that was stopped when the defect first appeared along with our inability to come to terms with something arrested our growth in that area. For addicts seeking recovery, it may be helpful to say aloud to ourselves, it happened while I was using and that's not how I am clean. Our decision-making ability, our ability to see or hear clearly, our ability to react accurately to life in general, all these were hampered or disabled by our active addiction. Even today, our disease will try to make the pain of our renewal seem greater than the continued pain that we are used to carrying with us. Like the odd twist that allows freedom to come from surrender, when we are able to make ourselves vulnerable we will know an increase of life. To be vulnerable is only to expose ourselves to the reality of the other person. If they hurt us, it is on them and we will be able to go forward. We are not so fragile as our disease likes to make us feel. While we may experience failure repeatedly in finding those we can trust, God will reveal them to us as long as we continue to practice our part in trust. Our spiritual courage is a signal to others like ourselves.

We may feel a spirit when we share our Fifth Step. It may be part of what changes our lives. Heightened awareness, sensitivity, interest and a sense of the miraculous may pervade us when the pain that is stuck deep inside is set free. While our Fifth Step is a spiritual and emotional reality, it has the effect of demolishing the walls we have erected to protect our fear and terror from observation by others. So strong is the hold of our pain that we act as if it will tear our flesh to pull it away from the injury. We don't work the Steps to lose at life. We do it to win. The gains can be terrific but the ones that may mean the most to us in time are the simple, everyday abilities that used to be beyond most of us. The blockage that has held us back so long has resulted in structures within our personalities that work only as an echo of past pain, real or imagined. The pain replays itself to us in a similar situation and we react as if injured whether we are or not. The failure to respond accurately to our environment is one phase of insanity and the defective portions have to be relaxed and ironed-out to regain function in that area. Peace begins when we find a way that allows us to feel safe enough to stop fighting. Forces that seem to have been working destructively in our lives slowly seem to be changing into sources of strength rather of conflict. Our addiction set us at odds with the world around us in many ways. This is not to say the world is perfect and that all living problems dry-up when we start living the clean life and working the Twelve Steps of recovery. It is through the Fifth Step that we re-unite with the world and the people around us. Who and what we are gains definition from what we share with others. Most of us are full of unshared feelings, hopes, fears and aspirations. When we are re-connected, all this flows out of us and we regain a sense of purpose and balance.