Guide to Making Amends in Addiction Recovery: Step 9 of AA

A living amend might include a posthumous promise to the deceased child to, from now on, make it a point to walk their surviving siblings to the bus stop each day. Then we make space for other people to hurt and heal—not just now, but into the foreseeable future. If we are honest and sincere about our amends, then we will not repeat those mistakes, and we will not rush people to forgiveness. We will honor the emotional consequences that stem from our behaviors, and seek to become healthier drug addiction so as not to repeat them. It’s not our job to quicken their process of accepting us any more than it was their job to help us get sober. Forgiveness may not come on our timetable, but what gives us the right to set the timetable?

Examples of a Direct Amend

Living amends involve ongoing actions that demonstrate a commitment to recovery and behavioral transformation. Unlike direct or indirect amends, which might be one-time actions, living amends involve actively demonstrating changed behavior over time to show accountability for past actions. This can include improving relationships through positive interaction, such as spending more time with loved ones. Despite the emphasis 12-Step groups place on making direct amends, it’s important to understand that this is not always a realistic option. Sometimes, a person will simply not be willing to accept your apology or efforts to compensate them for the harm you’ve caused. They may be dealing with their own mental health issues or the effects of past trauma and not be ready to move forward.

What Does Making Amends Have to Do With Sobriety?

It’s important to be in a state of readiness, both emotionally and mentally, before reaching out. Assess whether the person you’re approaching is prepared to engage in the conversation about amends, as it can significantly impact the outcome. Challenges and setbacks are common in the process of the 9th step. It’s not unusual to face disappointing outcomes, including rejection.

How Is Recovery.com Different?

Engaging in the process of making amends can be a profoundly transformative experience for individuals in recovery. Whether or not you’re intimately familiar with the Twelve Steps of AA, you’ve probably heard of Step Nine. https://ecosoberhouse.com/ Making Amends with Others has positioned itself in the public eye to a degree that many of the other eleven steps haven’t. That’s because it attempts to rectify the outward consequences of the disease.

• Essentially, it means making a radical shift in the way you live and sticking to that.
• We can also make amends by living very purposefully within the bounds of our principles.
• Giving a person space and honoring their right to feel what they feel about the impact your addiction and the connected behaviors has had on their lives.

Well, your sponsor (or treatment counselor) can help you with the categorization. Step nine, in particular, gets people to work through shame and discomfort as they meet people they’ve hurt face-to-face to apologize. An apology here would be considered part of a person’s direct amends. Discover when living amends are the right choice, what they involve, and how to genuinely repair relationships through ongoing actions. Sometimes, it’s necessary to make amends to employers or co-workers.

Talk with your sponsor or others in your recovery community about what has worked for them. 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. The first is when you take actions (donate, volunteer, etc.) whenever you can’t directly reach out to the affected person. Going by this take, you can think of living amends as a replacement for direct amends in step nine. That’s when the recovering alcoholic reaches out to people they’ve hurt before getting sober in an attempt to make things right.

Learn About Mental Health

My Mom, on the other hand, loves to complain about Ricky’s behavior. Sometimes I can listen supportively for a short period of time. Over the years, in small bits and pieces, I have been able to share small pearls of my Al-anon wisdom. Children don’t need to hear about the disease of alcoholism or the Twelve Steps. So we can skip the long-winded speeches and just be mom or dad. In Twelve Step terminology, another word for “amend” is “fix.” Not the fix we might have chased back in the day, but a fix to a broken relationship.

AA Amends Script

It’s hard to find the right response to someone making living amends amends. You likely have a lot of emotions surrounding the situation. It’s much easier to just apologize and move on, but committing to living your life differently looks different. Making these types of life improvements typically requires that you work with a counselor or therapist who can provide an outsider’s perspective and objective view of your life.

We strengthen and reinforce healthy recovery whenever we do our part to repair relationships or reach out to others with support and understanding. In simple terms, it means taking responsibility for the person you used to be and how you caused harm to the people in your life who care about you. It may be difficult to accept that you’re not always going to be able to make amends to people who you’ve wronged in some way. Some might be too tested by prior behaviors and actions that they simply need space. Or the people you need to apologize and make amends to are no longer living.