The Truth Shall Set You Free

Step 4 from the book Alcoholics Anonymous states that we “made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” At first blush, this statement feels both daunting and, despite the word “fearless,” a little frightening. But this step is, in fact, wonderfully freeing. (A word of advice: work the steps with someone who has successfully completed all twelve and is demonstrating the freedom from addiction and overall improved living that are promised through this work.)

How does working the fourth step lead to freedom? Through gaining:

An honest view of how we are relating to the world around us
A clear understanding of our resentments and patterns of behavior
A clear vision of what is working in our lives and what clearly is not working.

Fear and resentment are the chief ways through which people living in addictions relate to the world. Both are horrifying because they rob us of life itself – we can remain so focused on past struggles and future fears that daily life simply passes us by as we are mired in our misery. When we encounter situations that feel similar to ones over which we are still harboring resentments, fear drives us to develop patterns of behavior to avoid them (such as lashing out, running away, lying, or passive/aggressive tendencies). Clearly none of these negative patterns are working for us. The fourth step provides a basis for working our way out of them and living life free and in the present moment.

Let’s tackle resentments first. The word resentment has its root in the Latin word, sensus, which means to feel. It boils down to this: instead of feeling (understanding and accepting) a situation just the one time as it happens, we RE-feel it – over and over and over again. And, if we are really good at harboring resentments, we feel each one with greater and greater levels of anguish, completely eradicating any part we may have played, and becoming daily more convinced of our victimization. Even situations that are, in fact, not directed at us or purely accidental will take on the aspect of intentional harm, further enforcing the sense that we are victims of life. For me, a resentment can also be a “backdoor” way to justify behaviors that have no productive outcome. But those same behaviors can masquerade as control I exercise to feel less like a victim – or can be used to counter resentful sadness with something I convince myself feels good, even when I know intellectually that it is actually not good for me.

Fear is simply paralyzing. It can take various forms from subtle, constant anxiety to outright terror, but it is always paralyzing. The word can be seen as an acrostic – False Evidence Appearing Real – relating to a faulty interpretation of things outside ourselves to understand our place in the world. Fear can also be born of a false sense of ownership or entitlement – I am afraid that I will lose something or someone I believe belongs to me, or that I will not get something or someone I think I need. I must realize that I own nothing and nobody – except my own choices. And I must own my choices (accept the consequences of). The antidote for fear is the fourth step – another acrostic – Face Everything And Recover.

Bill Wilson describes the business of taking inventory as just that – a necessary part of doing the business of life (in the book Alcoholics Anonymous). Imagine being the owner of a small tool and equipment rental company. You have a large warehouse with row upon row of tools stacked on shelving. If you are running a profitable business, your tools and equipment will be in working order, stacked neatly on shelves and categorized for easy access. When someone comes into the storefront to rent something, you will know where to find it and rest assured that it is working when you rent it out. But if you never take an inventory and make repairs, if you allow things to be stacked about willy-nilly, some working, some not, you are likely to go bankrupt.

The fourth step can be equated to taking a clipboard into the warehouse of your life, inspecting and then categorizing each part of you as (1) in good working order, (2) in need of repair but worth repairing, or (3) permanently broken – discard or recycle. It is not a process to further damage yourself with guilt and condemnation – these are never productive and usually as paralyzing as fear. Instead, this is an opportunity to take a cool and honest look at where each piece stands, how it got into that state, and how the only thing you could control – yourself – contributed to the state that it is in. What most of us find is that we started off with pretty decent equipment – good assets. Through excess, developing negative response patterns through fear and resentments, and uninformed choices, these assets became skewed into liabilities. For example, someone who began with the very admirable asset of perseverance, through excess might today be bullish and stubborn – a liability. The good news is that upon close and honest examination of the liability, we can see how to restore it to the asset again.

For me, working the fourth step, and then sharing it with someone I trusted, brought me the freedom to live life large and taught me an ancient adage I can apply every day: The truth shall set you free.

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