Step 4 and Resentments, Institutions and Community

In 12 step programs we are encouraged to do a step 4 listing all the persons, institutions, and or principles we had a grudge against. Later we look at how grudges develop because we have unrealistic expectations. These persons, institutions or principles get between us and security (and or money), our sexual desires (marriages, mistresses, lovers), our ambitions (where we want to go, who we want to be) and our personal relationships (our friendships, status etc.)
Some of the institutions are as follows:

Government - in the 12 step programs there's the recognition that commonly individuals are emotional immature, fixating in their development at a time of trauma in childhood or at a time when they turned to their addictions to deal with the anxiety that followed the trauma or stress that was occasioned with something as everyday as "growing up". So there's a tremendous amount of anti authoritarianism in the society and this shows up with anger at paying taxes, frustration with the arms of government starting with the world, federal, provincial or state and moving down to city and local strata.

 Religion - it follows if we are antiauthoritarian and verging on anarchist like most 'king babies' are would want to be 'accountable' to a God, or even a 'higher power'. We certainly don't like the idea of accountability and we certainly don't like the idea of 'spiritual laws' since we're not particularly happy with 'speed limits' on the highway that we can be fined for ignoring. We don't even like gravity and would want to fly not that we would want others to have this capacity since that would interfere with our own flights of insanity.

Education - we generally encountered rules in home and then in the first institutions of school and church. The schools were a kind of training ground for adulthood and we often didn't like to do as the teachers or principals said and we didn't like completing assignments as we were told to or when we were supposed to. We didn't like the hierarchy there and we didn't like our inadequacies being made public. It was alright when we were the A student or the winner on the sports team or the soloist in the choir but we weren't particularly happy to have no attention so often got negative attention. Later we'd blame what we'd come to know as 'defects of character' on the organizations that were supposed to be moulding our character.

Money - The institution of money and how some people had more and we had less and how families and tribes got more and others got less all upset us to no end. So often we'd focus on these 'entitlements' rather than consider our own 'benders' and 'wastes' and how we'd alienated the institutions that might help us get more money.

Work- the need to contribute to society and have a job and participate really peeves the addict who would rather be out playing hooky and pursuing pleasure so since work often delays gratefication with the primary pleasure pursuits of the addicts it's soon forgoten that work is a means to an end and increasing work becomes anathema.

 Family - this is an institution that gets a lot of flak from the addict because of the unrealistic expectations that addicts and alcoholics have placed on family members. If they can blame their parents or siblings for their losses or lack of achievements then they don't have to look at themselves and god forbid their 'addiction'. Addiction works like a virus in a computer hiding itself by every means possible and yet taking over all programs and making them work poorly, like a cancer really. Alcoholism and addiction have been called 'cancer of the brain' and the 'great chameleon' since they appears as everything but addiction. The Addict or alcoholic then ascribes the 'problems' whatever they are to 'family' or 'work' or 'school' or some individual or institution.

The Banks - we didn't like the banks if they didn't loan us money and if they loaned us money and then they wanted it back with interest. We didn't like the paying back part. Anything that interfered with our personal pleasure was something we developed a grudge against.

The Courts - we came to realize that while the government was a problem if we'd ever dealt with the courts directly they were even more of a problem because the judge might well not agree with our view on the way things happened in an event that got into his court room. We might object to only lawyers being judges, only educated people being judges, judges having so many powers, the way the courts worked, lawyers, the way lawyers were recompensed, the history of the courts, any number of aspects of the courts that we could bitch about if we somehow got an unfavourable judgement.

The Prison System -if we found ourselves in the institution of the jails we had a lot to be resentful about.

The Medical System - we could have a grudge against this. Sometimes alcoholics blame their liver failure and gut bleeds and all the other failures of the body to deal with self poisoning, on the care of the doctors, nurses and hospitals, rather than consider who caused the problem and who can stop the drinking and drugging.

The Psychiatrists and Asylum - if we found ourselves in the psychiatric system we could develop real resentments against the whole deck of cards that makes up what people insist is 'reality'.

There are the 'mind police' we have resentments against, the 'feeling police', the 'gender police', the 'sex police' and increasingly all these police and punishments of the courts and jails and psychiatrists and asylums were overlapping.

We didn't like anyone who interfered in our freedom. Society - so what it came down to was we wanted to be alone with our addiction what ever our pleasure lever was that we, (like the monkeys who have a brain operation to their pleasure centre and will spend all day pressing the lever until they die if they're not physically disconnected) didn't like anything that got between us and our 'pleasure lever'.

So others, humans in general were a curse to others unless they were somehow helping us, building levers and putting electrodes in our monkey brains, otherwise, be gone. So it's not surprising that so many people with addictions are in the end very unhappy unless they are actively drinking or using or have the electrodes in their brain hooked up and they're pressing that lever 24/7. Wow!

So addiction tends to break down relationships reducing their reciprocity, decreasing their depth, and increasing their shallowness. People may pull away from long term friends and claim new using friends are just the same as family and friends known for years. Suddenly the person met last week, usually a buddy who shares the addiction is as important as a person who knew the person for decades and stood by them through thick or thin.

In Jaggerts curve of the decline of alcoholism there is a movement away from others to the source of addiction, anything that takes time from being 'available' for the 'call' of the addiction or to respond to the 'craving' for alcohol gets put aside. Increasingly a person stops belonging to community, going to work, attending church, being a member of a club or organization. They become solely 'on call' to their new God, whatever is the addiction, what ever lever they've got their brain's pleasure centre electrically hooked up to. So they're distracted and not really present for anything but their addiction where they worship at the alter like the greatest zealot.

Having rejected all the community institutions as a result of addiction which ultimately aims to have them alone with their addiction when they stop their addiction it's not just stopping the drug or alcohol that is 'recovery'. In medicine setting a fracture isn't the cure if the patient stays in bed where the broken leg took them. Rehabilitation is walking again.

Rehabiliation in terms of the disease of addiction and alcoholism is termed 'recovery'. The 12 step program was developed to assist people in recovery and understanding. Hence the person who sarcastically in a meeting says "a thermometer has degrees and you know where we stick them" is likely to have left school and formal learning and avoided education and formal learning, to their own detriment, despite no longer being a drunk or a drug addict. In this regard they need to address their own unresolved anxieties with the education system and let go of the long seated resentment at perhaps leaving school or failing, or perhaps return to school to make the achievements they want in recovery. Similiarly a person who 'jokes' 'sarcastically' that they are a 'recovered catholic' might well need to look at their own leaving the church and return to change the church or start a new church, join a different church or at very least let go of the resentment against an 'institution' that has served billions. Institutions are generally simply organizations that individuals have solidified to enhance the good of some activity.

Even the military is an organization that improved on the original need of a small group to defend against another small group. If I had resentments against the military I might perhaps become involved in the peace movement. But the idea of the 'critic' and 'righteous anger' is beyond the alcoholic and addict because part of the disease of addiction and alcoholism was the mental process whereby we became the most adept 'critics'.

Dr. Paul O. a famous writer in recovery said he could find fault with a blank wall and if you didn't see the problem that made the problem even worse.

Today whenever I hear others or find myself 'criticizing' an institution I ask what would I replace it with and how much time am I willing to put into this alternative. If I'm not going to run for government and sit in parliament and listen to old fat cats belly ache and complain and argue, then maybe I should just accept that politics is never about the best but rather the picking of the least bad. In the case of the alcoholic or addict I have to stop thinking with the 'idealism' of a child and 'participate' to see how getting anything done in this world is like herding cats.

Institutions have developed often over hundreds to thousands of years to deal with the the principal problem of the alcoholism or addict, talking alot but not getting anything done, criticizing a lot but creating little. Recovery is about creativity. It's said that a 'meeting' of a 12 step group only needs a 'coffee pot and a resentment'. A person in addiction will leave the meeting and go off alone to be available for the call of their addiction whereas a person in recovery might well leave a meeting and go off and set up another meeting more to their liking. The world is such that if I don't like a school I can create my own, and the same goes with churches, laws and governments, if I wish to invest the time and energy that those whose names are associated with the major institutions did.

Personally I'm more often than not thankful that others will take on the leadership and invest the time and energy that makes for the olympic champions of society no different that those olympic champion athletes. I also know that recovery means I'll participate in community and contribute creatively. As Dr. Phillip Ney, a spiritual psychiatrist liked to day, the world doesn't need another bitter critic especially if they're an old man or old woman.

Resentment and Forgiveness

In the 12 step programs there is great emphasis on addressing one's own 'resentments' and attempting to 'let go' of these and move on to 'forgiveness'. It was explained to me early that 'forgiving' didn't mean I 'condoned' what I perceived as the other person's behaviour. Further it was also explained to me that in the 'heat of the moment' I was supposed to be defending myself directly and surviving and leaving the forgiving till a later time. Even the Dalai Lama has said that if a person is pointing a gun at you and shooting you are right to defend yourself.

However, holding onto resentments has been described as 'taking poison and hoping the other person dies'. We are what we think. Cognitive behavioural therapy says specifically that our thoughts create our emotions and we also tend to attract and be drawn to what we feel, sometimes in a viscious circle kind of way.

The key to addressing our 'resentments' in the 12 step program was to make an inventory of all those who we felt had hurt us and then list what the hurt was. This hurt was described as being less complex and more specific than most of us are willing to do. Indeed we tend to think of ourselves as 'terminally' unique but when we actually list our resentments and see the pattern is rather basic we realize that we're not that special or different from anyone else.

The experience of resentment is associated with a threat to the following:

1) Money - it's utterly amazing how much resentment people hold to anyone who interferes with their money 'supply'.
2) Sexual life - it's equally amazing how much resentment people hold to anyone who interferes with their sexual life.
3) Security - this refers to whatever we believe protects us and keeps us safe in what we believe is an unsafe world. It probably should be at the top of the list because certainly I still have fleeting negative thoughts of the careless irresponsible drivers who drove through lights and hit me with their vehicles leaving me today with some rather serious pain issues where joints were damaged. That's an example of a 'security' issue. The failure of the insurance company to compensate me for my loss is another resentment issue that goes with money.
4) Self esteem or status or personal relationships - we have a 'social image' of ourselves. I have had a serious resentment to a compulsive liar and pervert who falsely accused me of being attracted to them, as a form of extortion for money. In then end I had to pay them off because the courts are only about money and no longer care for 'justice' or 'right and wrong'. Indeed the courts are a source of resentment to me because as a dead lawyer friend said, the middle class of Canada can no longer afford them. The legal system no longer protects me from thieves and criminals and all I have is insurance which costs me more and more to the point where I'd think the insurance and legal system and criminals were in league against the law abiding citizens. Of course after the 'status' issue, where the 'false allegation' impugned my 'reputation' and rewarded the liar and criminal, I had a resentment about the money issue. At the same time I worried that my family and friends would think there was some truth in this even though I knew that anyone who knew me knew me as a good man. I worried that these days people don't want to associate with anyone in any kind of trouble for fear 'bad luck' is infectious. I know the love of my family and close friends wouldn't be affected by these consequences of my working within a corrupt government with the most dangerous and disturbed people but I still worried and had resentments about what these negative experiences would do for my relationships in general.
5) Ambition - I wanted to buy another house having lost two to divorces and the punishment that is institutionalized there. I hoped to work less with later years and more pain. I wanted to be safer and be surrounded by friends who accepted me as I am after all the sacrifice and work I'd done. I worried about health care and cosmetic care and safety in old age and worried indeed I'd be pushing a cart on the street or dying painfully of a treatable medical condition but not having the insurance or money to pay for this. I have resentments against those who have interfered with my attempts to 'get ahead', to 'be the best person I can be', to 'love and not hate', to be 'fearless' and to do those things I wanted to do on my bucket list, like sail around the world, learn the bagpipes, right the great Canadian novel, serve as missionary doctor, make love, sky dive, para sail, take a trip into outerspace and meet aliens, any of those things. I can develop a resentment against anyone who gets between me and where I see myself in the future, even in the future a day or two from now, like recently when a slow moving arrogant Heathrow security guy held us all up so we missed our flight and I'd been hoping to get home and to bed but instead was delayed a day and didn't sleep till 3 am. Expectations have been described as "pre formed resentments'. Consequently we try to have 'good intentions' leaving the outcome in God's hands. That's the Christian thing but I was trained in science and medicine that I'm responsible not only for intentions but for outcomes and I have a resentment for 12 steppers and Christians who abdicate responsibility for poor outcome saying it's in 'god's hands' whereas as a rifle marksman I also know that most poor outcome is a product on lack of training, practice or taking into account the wind. So I'm learning how to coordinate my expectations and time frames with the limits of others and the environment rather than having 'great ideas' without realization of how much is involved in the actual translation of idea into finished product. I'm also very appreciative of those who are successful at this and less likely to criticize effective people than many whose lives are less so and they rarely seem to really look where the need for change is, not with the external world but rather with themselves.

Of course I have to address resentments I have to myself, ie the person I was yesterday rather than today. Most of what occurs in my life is a product of the desires I had yesterday. I can see the outcomes of my prayers and ambitions when I was younger. I can also see the effects of 'karma' or 'divine retribution' the older I get. So I have joint that's painful not so much because of the injury but more because of the lack of care I took and my unwillingness to follow medical advice at the time of the injury. So much of what I deal with today is a product of my 'knowing better' and not taking 'good advice' or 'listening to my superiors, parents etc".

So I have to recognise that my happiness is subtracted by my resentments. It's like the hard drive of a computer that's full of spam. I have to forgive if only to stop thinking of the old shit.

Now I've got to go back to work right now.



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