Step Five of the AA program of recovery is...
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
In this step we have to admit some things. We have that inventory we took in step four, the one that we hated doing, the one where we found out things about ourselves that we did not like. Now we must not only admit these things to ourselves but also to God and another human being. Ouch!
It is bad enough to face the fears and resentments in our private meditation and it even feels very uncomfortable admitting it all to God in prayer, but to actually tell another human being the things we wrote down about our innermost thoughts and feelings, as well as some of the horrible things we've done in the past. This is where many people say "hell no, I will never tell these things."
We are afraid we will be misunderstood and judged if we share our secrets. We believe the person will tell us that we are horrible and never want to speak to us again. Yes, we believe these things because that is what our disease tells us, and we are used to listening to our disease. But our disease lies.
Once we finally muster up enough courage and determination to talk to someone and tell them our story we find that a certain amount of peace comes from it. We realize that we really don't have to hide inside ourselves anymore. We can talk about our faults and failures with some other human beings and it will be okay. We actually start to believe that we are okay. What an amazing discovery!
We share the nature of our wrongs with another human being and we begin the process of peeling the layers of fear away and we start on a new journey of sharing our life with others, and in return we find that sometimes they are willing to share their life with us. Then we don't have to feel so alone anymore.
