Betrayal Trauma Recovery - BTR.ORG

Today I want to talk about Step 7 which is one of my favorite steps. I love all the steps, but I have seen so much growth in being willing to have God remove my character weaknesses. When I have humbly asked him to do so, it has changed my life.

Step 7 is the part where we humbly asking God to remove our shortcomings.  

The humility really comes from the other steps.  When I started this program I was not humble at all and I still have so far to go. But I’m feeling more humble now than I have ever felt in my life. Knowing that I am powerless and that I have defects I don’t have the power to fix, has humbled me.

Because humility is so essential for change, we go through Steps 1-6 to develop enough humility for Step 7.

Because step 7 is not about just demanding that we are this amazing person. Like “God fix me now!!!”  That is not at all what Step 7 is about.  From the Blue Book: “We frequently misunderstand the word humility. Often we think it implies weakness, lack of character, or helplessness.  In a world that exalts fame and fortune humility does not seem like a desirable quality.  Instead we believe success requires pride and ambition.”  

Now this next paragraph in the Blue Book describes me perfectly… “Many of us spent years achieving the kind of success we can measure in money and material possessions.  We tried to be successful in our careers and thought that it was the way to guarantee happiness.  We acquired comfortable homes and thought that would guarantee comfort. We thought we could guarantee a secure future through hard work and intelligence.”

So that sentence was me to a t.  I thought that I could guarantee a secure future through hard work and intelligence and, so I just attacked everything with that hard work and intelligence thinking I knew the right way to do things.  

“We thought meeting our physical and material needs were the primary goals of our lives.  We were not necessarily wrong, it’s just left out some important priorities.  Even though we meant well, we hindered ourselves with our lack of humility.  We didn’t realize how important humility is in building our characters.  Nor did we see that spiritual needs have to come before any others.  At times, we did have a sincere desire to build our characters, but when we had to choose between character and comfort somehow comfort always won.”  That describes me perfectly.  

“When we had to choose between character and comfort, somehow comfort always won.  In SAnon we learn that pride and fear were the motives for much of our irrational behavior.  We feared that we would never get the things our pride told us we deserved.  We feared we would lose the relationships and material possessions we had.”

That's why for me I didn’t set boundaries because I was very fearful that I would lose my relationship and my worst fears have come to pass and I’m ok.  I’m ok. As we approach Step 7 most of us have learned to call upon God in times of great need.  We really have begun to desire humility instead of just accepting it as something we should want.  We have learned that we can accomplish more with a humble attitude then we can when we are prideful and fearful.  Humility works better not only when we are asking God for help but also when we are dealing with other people in our lives.  Humility allows us to ask for and accept God’s forgiveness.  With that forgiveness our consciences can be at ease and as long as we place genuine reliance upon a Higher Power our humility is at work.  

So I’m going to be doing Step 7 again soon because I’m right now doing Step 4 again. I’m doing Step 4 with the help of the Al-Anon Blueprint for Progress book and I’m really excited now that I’ve uncovered some more character defects to humbly take these to Heavenly Father and ask Him to remove them. I know I’m not powerful enough to do this and I know that I need him to remove them for me as I humbly ask him.  

I’d like to talk about some of these character defects that I am looking at.  Am I aware of others or am I self-centered?  Do I try to become less preoccupied with myself by getting interested in things outside myself?  Can I see that being helpful to others is a way out of my dilema?  ARe my responsibilities to myself kept in good balance with my desire to reach out to others?  With that one I”m kind of right in the middle.  I feel like I am sometimes self centered and sometimes I’m aware of others.  That’s one thing that I’d like to be better at. That’s one of the character defects I will be asking God to remove is my self-centeredness.  

Am I thoughtful or am I self-pitying?  These are some of the questions. Have I considered that others may have had as difficult a time in life as I have?  Do I steer clear of getting others to feel sorry for me? Do I see problems as one of my greatest sources of growth in life, a real gift from my Higher Power?  I feel like I don’t want other people to feel sorry for me, I don’t like that at all, and I do definitely consider that other people have a very difficult time, but where I am having a struggle with right now is do I see problems as one of the greatest forces for growth in my life and I am not there so I am asking Heavenly Father to help me be more thoughtful.  

Am I cheerful or am I depressed?  Do I avoid blaming others for my unhappiness?  Sometimes.  Sometimes I don’t.  Can I understand why Abraham Lincoln said “Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be?”  On that I put a “Yes” with an exclamation point I’ve always felt that way that I’m happy and that I choose to be happy.  Do I recover quickly from disappointment?  And normally I do very quickly.  So right now I'm kind of in between being cheerful and depressed.  The antidepressant of course has helped with that.

There are a lot of different things that I am so grateful for that I'm seeing in myself.  At the very end of the section it says “after answering these questions on the subject of character traits what have I learned about myself?” And I put I have a lot to work on.