I'm just wondering if anyone has any particular way of doing 4th step work that is formatted somewhat differently than the Big Book?

Hi!

Tough step.  I'm AA, Al-Anon, ACOA, so through the years have done different studies. Al-anon has "Blueprint for Progress", a fourth step inventory booklet. I have also used "The Twelve Steps for Christians", which expands on the steps.  These and lots more are available at Amazon.com, under recovery, and MIP has it's own book store also 

Hope this helps

if you're asking from an AA point of view i have a 247 question outline if you're interested...

For me I didn't make any real progress with my fouth step work until I realized that doing my fouth step work wasn't about beating myself up, it was about looking and seeing how I react to life situations. Then asking myself what was working and what wasn't working. Also I got to a place of realizing that in the process of trying to get my needs met inappropriately ie. trying to control everything and everybody around me I had hurt a lot of people including myself. Once I identified all of that. I could honestly go about making amends to all of the people in my life I had hurt including myself. Making amends freed me from my past mistakes and allowed me to turly start living my life with self respect and respect for others. There are many good books on step work out there visit your local book store and check them out. My favorite is THE Twelve Steps A Way Out, A Work Book by Friends in Recovery.

Here's a website that has some fair information about step 4: http://www.ni-cor.com/stepfour.html I like the 4 column worksheet. It's best to work one resentment, etc., all they way across instead of doing column one then column two, etc. Some people add a 5th column where they put how they plan on handling it. I can email you a pdf file with the forms in it, but it's too big to attach here. RJ