4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Do this step.

This one is where people procrastinate, make excuses, skip, or even quit the steps over.  We don't want to own up to what we've done.  Or we're afraid we're going to beat ourselves up over and over again. I took a long time to do this step myself because of this. However, I went to the workbook and found that it didn't have to go as I had feared. And that's because of a key principle: blamelessness.

We're not here to indict in Step 4. We're here to simply but fully acknowledge what we've done and what was done to us. We're not concerned with blame at this step. We simply seek full knowledge and comprehension.

To get you started, begin with this Yellow Workbook exercise. Below, find the Laundry List. Note the ones you identify with and write how they apply to you.

1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened of angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."
10. We have "stuffed" our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

It's okay if you don't relate to each one. Just write about the ones that do apply to you.  But please...

Do this step.