Why I Hold Grudges

I’m working the Steps this year by reading and answering the questions in Paths to Recovery. The first question in the defects section in the chapter on Step 4 – made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves – asks why do I hold onto my resentments? I’m not sure I’ve ever asked myself this question; I’ve only acknowledged that I do indeed hold onto grudges, thinking it is what I learned growing up with a very sick mother, having been abandoned by my father.

Perhaps knowing why I continue to hold onto my resentments even when I know they hurt me is the key to really letting them go. Suddenly I realized that I hold onto my grudges to protect myself from getting hurt. As a child, I put on my suit of armor and became as hard as steel so no one could hurt me again like my father had and like my mother continued to do. Even then they got through, although I didn’t feel it, not really.

But as I grew, both physically and emotionally, the suit of armor became too small; it began to spread apart and the gaps left me more and more vulnerable as time wore on. I still had resentments, but my coat of grudges no longer protected me the way it used to. As I’ve grown spiritually in Al-Anon, I’ve learned that my health depends on me completely shedding this false protection that no longer serves me. Instead, I will cover myself in God’s acceptance, love, forgiveness, and approval of me, as well as my own acceptance, love, forgiveness, and approval of me.

In this way, I no longer need to hide behind steel plates; the problem with the armor was that it protected me from everything – even the good stuff in life! Now I am protected by a transparent bubble that lets hurtful opinions and actions bounce off of me while letting kindness and love through. I no longer need to fear what others can do to me, so I can let go of my old, childhood resentments and finally be free of their constraints. I can grow up and enjoy the maturity of adulthood. Just for today, I know that I did the best I could even as my parents did the best they could.

B.A.R.F.

So here's a new acronym I came up with during a meeting on Step 4 yesterday:

Behaviors

Attitudes

Resentments

Fears

I got these from someone sharing about what they write about during a personal inventory. These are the things we need to get rid of to uncover our assets (except behaviors can be good as can attitudes!), thus B.A.R.F.

Step 4: Just Do It

I went to a good meeting today on Step 4. We read the chapter in Paths to Recovery and it contained many methods to taking one's moral inventory, making it a bit overwhelming. But there was one line I really liked from an Alateen sponsor: "Keep It Simple!"

It occurred to me that we in Al-Anon spend an awful lot of time on Step 4, often years, when it is really just one of the twelve steps. In that way, we seem to make it more important than the other eleven steps. And because we think it is soooo important, we get stuck on it, thinking it is tooooooo hard and we'll never be able to get it done.

There are those who go way back to the beginning and write about all the resentments they've ever had. I recently heard about someone with 600 resentments! What? The most I ever wrote were 60. But even that was way too much, especially since my Step 5 took two days. What my sponsor says is correct, in my opinion, that we really only have about ten main resentments that cover everything as we tend to meet and deal with the same characters and characteristics, including our own, over and over again.

My advice to sponsees now is to begin your inventory with what is going on right now. Deal with the present first. As time goes by, you can work your way back to your early childhood where your problems began. I found that this was more like "peeling the onion" because when I got to the bitter core, it was the incident and the person whom I first reacted to negatively. By then, I'd been going to Al-Anon long enough to be able to face this squarely and ask God to remove my continual reaction to it.

So this month, as I work Step 4, I'm going to "Keep It Simple!" I'm fortunate in that I've written a lot of Step 4's, so I don't really have a lot of stuff to dig up and dispose of. Yet, I still have some grievances and behaviors, especially my own, that I need to write about and then talk to my sponsor about when it's time to move on to Step 5.

I'll give myself a month, since my meeting works one step a month. Any more time and I'm holding myself back from the good God has in store for me.