Tag Archives: character defects

Removing Defects

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The 4th and 5th steps gave us an idea of what our faults are, where they might be coming from, and which ones have been the major players in our lives up to now. Once we know what they are, we can start to get rid of them. But how exactly do we do that?

Some of them will be so minor that they seem silly in hindsight. We can simply let them go and that’s that. Something like “I’m jealous of my brother because Mom always liked him best,” maybe. (Remember the Smothers Brothers?) Other faults will need a bit more work. I go through a process of comparing my feelings/emotions of the moment against certain core beliefs and values I have. By the time I’m done, the majority of them drop to the more manageable level of “silly,” and then I can let them go.

Core Beliefs and Values

This is a short sample of beliefs and values of mine that usually play a part in the process:

  • We are not powerless over our reactions or our feelings. We can choose to change.
  • We are all brothers and sisters, each one of us a divine spirit having a human experience.
  • The human experience is to be imperfect. We all have defects, and for the most part, they are all the same.
  • To be human is also to be conflicted. We are both/and rather than either/or, both saint and sinner, beast and angel.
  • What we resist persists.

There are others, of course. You may not have the same ones; yours might even be in direct opposition to mine. It doesn’t matter; we all need to discover and start living by our own set of values and beliefs.

The Process

Anger (along with resentments, which are anger we’ve put into an interest-bearing spiritual savings account) were big on my inventory, so I’ll use that in the example. When I get angry about something, such as something someone writes on the Internet, I stop and go through the following:

  1. I let myself feel it. What we resist, persists. I let it have its way until it subsides enough for me to continue. Sort of like counting to 10, except I observe the feeling without judging it as good or bad and accept it for what it is—the feeling of the moment.
  2. I name it. “OK, I have some anger here.” This lets me own the feeling.
  3. I look at why I reacted with anger. Maybe I was on a forum and someone replied to tell me I was wrong about something. This would affect my prestige in that community, which really means “my pride gets hurt.” Or maybe I hear my bank is going under, and my financial security evaporates. The list is, or seems, endless. (I don’t know yet, I’m still alive.)
  4. I decide whether I want to let it go. If I don’t, or I’m not sure, I look for why I want to keep it. What am I getting by clinging to the anger in this particular case. What’s the payoff? Am I afraid of something? Often, I’ll need to do some contemplative meditation to discover this.
  5. When I know I’m ready to let it go, I plug it into one or more of my core beliefs or core values.This puts it into a proper perspective, usually knocking it down to the more manageable level of ‘silly.’ Then, I can let it go.

The process is not as involved as it appears when written out, and it gets easier and more automatic as I practice it. It’s my way of disconnecting my buttons so that the next time a similar situation occurs, I can act with understanding, rather than react with emotion. The same process works whether I’m dealing with baggage from the past or present, and whether it involves another person or not. The only difference is that if it involves another person, I almost certainly will need to make an amends.

How do you go about ridding yourself of these defects?

AA’s Step 7–Or Is It?

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Step 7 gets nearly the same treatment in the BB as Step 6—a single paragraph of sixty-nine words instructing us to pray to our higher power to “remove every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you [God] and my fellows.  Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding.  Amen.”  It then declares we have completed Step 7.  Cool!

Well,  it would be if I believed in an interventionist god, and if it really worked that way.  I don’t, and more importantly, it doesn’t.  Note what Bill W. wrote in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, in the Chapter on Step 6 [emphasis mine]:  “If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions.  But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation.  That is something we are supposed to work toward ourselves.”  A short while later he writes: “So, Step Six…is AA’s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime job.  This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was.  A few of them may be, but with most of them we shall have to be content with patient improvement.” [again, emphasis mine]

So I didn’t “do” Step 7.

What Gives?

The chapter in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions devoted to Step 7 is basically an essay on humility. It begins with “Since this Step so specifically concerns itself with humility…” and in the final paragraph states “The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility.”  True enough, when an instructional step starts with ‘Humbly’ [did something], the need for humility is fairly explicit.  But it’s not just Step 7.  The entire program of the 12 Steps is concerned with humility–humbling ourselves (not others, that’s ‘humiliation’) enough to understand, accept, and apply the principles of those steps in our lives.

By the time I got to the seventh Step, I had been humbled enough to admit I needed help; to walk into that first AA meeting; to admit I was alcoholic; to take an honest look at my shortcomings; to talk about those shortcomings with another person (or persons).  I honestly didn’t need to cement the newfound humility by humbly asking a god I didn’t believe in to do something that most (honest) religious folks will say He doesn’t do anyway.  If cement is needed, after Step 7 our humility is tested when we make our amends, continue looking at ourselves, and while being of service to others.

Anyone who does believe in petitionary prayer and an interventionist God would do well to heed this step.  The rest of us can safely pass over this one.

Wait!

The last page of that chapter does give us one suggestion concerning the seventh step.  It advises we might do well at this point to take another look at just what our deepest objectives are.  That’s worth considering—often and in-depth–and will be the topic of a separate post here at Spirit of Recovery.  Next up will be a look at how I go about the “work” of defect removal.

What are your thoughts about Step 7?  Is it a necessary step? a non-step?  Let us know by leaving a comment below.  Differing opinions, offered with respect, will always be welcome, encouraged and respected here.  Thanks for being here!

AA’s Step 6

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Saint Augustine of Hippo, a seminal thinker on...

“Lord, help me to be pure–but not just yet. “  St. Augustine

(before sainthood, no doubt)

If the Steps were puppies, Step 6 would undoubtedly be the runt of the litter.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous (the Big Book) glosses over it in one paragraph of 66 words, and 13 of those are lead-in.  If you blink while reading, you might miss it all together.  The gist of the instruction is to ask ourselves if we are ready; if the answer is no, we ask God for help.  That’s it.  Not much to work with even for those who believe in an interventionist deity, less for those of us who don’t.

Not a Step?

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”  I mean, come on already, it’s not even a step!  Or is it?  When someone in the fellowship relapses, Steps 4 and 5 are the usual suspects, and the person is advised “You need to do Steps 4 and 5 again to find what you left out.”  I submit that more relapses occur due to a misunderstanding of Step 6 than any other single step.

I had identified many (not all) of my defects in Steps 4 and 5.  Early in the process, I thought that having done that I’d have no reason not to let them go.  I was desperate and serious about the program.  Why would I not want to get rid of all my baggage?  It turned out to be not so black and white as that.  Many of my defects had been with me for so long, had become so much a part of who I believed I was, that I couldn’t see myself without them.  How would I be able to function at work, at home, at all, without this or that ‘defect’, who would I be, were the questions, fears really, that were running around in my head.

It helped when I read (in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) that these defects we’ve been talking about are actually natural instincts either misdirected or gone wild–”exceeded their proper function” as Bill W. wrote.  Since they’re natural instincts, they cannot be completely removed.  Pride gone wild can run from arrogance to narcissism; yet properly positioned, it is self-esteem.  Fear and anger are necessary survival instincts, but when they are operating at inappropriate times, in the wrong situations, or left unchecked to swell out of proportion to the time and circumstance, they overpower our ability to take the appropriate actions for our survival.

Not God

Bill W. goes on to explain that while the obsession to drink seemed to be removed by a higher power for the early members of AA, that wasn’t the case with these character defects, and he suggests this is because, while they cause us problems, they do not cause us “excessive misery.”  I would add also that the cause/effect is not as obvious as it was (is) with our drinking.

I know now that my defects lose their power over my actions not through denial or divine intervention, but through my:

  1. accepting that they exist,
  2. awareness of positive values and behaviors, also known as virtues, that can replace them, and
  3. replacing the old with the new.

When the defects lose their power over areas of my life where they have no place, they are effectively ‘removed.’

This is a lifetime effort for me.  I still have issues, but as they present themselves I do what I can to deal with them.  From my personal experience, and from hearing others share their experience with this Step, it is probably universal that our defects come into our awareness one at a time for attention and removal.  Even the Bible points to the fact that one’s defects are not instantly and permanently removed by God; there are things one has to do and keep on doing.  As my defects come to my awareness, I look inside myself to see their exact nature and what benefit I may still be getting by keeping them, such as comfort and security, ego strokes, a perverse pleasure even.  When I can do that, then I can begin to let them go, and replace them with compassion and loving-kindness toward myself and others.

“One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.”   Joseph Campbell

What has your experience been with Step 6?  Let us know by leaving a comment!