RSS FeedStep Eight is: “[We] made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” This eighth of the Twelve Steps is the beginning of making amends, of healing the past with others. From the inventory of Step 4, we already have a good starting place for making a list of people that we may have harmed. Now, we can look over our personal inventory and possibly reflect on our lives again, making a more detailed list that includes thoughts about what the appropriate amends might be. Then we go through the list again to make sure we are willing in our hearts to make these amends.
“Step Eight is a social housecleaning, just as Step Four was our personal housecleaning. In Step Eight we’re setting out to clean up all the bruised relationships and the pockets of guilt, pain, fear, resentment, and sadness that are stored inside, stuck to our shameful past deeds. For this undealt-with material blocks us from loving other people, ourselves, and God in the present.”
- A Hunger for Healing
Doing the list helps us to work through and grieve our underlying resentment, hurt, anger, and pain before trying to make amends, which happens in Step 9. “Otherwise,” as Serenity, A Companion for Twelve Step Recovery tells us, “we are putting a bandage on a festering, cancerous sore, because the toxicity is still there. Only after it has been excised can we release our resentments with a high degree of emotional integrity.”
“The Eighth Step is not easy; it demands a new kind of honesty about our relations with other people. The Eighth Step starts the procedure of forgiving others and possibly being forgiven by them, forgiving ourselves, and learning how to live in the world. …The final difficulty in working the Eighth Step is separating it from the Ninth Step. Projecting about actually making amends can be a major obstacle both in making the list and in becoming willing…. The main thing this step does for us is to help build an awareness that, little by little, we are gaining new attitudes about ourselves and how we deal with other people.
- Narcotics Anonymous Basic Text
Patrick Carne tells us in A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Steps, that reflecting on all levels of your awareness is very important to a thorough Eighth Step. When making a list of the persons you have harmed, consider memories, thoughts and feelings of harm done, and the intentions you now have to make amends.
The Twelve Step Program plays a large part in the recovery process at Transitions Recovery.
