Stephanie, an abstinent compulsive overeater, and Nancy, a gratefully recovering and abstinent compulsive eater, host this workshop on OA’s Fourth Step: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”
For Discussion and Journaling:
- Do I have reservations about starting a Fourth Step? What are they? How can God help me do this step?
- Am I hanging on to a grudge or resentment? Do I experience jealousy, envy, or guilt? Am I a perfectionist, or am I overly dependendent?
- What am I willing to do today to start my Fourth Step inventory? What are some of the methods I can use to do a Fourth Step?
OA-approved literature used in this episode:
- The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous (link to Second Edition)
- Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition
- For Today
- Voices of Recovery (link to Second Edition)
- The Twelve Step Workshop and Study Guide (includes the Fourth Step Inventory Guide)
- Sponsoring through the Twelve Steps
- Fifteen Questions
- Twelve Stepping a Problem
Transcript:
Good afternoon. My name is Destiny. I’m an abstinent compulsive overeater. Today we’ll be looking at Step Four. We’re going to be referring to OA-approved literature throughout the workshop: The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, For Today, and Voices of Recovery. OA has a Step Four inventory guide in the Twelve Step Workbook of Overeaters Anonymous. There’s also a great pamphlet, Sponsoring Through the Twelve Steps.
What I’d like to do is tell you a little bit about myself, so you’ll understand I’m a real compulsive Overeater. I was introduced to OA in my early 30s; I’ll be 69 in a few months. When I came in the first time, I didn’t understand about the Twelve Steps, I was just looking for a quick-fix diet plan. And it didn’t really work for me. I didn’t want to stop. The food plan worked very well, because at that time they assigned your food plan. Because it eliminated my binge foods, I was able to lose weight.
To back up a little bit, the first time I became aware that I was a compulsive overeater was at age four. I was in a contest where we pin the tail on the rabbit; the prize was a big chocolate thing. I looked underneath the blindfold to win the prize. From there it began. I weighed about 180 pounds (81.5 kg) before graduating from high school and never had a date. When I came into OA in my early 30s, I weighed 240 pounds (109 kg). I didn’t work the Steps; I used the program as a support for the food plan/diet they gave me. I lost a bunch of weight and was very happy. I continued to go to meetings, but, as happens with most people that don’t work the Steps, over a period of time I regained the weight and more. I pulled out the food plan that I had previously, but I couldn’t stick to it for more than a day.
Thankfully, God gave me the gift of desperation. I found my way back in August 1986. But mine has not been a straight-line recovery. I had multiple relapses. I’m grateful to say today I have more than ten years of back to back abstinence. And that is strictly a reflection of a spiritual awakening. I’m maintaining about a 116–120 pound (52.5–54.5 kg) weight loss. My current abstinence date is May 29, 2004. I was one of those people who had to put the food down first. I found it impossible to get connected with a Higher Power when I was overeating.
I’m grateful that we’re doing this workshop on the importance of working the Steps. I was taught early on that it’s important to work them in order. There’s a reading in Voices of Recovery, August 8, that talks about God using the Steps like an artist would carefully restore a beautiful painting. That visual made a lot of sense to me. I wasn’t an entirely broken person: I still have a job, I still have a family. There were people that liked me. But I needed a lot of restoration through the Twelve Steps.
One of the things I like to focus on in my part of the sharing, is that this workshop is about the importance of working all the Twelve Steps. I found that it was critical to have worked the other Steps before I was willing to do Step Four. There is a June 19 reading in For Today that says there is a reason for each of the Twelve Steps. I cannot pick and choose the ones I want and skip the rest. I think one of the reasons that I had some of those relapses was that I didn’t really want to be fully forthcoming.
This idea of working through all these Steps has been really helpful in terms of how my recovery has evolved. You’ll find if you go on the OA website that we have podcasts on four of the previous workshops that were done; we did one on “Zero” which is about the preparation for being ready to take Step One. In the Big Book in “How it Works,” it says, “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it– then you are ready to take certain steps” (Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, p. 58). I needed that desperation. And I needed that willingness. I had to sincerely have an honest desire to recover from compulsive overeating.
Another part discussed in the “Zero” workshop that I found helpful is to understand the nature of my disease: it wasn’t strictly an allergy of the body that set up the craving and made me want more and more of my addictive substances. Neither was it just an obsession of the mind. It was the combination of both of those things that kept driving me back to the food. It’s explained in “The Doctor’s Opinion” in the Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous, Fourth Edition, pp. xxv–xxxii), and in the Overeaters Anonymous, Third Edition, they’ve added another one where a dietitian, I believe, talks about the connection with a plan of eating in our recovery. And that was really helpful.
So before I was ready for Step One, I had to do preparatory work, I had to know that I needed help, I had to understand why I had spiraled out of control. And then in Step One, I had to admit that I was powerless over food and that my life was unmanageable. It took an honest look to see that I couldn’t manage it; to recognize all the times I tried to diet, exercise, and all kinds of things to realize that my best thinking wasn’t going to get me out of it. In the OA Twelve and Twelve page 2, it says, “Whatever the cause, today we’re not like normal people when it comes to food.” That was something I really needed to get in my heart of hearts before I was able to abstain back to back, day in, day out. No matter how long I had not eaten XYZ, it didn’t matter. In the first reading in Voices of Recovery, January 1, it says when we gave up our binge foods, the compulsion was lifted. And when I set the food aside, it made it much easier for me to have a clear head to begin to work the steps.
So the action in Step One was to get honest and develop a plan of eating that would allow me to put down the food. From there, I moved to Step Two, where I found the hope that perhaps I could do this. I saw other people in the meetings that were in a normal size body; that encouraged me to continue to do what I was taught to do. In the OA Twelve and Twelve, page 13, it says “ours is a spiritual program, not a religious one.” This was really helpful to me. I remember the first time when I treated OA like a diet club. The thing I found most difficult was people talking about God. I just wanted to find my magical diet so I wouldn’t be fat anymore; I didn’t understand that mine was a spiritual problem. As I worked through the Second Step that became apparent to me. I’m grateful that nobody told me what the God of my understanding had to be or what my Higher Power had to be. It was really important to realize that I needed only a little bit of faith that there was something bigger than me that could help me. The Step Two actions were: using Tools to help me stay on my plan of eating, and to look at the folks in the meetings to see what I might design as my sane and sound ideal.
Once I do that, I move to Step Three. If I have problems in my recovery, it almost always comes back to Step Three. I’ve gotten into the driver’s seat. If I have made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God I have to let go of self sufficiency. I had to make the decision to turn my will, which was not only my thinking, but also the kind of actions I did. For me, the actions came before the thinking. I found that if I began to do right actions, my thinking began to change. So for me the action in Step Three is to say the Third Step prayer. This has been a constant in my life almost every day. And when I get in trouble, that prayer reminds me how easily I fall into the bondage of self. It says in the OA Twelve and Twelve, Step Three, page 27, “Once we compulsive overeaters truly take the Third Step, we cannot fail to recover. As we live out our decision day by day, our Higher Power guides us through the remaining Nine Steps.” What that does is give me the willingness to move on to Step Four.
Step Four, the primary step we’re discussing today, is about courage. We made a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of ourselves. The definition of searching is to examine in order to discover. I’ve heard other speakers talk about the need to uncover, discover, and discard. Probably like a lot of you, the hardest part of the Fourth Step is thinking about it.
We begin by examining our lives up to the present day, writing down all important actions and events of a moral or ethical nature, our feelings about them and the character traits from which they sprang. On page 42 of the AA Twelve and Twelve we learn about instincts: that we have them for a reason and that we couldn’t function without them. But what happens for most of us is that they often exceed their proper functions, and they get out of whack. For me, that was certainly the case. So here I am on Step Four. My daughter really encouraged me to do it. She’s troubled by the thought that if I don’t continue to work the Steps, I’ll go back to eating compulsively. At that point in my recovery, I was maybe thirty days in, and I really needed that kick in the pants to make me do it.
So why do I want to do a Fourth Step? In the first place I want to do it because I want to stay in recovery; also the growing awareness that there is something more that I need, the spiritual awakening. There are a couple of readings from the For Today that I like. On September 29 it says, “The fourth-step inventory, taken not once but repeatedly, allows me to keep yesterday as a teacher on an ongoing basis; and everything I learn advances my recovery.” That was important when I was a chronic relapser. If I couldn’t look back and see what caused the situation, what my thinking was, or what my actions were that led me back to the food, it was like a big race that led me to self-pity and depression. But when I could go back with the help of a sponsor and come out with some lessons learned, it was helpful for me in terms of moving forward. There’s another reading on October 16 that says, “I’m allowed to make mistakes, and so are other people.” For me it was important not to live in the past, not to dwell on what I’d done wrong once I cleaned up my mess, and to move forward. And that’s one of the things that we learn as we study the Twelve Steps.
So now I know why I want to do the Fourth Step: I want to stay abstinent; I want to learn from my past; I want to move forward toward a spiritual awakening. So then how am I going to do it? For me, it required having a greater fear of going back to the food than working the Fourth Step. I had to figure out how to do it by reviewing what is said in the AA literature. All of it says that I need to be honest. I need to take an honest look at what’s happened in the past, and my inventory needs to be written. As I began to write, I began to see the truth. I needed to practice balance. Being a woman of extremes I needed not to let myself off the hook, but see the big picture. OA has a lot of support on how to do a Fourth Step. The important thing is just to do it. We have a Step Four inventory guide that’s available on the oa.org website; we have the OA Twelve and Twelve, which has lots of questions; there’s the Twelve Step Workbook of Overeaters Anonymous; there’s a great pamphlet Sponsoring Through the Twelve Steps. I’ve used it before, and it has enabled me to work the Steps at the same time with my sponsors; the mutual sharing has been really helpful. The AA Big Book was the one I used for my first Fourth Step. I’ve used it many times. I like the fact that it sets out in clear language what the Steps are. And now many years later I am doing another Fourth Step in more intimate detail.
There are so many ways of doing the Fourth Step. Some people do it historically; others do it by people, principles, institutions. As I said before, the most important thing is that I do it. The way I’m doing my Fourth Step currently, I’ve been asked by my sponsor to invite God in and ask him to show me what I need to write about. I want to share a little story about the first Fourth Step I did, and the importance of being thorough and fearless. There was a deep, dark secret I had, and I spent probably five times as much time talking about stealing from work as I did that. But it allowed me to get it out in the sunlight of the spirit; during further Fourth Steps, I was able to look at it. That’s why I keep harping on the idea that it’s just so important to do it, however you’re able to. The most important thing I learned was when I was able to stay abstinent long term. There was a point at which I realized that the God of my understanding loved me no matter what, whether I was abstinent or not, and that he couldn’t love me any more than he did. And he wouldn’t love me any less even if I wasn’t honest. Knowing that was like a spiritual awakening; it made me more willing to do what was necessary to stay abstinent and to work the Steps. I want to close by sharing some of the promises we have in our OA Twelve and Twelve: “As we work the Fourth Step, we develop a new ability to see our own dishonesty and a greater willingness to live by truth.” The next one, it was not until we made the Fourth Step inventory that we began to realize that we don’t have to live with fear. That was important for me to page 37. I don’t have to fear looking at work from there. There was so much fear about what I was going to find. But there was nothing new. I mean, I already knew it all, but it was about bringing it to the forefront. The last one is from Our Invitation to You: “We begin the Twelve Step program of recovery, moving beyond the fear and emotional havoc to a fuller living experience.” So I’ll close with that.
So now please welcome Nancy who’s going to share on Step Four. Hi, my name is Nancy, and I’m a gratefully recovering, abstinent compulsive eater. I want to zero in on how Step Four was for me. I encourage everybody that’s listening to avail yourselves of the OA literature we have that is now for everyone. It doesn’t matter what your eating disorder is. It’s complete, it’s concise, and it’s healing.
Let me tell you first about the beginning. If I live until the end of September this year, I intend to mark 42 years in OA. That was interrupted only on my second Thanksgiving Day by a relapse. And that led to five months of relapse. I was very fortunate that I ran into another OA member in the supermarket, and that’s what got me back. By the grace of God and the fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous I have not found it necessary to take a compulsive bite since then. That relapse taught me a grave lesson. It taught me that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. By that same grace and that same fellowship, I had been maintaining almost 150-pound (68-kg) weight loss at that time.
I came to a very small meeting—there were only two meetings in greater Detroit. Intergroup hadn’t even formed, and we didn’t have the literature we have now. And so we got our abstinence through working AA Twelve and Twelve and the AA Big Book. We had a few pamphlets that are still in print as far as I know. I came in on that meeting. It was a very small church, there were only seven people there counting myself. I had seen the program work with one of my best friends. I came in with 20 years of amphetamine diet pills under my belt; that wasn’t working because I weighed a little over 325 pounds (147.5 kg). I saw her, who had never taken a diet pill or been able to lose 80 pounds (36 kg). Because she had gone to Overeaters Anonymous, it convinced me that if it worked for her, it would work for me.
We went into this little meeting, all women, that was in 1973. At that time it was still considered a women’s weight loss group. I had tried every diet and every crazy weight loss scheme known to humankind, and I also knew the caloric value of every food, and that still didn’t keep me from being a yo-yo. I would gain enormous amounts of weight and then go on a diet or work out or run. I’m an exercise bulimic as well. I would run, and I would lose 65, 70, 80 pounds (29.5, 32, 36 kg) all at one time. Then I would pound on my kitchen counter and say I’m never going back to that. Then within a year, I would have all the weight back on. So I very cautiously went to Overeaters Anonymous, because I really didn’t know if it would work. I thought it was a cult, because I came in as a Christian and thought I knew all about religion. When they started talking about God, I wanted to bolt for the door. Then they explained that it was God as I understood God; they weren’t offering any kind of a religious doctrine. It was only for relief from compulsive eating. I didn’t really understand how the two were going to work out. But nevertheless, I think I instinctively knew that this was the last house on the block for me. And so it had to work.
The night I got there these women were studying Step Eight in the AA Twelve and Twelve and the Big Book; they studied a different Step every week. They would study a Tradition once a month, whatever the Tradition of the month was. They taught me to change alcohol to food and alcoholic to compulsive eater, and the shoe fit perfectly. So that’s how I felt God’s grace. I was able to get involved by the time we had worked our way around the Steps, and I had a little bit better understanding of what the Steps would do. Everybody talks about the woes and the horror of doing a Fourth Step inventory. I’m grateful I came in on a Step that was past that, because I began to see how the Steps fit in place. They told me that when I worked the Steps, the suggestion was to work them in order, because that’s the way people had found that it worked the best. I flopped around and did the Step as I thought it should be, or whatever was bothering me. We had no Fourth Step guides, and I didn’t understand what the Fourth Step was in the Big Book. I couldn’t put the columns together; I didn’t understand what it would do as far as making me lose weight. And later on, even after I’d been in many years, I didn’t understand that it was up to me to make that fourth column. I thought the answers were supposed to magically appear on my paper. And so it frustrated me. My sponsor recommended that I go to other Twelve Step programs and find their inventory guides to do my Fourth Step. So I would follow those religiously.
I found that it was all about taking a look at me, Step One. It showed me not only was I powerless over food, but also I was powerless over people, places and things. I didn’t know that it was those things that were affecting my life. I didn’t know I was a control freak. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So this taught me slowly but surely, a whole new way of living. That small meeting that I went to on September 28 1973, there was only one person who was just a week ahead of me, and the rest of the people there were thin. I knew I wanted what they had. although I didn’t even know what they had. But every single one of them, when I talked to them on the break, said it was the Steps that delivered them from compulsive eating, and that they just had to take it one day at a time. They didn’t have to change their whole life. Nor did they have to get on a scale and have somebody call out to a roomful of people how much they weighed, or how much weight they gained or lost. That pleased me, because I had tried all those things. I had tried some of them so well that I was a three-time charter member.
But it was the endurance, it was keeping the weight off that I found was the magic in working the Steps. They said that I had to get to know myself. And I didn’t know myself. I didn’t know myself from a stranger walking down the street, because I never had to take a look at myself. So when my sponsor suggested I get the guideline for an inventory from another program, of course I went out and bought one of every book that I could find. I went through those; I also went through the Twelve and Twelve and the Big Book, and finally decided, well, okay, I might as well bite the bullet. When we got to Step Four my sponsor said, it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. So I put pen to paper and wrote the Great American Novel; there was a little history, mystery and sex and spice. What I had done was I had taken everybody else’s inventory. I didn’t know that either. When I went back to her, there were twenty-four and a half pages. She read about a half paragraph and handed it back to me. She said, you need to do some more writing. I was aghast. I said, What do you mean? I need to do some more writing.
She said, there’s a few things you need to know about this inventory, and the reason I’m sharing those with you today is because they still work for me. She said, number one, you’ve got to take your own inventory, not the inventory of everybody in your circle of influence, whether you like them or not. The other thing is, don’t be afraid to look at yourself and to see a real person. Will the real Nancy speak up, please step forward. She said the other thing you need to know is you’re not going to cover all of your defects in one sitting; you have embarked on a lifelong learning program. You’re not going to do one inventory and be done. This is going to go on for the rest of your life. And I said, how will I know when I’m done? She said you won’t, unless God lets you know. You may have to do one hundred inventories, and you will know when it’s time for you to do an inventory. It’s an ongoing process. Just like life is an ongoing process. I went back and I wrote another inventory, and I had trouble with it at the beginning, because I wasn’t sure that I was giving the right answers. I called her and said I’m having difficulty; I just can’t see me the way other people see me.
Well, she said, why don’t you come over for a cup of tea? And I knew whenever she said that I was in for a lesson. She was the kindest and most gentle person on earth. And she had kept her weight off. So I went over to her house, and she said, I want to show you something. She took me into her bathroom, and we looked in the mirror together. She said, I want you to tell me what you see. And I said, well, okay, I’ve got red hair. Good. That’s a good characteristic. She said, What else do you see? I’ve got freckles. She said, good. That’s a good characteristic. She said, you’re on a roll, keep going. And so we went through the whole thing, and every time I mentioned one of these physical characteristics, I saw her eyes light up. So finally, she let me go through them until I couldn’t think of any more. And she said, Okay, now, let’s flip this screen over. I want you to tell me what your emotional characteristics are, fear, anger, whatever. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, I’m angry. She said, Yes, you are. That’s good. What’s another characteristic? I’m fearful. I’m fearful, this won’t work. She said, Good, you’re on a roll, you’ve got the idea.
Now go home. Let this be the basis for searching for emotional characteristics. This is an emotional disease. It’s the emotions you can’t deal with that are going to make you eat. She said, write down all the emotions you find that are causing you to eat. It’s not the people that are involved.There was something that happened that day when she helped me see the emotional being that I am. It opened the door for my recovery. And it has changed as I’ve come along, so that about every year or year and a half, I felt like I needed to do another inventory. She’d say, hey, if you feel you need to do another inventory, do another inventory. As we went on our intergroup forums and I got into service, I found that other people were doing inventories. They were doing emotional inventories; they were doing food inventories, and on all the things that could be triggers to make them eat. And so I was learning the lessons from other people as well. The meetings grew in the greater Detroit area, and I had lost enough weight. I became “a circuit speaker.” One of the things I noticed when I went around to other meetings, when people shared, they were identifying the same things that I had identified. I had been completely ignorant of them until I had new glasses. And that was through the help of a sponsor. I began to read the literature differently. It started making sense because I could identify it from the emotional being I was. That also helped me keep the fork down. I never broke my abstinence after that Thanksgiving Day thing, because I found that whenever something was bothering me, I could stop and inventory it.
That’s what my sponsor says to me today. I have a different sponsor. I live in a different part of the country. I eat different food. I have a different circle of influence. But you know what? The same Nancy is still present. Because I have a better life, whenever I find something today that’s causing me resistance, or anything starts to make me angry, I think, Wait a minute, this doesn’t work. I call my sponsor, and she says, Well, have you inventoried it? That always clears away the smoke, and I stand face to face with Nancy.
I want to tell you a little story that happened after I was about ten years in program. When I was in high school, I worked after school at a movie theater in the center of town. I started out as an usher, and after I was there about six months, they elevated me to head candy girl. We could eat all of the popcorn we wanted, but we weren’t supposed to eat candy unless we paid for it. Well I was pretty good at math, and I figured out how I could eat what I wanted to for free. And it got only worse. And I was of course gaining weight. Eventually I started taking money out of the till. A series of events happened where I lost the job. And it wasn’t it wasn’t because I was stealing; it was through some home issues. And so I lost the job at the theater and totally forgot about it. Years later—it’s got to be at least ten years in program—I’m married, I have a child, and I’m on my way to church. I passed right by this theater, stopped at a traffic light, and across from me was the theater where I had been stealing. Now I had done several inventories prior to this, but all of a sudden, there it was in glaring neon lights: you owe these people some money. I went home, wrote an inventory about it, and sure enough, that’s what came out. That led me down the line to the other Steps. Eventually my sponsor and I worked out how much money I would owe them. The theater manager had died, and they had sold it to somebody else. I went back to the theater and told them what had happened. It was a different manager, and he let me sit there with all of the embarrassment. Finally he took the cash and said, “That’s okay, lady. I’m in a Twelve Step program too.”
So I can look back on that and see how that inventory started a chain of events that provide healing in my life. Sometimes I have to go back again years later, but if it hadn’t been for the inventory process I would not have been able to see it. We find out in different ways. Today if there’s something that bothers me, or I’m resistant to, or I don’t understand, I call my sponsor, and say I’m having a problem. When my feet hit the floor in the morning, if the world seems out of sorts for me and I don’t know what it is (I don’t know if I’ve had a bad dream, a bad night, or a bad date), I have to inventory and find out what’s going on if I want to protect my abstinence. Nine times out of ten I will call my sponsor and say, I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I want to commit an abstinent day, because something is sure going to throw me a curve. I’m gonna inventory it and see what happens. Most of the time it’s gone by noon. The inventory process has become integral to my staying abstinent, to being able to check my feelings and see what’s going on inside me. Even if I’m sitting in a meeting, if there’s something that disturbs me, I will make a note of it. In Step Ten in the AA Twelve and Twelve page 90, it says that if something is disturbing me, something is wrong with me.
I thank God we have the literature in OA that we do, because there are subtle differences in an inventory. Now when something is bothering me, I go to the questions at the end of Step Four in the OA Twelve and Twelve, because they help me deal with putting the fork down and getting on with the business of life. Every night, I take an inventory; I take the promises out of the Big Book and put them in the form of a question. Have I been selfish and self centered today? I grab any of the OA literature that I can today; that is what has kept me abstinent for this long time. And it’s also what has given me a new lease on life.
I have questions you might want to think about. Am I afraid of something? What is my fear? If something is bothering me? What am I afraid of? Am I afraid of change? Whether it’s physical, emotional, or spiritual? Am I hanging on to a grudge or resentment? Am I experiencing jealousy and/or guilt? Am I a perfectionist? Am I overly dependent? Do I live or work in an abusive situation? Am I afraid of intimacy? All those questions are at the end of Step Four; they make me take a square look at myself without having to point fingers at anybody else.
Here are some questions Nancy and I have looked at in addition to the ones she just talked about. Do I have reservations about starting a Fourth Step? What are they? How can God help me do this Step? Am I hanging on to a grudge or resentment? Do I experience jealousy, envy or guilt? Am I a perfectionist? Am I overly dependent? What am I willing to do today to start my Step Four inventory? What are some of the methods I can use to do a Fourth Step?
Thank you both; this was a tremendous workshop, as they all have been. But this was very powerful. It took me down memory road. I have done the Fourth Step in a variety of ways. Each time it was the exact way I was supposed to do it at that time. My Higher Power knew when I was ready to look at certain things and not look at other things. As someone said, with my first Fourth Step, it was all you, you, you. My sponsor brought me back to, okay, what is your part in this? Through the years I have been able to look at that, and it is very freeing. We have so many different ways to do the Fourth Step now, that it’s sometimes confusing. For me, the most important thing is just to do the Fourth Step, that it is so freeing and it is part of the road toward recovery. And both of you just gave wonderful examples and a lot of great literature. So I thank you. If someone is hesitant, I was hesitant. I lived through it, and my sponsor still loved me. So with that, thank you for letting me share.
