Step 4

Step 4

4.  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.[1]

Writing my inventory was scary for me at first. I didn’t want to look at myself. I was so full of shame and self-loathing that I felt like it was going to be too awful to look at myself and my faults.

I’ve written my inventory more than once, and in different ways.  I have done relationships inventories, chronological inventories, behaviors and beliefs inventories, and defects of character inventories. As I described in my earlier chapter “What’s a Fearless Moral Inventory,” this book is an example of two different types of inventories, a relationships inventory and a defects of character inventory.

All of my inventories have been very insightful.  I was very brave in all of them; I wrote out everything.

This included every little sin:

• Biting the pickle and putting it back at Chief Charlies
• Telling Cain I would have sex with him when I had no intention of doing so
• Letting my father get Alzheimer’s
• Being too busy so Alex fell out of love with me
• Not being perfect
• Not being thin
• Not being a good guitar player
• Failing at my Hollywood stardom mission
• Falling asleep at the wheel while driving
• Getting in car accidents
• Masturbating in my dorm room when my roommate was asleep
• Making Gad responsible for my feelings
• Making Sam responsible for my feelings
• Being naked with Travis when I didn’t want to be
• Fornicating with Brad
• Doing sexual things with Brad that I didn’t want to do.

No boundaries.  I wrote it all out.  Every little screw-up. 

It was very difficult for me to face the fact that I had to hold myself accountable in the molestation event with Cain. I told him I would have sex with him when I had no intention of doing so. That was a very difficult thing for me to look at.  But it did teach me to let my yes be yes and my no be no. That was a tough lesson.

Step 4 is a really tough, raw, long, hard look at myself every time I do it.  It is always very enlightening, and humbling.

[1] Codependence Anonymous, Codependents Anonymous. (Dallas, TX: CoDA Resource Publishing, 1995), p. vi.