How to Make Amends The Value of Making Amends in Recovery
Profess your faith in Christ as our one and only Savior, and receive eternal life. Having faith will give you the courage, strength, and motivation to make amends and offer forgiveness. Symbolic amends might be something you need to do if the person you harmed is no longer living or if establishing contact with them would cause more harm than good. It’s important to be in a state of readiness, both emotionally and mentally, before reaching out. Assess whether the person you’re approaching is prepared to engage in the conversation about amends, as it can significantly impact the outcome.
- Trust the recovery process and believe in God to truly prosper!
- Part of my living amends is also being the friend my friends deserve and the employee my employers hired in good faith.
- We’ve written about how common guilt is in grief (you wouldn’t believe how many people get the “coulda woulda shouldas”).
- This can be disheartening, but it’s important to practice patience and persistence, as making amends is often a gradual process.
- People get tired of broken promises, of forgiving over and over and giving second and third, fourth, or fifth chances only to get hurt again.
Getting Started
While making amends can be healing, the outcome is not always predictable. Nonetheless, being accountable for your misdeeds is your goal. Your actions alone may bring you a sense of peace, whether a person accepts you amends or not. Working through Step 9 allows you to move forward, regardless of how others respond. What happens when an attempt to correct your wrongs may cause further harm?
What is Celebrate Recovery Step 9?
For example, some people may require medically supervised detox as a first step, followed by residential alcohol treatment. Donating money, volunteering time, or providing care can serve as indirect amends when direct communication is not feasible. The key aspect of indirect amends is focusing on personal growth and changing harmful behaviors. In simple terms, it means taking responsibility for the person you used to be and how you caused harm to the people in your life who care about you.
- Making direct amends requires face-to-face interactions wherever possible, which shows sincerity, openness, and humility.
- It would be easy to think there is nothing more WYG can write about guilt and grief.
- If you are unsure if you should approach an individual to forgive them, pray about the matter, or talk to your sponsor to determine if this is the right choice for this person.
Recovery Stories
If you need to pay someone back a thousand dollars (direct amends), make an agreement with them to work to do this. The main difference between the two recovery programs is that Celebrate Recovery is a Christ-centered recovery program. However, if you are searching for answers related to AA’s Step 9, you’ve come to the right place because, as mentioned, the 12 steps are the same.
Sober Living Services
This may involve apologizing and, when necessary, making restitution to a person, or organization. Step 9, often seen as one of the most challenging, requires courage, humility, and guidance. More than an apology, it’s about making genuine amends—taking action to correct past mistakes without causing harm. Here, we explore Step 9, its goals, possible outcomes, and effective language for making amends. It’s important to note that making amends is for the person we hurt. Yes, we partake in the process to “clean up our side of the street,” but we do not make amends to clear our conscience or undo our feelings of guilt.
We make a promise to pay an amount we can every month and begin on the day we make the face-to-face amends, and we have a set timeline for when all the money will be paid back. Lists to Help you Through Any Loss is for people experiencing any type of loss. This book discusses some of the most common grief experiences and breaks down psychological concepts to help you understand your thoughts and emotions. It also shares useful coping tools, and helps the reader reflect on their unique relationship with grief and loss. Notice the words “right to resentment” and “underserved Sober living house qualities” in there? It is about what we do despite that wrongdoing, “abandoning our right to resentment . . . “.
Navigating Step Nine: Living Amends
Ideally, after an honest assessment of how you harmed someone, you’d have a chance to make direct amends to them and actively work to fix the damage. For instance, when apologizing to someone you stole money from, you should also return the amount you took. As Kessler describes, this woman may decide that her way of making amends is to always answer the phone when someone she loves calls after a fight. Though this cannot undo or directly compensate for the initial mistake, it can serve as living amends that comes through a different way living amends of being in the world. In that act, your actions in their memory make you and the world a better place. Like the definition says, amends is something we do to make up for something we feel guilty for.
When I don’t do things perfectly, when I mess up, when I make mistakes, and when I make poor choices, I would love it if I am quickly forgiven and not chastised about the matter. To learn more about addiction recovery, including AA, reach out to Silver Mist Recovery. Those who receive an amends see firsthand that people with use disorders can and do recover, becoming healthy, happy and productive community members. It’s important to have a plan in place before we reach out.
Step 9 in AA: Making Amends
So, to truly make amends, we have to offer more than words. Think of amends as actions taken that demonstrate your new way of life in recovery, whereas apologies are basically words. When you make amends, you acknowledge and align your values to your actions by admitting wrongdoing and then living by your principles. Again, in recovery, your words may not mean as much to some people as you wish they would.
Challenges in The 9th Step Process
Ninety percent of the time, I keep my mouth shut, but I am my son’s mother. I have a responsibility to parent him and speak out for his best interests. Early in my recovery, I learned neither my son nor my husband was listening to anything I said.
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