Ending the isolation with Step Five

Addictive Eaters Anonymous Step Five:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 

A member of Addictive Eaters Anonymous spoke to other AEA members about their experience of living the Twelve Steps.  This blog is the edited transcript of the interview on Step Five.  All the readings referred to come from Step Five in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous book.

At the start of Step Five in the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions (Pg 55), it talks about how we’ve cast the searchlight on our wrong thinking and actions in Step Four. Did you have a sense from doing Step Four that there were some things to look at?

I knew before I did Step Four that there would be a lot of things that I needed to look at because I'd carried a lot of guilt and shame and remorse with me throughout my life, which affected my eating. I knew that some of those things I was never going to tell anybody; I was going to take them to the grave with me, which added to the guilt, shame, and remorse I felt. I knew that I wanted to get well, that I wanted what the other members had, and that Step Five was a crucial part of what they had.

As you prepared to do your Step Five, did you still think that maybe you wouldn't share everything?

Initially I did hold things back in my first fifth step. But as time progressed, I became more willing to do what I needed to do. Prior to that, I had reservations about which parts of the programme I was and wasn't going to do. Then I had an experience where I just knew that if I wanted recovery, I had to do the programme completely, one hundred percent. There wasn't anything I could hold back. So I completed a second fifth step. After that, I became aware that I needed to share everything, every little nook and cranny, even the things I was going to take to the grave with me. When my marriage ended, I did another one because more was revealed that I couldn't see at the time.

Before working the Steps in Addictive Eaters Anonymous, I hadn't done a lot of self-searching because I had no insight into the unmanageability of my life. All I could see was the eating, the food, and the weight. I thought that, when I was a normal size, I wouldn't want to eat all the time. And I was too ashamed to speak to anyone anyhow. By the time I did my second fifth step, I could see more of myself, of my character defects, which led to my unmanageable life and the emotional and mental distress that I suffered because of it. I could see that the blame, mainly towards my mother, was misdirected.

One of the things that Step Five particularly talks about is that terrible sense of isolation that comes with wrong thinking and action, and not being able to share it.  It says here, “Until we talked with complete candor about our conflicts, and we had listened to someone else do the same thing, we still didn't belong.” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, P.57)

The isolation, loneliness and depression were a major part of my story and experience.  I felt like the worst person in the world. Then the worse I felt, the more I ate, and the more I ate, the worse I felt, compounding that spiral of eating which led to depression. 

I have now heard a fifth step, and I was able to share with the person. There was one particular thing I had done that she had done, and like my sponsor,  I shared my experience with her. We laughed at some of the things we had both done, and that was part of lightening my load, the burden I carried.

I remember reading once that if it's got a name, somebody else has done it. I realized I was not the only one who had felt like this or done these things. Because I was isolated and depressed, I had no contact with other people to see how they lived their lives or chatted about the things that they'd done. It would have normalized some things, which I felt great shame about and which, I can see now, compounded the eating.

It talks here about Step Five being the “beginning of true kinship with man and God” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Pg 57). Has that been your experience?

Definitely, but it wasn't initially. Our literature talks about the feeling like a great weight has been lifted from us, and that wasn't my experience. After I left my sponsor’s place, I felt no lighter or less burdened. But I thought that I had done it to the absolute best of my ability. I knew in my heart that it was searching and fearless. A few weeks later, I was talking to someone I didn't know, and I didn't have that feeling I'd always had of “if you only knew what I had done”. I couldn't look people in the eye. Then, I realized the difference that doing my fifth step had made, and it was the beginning of feeling a part of life. 

My experience of sharing the things that are bothersome and cause me pain with my sponsor is an ongoing process. When things come up, I share them and clear them away. Then they don’t need to sit there and cause me stress. They can sit there if I don't want to do anything about it. But there's no need for them to be causing problems. 

I have a comparison now, a new way of living, which has alleviated a vast proportion of that emotional pain. In my eating, I was not aware, because I had no reprieve; it was my state of being. Now I'm aware when something doesn't feel right, and I can just share it and clear it away. I can share it with my sponsor or in a meeting, so other people can benefit from my experience as well.  We get to experience the sunlight of the Spirit, which the programme talks about.

Emotional pain is a great motivator. If you want to call it humility, it is being humble enough to share with a sponsor or an older member, which is less difficult than sitting with it; it's the less painful of the two.

It is being seen in an unflattering light, but then we're all human, and we're all doing our best. I have a greater sense of that today. The most I'm going to be is human, a person in recovery. The literature talks about being rigorously honest. That's a part of the program that I can't pick and choose to be searching and fearless about. It’s in Step Five and all the steps. It feels like growing up in a way, because I never looked at anything objectively. I lived in this sort of murk of emotion. Now it feels like an adult way of living.

Step 5 says, “…it is only by discussing ourselves, holding back nothing, only by being willing to take advice and direction could we be put on the road to straight thinking, solid honesty, and genuine humility?” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Pg 57). There is the need for confession of our shortcomings, but there is also the need to take advice and direction. “...we can get his direct comment and counsel on our situation...” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Pg 60).  Was that easy for you? 

It was. I didn't always like it, and I still don't always like it because often it means being out of my comfort zone. But when I ran away from life, my problems got bigger, because I never addressed anything, I never sorted anything out, living in denial, so problems got worse. What could have been a very minor issue either got bigger, or it got bigger in my mind. Then I got to the stage where I just couldn't even bear to look at it. 

Now we don't have to do life alone anymore, and what a gift that is. My sponsor has my best interests at heart, and she probably has a better picture of me than I have of myself. She also has more experience in recovery and more life experience than I do. I feel grateful to have that guidance. In the past, every decision I made was a poor decision that led to another poor decision, eventually leading me to the rooms of this fellowship. My best efforts at running my life got me to this fellowship. Left to my devices, I have no doubt that would continue to be the case. It's such a gift to have someone to have confidence in who I know wants the best for me. 

What an absolute gift, after, as you say, listening to ourselves, and our best advice, which of course, got us nowhere. Then it says, “the dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Pg 62).  Clearly, Step Five has quite a profound impact on recovery going forward. It “...brings us to a resting place where we may prepare ourselves for the following Steps toward a full and meaningful sobriety” 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Pg 62).

Recovery is such an amazing journey to be on.