How Can I Practice Living Amends?

“There’s a lot of alcoholism and mental illness in my family. The legacy of that is quite powerful and sometimes hard to shake.” Affleck’s younger brother, Casey, 44, has spoken about his own alcoholism and sobriety. Their paternal grandmother took her own life in a motel when she was 46. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, AA and groups like it draw on “social support” and encourage recovering addicts to work together to help one another succeed. If you are struggling at this point in your journey or even if you just require some advice, it is always a possibility to reach out to the other members of your group. Other people who are or who have gone through the 12 steps are likely to have some insight on how best to do so.

Amends, and the rebuilding of relationships, are a critical part of ongoing recovery and returning to family life. Its effects ripple through our family and close relationships. And making amends in recovery to repair those relationships is a crucial step.

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions ASL – Step Nine

In order to truly understand this concept, it is important to really understand the steps involved, and how it helps to complete them. To discern whether to make amends, ask yourself why you’re wanting to contact the person. For example, if you had an affair for three years during active addiction, visiting your ex to fess up and say you’re sorry isn’t going to help them; it’s going to hurt them. Are you taking the step to clear your conscience at the expense of another person?

Rather, you need to make a more concrete and serious effort to express that you know what wrongs you have done, and that you have changed, and want to make things right. When you make amends, the way you look and feel about situations https://ecosoberhouse.com/ changes. You can gain clarity about what happened and what should have happened. For example, someone living with an addiction may make amends by apologizing for stealing property and then make it right by returning what they’d taken.

Twelve Steps

It’s not one we use too frequently in our everyday language, but it still holds significant meaning. To make amends means to apologize living amends for something you have done or for wronging someone in some way. It means mending, or (quite literally) fixing, the relationship.