Introduction:


I'm your WTS Step Study leader this quarter and also a compulsive overeater.

This is a practical Step Study. It is designed to use what I’ve been taught are the directions from the Big Book to recover from compulsive eating, and to maintain that recovery on a one-day-at-a-time basis for the rest of your life.

Don’t forget to go to www.oabigbook.info to download (for free, of course) some forms and documents I’ll be referring to in this Step Study, as well as a book I’ve written, based on a 2005 Step Study I did for WTS, which provides the theoretical background for this 2008 Step Study.

If you’re offended by anything I write, please don’t be critical until you have read the book I’ve written to see where I’m coming from. In this Step Study I am deliberately getting to the nub
and not trying to justify and explain everything I’m saying.

This is the second part of a discussion of the instructions for Step Four. It will make little sense to you unless you have read the first part of that discussion and followed the directions there, so I encourage you to look at the first part of the discussion.


Where We Are:

We’re now at a critical point of Step Four-where we are going to move from describing the effect on us of the fact that the world hasn’t gone our way to figuring out our defects of character.

We have filled out the first three columns of the Resentment Form.

In Column One we listed things that bothered us-people, institutions, facts, ideas that were on our mind and that we wished weren’t facts; the what-ifs and the if-onlys of our mind; the people and things that we thought about; people who have wronged us or others and people we’ve wronged.

In Column Two we set out why those things bothered us in short, point form.

In Column Three, beside each of those points, we put a check-mark (a tick) where any of those points affected our self-esteem, our sense of security, our ambitions, our personal relations, our sex relations, and wherever fear was involved.

Then we reviewed what we had done. We saw how clouded our minds have become by the fact that life just hasn’t gone our way. Our whole state of being-what we think of ourselves (self-esteem), how safe we feel (security), how frustrated we are (ambitions), how we’re unable to form good and solid close relationships (personal and sex relationships), and how frightened we are (fear involved)-is muddled and confused.

So we feel bad about ourselves, we don’t feel safe, we are frustrated, we can’t form good and solid close relationships, and we’re full of fear.

The mystery as to why we can’t remember, at certain times, that eating certain foods or indulging in certain eating behaviors will create uncontrollable cravings, is now solved. No wonder we can’t think straight about food! We can’t really think straight about any thing for any great length of time!


The Nub of It All:

Thus our past is killing us. We have to find a way to change!

Because our minds are unable to remember the truth about our bodies, we’re going to die. Our bodies are being damaged in ways that will ultimately result in painful and lingering deterioration and death.

For many of us in OA, that probably means the inevitable results of obesity-diabetes (which can lead to strokes, blindness, amputation), heart attacks, joint pain, asthma, apnea, cancer, lack of mobility.

For others of us in OA, that probably means the inevitable results of being undernourished-starvation, broken brittle bones, and the host of illnesses associated with lack of proper nutrition.

If we don't deal with our resentments we will die! And it won't be pretty!

(If you don’t feel that sense of urgency, then you ought to think carefully and honestly about why you’re involved in this Step Study. If you’re not willing to go to any lengths to change, then what does OA mean to you? This is a Life and Death matter to me. It is as serious to me as drug addiction, alcohol addiction, gambling addiction, is to other addicts. I know the fate that awaits me outside the doors of OA, and I don’t want that.)


How We Change the Situation:


First we deal with people who have harmed us or others:

The first thing we have to do is find some way to deal with those people who have harmed us or others and who make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to look at our defects of character when their defects are so obvious, striking, and terrible.

There are almost certainly other resentments on our list that show up our own defects of character directly, but there are probably people on your list who have done some pretty rotten things; how can we deal with them?

We have to realize that they are spiritually sick, and that that sickness is as serious for them as any kind of physical sickness would be.

Consider the case of a person who is constantly in pain, or a person with a mental disability, or with a brain tumour-consider how you will often make allowances for their behavior. If I were constantly in pain and happened to be grouchy, I would expect that people would understand. If I had Tourette’s Syndrome and said offensive things over which I have no mental control, I would expect that people would understand. We do that all the time. We certainly often expect it for ourselves ("I’m in a bad mood." "I just had a sudden death in the family and am so sad that you’ll pardon me if I don’t laugh at your joke." "I had a bad day at the office, so give me some slack.").

There are people in this world-those who have harmed you or others-who have the equivalent of pain or tumours or mental disabilities in their spiritual life. They are damaged and sad people, and what is even sadder about them is that they take their pain out on others. The more they do that, the worse they get. The more harm they inflict on others, the more difficult it will ever be for them to change. The more hardened they become, the more set in their ways they become.

They have less of an opportunity than you or I have to change and to become better people. The right attitude to take to them-no matter what harm they may have done to you or to others-is one of pity. The more harm they do, the less of a human being they become.

(This kind of pity is not one of superiority. It is one of compassion. You have a spiritual sickness, too. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t need the Twelve Steps to recovery. Your only hope is a spiritual awakening. That’s their only hope, too. You have the hope of the Twelve Steps. They might not have that hope at all.)

Interestingly enough, the Big Book doesn’t talk about forgiveness. It talks about tolerance, pity, and patience. You aren’t required to forgive those who have done harm to you or to others. But you do have to learn to treat them with tolerance, pity, and patience.

Say a prayer for them. "_____ is a sick man/woman. God, grant me the same tolerance, pity, and patience, I would cheerfully grant to a sick friend."

In many many cases this may be enough to get you to realize how sick they are and how pitiful they are. In some cases you may come to the conclusion that you were wrong, and they weren’t that sick and didn’t do that much harm.

In some cases, however, you may still not be able to develop that sense of tolerance, pity, and patience.

If that occurs-and we can all imagine cases where the harm done was so great that it feels impossible to give the person who did the harm any sense of pity-then do this:

• Get a sense of what you want out of your life, what you want your life to be. The chances are good that you will come to a conclusion much like mine: you want peace and serenity; you want to be useful to others; you want to be able to love and to be loved. Aren’t these the real things that you want out of life.
  
• Say a prayer for this person. Say something like: "I pray that ___________ get peace and serenity; that he/she is useful to others; that he/she is able to love and to be loved."
  
• After saying that prayer, think on it. If that person is capable of doing such great harm, do you think it’s at all possible that that person is peaceful and serene? That he or she is useful to others? That he or she is capable of loving and capable of being loved?
  
• Say that prayer for that person every day for two weeks. Sooner or later, within those two weeks, you will see so clearly how that person has nothing, nothing whatever, of what you want out of life? That person is probably living in fear and anger, trusts almost no one, is always frustrated and clearly doing harm rather than good, and can’t possibly have a deep and loving relationship with anyone else!

• Are you keeping abstinent? Work on that hard.
  If you want to give yourself a deadline, make an appointment with the person you want to do Step Five with to do the Step Five in two and a half weeks. It’ll take two to five hours, not much more than that.
  
• Have you been able to look at those who have harmed you or others as persons who have to be looked at with tolerance, pity, and patience?
  
• If not, have you figured out what you want out of life, and prayed for them to have it? And if you have, have you realized that they have not been able to achieve anything you want out of life? Now don’t you feel pity for them?
  
• Have you ignored the second and third columns and set out in the fourth column, beside each person, institution, or principle that you put down in the first column, where you have been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened?
  
• Do you now realize how those four character defects are keeping you from connecting with your deepest values, your higher power, and thus from being sane?