When I began my sobriety in recovery in SA over three years ago, I listened to the Tenth Step as it was read at every meeting. At that time all I could hear was the reflection of my guilt, my shame and my pain. I thought that this Step meant that I would have to quickly proclaim to everyone all the screw-ups that I make in my life. I had enough difficulty revealing my past screw-ups!

Fortunately, a power much greater than I had something to do with the development of these Steps and there were nine Steps preceding this Step. Those other Steps absorbed my attention and took my mind off the Tenth for a while. I know today that I would not have been able to accept a “suggestion” that meant to me the need to continually reveal my imperfections to others while I contained such shame and internal pain.

So I attended to the first nine Steps in sequence. I made a commitment to a new higher power, that of my new understanding. I came to know the wreckage of my past, and revealed it to another human being as well as to God and myself. I became able to tell others, after admitting to myself, the problems I had and the shameful thoughts, feelings and attitudes that I continued to experience. These being accomplished, my shame diminished significantly.

I then became aware of my behavior and character defects that were still present and which caused me continual pain in my daily life. I was only then made willing and able to take helpful suggestions from my fellows in order to begin the process of changing my self-defeating behaviors. My internal pain abated dramatically. I then began to notice that a wide range of people had become important to me. The only problem was that I was truly terrible at the work of relationships. What relationships I hadn’t damaged in my active addiction, I was incapable of sustaining or attending to properly in my early recovery. Though my shame and pain had been remarkably reduced, my guilt about the sad state of my relationships continued to trouble me. The Eighth and Ninth Steps helped me do the repairs necessary and I learned how to do the hard work of relationships, continually taking the actions of love demonstrated to me by others that had gone before me.

I now became able to look both inwardly and outwardly to see troubles and I developed tools to be able to do something about them once detected. I grew respectful of myself and others and became convinced of the need to deal with problems as soon as they arose. I could no longer hide from them and think they would just go away. My past convinced me of the power of shame, guilt and pain in my active addiction. My experience with the grace of God and the positive responses and support of my fellows gave me the hope I needed to face these problems.

Suddenly I was aware that the Tenth Step was quite simple and reasonable! It now meant that I had to develop internal and external gauges that could help me learn before it was too late, that something was not right either inside of myself or in my relationships with others. My “personal inventories” could then detect when I was “not right.”

Since my pride was reduced in Step Seven, I was able to accept the fact that to “not be right” meant I must be “wrong.” Quickly the intimidation of being “wrong” faded away. Having gone through the painful yet shame-and-guilt reducing process of Steps Four through Nine, it was now an absurdity to consider delaying the clearing away of any “not right” feeling, attitude or behavior as soon as possible. I now knew that each, left untouched, would predictably bring me back to the position of pain, shame and guilt I had left behind with God’s grace and the program of SA. I certainly did not want that!

So as with a car that took a great deal to get into working condition, I could only maintain that functioning state with a set of well functioning gauges. It is not good enough to have a gas gauge that reads “empty” as my car putters to a stop without fuel or an oil gauge that reads “low” as the engine burns out. I now had to have gauges that would give me sufficient warning so that I could do something about the problems that were detected. I could then take “prompt” actions.

These gauges were the heart of what I learned in Steps Four through Nine. The “prompt” actions were those that were suggested to me by my sponsor, others in the fellowship and the Big Book of SA. I now thank God for the program of SA and the Twelve Steps, each important at different times in my recovery.