Guide to Making Amends in Addiction Recovery: Step 9 of AA

Living amends look different for everyone, depending on the specific negative behavior patterns you have identified while working the 12 Steps. Determining the most impactful living amends will require a great deal of honesty. A qualified behavioral therapist can help you identify the areas of your life that need attention. You may also have the opportunity in the future to make more direct amends with certain people in time. However, this future possibility should not keep you from working your steps.

Step 8 A.A: Making a List for Amends Worksheet

• Acknowledging the damage caused, though challenging, is a critical step for our recovery.
• The sincerity and importance of making amends should hopefully be unaffected by how they are received, underscoring it is a personal commitment to growth, not reliant on someone else’s reception.
• While making amends is apologizing, living amends means living a completely new, sober lifestyle, and being committed to that lifestyle for both yourself and those you’ve harmed in the past.
• To make amends means to apologize for something you have done or for wronging someone in some way.
• Your relationship with a higher power—no matter how you define it—can help you to remain open and willing, even as you acknowledge hard truths about pain you have caused to others.
• It is important for me to realize that, as an alcoholic, I not only hurt myself, but also those around me.

Unfortunately, this scenario plays out much too often in the lives of people who didn’t get a chance to correct their mistakes and past behaviors in time. Admitting the wrongdoing is the initial step in developing your amends script. This signifies the acceptance of one’s responsibility for harmful actions. It involves specifying the particular behaviors and actions that led to harm, ensuring the admission is not vague or wishy-washy. Developing your amends script shouldn’t be an isolated endeavor. A sponsor plays a critical role, offering guidance and expertise during script development and approach.

Making Amends: How to Approach Step 9 AA… and When Not To

In some cases, simply opening up a conversation with a friend or family member about your history of alcohol use can begin the process of making amends. Step Nine can leave you emotionally exhausted; it’s a difficult step to navigate. But the rewards you’ll reap from living amends can help make the challenges easier and more productive.

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In some cases, making amends may mean paying or promising to pay “whatever obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe,” the Big Book also states. An example would be telling someone how sorry you are that you stole from them and actually giving back what you took. It requires good judgment to navigate the intricacies of making restitution with a sense of responsibility and sensitivity to avoid causing further damage, lest we make the wreckage of the past worse. Consider everything when making your list — big and small.

The spiritual principle involved is that of forgiveness, not only from others but forgiveness of self, which can bring healing to both parties. Practice accepting other’s responses to your efforts and remember that you have done all you can. Sometimes other people need more time to accept an apology. When appropriate, remind others that you are here if they change their mind or wish to talk. Your efforts to make amends may not always go as well as you hope. Try not to respond with anger or defensiveness if others aren’t responsive to your efforts.

Don’t Hold Back—It’s Too Easy to Get Out of This Step

The program and this step made me see that it was their own doing; they made the choice. This was after they both had died and I am sorry that I couldn’t take this issue up with them personally. But living amends I know they will know, we had settled everything made our amends to each other and enjoyed the rest of their lives. This makes me realize more and more how much this program is a lifetime program.

One of the most common reasons people want to make living amends is to correct past wrongs. Living amends bridges the gap between living in shame and regret and finding forgiveness. Making amends with the people you’ve fallen out with as you’re thinking about mortality and what happens when you die is one way of finding emotional freedom and closure. But what happens when the person you need to make amends with dies before you’re able to apologize and change your ways?

The AA Amends Script: Troubleshooting and Tips

To make amends means to apologize for something you have done or for wronging someone in some way. It means mending, or (quite literally) fixing, the relationship. Even so, you will have done all that you can to take responsibility for the past—and there’s a level of peace and freedom in that as well. How the other person chooses to respond to our amends is out of our control.

• When choosing to make amends, exercise careful consideration of yourself and others to ensure you avoid causing further harm in your recovery efforts.
• If the act of making amends will open old wounds or create new harm, then making direct amends should be avoided.
• Somehow in all this guilt writing, we have never talked about making amends with someone who died.
• More general quotes regarding the process can still be helpful, like, “I don’t want to just say I am sorry, I want to show in my actions I am truly making amends”.
• The beauty of this process for newcomers and those unsure of where to go next is that their recovery from alcoholism is outlined in twelve in-depth action steps.
• Before approaching Step 9, you need to complete the inventory in Step 8.
• A few months back, she was traveling for an extended period of time.

When and Why Do People Make Living Amends?