![]() ![]() Perception and judgment are mental processes, mental activity or how people use their minds. We call these opposites preferences because most people prefer one side more than the other but can access and use both sides of a preference pair if a situation calls for it. There are also opposite ways in how people naturally make decisions. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. People naturally perceive in opposite ways. Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Here in Step 10 I have a plan to cope with life, a plan of daily action that will work each day that I work it.Perception and judgment, in type theory, describe how people prefer to use their minds. "My problem was not just learning how to put down my drug of choice," says the woman in Twelve Step recovery. "That's when you need to talk it through with someone who understands." "You might find things coming up on your inventory that you have an emotional hangover about-when an anger starts turning into resentment, or fear becomes my life," says Mark Sheets, executive director at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation in charge of a wide range of continuing care programs. Step Ten suggests that we take responsibility for this fact, clean up our role in these matters, and practice forgiveness. ![]() ![]() The truth is that we usually say or do something that helps to create the conflicts in our lives. We give other people control over our lives when we say that they "make us" angry or afraid. "If somebody hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also." "It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us," notes the author of Twelve Steps for Twelve Traditions another core text for people in recovery. Their logic is essentially this: "I am always right, and my problems will end when everyone else changes their behavior."Ĭontrast that with the attitude suggested by Step 10. Alcoholics and other addicts are especially skilled at nursing resentments and finding fault. And this calls for a radical change in how we deal with negative emotions.Ī typical response is to blame our feelings on other people. What's most important is being willing to release selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear in the very moment that they occur. Your Higher Power might be a friend, a family member, a therapist, or the members of your Twelve Step group. In fact, the term "Higher Power" is often used instead, referring to any source of help that comes from outside ourselves. Remember that AA and other Twelve Step groups do not require members to accept any particular definition of this word. Some people are put off by the word "God" in the above passage. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help" We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. The Big Book's suggestion for daily work on this Step is to "watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. While studying the suggestions for Step Ten, she recalls, "I realized something that I had been missing: daily work." This woman's desperation led her to read the Big Book of AA for the second time. ![]() That led to two decades of repeated relapses." I was shocked when, after three years of recovery, I used one day. I started going it alone in the fellowship. "I stopped talking regularly to a sponsor. "After several years of recovery and doing vigorous work in completing Steps One to Nine, I felt I had arrived, that my work was done," says one long-time practitioner of the Twelve Steps. Taking a daily inventory is important to all people, but especially to those in recovery. Step 10 suggests that we watch for these disturbances every day and make an immediate response. Here the word "inventory" means taking stock of our emotional disturbances, especially those that can return us to drinking or other drug use. These daily practices are the subject of Step 10 of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous: "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." Instead, it is about adopting daily practices that help people stay clean and sober. The Twelve Step program of recovery from alcoholism and other addictions rests on a notion of spirituality that is not about having the "right" beliefs. ![]()
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