Step 9: The Best 5 Tips for Living Amends

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Mindfulness of both parties’ emotional states ensures constructive amends, fostering healing and resolution. Challenges and setbacks are common in the process of the 9th step. It’s not unusual to face disappointing outcomes, including rejection. Some may not be ready to accept amends, leading to potential rejection or disappointment. This can be disheartening, but it’s important to practice patience and persistence, as making amends is often a gradual process. Step Nine states that we make amends “except when to do so would injure them or others.” We don’t want our actions to cause further damage, harm or stress.

living amends

Table of Contents

Making Indirect Amends

This balance ensures that the process of making amends is constructive rather than detrimental. However, even if you feel extremely motivated to make direct amends, it is advisable to take your time with this step. Make sure that you are comfortable with your progress during recovery and that both you and the other person are ready to engage in the process.

It’s the point where we acknowledge that our behaviors damage others beyond ourselves. But to rectify this damage, we can’t maintain the same “me first” attitude that many of the other steps require. Adam Vibe Gunton is an American author, speaker and thought leader in addiction treatment and recovery. After overcoming homelessness and drug addiction, Adam found his life’s purpose in helping addicts find the same freedom he found. Approaching individuals when they are open to dialogue increases the likelihood of a positive interaction.

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Please read our success stories below, or contact our team today to talk to some of our experts. To fix broken relationships, you have to put a lot of effort into making things work. It’s not enough to say to someone that you apologize and feel badly for how you acted in the past. It takes a certain maturity and level of respect for yourself and the person you’re hoping to reconnect with to get past any past issues.

Be generous with your time.

In those cases, we can make amends in a broader sense by taking actions like donating money, volunteering our time or providing care. A few months back, she was traveling for an extended period of time. Well, the time came to continue my living amends to her and redo her entire master suite, including her bathroom.

living amends

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If making an amends means exposing ourselves to triggering environments, we ought to reconsider and discuss healthy alternatives with a sponsor or addiction counselor.
This step involves a life-long commitment to make yourself a better person.
It’s not enough to say to someone that you apologize and feel badly for how you acted in the past.
There are situations where making an amend might cause more harm than good.
After embracing a sober lifestyle, you continue to live well and treat family and friends as they should be treated.

Step 9 also allows one to practice the processes of self-reflection, accountability and making amends, all key components the next step, Step 10. By proactively and “promptly” admitting wrongs, those in recovery may be able to prevent future conflicts that could trigger a lapse in unhealthy behaviors or a return to use. When making amends it is important that you focus on your behaviors only and your amends. Or because of my drug use I https://hr-life.ru/node/52793 ….” have no place in this process.

How do I prepare for the 9th step?

The changes that occur due to your efforts positively affect your commitment to becoming a better friend, child, parent, or person all around. Making amends offers profound and far-reaching benefits, along with the aa promises so often discussed. Successful amends can lead to mutual healing for both the one in recovery and those we have harmed.

Step 9, often seen as one of the most challenging, requires courage, humility, and guidance. More than an apology, it’s about making genuine amends—taking action to correct past mistakes without causing harm. Here, we explore Step 9, its goals, possible outcomes, and effective language for making amends. Addiction takes over your life, stealing both your joy and your time, and making it impossible for you to give back to others and live a generous life. Instead, as you pursue a life in recovery, focus on being generous with your time and giving back to others. In this way, you can take the focus off of yourself and choose to live a life of greater meaning.

living amends

These changes in behavior help toward the goal of reestablishing relationships or making them stronger. 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.

In particular, he discusses how to heal when the person we need to make amends with is no longer living. 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 http://lol54.ru/music/mp3flac/140042-winter-dance-party-2014.html the person you need to make amends with dies before you’re able to apologize and change your ways? 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. Whether or not you’re intimately familiar with the Twelve Steps of AA, you’ve probably heard of Step Nine.