The Step Eleven review, based on the first paragraph of page
86 of Alcoholics Anonymous, is a
useful tool in recovery. Many people perform a written review once a day and
share that review with others. It is easy, however, to get side-tracked.
Let's look at what the questions are really about.
Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? This
focuses 50/50 on thought life and action.
Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves
which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind and loving
toward all? What could we have done better?
These focus entirely on action.
Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time? Or were we
thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream
of life?
This focuses on thought life—but whether that thought life
was focused on action.
After making our review we … inquire what corrective
measures should be taken.
This focuses chiefly on action.
In other words, the review is largely a review of action,
with a little bit of attention paid to obstructive thought (resentment, fear,
and self-centred thinking).
What happens in practice?
A bad review will focus 90% or more on resentment and fear
and other mental and emotional manifestations of self-centredness. This is not
constructive.
As the Book says: 'we constructively review our day… But we
must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection, for that
would diminish our usefulness to others.'
Many reviews will do precisely that: focus on regurgitating and
further embedding the negative.
The substance of the resentment and fear may need to be
mentioned in passing to provide some context. However, the point of having done
a Step Four is to have learned that resentment is miserable, futile, and
dangerous and that fear is self-defeating. Moreover in Step Four, we have been
given solutions: forgiveness and reliance on God. Step Ten furthermore gives us
the tool of regaining (or gaining) control over our own thought life through the
diligent observation and turning of our thoughts to God and outwards to others.
By the time we arrive at Step Eleven, we cannot honestly
plead ignorance.
If the day has been a resentful, fearful one, the problem lies
not in the circumstances we have been resenting or fearing but the very fact we
have deliberately failed to pick up the tools to nip these afflictions in the bud
the moment they arise.
It can be easy to use the review to regurgitate the symptoms
of the problem without ever facing the real problem: the decision when tempted
to resent or fear to meditate and ponder on the wrongs of others or future catastrophes
rather than turning our thoughts to the task at hand or to higher principles of
love, service, patience, tolerance, etc.
Finally, a chief purpose of the review is to establish a set
of corrective measures that we use our willpower along with God's power to
apply the following day.
If there is a month of identical reviews without any
corrective measures or genuine effort to apply such corrective measures as there
are, continuing a Step Eleven review may actually be harmful to recovery,
because it gives the appearance of diligence whilst acting as a fig leaf for
complacency and indolence.
I am the first to admit that I have misused the Step Eleven
review, not wilfully or negligently but misguidedly, hence the desire to pass
on what I have since learned.