Step 9 AA: When to Make Amends and When Not to FHE Health

Through these restorative actions, you demonstrate your commitment to change. Set on 50 rolling acres in the Scottish countryside, they offer bespoke, discreet treatment for alcohol and drug addiction with holistic healing. Making amends helps repair relationship problems caused by addiction. While the process may seem daunting at first, you can make amends in a way that’s sincere and respectful. This can be a powerful way to move your healing journey forward. Should others be unreceptive or outcomes aren’t as planned, don’t blame yourself.

The Constitution was created by 55 people… and several animals

The Founders didn’t mean for it to be so difficult to change, but they failed to see the rise of two rigid political parties. You don’t have to take our word for the success of sober living in preventing relapse. Please read our success stories below, or contact our team today to talk to some of our experts.

Start apologizing

Because he is a member of a support group that stresses the importance of anonymity at the public level, he does not use his photograph or his real name on this website. How blessed we are to become free from our past, and given the gift to help free another. I tend to hide the memory of past transgressions under the ever-handy umbrella of “Didn’t do it if I don’t remember”. Since I spent years in a boozy haze all sorts of hurts were ignored. Making amends may seem like a bitter pill to swallow, but for those serious about recovery, it can be good medicine for the spirit and the soul. This tends to result in enhanced relationships and repairing ones that were injured.

What Does Step 9 (Making Amends) Have To Do With Sobriety?

Your goal is to show you reflected on your mistakes, are truly sorry for the pain caused, and are ready to translate words into actions. Avoid general statements like, “I’m sorry for everything I’ve done.” Be living amends specific with your apology and include concrete plans to restore the relationship. The other person will better appreciate your sincerity, feel more understood, and thus be more receptive to the apology.

• You may not be able to rectify “everything” you’ve done to the other person, but you can repair specific wrongs.
• Completing Step 9 is the next step forward in recovery, regardless of how the other person responds.
• Additionally, if we continue to make the same choices, it causes us to use our minds to feel righteous about choices and make the other person wrong for feeling hurt or deserving of our choices.
• By showing up, doing the work, and continuing to do “the next right thing,” you will make more progress toward trust-building and repair than with any amount of words.
• It’s not one we use too frequently in our everyday language, but it still holds significant meaning.
• Thank you for visiting We hope that you have found the information you were seeking.

Changes in personal behaviors

• Thankfully we are given some insight in to how to make amends through steps 8 and 9.
• I’m not his teacher, and I’m sure she’s skilled at handling that type of problem.
• John C. Umhau, MD, MPH, CPE is board-certified in addiction medicine and preventative medicine.

We’ve written about how common guilt is in grief (you wouldn’t believe how many people get the “coulda woulda shouldas”). We wrote an article about the difference between guilt and regret. We talked about the complicated processes of self-forgiveness and self-compassion. We’ve filled you in on things that can exacerbate guilt, like hindsight bias and survivors’ guilt.

This is a list of all of the people in your life whom you believe you have harmed. It can be a challenging list to write, even for those who want to embrace forgiveness and inner peace—but the list is important. It represents many of the feelings and struggles you’ve had. By working through the list in Step 9 and making amends to each person named there, you will restore a piece of yourself with each conversation. No matter how much we feel the need to make things right, forcing another to meet with us or hear from us is not part of the Steps. 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.

Though this cannot undo or directly compensate for the initial mistake, it can serve as living amends that comes through a different way of being in the world. In that act, your actions in their memory make you and the world a better place. The spiritual purpose of making amends is to find inner peace, freedom, release, and rebirth. While this step involves a direct exchange with another person, its goal has everything to do with healing and addiction recovery on the part of the person making the amends. Before approaching Step 9, you need to complete the inventory in Step 8.

• I tend to hide the memory of past transgressions under the ever-handy umbrella of “Didn’t do it if I don’t remember”.
• You may need to attend family therapy sessions together over time to fully patch up those strained relationships.
• Maybe it is a fight you always thought you had time to resolve.
• Instead, as you pursue a life in recovery, focus on being generous with your time and giving back to others.
• In fact, two of the 12 Steps (8 and 9) are specifically about making amends.

Apologies are intended to show you accept responsibility for the harm you caused to another person. To amend something is to make it better or improve it somehow. The goal of making amends is to right the wrong you did once upon a time. The wrong could have involved stealing, lying, causing damage to someone’s property, hurting someone, or something else.

My Loved One Needs Help

A 12-step program is designed to encourage long-term sobriety, by fostering a spirituality for recovery. Each step signifies a new challenge to reflect and/or act in a way that changes old mindsets and behaviors that once fed addiction. Through mutual support groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, members learn and practice these spiritual steps and principles, with a view to staying sober and helping others do the same. Talk with your sponsor or others in your recovery community about what has worked for them. If your actions match your intentions and you reach out in person, you are doing the next right thing to right past wrongs. And remember, if you are feeling ashamed about mistakes made and damage done during your using days, you are not your disease.

Why Making Amends Can Be Difficult

At Boardwalk Recovery Center, we support clients through the steps and encourage them to make amends when appropriate to restore their relationships and sense of morality. But when I worked this step with my sponsor I realized that I had several issues that I didn’t even realize I needed to make amends about. The first being the alcoholics in my life, I had a part in their disease and didn’t know what I had done to them.