I stop blaming and feeling blamed, with a willingness to heal the
wounds.
Original wording (AA):
Made a list of all the people we had harmed, and became willing to make
amends to them all.
Pleasure in Revenge
There is great satisfaction in getting revenge for what others did
to you. If you can hurt them, in turn, at least you'll stop being a
punching bag, you'll show them!
It's understandable that there are people you'd love to hurt even more
than you've done so far.
Step 8 is about realizing how much revenge and blame are ingrained
in all of us... and starting to walk away from these tendencies.
A different focus
Why is that? As long as you keep blaming others (or feeling susceptible
to blame), you cast yourself in the role of a powerless victim. You
say you have no power over your actions. You pretend you're such a powerless
puppet that even the harmful things you do are other people’s
responsibility!
You’re following these Proactive Twelve Steps to regain power
over the things you can have power over. You may not have much power
over other people... but you certainly have power over the way you behave.
If you acknowledge that there is some pleasure in your harming other
people, that it is your way of feeling less powerless... then you're
no longer stuck on the defensive. You now have a choice between continuing
to do the same thing, or moving on.
At some point, you may decide that, while there is some pleasure in
revenge, it's not really what you want most out of life… that
you'd rather focus on being happy.
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