In the late 19^th century Sigmund Freud stated that guilt is the universal problem of humankind. Recovering 12 Steppers know that guilt is a universally-present phenomenon that must be resolved if we are to attain the peace and serenity that sobriety promises. It is to this end that Step 8 is addressed.

Step 8 states "made a list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. " Who are the persons we had harmed? This list may be derived from Column 2 of our 4th Step inventory. There will typically be people who were either our codependents who failed to satisfy our dependency needs, or people who in some way threaten our codependent relationship with another person. The neighbor who was a little too kind to our significant other is a good example of this. These are people over whom we carry guilt—guilt for which we used something or someone to repress and hide from. We will likely use over it again if we do not resolve our guilt.

An amend is more than an apology. An amend is unilateral and does not require any form of acceptance to be effective. It does not matter if an amend is accepted or not. It is simply a statement of personal responsibility for a negative action which allows us to, supposedly, resolve our guilt. Restoring a relationship is not the primary objective of doing an 8^th Step, quite the contrary may occur. No matter what happens in doing our 8^th Step, the primary objective is to resolve our own guilt.

The Power Fantasy

On the spiritual level this Step takes aim to shoot down another of our cherished illusions, the fantasy that we have the power to make another person a victim. This fantasy is only another disguised version of the illusion of power/control addressed in the 1st Step. As we have seen, we alcoholics, addicts and codependents set ourselves up for victim-hood by the very dynamics of the relationships that we enter. Whether or not they realize it, the codependents in our lives are responsible for their own pain. They unwittingly set themselves up for their own victim-hood (just as we did). This is not meant to excuse sick and painful behavior on our part, but to help us understand that in the addictive relationship the enablers share the responsibility for the disaster equally with us. They helped to set it up to happen just as the addict did. Ultimately, no one can be the victim of a user without setting themselves up to be one. When considering an amend we should remember that we can only take responsibility for what we did or said, but not for how the other person responded or felt about the event. We have not and never will have any control over another person's feelings.

The power fantasy, which lies at the heart of our guilt, asserts that we have control over other people. Therefore we must bear the responsibility for what happens to them. This is an expression of the control illusion we saw at the heart of our Step 1 examination. The only way we can justify carrying guilt is by presuming that we can control other people. This is why we often resist making amends and letting go of our guilt. We cannot let go of our guilt without letting go of our illusion of control (See Step 1).

One of the most common destructive games played out in dysfunctional families is the "Manipulation-Through-Guilt game. The scenario looks roughly like this: the codependents play upon the addict’s guilt over their wrongs. This subtly (or not-so-subtly) intimidates the addict to meet their wants. The theory is that one can atone or mitigate for historical events by "paying" or "buying" forgiveness in the present. Such interactions presume that this atonement can either change the past or alter its subsequent effects, all of which is obviously absurd. Note that the amend-making process is not magic. It is a tool to help us break the Manipulation-Through- Guilt cycle. The evidence that we have let go of our guilt is to be seen when we are able to stop responding to the manipulation attempts. The 8th and 9th Steps begin the process of resolving our guilt, a process that tends to take more time than we would like it to. Step 8 is where we identify these codependent relationships and deal with our illusions that we are solely responsible for the hardships of our relationships

Step 8 also addresses the issue of timeframe perception. The disease of addiction exists in the present moment. Being mindful of the 12 Steps on a daily basis subdues our disease in the present moment, day-by-day. The difficulty lies in our well-practiced, habitual compulsions we all have to protect our disease. Years of addictive behavior have made us very accustomed to engaging our defense mechanisms. The defense mechanisms protect our disease from discovery. We do this instinctively, before we are even consciously aware that it has happened. Our disease keeps us distracted from the present moment and especially from looking inside of ourselves. It diverts our attention to the most painful memories of our past, and uses those memories as a basis for predicting a fearful future. This is what the program calls "projection." Keeping our attention on the guilty past and the fearful future prevents us from looking at the one frame of reference where our disease is vulnerable—the present moment. While we are busy brooding over the past and fearing the future, our disease is happily destroying our peace and serenity, safe from any attack, protected and hidden away in the present moment. Our guilt over past events continually forces us to live in the past rather than being fully in the present day. This provides the basis for our fear of the future by our presuming that the future will be just as painful as the past has been. This is a classic protection device of our diseased belief system. So long as we carry guilt over our painful past and predict an equally painful future, our disease is safely hidden from us in the present moment, safe from scrutiny and from the healing process.

It is unwise to go ahead and begin making any amends at this point without the counsel and advice of a sponsor or trusted advisor. Our understanding of the amends process must be spiritually sound or we may put our peace of mind at risk inadvertently.

Suggested Assignment: Review your 4th Step inventory and from it construct a list of all those people to whom you need to make amends. This list should include all those who were party to situations involving you over which you carry any feeling of guilt. The list may be directly derived from Column 2 of your inventory form. Do not go ahead with making any amends until you have discussed the list with your sponsor.