Secular Step Eight
CREATING a list of people we have harmed represents one of the most challenging and important aspects of recovery. Most of us approach Step Eight with considerable reluctance, and for good reason. It requires us to face the full extent of damage our drinking and related behavior caused to the people in our lives. It demands that we move beyond general acknowledgments of having "hurt people" to specific recognition of particular harms to particular individuals.
For many of us, the prospect of making amends feels overwhelming, embarrassing, or even dangerous. We worry about reopening old wounds, facing anger or rejection, admitting legal or financial liability, or discovering that the damage we caused was worse than we remembered. These concerns are understandable and should be taken seriously as we work through this Step.
Yet Step Eight, properly understood and carefully executed, is not primarily about the other people we have harmed—it is about our own freedom and integrity. We make this list and develop willingness to make amends not to fix other people or to guarantee their forgiveness, but to clear away the wreckage of our past so we can live with honesty, dignity, and peace of mind.
Understanding Harm in Recovery Context
Harm in the context of Step Eight includes any way our behavior negatively affected another person, regardless of our intentions at the time. This broad definition is important because it prevents us from minimizing our impact by focusing on our motivations rather than the actual consequences of our actions.
Physical harm includes any violence, threats, or physical neglect that endangered others' safety or wellbeing. This might involve domestic violence, fighting, reckless driving that endangered passengers, or neglecting our responsibilities to protect dependents.
Emotional harm encompasses the psychological damage we caused through our words and actions: lies that betrayed trust, promises we failed to keep, verbal abuse, emotional manipulation, abandonment during critical times, or simply the ongoing stress our unpredictable behavior created for those who cared about us.
Financial harm includes money we borrowed or stole, bills we failed to pay, financial obligations we ignored, joint accounts we depleted, credit we damaged, or economic opportunities we squandered that affected family members or business partners.
Relational harm involves damage to relationships through our behavior: adultery, broken commitments, violations of agreed-upon boundaries, failure to fulfill our roles as parents, partners, or friends, or simply the erosion of trust and intimacy that results from living with someone whose behavior is unpredictable and self-centered.
Professional harm includes damage to colleagues, employers, or business partners through poor performance, dishonesty, missed opportunities, or behavior that reflected poorly on organizations we represented.
Creating the List
The process of creating our Step Eight list should be thorough and systematic. We begin by reviewing our Fourth Step inventory, which already contains much of the information we need. We look at each resentment, fear, and sexual relationship we examined, identifying the people who were affected by our behavior in these situations.
We then expand beyond our Fourth Step to consider other relationships and situations where we may have caused harm. This includes family members, friends, romantic partners, spouses, children, colleagues, employers, business partners, neighbors, and even casual acquaintances who were affected by our behavior.
It's important to be specific rather than general in creating this list. Instead of simply writing "my family," we list individual family members and consider how each was specifically affected by our behavior. Instead of "people at work," we identify particular colleagues or situations where our behavior caused problems.
We should also include institutions, organizations, or groups we may have harmed through our behavior, even though we will ultimately make amends to specific individuals who represent these entities.
The Challenge of Self-Honesty
Creating an honest and complete Step Eight list requires overcoming several forms of self-deception that may have protected us from facing the full extent of our impact on others.
Minimization involves downplaying the significance of harm we caused by telling ourselves it "wasn't that bad" or that others "got over it quickly." This form of self-deception prevents us from taking full responsibility for our actions and their consequences.
Rationalization involves explaining away our harmful behavior by focusing on the circumstances that led to it or the ways others contributed to problems. While understanding context can be helpful, it should not prevent us from acknowledging our role in causing harm.
Blaming others involves focusing on what others did wrong rather than examining our own behavior and its impact. Even when others bore some responsibility for conflicts or problems, we must focus on our own actions and their consequences.
Selective memory involves "forgetting" incidents of harmful behavior or remembering them in ways that minimize our responsibility. This often requires us to seek input from others who witnessed our behavior or to review written records, photographs, or other documentation from periods when our memory may be unreliable.
Developing Willingness
The second part of Step Eight—becoming willing to make amends to all the people we have harmed—often proves more challenging than creating the list itself. Most of us feel comfortable making amends to some people while feeling resistant, fearful, or unwilling regarding others.
This selective willingness is understandable but insufficient for Step Eight. The goal is not to feel ready to make amends to everyone immediately, but to develop genuine willingness to make appropriate amends when the time is right and when doing so will not cause further harm.
Willingness develops gradually through several processes. Understanding the purpose of amends helps us see beyond our immediate discomfort to the larger goals of clearing away guilt and resentment, repairing relationships where possible, and demonstrating changed behavior through actions rather than words.
Examining our resistance helps us identify specific fears or concerns that prevent willingness, so we can address these concerns directly rather than simply avoiding the people we are reluctant to approach.
Practicing forgiveness, both of others and of ourselves, removes emotional barriers that prevent us from approaching amends with appropriate humility and genuineness. We cannot make sincere amends while harboring resentment toward the people we have harmed.
Seeking guidance from sponsors, therapists, or trusted friends helps us work through our resistance and develop realistic plans for making amends that serve everyone's best interests.
Categories of People on Our List
Family Members often appear prominently on Step Eight lists because our closest relationships typically bore the brunt of our harmful behavior. Parents, siblings, spouses, children, and extended family members may have been affected by our drinking, lying, financial irresponsibility, emotional unavailability, or other forms of neglect and abuse.
Friends and Social Connections include people who trusted us, spent time with us, or tried to help us during our drinking years. We may have borrowed money we never repaid, broken commitments, embarrassed them in social situations, or simply disappeared from their lives without explanation.
Romantic Partners and Spouses often experienced multiple forms of harm including emotional abuse, infidelity, financial irresponsibility, broken promises, and the ongoing stress of living with someone whose behavior was unpredictable and self-centered.
Children deserve special attention on our lists because they were powerless to protect themselves from our behavior and because the harm we caused them may have lasting effects on their development and relationships.
Professional Contacts include employers, colleagues, employees, business partners, and clients who were affected by our poor performance, dishonesty, or unprofessional behavior.
Community Members might include neighbors, acquaintances, service providers, or others who experienced our behavior in public settings or professional interactions.
Special Considerations
Safety Concerns: Some people on our list may present safety risks if we attempt to contact them directly. This might include people with restraining orders against us, individuals who have threatened violence, or situations where our presence might escalate conflicts. In such cases, we need to find alternative ways to make amends that don't compromise anyone's safety.
Legal Implications: Contacting some people or admitting certain behavior might create legal liability for past actions. While honesty and accountability are important values in recovery, we need to seek appropriate legal counsel before making amends that might result in criminal charges or civil lawsuits.
Deceased Persons: People who have died since we harmed them present special challenges. While we cannot make direct amends to them, we can still address our guilt and make symbolic amends through service to causes they cared about or kindness to their surviving family members.
Geographic Distance: Some people on our list may live far away or be difficult to locate. This doesn't excuse us from including them on our list, but it may require creativity in finding appropriate ways to make amends.
Institutional Harm: When we have harmed institutions, organizations, or groups, we typically make amends to specific individuals who represent these entities, such as supervisors, board members, or other decision-makers.
Working with Resistance
Most people experience significant resistance to including certain individuals on their Step Eight list or developing willingness to make amends to particular people. This resistance often centers around people who:
- Caused us significant harm themselves
- Might react with anger, rejection, or hostility
- Represent situations we find embarrassing or shameful
- Could create legal, financial, or professional consequences
- We believe "deserved" the treatment they received from us
- We feel unable to approach due to practical constraints
Working with this resistance requires patience, honesty, and often professional guidance. We examine our specific concerns about each person, consider whether these concerns represent real obstacles or emotional resistance, and develop appropriate strategies for addressing legitimate concerns while not allowing fear to prevent necessary amends.
It's important to remember that willingness is not the same as readiness. We can be willing to make amends to someone while recognizing that the timing is not right or that we need to develop better skills or circumstances before approaching them.
The Role of Forgiveness
Developing genuine willingness to make amends often requires forgiving both others and ourselves. Resentment toward people we have harmed prevents us from approaching them with appropriate humility and sincerity. Self-hatred prevents us from believing we deserve forgiveness or that our amends could be meaningful.
Forgiveness in this context does not mean condoning harmful behavior or pretending that damage didn't occur. Rather, it means releasing our attachment to anger and resentment so we can focus on repair and healing rather than blame and punishment.
Forgiving others allows us to take responsibility for our own behavior without requiring that they first acknowledge their role in conflicts or problems. Forgiving ourselves allows us to believe that change is possible and that our efforts to make amends are worthwhile rather than futile.
Practical Preparation for Amends
As we develop willingness to make amends, we can begin preparing for the actual amends process by developing the skills and resources we will need.
Communication Skills: Making effective amends requires the ability to listen carefully, acknowledge impact without making excuses, express genuine remorse, and discuss restitution appropriately. Many people benefit from practicing these skills with sponsors, therapists, or trusted friends before attempting difficult amends.
Emotional Regulation: Amends conversations can be emotionally intense and may trigger shame, anger, fear, or other strong emotions. Developing better emotional regulation skills helps us stay focused on the purpose of amends rather than getting sidetracked by our own reactions.
Financial Resources: Some amends will require financial restitution, and we should begin planning for these expenses as our circumstances allow. This might involve setting aside money regularly, developing payment plans, or finding creative ways to provide value when cash restitution is not possible.
Support Systems: Making amends can be emotionally challenging and may not always go as we hope. Having appropriate support available from sponsors, therapists, recovery groups, or trusted friends helps us process the experience and maintain our recovery regardless of how others respond.
Integration with Recovery Program
Step Eight integrates closely with other aspects of recovery work. The honesty we developed in Steps Four and Five helps us create accurate and complete lists. The humility we developed in Steps Six and Seven helps us approach amends with appropriate attitudes. The character change work of the earlier Steps provides the foundation for meaningful behavioral change that makes our amends credible.
Step Eight also prepares us for Step Nine by identifying whom we need to approach and helping us develop the willingness necessary to follow through on our commitments. The careful preparation we do in Step Eight makes the actual amends process more likely to be helpful for everyone involved.
Secular Approaches to Spiritual Elements
For those preferring secular approaches, the spiritual aspects of Step Eight can be understood in terms of personal integrity, ethical responsibility, and commitment to repairing harm we have caused. The willingness we develop to make amends reflects our commitment to living according to our values rather than our immediate comfort.
The process of creating our list and developing willingness can be understood as taking responsibility for our impact on others, regardless of our intentions or the circumstances that influenced our behavior. This responsibility reflects our commitment to being trustworthy people who repair damage when we cause it.
Conclusion
Step Eight represents our commitment to taking full responsibility for the harm our behavior caused others and to repairing that harm wherever possible. It moves us beyond general acknowledgments of having "hurt people" to specific recognition of particular harms to particular individuals.
The list we create in Step Eight and the willingness we develop serves multiple purposes: it helps us understand the full scope of damage our behavior caused; it prepares us for the actual amends process; it demonstrates our commitment to changed behavior; and it clears away guilt and resentment that could threaten our recovery.
Most importantly, Step Eight teaches us that we are not condemned to live with the wreckage of our past indefinitely. While we cannot undo the harm we have caused, we can take responsibility for it, make appropriate repairs, and demonstrate through our actions that we have changed.
Through Step Eight, we discover that facing the people we have harmed, while challenging, is both possible and liberating. We learn that most people appreciate sincere efforts to make amends, even when they cannot immediately offer forgiveness. We find that taking responsibility for our behavior, rather than feeling victimized by consequences, actually increases our sense of personal power and integrity.
The willingness we develop in Step Eight becomes the foundation for the direct action of Step Nine. But even before we make our first amend, the process of honestly examining our impact on others and committing to repair that harm begins the healing process for ourselves and prepares the way for healing in our relationships with others.