“HOLD BACK NOTHING”:
The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey… Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are
exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place.
– Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 61-62 –
A tiny kernel of locked-in feelings began to unfold when I first attended A.A. meetings and self-knowledge then became a learning task for me. This new self-understanding brought about a change in my responses to life’s situations. I realized I had the right to make choices in my life, and the inner dictatorship of habits slowly lost its grip.
I believe that if I seek God I can find a better way to live and I ask Him daily to assist me in living a sober life.