The Sixth Step
Part 2

“Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

My name is Dave, and I am a grateful member of Overeaters Anonymous. I still have a lot of growing up to do. I admit it. I am not the most emotionally mature 50 year old man around. I don’t have all the self-discipline or social graces some people my age do. I often mishandle and botch even basic interactions with other people. I’m seriously lacking in some pretty fundamental life-skills and quite good at others. Sometimes I feel like a cross between an ultra-needy victim, and a super self-reliant self-assured man in command of his own inner and outer world. Kind of 50 on the outside and 15 on the inside. My life-experiences and various disease processes have sort of stunted my growth in some departments and given me a lot of strength in others.

For me, this Step is about consciously making a commitment to do the work of growing up—becoming emotionally mature. That is, learning to accept and handle life on life’s terms. Learning to take responsibility for the way I act and react to the things life throws my way without hurting myself or others.

Steps Four through Seven are essentially about the process of behavior modification. In Step Four we discover the liabilities and “defects of character” that have caused problems in our lives and blocked our path to recovery. In Step Five we made a breakthrough in honesty and trust. We gained perspective on our problems, refined our understanding of what was our responsibility and what really wasn’t, and in putting voice to these issues we found out that we were not as alone and different as we had thought. Step Six not only gives a bit of time to come down from any euphoric or “special” feelings we had after sharing our Fifth Step, but it is a time of real growth in the areas of awareness and willingness. By awareness I mean learning to pay attention to both the positive and negative consequences of our actions in present or real time.

Increasing Awareness

When speaking of inappropriate coping skills and problem behaviors, psychologists recognize that they do serve some purpose in a person’s life. Besides the pain they cause in a person’s life, they produce what is known as secondary gains. For instance, a man might continually complain or boast to his family and friends about his job and how hard he works to the point that the people around him are so sick of hearing it that they are driven away or disgusted. Yes, he might work hard or not be satisfied with his job, but so are a lot of people. They however, don’t feel the need to interject that information into almost every conversation. This complaining or boasting might offer that man some distorted rationalization or feeling of vindication for not keeping up other obligations in his life. It might offer him a sense of recognition he never gets or can’t accept from his workmates. Or it may be his way of dominating the conversation to make himself the center of attention, thus propping up his fragile self-esteem

This man knows he is changing the subject, exaggerating his pain, position, knowledge, or importance, but he persists in the behavior almost as if on autopilot. Until this man realizes that the negative consequences of this boorish behavior outweigh the seemingly positive ones, he isn’t likely to be ready to put any real effort into changing. He just isn’t ready. He has to become willing to surrender or give up the feelings he gets from the secondary gain. This is not usually an easy thing to do.

So, between identifying our shortcomings, liabilities, and “defects of character” and admitting them honestly to ourselves, another person, and our higher power in our Fourth and Fifth Steps, and actually being ready and committed to the process of changing them, is usually a much bigger step than first appears. A lot of the time the secondary gain is so attractive it’s very hard to let go of. And if we do let go, what will replace it. This can bring in the element of fear. So again, wanting to and being ready to, are two different things.

Believable Hope

Step Six is a period where we work at developing an attitude that is most conducive to taking on the job of change and personal growth. So called “defects of character” usually don’t disappear overnight. They may come back to haunt us on different levels throughout our lives. Sometimes they sort of mutate and reappear down the road pretending to be a whole new issue. Part of developing an attitude conductive to growth and healing is accepting that things happen in God’s own time not ours. We never really know exactly how or when. Self-destructive or problematic behaviors may change slowly over time. This does not mean they are not being removed. I think it means our higher power is simply giving us no more than we can handle at any given time. When we give up old behaviors and inappropriate coping mechanisms, we have to learn new effective and healthy patterns to replace them. This requires patience and determination, and a healthy measure of faith that when our will is aligned with our higher power’s will and we are doing our best to carry it out, our change and growth will progress. In the early days of my sobriety, I got most of my faith from hearing people who were a lot like me share their stories and recovery successes in meetings. That’s what kept me hopeful. Through those people and their experience, I was able to believe firmly that I too could overcome the obstacles in my path. The faith that the program could work for me even though I didn’t understand it very well. No professional or self-help book could have given me that kind of hope and faith.

Perfectionism

Step Six sounds at first like it’s an all or nothing proposition. It says we need to be “entirely ready” to have our higher power remove “all” of our known liabilities. That’s a tall order! However, the First Step is the only Step we need to do 100%. All the others are only perfect ideals. They are goals to work toward. We seek progress, not perfection. It’s not so much that we be ready to perfectly walk the path and do the work, but that we are perfectly ready to start the walk and do the work. We are human and fallible and may trip and fall along the way. Those are lessons learned as long as we pick ourselves up and get back on the path.

But don’t let me steer you wrong, entirely ready means entirely ready. I does not mean you are sorta kinda maybe ready to take on this task. It means what it says. This step may sound simple and it is, but it’s not usually easy.

I find myself returning to Step Six quite often. A lot of times I need to find or renew my sense of willingness and readiness. As far as my quirky instincts and character go, the longer I am in recovery the more that is revealed. I need to keep working at having the right attitude and willingness to move foreword and keep trying.

Fear

Change is hardly ever easy. We tend to resist change almost instinctually. In part I think the roots of our very instinct for survival kicks in. We have used certain of the behaviors and liabilities we identified in our Fourth Step to protect ourselves. Sometimes from situations we don’t know how to deal with, sometimes from feelings we don’t want to deal with. Change requires we get out of our comfort zone and take risks. Step Six is about recognizing and admitting our fear, and becoming willing to move on anyway. We become willing to go to any length to change and when we are that willing, change does happen.

God

Many people will have no problem with the concept of the God of their understanding removing their liabilities and roadblocks to recovery. However, others will find it difficult or impossible to incorporate such ideas into their program of recovery. Not to worry. If you have come this far, you already have a personal concept of a higher or helping power(s) that has your best interests at heart. It is the wisdom and guidance of that higher power or set of helping powers that gets you from point A to point B. For you, Step Six is about believing that utilizing that wisdom, guidance, and support is the right thing to do and being entirely willing and ready to start using it.

Having God do it

Step Six speaks of being ready to have ‘God’ remove our “defects of character”. It would seem that they are saying we are ready for “God” to perform a miracle in our lives. Like most things, it can be interpreted in several ways and in this case, it really is up to you to figure out how that idea fits within your own recovery. Keep in mind that we haven’t been capable, through our own will and intellect, to change these things on our own. We may now have more knowledge but we are still ourselves. We may be able to suppress some of our deeply ingrained “defects of character” and old coping mechanisms for a time, but they will eventually resurface. I choose to believe that my higher power will remove what blocks my recovery by showing me how to do the things required to change, grow, and heal. To me, that’s a miracle.

Trust and transformation

Before much change can take place, we need to have faith that by utilizing the help from a source greater than ourselves, constructive change can actually happen. We need to trust the program and the process. This may not happen all at once—we are in the process of learning to trust and rely on our sources of help, to trust the process, and even to trust ourselves. In Step Six we are learning to trust that when we become honestly willing to do the work and go to whatever lengths are required, the process of growth and transformation will have begun.

Serenity

Many of us have used food to stuff our feelings or escape feeling them for awhile. Many of us have binged because we were angry, sad, afraid, wronged, rejected, lonely, or in other turmoil. We wished we had some serenity in our lives and tried to get it through food. Being to stuffed or busy with eating is not serenity. It’s no more serenity than is being in a drug induced stupor. Serenity is the ability to completely accept your full range of emotions and being able to feel them when they happen. That’s also part of being fully alive. When we try and kill our feelings, we are giving up a good portion of our very humanness and our very selfhood. This can only leave a hole in the core of our being that food can never fill up. Reclaiming (or finding) our full and authentic spontaneous selves IS the work of recovery. Recovery is about a lot more than sticking to a food plan.

We will never be able to remove or hide from all the things that are uncomfortable or painful in life. We can never escape having to deal with difficult people and situations. Even when we are making health promoting food choices, new issues will always arise and old ones resurface. Eventually, we either learn how to accept and deal with these issues in a healthy and constructive way, or we return to abusing ourselves with food and repeating old destructive behaviors. Step Six is about making a commitment to learn how to deal with our feelings in healthier and more life-affirming ways. It’s a willingness to let go of all the things that didn’t work. It’s a willingness to honestly start the journey to wholeness and serenity and break the self-destructive cycles that had supported and perpetuated our disease.

Questions for journaling and contemplation.

Note: I really dislike the terms, “character defect” and “defects of character”. Those are terms used extensively in a lot of 12-Step literature and meetings. I use those terms at times because they actually do have some merit as long as we keep in mind that eating disorders are “No-Fault” illnesses. We didn’t ask to have these problems, but we can choose to be responsible for our own recovery from them. We aren’t deficient or defective people, we simply have an illness and are learning to keep that illness in remission one day at a time.