From Courage to Change of Sep 11:
During the entire process of working on my Fourth Step (making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself), I felt a nagging suspicion that I wasn’t doing it right. With my Higher Power’s help, I finally realized that the problem wasn’t that I had done my Fourth Step wrong; the fact was that I had the same sense of inadequacy about my whole life. Whatever I’m doing, I’m inclined to feel that I’m doing it wrong, that my best is not good enough. And that is simply not true. I am doing just fine.
The awareness that I have developed through Step Four puts my self-doubt into perspective. It’s just an effect of years of living with problem drinkers. So when the feeling comes up, I recognize it, share about it, accept that I feel it, and then set it aside. I no longer assume that it has any validity.
Today’s Reminder
Step Four offers me a chance to find some balance. It helps me to identify the things I’ve been telling myself about myself, and to learn whether or not those things are true. Today I will take one of my assumptions about myself and hold it up to the light. I may find that it stems from habit rather than reality.
“Let me realize… that self-doubt and self-hate are defects of character that hinder my growth.” – The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage
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The Old Reflex of Inadequacy
That nagging suspicion — I’m not doing this right — has followed me like a shadow through most of my life. It isn’t really about the Fourth Step, though it attached itself there. It’s the reflex of someone who grew up in the undertow of alcoholism, where no matter how well I tried to balance myself, it never felt steady enough. My “best” has long been stalked by the whisper that it’s never good enough. But recovery helps me name that whisper for what it is: not truth, just a scar of survival.
Step Four as a Mirror
The Fourth Step didn’t just catalog my mistakes; it taught me to hold up my assumptions about myself to the light. It showed me that the voice of inadequacy isn’t an authority, only an echo of the chaos I once lived in. Now, when it speaks, I don’t have to follow it. I can recognize it, share it in a meeting, and lay it down. That is freedom: to know I don’t have to argue with every thought that passes through me.
Balance Over Condemnation
Honesty in recovery is not about self-condemnation, nor is it about inflating the darkness. It’s about balance. It is about seeing where my habits of self-judgment come from, and daring to believe they don’t define me. If I take one assumption today — “I am not enough” — and test it against the evidence of my recovery, I find a different verdict: I am showing up, I am doing the work, and I am learning to live differently. That is enough. More than enough.
I like the idea of catching one old belief about myself, and to let the light of truth reveal whether it is habit or reality. I suspect that in that space of honesty, serenity grows.
Daily Reprieve 
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