What Are Living Amends? And How Do You Make Them? Cake Blog Cake: Create a Free End of Life Plan

For example, someone who is living amends may be more responsible, helping parents or spouses with chores, and may choose to be more selfless and compassionate. Living amends, then, is nothing more than a complete and radical shift in lifestyle that rejects the past of addiction and looks forward to a future of long-term sobriety and growth. When making direct contact would be harmful, or if your amends have been met with negativity, you can still find reconciliation in the larger experience of living amends. Living amends is making the commitment to a new, sober lifestyle lived with generosity, honesty, and empathy for others. Through genuine personal change, you can find serenity and make positive contributions to your community as you devote yourself to breaking the destructive patterns of addiction.

• If interacting with someone re-traumatizes you, or increases your risk of relapse, you might want to reconsider approaching them.
• Living amends is the part of your recovery where you must “walk your talk” by incorporating positive, healthy habits into your new sober lifestyle.
• For many, this is one of the most important components of recovery, because it allows them to work on rebuilding their relationships and letting go of those they cannot repair.

Making Living Amends In 12 Step Recovery

Besides addressing the relationships that may have been harmed by addiction, you must overcome the guilt and negative self-labeling you may have placed on yourself during active addiction. We can also make amends by living very purposefully within the bounds of our principles. For example, if we hurt people with our lying and we cannot make amends without further injuring them, we would make living amends by making a decision to behave and communicate with complete honesty. Think of amends as actions taken that demonstrate your new way of life in recovery, whereas apologies are basically words. When you make amends, you acknowledge and align your values to your actions by admitting wrongdoing and then living by your principles.

Get Directions

It’s important to make sure that you are in the best mental space before making amends. Here are some tips on how to make the process smoother for you. Visit relatives more often, mentor young people you know, teach people close to you skills you’re good at living amends or make time for a regular date night with your partner. Fulfill a promise that you made to someone in the past but that you didn’t keep because of addiction. If you do, it’s important to remember why the relationship, and your recovery, are important.

Come Up With Ways to Mend the Relationship

Specifically, the eighth and ninth steps of AA address the concept of amends, including listing the people you harmed and making direct amends to them wherever possible. The benefit of working on these two steps is that they ask you to confront your mistakes, examine how you hurt others and allow those you wronged to achieve closure. Taking these actions helps us to separate ourselves from the disease of addiction. We come to understand that we are good people with a bad disease. Steps 8 and 9 help us to move out of the shame we have lived in, shame that feeds the cycle of substance use and addiction. We strengthen and reinforce healthy recovery whenever we do our part to repair relationships or reach out to others with support and understanding.

• They genuinely want to see every person that comes in succeed and live a happy life in recovery.
• With this option, the individual in recovery takes steps to improve their relationships and demonstrate their lifestyle change.
• Continually examine the ways in which you act and look back on past mistakes to uncover the reasons that you made them.
• It is healthy and wise to avoid making the same mistakes in the future by writing things down, confronting the person head-on, and creating a space for the healing of broken trust.

Step 1: Understanding the Importance of Making Amends

The initial 7 steps are about inward self-reflection and transformation, while steps 8 and 9 focus on fixing interpersonal relationships. Step 9 is about meeting with those people to actively redress the wrongs. The 12 steps are beneficial in helping people smoothly transition to each new stage in their recovery. Making amends is about acknowledging and correcting the harm you have inflicted on your family or friends during active addiction. You must demonstrate your remorse with actions, not just words, and how you aim to fix the broken relationship.

When you’re ready to make amends, you can find support to guide you through the process. Connect with 12-Step treatment programs to start planning your recovery. There are also circumstances where there is no “black or white” answer as to whether a direct amends would be appropriate. If you stole from your current employer to support your drinking or drug use, making a direct amends could place your job in jeopardy and, in turn, threaten the well-being of your family. This is an example where the support of a sponsor, the recovery community and a higher power would be beneficial to help determine the proper course of action.

We are only in control of our part—making and living the amends. As with alcohol and other drugs, we are also powerless over other people. We cannot control how others respond, whether they will forgive or whether they will hold on to negative feelings or resentments. There may be situations where the damage caused by your active addiction is irreparable and making amends is not possible.

As a result, the opportunity is lost to make things right if that person dies before they can apologize. Once you enter into sobriety, there isn’t a set timeline for working Steps 8 and 9, so you might want to ask your sponsor and recovery support network for their insights about whether you’re ready. No doubt you will experience challenges and setbacks along the way. But by prioritizing your recovery on a daily basis and doing whatever that next right thing might be for you, you will keep moving forward in living a life of good purpose. It’s important to note that making amends is for the person we hurt. Yes, we partake in the process to “clean up our side of the street,” but we do not make amends to clear our conscience or undo our feelings of guilt.

Making Amends vs. Apologizing in Recover