Making any type of amends can be challenging, but in this article, we’ll focus on living amends and tips for how to make them. If you or a loved one is struggling to stay sober or needs help maintaining sobriety while working the 12 Steps, Eudaimonia Recovery Homes can help. Call us or fill out our online contact form today to get started. State how you are taking personal responsibility for the hurt you’ve caused. Making amends means apologizing but also goes one step further—doing everything in your power to repair the damage, restore the relationship, and/or, replace what you took.
We’re taking accountability for our actions during active addiction, and we’re marking for ourselves a new chapter where those behaviors are no longer acceptable. We’re telling the world, “Addiction made me behave a certain way. I don’t like it, and it doesn’t reflect the person I want to be in recovery.” Children don’t need to hear about the disease of alcoholism or the Twelve Steps.
Support for Me and My Family
The more personalized your lifestyle changes are, the more they’re going to resonate and stick with you. It’s really hard to apologize to those you’ve hurt — it takes courage and humility and requires a deep, intense look at yourself. It follows, then, that Step Nine is a challenging step. Thankfully, there are tips you can take to help make your living amends permanent and lasting. After acknowledging how actions tied to their addictions had a negative impact on people in their lives, those in 12-step recovery programs commit to making direct amends whenever possible. When first writing your list, don’t worry about including everyone you have wronged.
During the first month, the applicant must fill out our form online and interview with one of our staff members. Keep up with what Living Amends is doing in the community. Turns out, I was a bossy control freak who was terrified of everything. I had all the answers, and I shared them with everyone. When they didn’t follow my advice, I let them know – repeatedly.
Apply for a Living Amends Scholarship Today
That was 255 days ago—eight months of sobriety from a guy who couldn’t get eight days. So far, sober living has taught me how to pay bills, be accountable for my actions, how to be a member of a community, and to be the best sober gentlemen I can be. If I hadn’t received help along this journey, I wouldn’t have succeeded. Thank you, Living Amends, for the scholarship and [for] investing in my success. Another instance where making direct amends may not be a good idea is if admitting your wrongs could jeopardize your freedom, which could hurt your loved ones. However, if after talking with your sponsor you decide to proceed anyway, make sure you have spoken to your family especially if you are the head of the household or primary source of income.
If you’re writing a letter, whether sending or sharing it in person, spend some time reflecting on and sharing the actions you’re taking to redress the wrong(s) done. People get tired of broken promises, of forgiving over and over and giving second and third, fourth, or fifth chances only to get hurt again. When you’re looking to change both your behavior and your broken relationships, stop making excuses to fulfill your promises. Soon, you’ll run out of reasons to give your loved ones why you’ve failed them once again. However, these promises are usually the result of deep feelings of shame, guilt, and regret and may not be genuine for some. Many times, these kinds of promises serve to alleviate the wrongdoer’s guilt and so that they can say they apologized before their loved one died.
The Application Process
This is a list of all of the people in your life whom you believe you have harmed. It can be a challenging list to write, even for those who want to embrace forgiveness and inner peace—but the list is important. It represents many of the feelings and struggles you’ve had.
- Remembering how I stole from you makes me sad and fills me with shame.
- So we can skip the long-winded speeches and just be mom or dad.
- It is freedom from behaviors that do not live up to the new life in sobriety I am choosing to live.
- Call us or fill out our online contact form today to get started.
- And in some cases, you may not be able to make direct amends at all.
Understanding some making amends examples can help the individual correct past behaviors. Along with reinforcing new behaviors and outlooks, making amends can also reduce stress. Many who lived with addiction have past behaviors they’re not proud of.
What If My Attempt to Make Things Right Goes Wrong and Things Get Worse?
If making an amends means exposing ourselves to triggering environments, we ought to reconsider and discuss healthy alternatives with a sponsor or addiction counselor. In addiction, our actions and intentions aren’t aligned. For example, we might intend to go to a friend’s birthday party, but in living amends actuality, we fail to show up for the event. While we might apologize later for missing the party, our apology consists of words rather than actions or changed behavior. And those words ring hollow when we repeatedly break our promises. So, to truly make amends, we have to offer more than words.
- To learn whether you’re an ideal candidate for our scholarship, please apply using our application form or contact our team for further application questions.
- It’s much easier to just apologize and move on, but committing to living your life differently looks different.
- At Living Amends, we recognize the need for sober living in the recovery process.
- It makes it hard to remember things that happened before or after.
- If you don’t see the sober living facility you want to attend listed above, we welcome you to contact us online.
- My dad’s friend Whitney Welch from Living Amends decided to scholarship me into sober living.