Step 4 · 21 of 79

Step Four, Column Two: Tips

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THE BASICS

In the second column of the Step Four resentment inventory, I write about what someone did that I object to. Here’s a good example:

Name: [agency worker]

Charges:

Note that none of these charges are more than five words. The total is eighteen words (less than the nineteen-word maximum in the examples in the Big Book).

PRESENTATION

A good way of presenting the second column is set out below. Background should be included only if necessary.

Name: ...

Background:

Charges:

TIPS

An exception

Normally, we write what the chap(ess) did or what they said. Sometimes, that produces an excessively complex result that would be comprehensible only to someone else who was embedded in that situation and au fait with the politics, the set-up, the history, etc. Sometimes, we are insinuating what someone might mean behind what they say, but an outsider simply will not make the same leap that we are making without being led along the forest trail.

How to deal with this: leap over the detail to the substance but retain the link to the real world in parentheses.

For example:

The first of these generalises complex events.
The second of these leaps over the words to the message.
The third of these represents my speculation based on their words or actions.

This enables the reader to get to the nub of the resentment without losing the breadcrumb trail to the ‘real world’. When these situations are examined later on in the process, the legitimacy of the generalisation, the validity of the insinuation, and the plausibility of the speculation will be challenged. For the work to proceed without presenting as a valid premise what might be a wild fancy, we need both elements: the essence of the charge plus the words, event, or situation that formed the basis for the charge.

This option should be used as a last resort, however. Some writers of the Step will be tempted to present all charges in this way, thus unnecessarily complicating the inventory and bogging down the process.

Remember, the inventory is an opportunity to take a few examples of one’s grievances to unpack and dissolve them. Which we choose is neither here nor there in itself, as we will be forgiving everyone for everything anyway (which is a spiritual not an intellectual act), and everyone has many more grievances than there is time to write about, so we are always being selective. It is usually possible, therefore, to restrict the writing in Step Four (on twenty people, with a maximum of five charges per person, producing a cap of 100 grievances, which is plenty as a corpus of worked examples) to simple, straightforward situations. Simple cases best illustrate the law, and simple grievances best illustrate the anatomy of resentment, which is really what we are after.

This exception should therefore be applied only exceptionally, and, if the resentments against a particular person are too elusive or manifold to capture simply, maybe pick someone else and write about them.

AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT NOT TO DO

Have a look at my five charges above. For a laugh, let us look at what the wrong way to write about these might be:

Name: [agency worker]

Background:

Charges:

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