1-2-3 Simple Solution to Remove Fear

Radical Accountability is perhaps one of the most challenging tools to use and principles to practice.  I don’t know why the human psyche is so drawn to trying to fix everything outside ourselves including other people before we will turn to the one and only place that we can participate in and effect change.  I have never found a more effective tool than the fourth step to promote, practice and execute radical accountability.  It’s a trick… we are told to sit and write all of our resentments and fears on paper. What we are not told is that after hours of writing and the humbling and embarrassing process of sharing the intimate details of our lives with our sponsor, that the only thing that we take onto the next steps, are our character defects that were identified in the process.  I remember the first time I wrote a 4th step and met my sponsor in a beautiful park in Seattle where I laid the intimate details of my life before her for a total of 5 hours… she shyly handed me a piece of paper with some words on it.  Little did I know that these were my character defects and that I was supposed to take them and ask for God to remove them.  When I look back I’m not sure that I have ever really understood steps six and seven.  Fundamentally I had a problem with the idea of asking God to remove them.  I did it in practice through the 7th step prayer but, I did not ever say “hey God, I have a lot of fear, please remove my fear and direct my thinking to what you would have me be.”  Well, check this out, and this is what is so amazing about the program, after nearly 20 years of being in and out of the rooms, I finally tried it and it flipping worked.  I mean, sometimes my fear will creep in again, but it has yet to become an obsessive overwhelming experience that has lasted even an hour let alone the days at a time of crippling emotional pain that the strongest drugs could not cure.  I’ve thrown everything that I have at this thing from therapy to month-long stints in treatment and, it was there all along.  It’s the 1-2-3 in dealing with fear.  

1. Pause when agitated or doubtful(fear).
2. Ask God to remove your fear & direct your thinking.
3. Find someone, anyone to help.

Just for today, I am reminded to forget about trying to figure out the “why” of my fear and to
simply practice the 1-2-3 fear solution presented by the brilliant 12 step program.  May you be fearless
and lovingly fierce today!