Confessing Your Secrets in Addiction Recovery is Crucial

Whether you are in a twelve step program or not, you have probably heard of the process in addiction recovery that involves admitting to yourself all of your wrong doings. Once you are able to admit them to yourselves, it is recommended that you take this a bit further and admit them to another human being.

It seems that addicts are in the habit of stuffing their feelings. If they are feeling guilt about something they did, they are likely to keep that feeling of guilt hidden from the world. Never admitting to even themselves that they did something wrong and feel bad about it. That guilt has a way of transforming into shame. It is shame that keeps our sickness alive.

Whether we realize it or not, we keep the tales of our wrong doings to ourselves usually out of fear of judgment. We have this preconceived notion that there is a state of perfection that is attainable and that because we are less than perfect we will be judged harshly. That is our addictive thinking pattern talking.

It is very common in addicts to be the sort of person that never really fesses up to things in their life. We don't want to look bad in the eyes of others so we do anything and everything possible to keep our image looking good. This is partly the reason that we are where we are in terms of addiction.

If we are to improve ourselves at all, we must get out of the habit of holding in these secrets. To do so, we need to unburden ourselves from the lifetime of secrets we have already hidden. That is much easier said then done.

Written Inventory

It is suggested that the best way to get the ball rolling with our secret purging is to begin by writing a list of what we consider to be our wrong doings. At this time it is suggested that you not even think about what the next step of actually saying these things out loud to another human being would be like. You should just focus on getting it all down on paper.

But what do we write? What is to be considered a wrong doing? I am a firm believer that if you are being completely honest with yourself, it will be pretty obvious. Anything that you have been holding inside because of shame and fear of being judged is usually a good indicator of something that needs to go on this list.

If you are into 12 step recovery, you know that they give you a kind of outline of what should be included: Resentments, Fears and Harms Done To Others. If something falls into one of those categories, it should go on the list.

Saying It Out Loud

It is thought that by saying your wrong doings out loud to someone else, you are purging yourself of them. You are no longer bound by fear and shame. You will have spoken these things out loud to another human and guess what...the world didn't end.

I think what the person in recovery will find is that what we think of as being a deep, dark secret never to be told to anyone, can almost always be identified with by someone else. Meaning we are not horrible people, we are human. As humans we can develop certain characteristics that cause us to do some of the things we do.

Saying our wrong doings out loud somehow makes them more real. The realer they become the more able we are to accept them, and start to work on ways of modifying ourselves so that we don't repeat these same wrong doings.

Once Your Secrets Are Gone

Imagine the feeling of not having one single secret that you are holding inside for fear of judgment. You have not one thing to feel shame or guilt about. You have confessed all of your wrong doings and have also begun looking at the reasons why they happened. After speaking them out loud with another human being you have something that you have never had in your entire life: A completely honest relationship with another human being.

It is by looking at our wrong doings that we can begin to heal ourselves from the things that caused those wrong doings in the first place. You no longer have to try to overcome fear and shame, they are no longer there. This frees you up to begin to repair the other things about yourself that are holding you back from peace of mind.