Bruce M (italics) – This article uses an acronym I had never heard before FRED for fear, resentment, ego, and dishonesty. Like weeds in the garden of my life, I need discernment to see FRED clearly and the courage with God’s help to respond completely differently to my FRED.
So much of my life has been spent in the wasteland of nurturing my resentments and creating a false sense of myself as a victim with no choice but to live in the misery I can now see I was creating for myself. (SEE BB. 133).
How I understand and relate to the FRED of my life really, really matters. The steps can be thought of as a ‘design for living’ that is teaching me how to bring FRED into the Light as I find out who I really am and learn to live out the daily adventure of ‘to thine own self be true’.
The FRED of my life is what separates me from reality … a falseness of conscious separation not connection. It’s also what keeps me locked in the bondage of self that is trying to create an identity for myself with only myself as creator … to be in the prison I create when I act as my own higher power rather than the sunlight of the Spirit that wakes me each morning. This prison wants me to believe the lie that I have no freedom to respond differently to my FRED.
How quickly FRED can overgrow the fruit of emotional and eventually physical sobriety.! For me, I must be especially vigilant when I’m full of conviction about my rightness and your wrongness. Can I move away from my elevation of myself as judge and creator to a curiosity about why I’m hiding from my own imperfection as creature. … I’m a participant not Judge.
As the soil of our lives gets richer and more fertile, we realize the weeds of FRED don’t go away but rather ‘we have a daily reprieve contingent upon our spiritual condition’– Bruce M.
Now here’s the article:
How a longtimer learned to observe her thoughts and identify her defects so they don’t take her freedom away
Last Sunday night, we had a discussion in my home group about remembering those times we wanted to escape into alcohol. We talked about what we do instead of drinking when the urge comes.
I sat there wondering how I was ever going to share that I’ve never had that moment of wanting to escape into alcohol. People might think I was a “goody two shoes” or “better than” them. Then I had a flash of insight.
As I listened to other people’s comments, I was reminded of what I was like when I came into AA. I was a resentful, self-pitying, fearful, dishonest woman. I rationalized and justified my attitudes and actions so that being a drunk was absolutely not my fault. I fed and watered real or imagined resentments to make it OK for me to drink. I lived in fear always, always that fear.
When I started to go to AA meetings, I unequivocally believed in the first half of the First Step. I knew I was powerless over alcohol. My ego hadn’t been sufficiently dampened yet and I thought I could give the drinking part of my life to AA to handle but still manage my personal life, thank you very much.
I had nursed a resentment against religion for years, often using this quarrel as an excuse to drink, so I didn’t want to consider the Second and Third Steps. Open-mindedness wasn’t even on the horizon at that time.
I had come to AA after a considerable amount of time being a really good quitter, always promising to quit drinking. But I was an even better starter, as I was always starting up again. I was so very sick physically, but I didn’t realize how sick I was mentally. I took great umbrage at the suggestion in the Second Step that I needed to be restored to sanity. I had come to AA after spending 30 days in a locked psych ward and I was sure you put that part in the Steps to single me out and embarrass me.
The good news was that my home group had a three-week rotation of topics: a Step, a Tradition and a topic. The topic meetings were, almost without fail, on character defects. When I heard other people talk about their resentments and fear and self-pity it was like winning the jackpot of insight. I could immediately identify with those defects and how I used them.
After weeks of meetings, I heard that resentment and self-pity are two sides of the same coin, that I would not have one without the other. Here was the magic key to staying away from the first drink. I didn’t need to nourish resentments anymore.
The more sober days I strung together, the less fear I had. I was able to do the things I needed to do every day for me and my family.
In the Tenth Step, I learned that I needed to watch out for “FRED,” which is an acronym for fear, resentment, ego and dishonesty. I no longer need to encourage these defects. What I do need to do is to listen to my thoughts. My defects go off the rails in my head long before I’m slamming a door or kicking the dog. If I don’t stop the dishonest thinking, the resentment and self-pity will do me in. When I harbored resentments, I fell prey to what I heard described later in AA: “I drank poison expecting the other person to die.” That was me. I was fuming, muttering, moaning, not sleeping, while the object of my anger went through their day smiling and peacefully sleeping all night. As funny as it seems now, I did think, Well, if they don’t know why I’m mad, I’m not going to tell them. I just punished myself instead.
So after years in AA observing my ego and keeping it in a safe place, with the grace of God, during a flash of insight I discovered that I now was putting my self-centeredness to a new purpose. I do not need these character defects to justify my drinking, and through the grace of God and the Fellowship of AA, I’m not going to give up my freedom to anyone. I have a whole new toolbox of positive remedies when I find myself trying to drum up a good case of self-pity or when I’m convinced that someone has trampled on my feelings.
I remember that this, too, shall pass, that I’m living one day at a time and that things could always be worse. I call my sponsor and I always remember that I need to focus on the three Ss: smile, step back and shut up.