How AA’s Twelve Steps Can Transform Toxic Shame – Healing The Shame That Binds (Chapter 6 Extract) By John Bradshaw

John Bradshaw was one of the most influential writers on emotional health in the twentieth century as selected by his fellow mental health professionals. His areas of expertise include addiction, co-dependency , trauma, emotional instability , and abuse. His book that this article is an excerpt from has sold over 1.3 million copies. We now have a growing set of resources about toxic shame in this new section of the website – Bruce M.

I OWE MY LIFE to participation in a Twelve Step program. Therefore, it is impossible for me to be unbiased concerning its ability to heal the shame that binds you. No one argues with the fact that Twelve Step programs have a proven record for dealing with addictions. I will describe my understanding of how the steps work to heal toxic shame. Since toxic shame is the fuel of addiction, I think it will be apparent why Twelve Step programs do so well with toxic shame.

Step One states, “We admitted we were powerless over (whatever the addiction) and our lives had become unmanageable.” This step acknowledges the most powerful aspect of any shame syndrome—its functional autonomy.

An old adage about alcohol illustrates this: Man takes a drink. Drink takes a drink. Drink takes a man.

Alcohol has its own inherent chemical properties of addiction. Toxic shame is an internalized state which, once internalized, functions the same way as a chemical. The second sentence of Step One underscores the functional autonomy of compulsive/ addictive disorders. In my own compulsivity support group, we often speak of toxic shame as an entity in itself with its own power.

In the face of it, we are powerless. All recovering persons come to a turning point in their lives precipitated by the pain of their addiction.

Pain made me aware of my powerlessness and unmanageability. The only way out of the pain was to come out of hiding—I had to surrender. I had to embrace my shame and pain. In my own case the pain had become so agonizing that I was ready to go to any length. Embracing my pain led me to expose my pain, sorrow, loneliness and shame. This is what I had feared doing for so long. As I confessed how bad I really felt, I saw acceptance and love in the mirroring eyes of others. As they accepted me, I began to feel like I mattered. I began to accept myself. The interpersonal bridge was being repaired.

Step Two asks us to reach out to something greater than ourselves. It states, “We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” I’ve spoken earlier of the Genesis account of the fall. Genesis suggests that four relationships were broken by Adam’s toxic shame: the relationship with God, the relationship with self, the relationship with brother and neighbor (Cain kills Abel), and the relationship with the world (nature). The Twelve Steps restore those relationships. Step Two starts by accepting something greater than ourselves. Step Three says, “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.” While there is conscious mention of God as the Higher Power, it is left to each person to decide how he or she understands God.

I remember a guy who made an oak tree his Higher Power. I remember him running into a meeting one day and saying, “They just cut down my Higher Power!” Twelve Step groups do not impose any notion of God onto their members.

The restoration of a bond of mutuality with God has enormous power to heal toxic shame. Toxic shame is a disorder of the will. As disabled, the will becomes grandiose. As shame-based people get entrenched in their cover-ups, they become more shameless. They hide their mistakes with perfectionism, control, blame, criticism, contempt, etc. To be shameless is to play God. This grandiose God-playing is a spiritual disaster. It is spiritual bankruptcy. Steps Two and Three reconnect the essential bond of dependence in man with a Higher Power.

Shame-based people also do not believe they have the right to depend on anyone. This is a consequence of the violated dependency needs that were ruptured through the abandonment trauma. To turn one’s will and life over to God is to restore a right relationship of dependence. To go to meetings and trust other people is to risk depending again.

Healthy shame is the permission to be human. To be human is to be essentially limited. It is to be finite, needy and prone to mistakes. Healthy shame lets us know that we are not God and that we truly need help.

The first three steps restore the proper relationship between ourselves and the source of life. Admitting powerlessness and unmanageability, having faith that a greater power can restore us to sanity, and making a decision to give up control and submit our will to the care of God as we understand God restores us to our healthy shame and grounds us in our fundamental humanness. The shamelessness, grandiose control madness and God-playing are given up.

With Steps One through Three we rejoin the human race; we accept our need for community and the essential limitations of our human reality. Scott Peck once defined emotional illness as avoiding reality at any cost, and mental health as accepting reality at any cost. Steps One through Three restore us to reality.

Step Four states, “We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

In this step we begin restoring our relationships with ourselves and our neighbors (the second and third broken relationships suggested in the biblical story of the fall). Our shame defenses kept us from showing ourselves to anyone else. More tragically, these defenses kept us from looking at ourselves. As I’ve suggested, to be shame-based is not to be in one’s self. It is to make oneself an object of alienation.

By restoring a relationship of trust with God as we understand God, and by sharing honestly and vulnerably with our group, we come to have a relationship with ourselves. Being mirrored by the loving and honest eyes of others allows us to accept ourselves. The process of self-reunion takes place slowly and gradually.

I didn’t write a Step Four inventory for two years after entering a Twelve Step program. This is not right or wrong. The taking of the steps is an individual process.

Most Twelve Step programs strongly advise that new members get a sponsor. A sponsor is a person who has some quality emotional health and is working a healthy program. A sponsor serves as a model and offers firm guidance in helping one work one’s own program.

In my own case, writing my inventory needed to wait while I struggled with the first three steps. My intellectual cover-ups were very strong. I had been a professor and had degrees in psychology, philosophy and theology.

I had taught all these subjects at the university level. I struggled with the simplicity of the Twelve Step program. Part of my facade was the act of being a sensitive intellectual who saw the awesome complexity of human suffering and pain. I drank because I bore so much awareness of human suffering. As I suggested elsewhere, this was all hogwash. It was a subtle way to maintain my delusion and denial.

One of the significant lessons in my life was given me by Abraham Low, the founder of Recovery, Inc. He said that “intellectualizing about our problems is complex but easy, while doing something about them is simple but difficult.” Shame-based intellectuals love to analyze. When I did write out my Step Four, I found that much of my wrongdoing resulted from my drinking and fear. I came to see that the core of all my problems was my sense of inadequacy. At that time I didn’t understand shame. Toxic shame was the inner core of all my wrongdoing.

I realized in taking my inventory that my core problem was moral rather than immoral. In fact, my first attempts at inventory were long lists of immoral behavior. What my sponsor helped me see was that I was involved in continuous moral failure. In my grandiosity I was either superhuman (exceptional) or inhuman (wormlike). I was never first human. I tried to be more than human (shameless). I wound up less than human (shame-full).

To be moral one must have a fully functioning will, the choice-making faculty. Moral acts require judgment, reason, being in touch with our feelings and ability to choose. I think shame-based people are premoral because of their disabled wills. It’s hard to attribute full human power to a false self. This does not mean that real wrongs have not been done to others by shame-based people. They certainly were in my case. In this step I took responsibility for the wrongs I had done, but I got in touch with the core problem. Some years later I took this step again in the light of my understanding of toxic shame. Then I clearly saw that 95 percent of the shame I bore was a result of abandonment issues and “carried shame.” Once I could see this, I was willing to do something about it. For a shame-based person to see that most of the shame he bears is “carried shame” is hope-giving. Remember, internalized shame feels hopeless and irremediable. If we are essentially a mistake, flawed and defective, then there’s nothing we can do about it.

Step Four helps one focus on one’s wrongdoings in such a way as to open the possibility of remedy. In Step Four one begins a process of transforming toxic shame into healthy shame, which is the foundation for healthy guilt.

Steps Five, Six and Seven state: “We admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs” (Step Five), “We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character” (Step Six), “We humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings” (Step Seven). I group these together because each is a part of the process of surrendering our controlling and grandiose wills. Each is a step of owning responsibility for our lives and giving up control. Each is an act of hope.

In Step Five, we come out of hiding. We talk about our shame. We tell God and another human being about our shame (the exact nature of our wrongs). In my opinion, this step not only helps one focus on one’s wrongs as mistakes and sometimes awful acts, but helps one see that these acts flowed from character defects that were used as defenses for shame. By telling another human being, we embrace the pain of our shame and expose ourselves to the eyes of another. We let another see how bad we have really felt about ourselves. There is no pretense or cover-up.

Step Six is an act of faith and hope. We feel good enough about ourselves to believe that God will remove these defects of character. At least we are willing to ask and believe that we have the right to depend on someone or something greater than ourselves. Grandiose control and God-playing are over. We need God’s help. We need help, and we know it, and we ask for it. The presumption in asking for the removal of these defects is the belief that we are worthy of their being removed.

In Step Seven we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. To humbly ask is to be restored to our healthy shame. We know we have failed. We are human, and we’ve made mistakes (like all humans). But we also believe we can be helped. We can change and grow. We can learn from our pain and misfortune.

With this step I was restored to my healthy shame. Out of this healthy shame, I felt my guilt. Guilt is the morality shame that forms our conscience. To be shameless is to have no conscience. Our conscience tells us that we have failed. We have transgressed our own values. Guilt moves us to change. A guilty person fears punishment and wants to make amends. A shame-based person wants to be punished. As I connected with my moral shame, my guilt and my conscience, I was moved to make amends.

Steps Five, Six and Seven restore us to ourselves. We accept ourselves enough to be willing to talk about our wrongs. We have enough hope about ourselves that we can ask our Higher Power for help. We are ready to be responsible, to remedy our wrongs, to move on and grow.

Steps Eight and Nine are the remedial steps. They state: “We made a list of all the persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them” (Step Eight), “We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others” (Step Nine).

In Steps Eight and Nine, we turn to the third broken relationship outlined in the biblical story of the fall, our relationship with other people. Perhaps the greatest wound a shame-based person carries is the inability to be intimate in a relationship. This inability flows directly out of the fundamental dishonesty at the core of toxic shame. To be a false self, always hiding and filled with secrets, precludes any possibility of honesty in relationships. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, shame-based people always seek out relationships with shame-based people. Hockey players don’t usually hang out with professional bridge players. They don’t know each other’s rules. We tend to find those who play by the same rules.

Secretiveness, dishonesty and game-playing were certainly the substance of my relational history.

During my drunken episodes, I raged and became violent. I destroyed property and violated people’s boundaries and their rights. Being moved to remedy our wrongs is the purpose of moral shame as guilt. Guilt is the “conscience former,” and it moves us to repair our damages, to move on and to grow.

Steps Ten, Eleven and Twelve are the steps that help us maintain these restored relationships. Step Ten says, “We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.” Step Eleven says, “We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.” Step Twelve says, “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

Step Ten is the maintenance step for our relationship with ourselves. It keeps us in touch with our healthy shame, the emotion that tells us we can and will make mistakes. By continually being in touch with our fundamental humanness and our essential limitations, we can accept ourselves. To acknowledge our mistakes is to embrace and express our vulnerability and our finitude. Such a consciousness keeps tabs on our tendency to become grandiose and shameless.

Step Eleven continues and deepens our bond of mutuality with God. It promotes a relationship of conscious contact. This is a true relationship. We’ve come full circle, starting from the broken and abandoning source relationships that set us up to internalize our shame and ending with a friendship with God as we understand God.

Step Twelve announces that a spiritual awakening is the goal and product of the Twelve Steps. It underscores the fact that toxic shame and all its cover-ups end in spiritual bankruptcy. Toxic shame is soul murder. Because of it we become other-ated human doings, without an inner life and without inner peace. Shame-based people long for true inner serenity and peace.

The spiritual life is an inner life. It cannot be attained on the outside. The spiritual life is its own reward and seeks nothing beyond itself. Once we achieve inner peace and conscious contact, we want to overflow.

Step Twelve moves us to carry the message to our brothers and sisters who are still hidden behind the masks of toxic shame. This step calls us to practice the spiritual principles of rigorous honesty and service toward others in all our affairs. It asks us to put our bodies where our mouths are, to practice what we preach, and to walk the walk as we talk the talk. It asks us to attract others by modeling a life of self-disciplined love and respect. As we model our restored relationships with God, self, our neighbors and the world, we can show others there is a way out. There is hope.