The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have been heralded as the most important spiritual development of the past 100 years (Rohr 2011). It is my opinion that they should also be considered one of the most innovative psychological interventions of the past century. As evidence, consider the fact that the Twelve Steps have had more success in treating a wide variety of addiction problems than all other medical or psychological intervention or treatment programs combined (Schenker 2009).
What are the therapeutic forces that enable the Twelve Steps to help so many people who are struggling to reclaim their lives? My conclusion is that the Twelve Steps help us recover our lost true-self. They provide a framework that helps us work out a new understanding of ourselves and that teaches us a design for living that encourages authenticity and responsibility. This new design for living honors our basic nature. Working the Twelve Steps creates a powerful personal transformation that leads to a deep sense of well-being, serenity, and peace of mind.
As you learned in the previous chapter, a main source of much of our psychological distress stems from the belief that we need to be something we aren’t—that is, attempting to live by the unreasonable demands of our false-self. We have alienated ourselves from our true-self in favor of an idealized version of who we should be. We’ve lost sight of the importance of character, people-centered values, keeping our integrity, authenticity and honesty, and honoring our true-self. We’ve made things more important than people.
This is the veer in the trajectory of our personal development that the Twelve Steps correct. The Steps help us wake up from the trance that our culture has created. They help us deconstruct our reliance on a false-self and guide us on an incredible journey of self-discovery and self-actualization. They help us clean house and make amends to those people we have hurt. They help us stay centered, grounded, and humble. They help us become authentic and present in our lives. They help us restructure our self-concept into something more positive, solid, and flexible. They help us recover our true-self.
Abraham Maslow (1962, 22) made the following observations about the importance of a basic need like self-actualization:
• The absence of self-actualization breeds illness. (The absence of our true-self creates serious problems; it becomes a breeding ground for addictions and other forms of psychopathology.)
• The presence of our true-self prevents illness. (This is the most important protective factor against alcoholism and other drug addictions.)
• The restoration of the true-self cures illness. (This is the experience millions of us have had in recovery: our true-self is restored through working the Twelve Steps.)
In the next two chapters I will explore the changes that take place within us during the process of working the first seven Steps, but before I do, let’s look at how the Twelve Steps are organized.
The Twelve Steps are numbered for good reason. The optimal therapeutic benefit occurs when they are worked in order, because the Steps are interdependent. As I mentioned before, each Step builds on the one that precedes it to create a powerful transformative experience. What happens in Step 1 creates an experience that readies a space in our psyche for what happens in Step 2. Step 2 leads to what happens in Step 3, and so on. This is how change unfolds across all Twelve Steps. The Twelve Steps create a momentum that motivates us to honestly face ourselves and others like we have never done before.
We can cluster or group the Twelve Steps into four functional groups. Steps 1–3 form the first grouping. These Steps demolish the foundation of our self-destructive life, the one that didn’t work, and build a stronger and more resilient foundation for a new life that works under any condition whatsoever.
Steps 4–7 form the second grouping. These Steps help us develop a positive self-concept by encouraging authenticity and promoting self-awareness and personal accountability. They help us to become our best possible selves.
The third grouping, which consists of Steps 8 and 9, helps us become trustworthy by righting the wrongs we have done to others. They teach us the nature of healthy relationships and to aim at having the best possible attitude toward human relations.
The last three Steps, Steps 10–12, form the final cluster. These Steps help us maintain our new way of life. They continue to promote self-awareness, self-realization, and emotional maturation through serving others and an ongoing program of personal and spiritual growth. These groupings are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Summary of the Organization of the Twelve Steps
| Group | Steps | Purpose |
| I | 1–3 | Build the foundation for our personal transformation, for our recovery. |
| II | 4–7 | Help us develop a positive self-concept by encouraging authenticity, increasing our self-awareness, and promoting responsibility and accountability. |
| III | 8 and 9 | Help us become trustworthy by righting the things we have done wrong to others, and teach us about the nature of healthy relationships. |
| IV | 10–12 | Help us maintain and deepen our humility and the connection to our true-self, as well as expand and enrich our consciousness, through serving others. |
The process of working the Steps is like constructing a building from the ground up. You’d work in intervals and wouldn’t move on until the previous job was completed. First, you’d demolish the old foundation because it was faulty, weak, and unable to support the new structure you hoped to build. Next, you’d dig a foundation and strengthen it with mortar and steel, and then you’d build the frame. In the meantime, you would constantly provide necessary maintenance to keep what you already built in good shape. In construction, it’s essential to use the best talent and materials available. You wouldn’t build something halfheartedly. And so it is with working the Steps. The Steps must be worked to the best of our abilities if we are to gain their full benefits.
The Steps facilitate a restructuring of the self. They help us find meaning in our lives and in our recovery by changing our emotional and spiritual values. Before we focus on the process of making amends and the twelve hidden rewards that follow, I want to spell out in some detail the therapeutic effects of working the first seven Steps. It’s important that we understand the changes that take place within us when we work the first seven Steps. If it were not for the work we do in Steps 1–7, we would be hard-pressed to make a list of those we have harmed, make amends to them when appropriate, and develop a practice of self-reflection that leads to self-regulation.
After we explore what happens to us when we work the first seven Steps, we will delve into Steps 8, 9, and 10. I will help you understand the therapeutic effects of these three Steps and the issues worth considering while working them. I want to help you see exactly what happens to us when we deconstruct a life that doesn’t work and then construct a new life that does work under any condition whatsoever.
Let’s now turn to the beginning of this powerful transformative process, Step 1.