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Steps for Making Living Amends

The other person may have a lot to say to you which can sometimes be hard to hear, but again, this is something to anticipate. Arguably the biggest challenge in making amends is learning to accept it if the other person denies your amends or doesn’t want to talk at all. Join our global mission of connecting patients with addiction and mental health treatment. That is just one small example of what are living amends. Part of my living amends is also being the friend my friends deserve and the employee my employers hired in good faith.

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You likely have a lot of emotions surrounding the situation. That’s normal, and you don’t have to respond right away. It’s common to struggle with feelings of guilt or shame. And it can be intimidating to be uncertain about how the other person will react. Many people find that the support they receive from AA meetings helps them prepare to make amends. Talking with your sober community about your history with drugs or alcohol can help you identify what you need to make amends for.

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Many alcoholics in early sobriety struggle with how to make direct amends for certain offenses against others. To help, we’ve compiled a list of examples of making amends in recovery that deal with ambiguous scenarios. As the person in recovery continues to grow and evolve, they may uncover additional relationships or harms that require attention and repair. When alcoholism treatment making amends it is important that you focus on your behaviors only and your amends.

• Similarly, making living amends means you completely change the way you live and remain committed to that lifestyle.
• You should also keep in mind that not everyone may forgive you or accept your attempt to make amends and if they do, it may not happen right away.
• Talk with your sponsor or others in your recovery community about what has worked for them.
• Making amends is more than “I’m sorry.” It involves acknowledging the hurt or damage done, seeking forgiveness, and, where possible, making things right.
• Though that could be hard to accept, that doesn’t take away from the process of actively working to improve your character.
• Researched, fact-checked and transparent articles and guides that offer addiction and mental health insight from experts and treatment professionals.

To repair relationships, people often need to make a living amends. Understanding the harm you caused the people in your life is critical for reflecting on your addiction. Making a living amends involves apologizing to your loved ones that you hurt and using your actions to prove you have changed and are committed to living a healthier and sober lifestyle. Step 9 in AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) involves making direct amends to those harmed by one’s addiction, except when doing so would injure them or others.

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Ask for forgiveness.When asking for forgiveness, be authentic. Be willing to accept any consequences—no matter how severe. If the other person forgives but acts poorly, it’s okay to not reconcile. We believe everyone deserves access to accurate, unbiased information about mental health and recovery.

To fix broken relationships, you have to put a lot of effort into making things work. It’s not enough to say to someone that you apologize and feel badly for how you acted in the past. It takes a certain maturity and level of respect for yourself and the person you’re hoping to reconnect with to get past any past issues. These changes in behavior help toward the goal of reestablishing relationships or making them stronger. Living amends require a voluntary fundamental redirection.

There are several different ways you can offer amends to someone you hurt. If you take the direct approach, you make an effort to contact the person and repair the damages you caused. On the other hand, if you take the indirect approach, you focus on changing your behaviors and allow these changes to demonstrate your efforts. Whether or not you’re intimately familiar with the Twelve Steps of AA, you’ve probably heard of Step Nine. Making Amends with Others has positioned itself in the living amends public eye to a degree that many of the other eleven steps haven’t.

For example, say that you stole $20 from your brother while you were using. In the midst of your ninth step, you say to him “I’m so sorry that I stole that money from you and used it for drugs”. A true amend would be giving him $20 back along with the apology.

• The more personalized your lifestyle changes are, the more they’re going to resonate and stick with you.
• She has experienced firsthand the difficulties of life with mental illness and addiction and has made it her personal mission to help others and their families navigate lives in recovery.
• If someone does not want to hear from us, we respect that and do our best to move forward with our recoveries.
• Our approach addresses the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of addiction.

What’s the Difference Between Making Amends and an Apology?

Maybe it is a fight you always thought you had time to resolve. Perhaps it is something you said or did while they were ill. Now, whether it is an apology, a want for forgiveness, or an amends, that person isn’t here and it makes it hard to imagine any of those things are possible. It is different from an apology, which is “a regretful acknowledgment of an offense or failure”. An apology doesn’t include an action that attempts to make up or compensate for that wrongdoing. That is also a different ball of wax entirely, one that we have written about here.