Nutbar wrote:

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"Self righteous anger can be very enjoyable. In a perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us; for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority."

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I had to learn that the tools of recovery were not in fact a weapon, but something for me to look at myself, that I had to "put down the magnifying glass and pick up the mirror" because every single time I accused someone of something I was displaying that very same character defect

I take my own inventory, and my own step 10, because when I take someone else's inventory, spot their character defects and then tell them about it, I am doing what's known as the newcomers step 10 "continued to take your personal inventory and when you were wrong promptly made you admit it" in which I point out the ways they were "wrong" and annoying me and by pointing out their character defects it gave me a comfortable feeling of superiority, when I "put someone in their place" what I am doing is putting them where they clearly belong, below me

The Spiritual Axiom is "If I am upset there is something wrong with me" so if I have a disturbance, that is what I need to address, not modify the behavior of others but instead learn to protect myself and not display the very defects I am accusing others of having

That Book does have a lot of great stuff in it, including this bit

. Our present anxieties and trouble, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people-people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable-that our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty one. They are!

That's the difficult thing about actually working the steps and a program of recovery is we learn to disregard the other person entirely and take our own inventory, and we learn new tools, such as healthy boundaries and new coping mechanisms because the old tools, which we needed to survive childhood and early life no longer serve us, as a matter of fact, they are harmful to both us and those around us, they are what caused my present difficulties, not the behavior of others, but instead my own choices and reactions

When I change my relationships change, whether the dynamic of my existing relationships change or I start being around healthier people, they say "recovery is an inside job" which to me means I change myself and my reactions to life, not others, putting someone in their place for me was "old behavior", and I needed to learn new behaviors in order to be serene, because I learned in arguments the victor only seemed to win, but my so called "victory" was short lived, and I was right back on the hamster wheel because if nothing changes, nothing changes, and I learned any relationship that relied on someone else changing was a gesture in futility that drove me completely bonkers, I was the one that had to make changes

This was stuck in my head all day, and I couldn't figure out why really, so I came home and read the next line following the one quoted here earlier from the 12 and 12

Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.

When I used to try to talk about the wrong doings of others, real or imagined, my sponsor nor my friends in recovery wouldn't let me tell them, they'd shut me down and tell me it was unhealthy, "but but but I'd say, and they'd keep bringing me back to solution, bringing back to what was my part, what was the decision based on self that placed me in a position to be hurt, I'd be bummed because I wanted to have a good rant you know? I wanted to have a good wallow in some good old fashioned rightous indignation, to show how "she" was "wrong" and "bad" thereby making me "right" and "good" and quite frankly, superior, but they weren't having it, they would shut me down, and if I got too carried away, they'd take my inventory in a way that would leave me reeling and in no doubt who the real idiot was....so I started learning to think before I spoke, and ask why they did that?

Why didn't they let me gossip about others? Why didn't they let me wallow in rightous indignation?

Well, read in it's entirety that passage makes it pretty clear, keep to my own side of the street and work on myself, I have learned that "my problem" might have your name on it, but my solution has to have my name on it

What we must recognize now is that we exult in some of our defect. We really love them. Who, for example, doesn't like to feel just a little superior to the next fellow, or even quite a lot superior?

Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In a perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority. Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness.

When I began this aspect of my recovery, I couldn't tell you how I felt, I mean I could say I was angry, vengeful, hostile, bitter, but then I'd give this litany about my girlfriend and my mother, as I started attending meetings I was running into old friends that had married alcoholics, and the one symptom I noticed we all shared in common was an inability to talk about ourselves, I'd ask how my friend was doing and she'd give me an hour of her husbands misdeeds, she'd ask me how I was doing and I would give her chapter and verse about a woman I wasn't even dating any more

So I got a sponsor and sat down with him, he asked how I was

big mistake

He got HOURS of how the alcoholics in my life had harmed me, all the sudden he roared "ENOUGH!!! You got a pen and paper?"

Yeah.....

He said "write this down...this s***'s gotta stop (think alternative word for poop)

So I did and an amazing thing happened, I filled up pages with my writing, and these people who had harmed me so grievously didn't appear anywhere, and I had been harmed grievously, someone else's alcoholism had cost me my home, my company, my life savings and my sanity, and 4 years of my life, but all the reasons that this -poop- had to stop didn't include them, they were all...for....me

he called it "step zero"

After that I understood why my friends in the program didn't allow me to take other peoples inventory, didn't allow me to gossip, didn't allow me to run down my girlfriends, because that was part of the disease, that was part of "the problem", not the solution, they also didn't allow me to give other peope advice, but only share my own experience strength and hope, because that was my hallmark trait as a codependent was thinking I could run "your" life when the truth was I couldn't even run my own, that every time I took someone else's inventory not only was I guilty of the same defects, I had to throw in secretly superior, pride, and if I looked closely, vast incompetence, because guarenteed if I give you advice it's sure as the sun rises in the east I need to do that very thing in my own life, and I'm not

I do this thing and I don't like it, and I am working on changing it, rightous indignation and feeling superior is an awful blight in my life, that brings nothing good to anyone, we are all here because we aren't all there, and so are "they", and I learned that if I learn to forgive others for their character defects, the truth is I learn to forgive myself for mine, and one by-product of that is in many cases, they go away, we all have our own hoe to row, and we all have tools we picked up in childhood that are harmful to ourselves and others, or we picked up behavoral or chemical gems along the way that don't serve us any more, but I had to learn that my journey in recovery was about changing me, not others, it was about me learning to take my own inventory and changing my own defects, not using recovery as a tool to bludgeon others into submission, which in all fairness I have done my fair share of over the years, and it always left a sick taste in my mouth and I couldn't figure out why the outcomes remained the same, me angry...but I used the recovery tools I would think....I finally learned they aren't a hammer to use on others but a scalpel to use on me

Thanks for letting me share