STEP SEVEN - Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.Book Source: Trauma and Transformation: A 12-Step Guide.(Edery, R. 2013) https://goo.gl/o3BndU

STEP SEVEN - Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Step Seven is about humility (realistic, selfless, and modest) and asking for help to make the changes you are now prepared for.  Consider Step Seven as a portal into openness for change.  Once you take Step Seven, you step out of the way, so your Higher Power can handle the rest of it.  The combination of humility and asking provides a survivor with a perspective beyond the traumatic events.  Sadly, you can form an inaccurate perspective based on how you internalized the traumatic event(s).  Through prayer (humbly asking), you can trust that your prayers are heard, shall be answered in God’s time only.  

Some common questions from survivors before taking Step Seven may include: “Will my part be good enough?  Will I be ready (conscious) enough so that my Higher Power can help me? What if I think I am ready, but on an unconscious level, I am not?  Will doing my part work?  Will my Higher Power show up for me the way I need it?  What if this Step does not actually work? What if my prayer is not as sincere as it should be?”  In its most simple and pure form, asking for help (praying) is a partnership agreement with your Creator.  One of my favorite quotes about prayer, is “Prayer is asking, and meditation is listening”.  I remind you that if you were able to do this on your own, you would simply do it and get on with life.  But by the time you seek spiritual guidance you have acknowledged that a Super Power is needed for this venture.  If you have been thoroughly honest with your process thus far, you will identify those traits, inner conflicts, and distortions that require a Super Power’s intervention.   

There are concrete benefits of allowing a Super Power to help your transformation process.  For one, your self-image will shift depending on how you understand yourself in relation to the God of your understanding.  If you have ever assumed that God does not love you, or want to be there for you, what does this reveal about your self-worth?  If you were shunned by your caregivers, your personalized replica of how God relates to you would be a distance and cold relationship, or not one at all.   Your need for a connected, intimate, spiritual love with your Higher Power is equal to the need you had for such a relationship with your caregivers.  Your relationship with the God of your understanding is another manifestation of your internalized “Object Relations” (your way of relating to people that was shaped when you were an infant).  With this perspective, you may find yourself more interested and open to learning about love and of the connection that flows from “humbly asked…”

If it appears that you are not in charge of when your life will change, or that it does not follow your personal agenda, take note that this is a fundamental reality of practicing humility.  Whether you pray for change for the internal or external aspects of your life, you do not stand in full control of this process. The good news is that as long as you cooperate with Divine Intelligence, doing your best to remain humble, conscious, and honest, you allow for Grace to enter your process. 

A CHILD’S HUMILITY – A LESSON IN ASKING FOR HELP

I want you to take a moment now, and imagine a five-year-old girl, Carole, asking her parents for help to overcome her tendency to bully other kids over toys.  She asks her parents in a direct and sincere way - the way that children communicate. That is the purest form of humility. Her parents are delighted that she has the sense to know right from wrong, wants to amend her behavior, AND feels loved enough to ask them for help.  This is part of their joy in parenting.  The same reaction is experienced by your Higher Power when you take Step Seven.  You can never go wrong in coming from this part of yourself when you humbly ask God for help.  

Survivors may react when they see the word “humbly” in this step.  Some traumatic experiences include feeling low, diminished, silenced, and demeaned in a significant way.  The word “humble”, without the correct definition, can bring you back to a time and place when you were undervalued, demeaned or made to feel inferior.  If you grew up in an abusive environment, your needs were not welcome.  It is easy to mistake Step Seven as a step of passivity, the time to apologize for inner struggles, wants or needs.  As an example, Little Carole can teach you about true humility.  She has a strong sense of who she is as she asks her parents for help.  Although she does not know what the results of her request will be, she has a basic sense of trust in her parents and is content with simply asking.  

You are the child of an Almighty Creator, who views you with the same love, tenderness and joy as Carole’s parents when she asks them for help.  If you can imagine this, you have completed Step Seven. Even if you believe that you are “damaged” as a result of what you survived, you are not incapable of humbly asking for help.  I urge you not to let your sense of “brokenness” stop you from asking your Higher Power for help to heal, grow, and live out your potential to the fullest extent possible.   True humility is about being grounded in your Higher Power’s version of your truth and self-worth.  

If you have inaccurate self-esteem, and find yourself connecting humility with being unworthy, I suggest that you imagine what your Creator thinks of you.  You have been handcrafted: deliberately, patiently, lovingly, and with great accuracy in the exact likeliness of your Creator.  This Creator is against any form of abuse, and any perpetration by humans against each other, animals or the planet.  So, by taking Step Seven, you are choosing to align yourself with this Captain. Alternatively, you can align yourself with the other side, and believe all the falsehoods that are attached to trauma caused by human perpetration.  

In the following exercise, you will seek to identify several of your heavy weight character defects that give you the greatest sense of self-defeat or failure.  See if you can find the hidden treasure in this pattern, and how you can channel it in a healthy, constructive way.  Once you find the treasure, do not use it as a justification for continued use of this heavy-weight defect, but as a motivator to make good use of it, as you map out your ongoing journey.

My heavy- weight character defect that gives me the greatest sense of self-defeat or failure.

I found the Treasure! This is how I can channel it in a healthy, constructive way.

**Suggestion for post-exercise: be gentle with yourself. Reach for a self-soothing activity: a bath, soft music, a scented candle; anything that feels like a kind, warm, loving blanket around you. You are worth every step of this beautiful, messy, mysterious, wonderful journey! And most of all, you are no longer alone  :)

Book Source: Trauma and Transformation: A 12-Step Guide.(Edery, R. 2013) https://goo.gl/o3BndU 

Audio Source: YouTube Channel: https://goo.gl/8N1kHu

Facebook Study Group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/12stepstraumatransformation/