Step 5 Questions: Preparing to Share Your Inventory
These Step 5 questions get you from a finished inventory to actually sitting down with another person and reading it. Four are for before, one is for after. They’re the same five Jimmy and Sarah ask in the app, but the step itself happens with a human being, not with the app.
Read this first
Read pp. 72–75 in your own copy of the Big Book (4th edition). The book explains why the inventory has to be shared, how to choose the listener, and what to do in the hour afterward. Have your finished Step 4 inventory in front of you.
“Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”
Before you share
1. Who can you trust to hear your inventory? Name one person.
Write a name, not a category. Good choices: your sponsor, a pastor or priest, or someone with solid recovery who keeps confidences. Then check them against two questions. Will they keep it private? Could anything in your inventory hurt them? If the answer to the second is yes, choose someone else.
2. When will you ask them?
Write a day and time, ideally within the next few days. Then write the date you’re aiming for the Fifth Step itself, within two weeks of finishing Step 4. A date on the calendar turns an intention into a plan.
3. What’s the entry you most want to leave out?
You don’t have to write the entry here. Just admit to yourself which one it is. Then decide that it goes first, or at least that it goes. The book asks that nothing be held back (p. 73), and the entry you’re tempted to skip is usually the one that matters most.
4. What are you afraid will happen when you say it out loud?
Be specific. That they’ll be disgusted? That they’ll tell someone? That you’ll cry? Write each fear down. Then, for each, write what you’d say to a friend who had the same fear. Most people find the listener has heard worse, and that the fear is bigger than the conversation.
After you share
5. After you shared it, what did you notice in the hour alone afterward?
The book suggests spending an hour in quiet once you get home (p. 75). Thank God. Reread the first five steps. Ask whether anything was left out. Then write a few lines: How do you feel? What surprised you? Did anything come to mind that you didn’t say? If so, call the person back and say it.
The two checks
Before Step 5 is marked complete in the app, you’ll be asked:
- Did you read your whole inventory to another person, nothing held back?
- Did you spend the quiet hour afterward the book describes?
The app also asks you to confirm it was a person you shared it with. It won’t count a conversation with Jimmy or Sarah.
If you’re stuck on question 1
Not everyone has a sponsor yet. If you don’t, ask at a meeting for someone with a few years of sobriety who has done this before, or ask your pastor. Some churches have ministers used to hearing confessions. You can also ask someone to hear your Fifth Step without becoming your sponsor.
When you’re ready, the Step 5 prayer can carry you into the conversation. The Step 5 page explains the whole step, and the Step 6 questions come next.
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