Step 8 Questions: Building Your Amends List
These Step 8 questions turn your Step 4 inventory into an amends list and help you get honest about how willing you are. There are five. Work them on paper or in the app, and go over your answers with your sponsor before you move on to Step 9.
Nobody gets contacted during this step. You are only writing and praying. That makes it safe to be completely honest.
1. Go through your inventory. Who shows up in the “my part” column?
Open your Step 4 sheets. Read the resentments, fears and sex conduct inventory. Every person where your part was selfish, dishonest, self-seeking or frightened is a likely name for the list.
Guidance: The Big Book says on page 76 (4th edition) that you already have this list from your inventory. You are copying, not inventing.
2. Who is missing from your list: family, employers, creditors, church, yourself?
Now go wider. Who did you hurt that you never resented? Kids. Parents. A boss you stole time from. A company you owe. A church where you made promises you didn’t keep.
Guidance: The people closest to you are the easiest to forget, because the harm was daily and quiet.
3. For each name, what was the harm, in one sentence?
“Yelled at her in front of the kids for years.” “Borrowed $400 and never paid it back.” Write facts, not feelings, and not excuses.
Guidance: If you catch yourself writing “but,” stop. Their part isn’t on this list.
4. For each name: are you willing, not yet willing, or hoping never to see them again?
Mark every name honestly. Most lists have all three.
Guidance: “Not yet” is allowed. Pray for those people by name each day. Use the Step 8 prayer if it helps.
5. Who do you need to forgive before you can make an amends to them?
Circle the names where a resentment is blocking you. Those are the ones to talk through with your sponsor or pastor first.
Guidance: Forgiving doesn’t mean saying what they did was fine. It means handing the debt to God so you can clean up your side.
One more thing to mark
Next to any name where an amends could hurt someone else, or involves money owed, the law, an affair or a former partner, put a mark. Don’t plan those alone. In Step 9 they get talked over with a human sponsor or pastor before anything happens. The book itself warns against making amends at someone else’s expense.
Before you call Step 8 done
The two checks asked before the step is complete:
- Is everyone you harmed on your amends list?
- Are you willing to make all of them, even the hard ones?
A verse for the hard names
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
Read the full step on the Step 8 page, and find more Scripture on the Step 8 verses page. When you are ready, the Step 9 questions help you plan the amends themselves.
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