Step 1: I am powerless over anyone else’s beliefs about God, religion, truth, sin and what is right. My life had become unmanageable with all the demands of conformity and submission along with my own disparity and frustration. With great relief I came to understand that feelings were a sign of emotional health and not a lack of peace of ungodly behavior.
Step 2: I came to believe that the greater power to restore me to sanity was not a minister or myself, regardless of their position or aura of power.
Step 3: Made a decision that controlling outcomes, controlling events, controlling other people was not the will of God. Turning my will and life over to God would come with growth and understanding.
Step 4: Made a searching inventory of thoughts, feelings, resentments and fears along with taking a stand to own what is also good, beautiful and true about me.
Step 5: Make full confession to another human, the extent of my personal inventory written as Step 4.
Step 6: I am entirely ready to have God remove all my unhealthy behaviors.
Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove all my shortcomings.
Step 8: Made a list of all persons I had harmed and became willing to make amends to all of them.
Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong, to admit it promptly.
Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God, praying only for the knowledge of his will and the power to carry that out.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps: I will carry this message to others and practice these principles in all my affairs.
By Phebe Spiller, 2003
Source: On the Rungs of a Ladder: Steps Out of Darkness