How to Make Living Amends: 5 Top Tips

Lists to Help you Through Any Loss is for people experiencing any type of loss. This book discusses some of the most common grief experiences and breaks down psychological concepts living amends to help you understand your thoughts and emotions. It also shares useful coping tools, and helps the reader reflect on their unique relationship with grief and loss.

Direct Amends deal with taking personal responsibility and confronting the person whom you want to reconcile with. You will intimately discuss the reasons why you did what you did and you will fix, re-pay, or repair any physical damage that you have caused, to the best of your ability. An example of this would be repaying a debt or repairing or replacing broken or damaged items. As in many harms done, I found that it just wasn’t “I” who had it all twisted up. In opening up some past wrongs and in making those amends, many dear and wonderful people have also received healing, an understanding and answers to stuff they were holding on to for far too long. If you have devoted the necessary time and energy to the first 8 steps, you should have a solid foundation from which to approach making amends in Step 9.

Graduate School of Addiction Studies

Just as you’ll have to work through the 12 Steps of AA (or another recovery program) at your own pace, the time for making amends will depend on your circumstances and when you feel ready. Indirect amends are made in those circumstances where making direct amends is literally impossible or could result in further harm to the parties you have hurt or others, including yourself. In some cases, the people you harmed may have died or can’t be located. In other cases, bringing up the past with people you’ve hurt may only make the situation worse, creating more harm and adding insult to the original injury. Thankfully we are given some insight in to how to make amends through steps 8 and 9. But amends are so much more than just making a list and saying you are sorry, and this is where it becomes important to understand the difference between making an amends and making an apology.

Thankfully, there are tips you can take to help make your living amends permanent and lasting. Working Step 9 is challenging and you’ll likely need support and assistance as you work through it. At Eudaimonia Recovery Homes, we provide personalized recovery support with comfortable sober living Austin, Houston, and Colorado Springs.

Apologizing and Making Amends

We want to convey our heartfelt remorse but worry that our words will fall short. The goal in making amends is “to freely admit the damage we’ve done and make our apologies,” according to The Big Book. In some cases, making amends may mean paying or promising to pay “whatever obligations, financial or otherwise, we owe,” the Big Book also states. It’s important to have a plan in place before we reach out. We can’t know for certain how another person will respond—or even how the interaction might affect us emotionally. So be sure to talk with your sponsor and/or support group about your plan in the event that you need support.

• Anxiety and fear about the outcome of the amends process are normal and natural.
• It’s not enough to say to someone that you apologize and feel badly for how you acted in the past.
• An apology consists of words but it doesn’t always include a change in behavior.
• Instead, try to reference specific times when you hurt the other person and/or let them down.
• It is an important and powerful way of asserting that we have the same values.