4th Step Inventory4th Step Inventory
ACA Tuesday Zoombox
Linda talks about working her ACA Fourth Step, moving from denying her feelings to finally asking herself how she truly feels, and how childhood shame shaped that journey. Her share touches on family trauma, grief, and the steady support she’s found through ACA meetings and service.
12:08•10 Jul 2026
Learning to Feel Again: Linda’s Fourth Step and Childhood Shame
Episode Overview
- Stuffing feelings in childhood can lead to losing touch with emotions, but ACA’s Laundry List and its flip side offer language for change.
- Working a Fourth Step inventory may reveal a tendency to focus on others’ feelings rather than asking, "How do I feel?"
- Early experiences of being forced into frightening situations can create lasting shame and fear that show up in adulthood.
- Safe ACA meetings and service roles can help build confidence to share, stay connected, and resist the urge to quit recovery work.
- ACA tools can support family members facing mental health crises while reducing codependent over-involvement.
“"Nobody ever asked me that growing up. It wasn’t a bad childhood, but we were told to put on our white patent leather shoes and sit there and be pretty."”
This ACA Tuesday Zoombox share centres on Linda, an adult child of an alcoholic, as she talks through the emotional weight of doing her Fourth Step inventory and learning, as she puts it, "to be my own loving parent." You’ll hear Linda focus on Laundry List item ten – first the painful side: "We have stuffed our feelings from traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much." Then the hopeful flip side: "We come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions." That shift from stuffing feelings to actually feeling them is the heart of her story.
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery? She recalls growing up as a people-pleasing youngest child in a military home, where she and her sister were told to "put on our white patent leather shoes and sit there and be pretty." A powerful childhood memory of being forced off a high dive at age four shows how shame and fear taught her to shut down her emotions.
As she works through the Fourth Step with her sponsor, Linda realises she’s been describing how everyone else felt, until her sponsor stops her with the simple question: "Linda, how do you feel?" No one had ever asked her that growing up.
The episode also touches on grief, family trauma, and mental health, including her nephew choosing to admit himself to a psychiatric facility after his sister’s death, and how ACA tools help Linda support him without losing herself in codependency.
For anyone feeling shy about sharing, Linda offers gentle humour and straight talk: she admits she wanted to quit ACA just two weeks earlier, yet here she is speaking, thanks to service and the support she found in these "little boxes" on screen. If you’ve ever wondered whether recovery groups can help you feel your feelings safely, this honest share might be the nudge you need to keep going.
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