The Step Everybody's Afraid Of (Sober Firsts)

The Step Everybody's Afraid Of (Sober Firsts)

Anna and Lisa talk honestly about why this step has such a scary reputation, especially in treatment settings where, as Anna puts it, “It was like the boogeyman… the fourth step, the fourth step.” Lisa shares how her sponsor’s chart-based approach helped her list resentments and then ask the uncomfortable question: “What was my part in that?” From impossible bosses taking credit to messy relationships and cheating exes, they show how expectations—and silent “rules” no one else knows about—often sit underneath long-held anger.

How do people cope with the challenges of staying sober? This chat between co-hosts Anna Davis and Lisa Smith zooms in on the “boogeyman” of 12-step recovery: Step Four, the fearless moral inventory. If you’ve ever heard hushed warnings about “the Fourth Step” and felt your stomach drop, you’ll feel right at home here.

Anna adds humour with her now-classic story of walking into a diner with a giant poster board covered in resentments, only for her cat later to throw up on it, forcing her to redo her Fourth Step from scratch.

Yet beneath the laughs, the conversation cuts to the core: “It’s easier to be angry than hurt,” Anna says, and both women talk about how recognising hurt and fear—especially fear of abandonment and being alone—helped their resentments “dissipate.” They also touch on the tangled overlap between people they believed had wronged them and the people they themselves had harmed, linking Step Four to later amends.

By the end, the “step everybody’s afraid of” sounds less like a horror story and more like a tough but freeing spring clean of the soul. If you’re sober-curious, in recovery, or just wrestling with old grudges, this conversation might nudge you to ask: what would change if you put your resentments down on paper and looked for your part too?