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My 8-year-old read me part of story the other day about the way Abraham Lincoln dealt with anger, and it made me laugh because it sounded an awful lot like some of the Fourth Step work I have done over the years.
She read a passage about how Lincoln would get angry, then write meticulous letters to the person outlining his anger. He called them “hot letters.” He would be brutally honest in the letters, even calling the person names. He’d lay out any mistakes that were made, and the way they should be remedied. He’d talk about his feelings, including his sheer anger.
And then… he would throw the letters away.
He made one of his generals write a hot letter once, and it took the dude two days to write it. At the end, he read it to Lincoln, and Lincoln asked him if he felt better. The guy said yes, and then Lincoln told him to junk the letter. The general was pissed that he spent two days with an old-school pen and paper, laying out his fury, and now he was just going to junk it? Lincoln explained that it’s often a good idea to take your time, plot out why you’re angry, consider solutions and then set all of it aside. His point was that by writing out your resentments, you can take some of the steam out of them. Hence, the “hot letter” name.
That sure is reminiscent of some of the resentment work I have done over the years. I’ve had some Fourth Steps that are bitter and petty and absolutely not how I wanted to be living my life. But the great news is two-fold.
First, I do my Fourth Steps with a sober friend, not the person I want to be launched into the sun. And secondly, I always feel better when I lay out my anger.
That begs the followup question: Why? Why would writing out my version of a hot letter work so effectively?
I don’t really have the answer. All I can say is, as hard as it is to believe, the difference between thinking things, versus writing them down, is enormous to me. There’s something very real when you look down and you see it on paper. That goes for stepwork, goals, even a list of items to get at the grocery store. Writing something down somehow seems to manifest its reality on a regular basis in my life.
The other thing about writing out everything—your feelings. your anger, the vengeance that you are seeking—is that you are physically looking at recipe for a life that you cannot lead and that you probably do not want to lead. I’m usually looking down at either flat-out rage, or extreme anger. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a situation in sobriety where I actually wanted to be in a state of rage to sort it out.
I’ve done Fourth Steps where I am still angry at the end and still need to approach someone and rectify an issue. But I’ve always blown out a large percentage of the steam within me, so I can have a much better, much more effective conversation now that I ditched the rage. That’s usually a game-changer. When I then try to work through something with that other person, it usually begins and ends in a much better place.
So I gotta tip my hat to Abraham Lincoln. I really appreciate your hot letter philosophy!
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A police officer pulls over a man who's been weaving in and out of traffic lanes. He goes up to the driver's window an says, "Sir, I need you to blow into this breathalyzer."
The man says, "I'm sorry, officer. I can't do that. I'm asthmatic. If I do that, I'll have a really bad asthma attack."
"Okay, fine," the officer answers. "Then come down to the station to give a blood sample."
"Oh, no. I can't do that either" the man answers. "You see, I'm a hemophiliac. If I do that, I'll bleed to death."
"Well, we'll need a urine sample from you."
"I'm so sorry, officer, I also can't do that. I am a diabetic. If I do that, I'll get really low blood sugar and the results will be off."
"Fine, then. I need you to come out here and walk this white line."
"Oh, I can't do that, officer."
"And why not?"
"Because I'm drunk."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, by Donald S., October 2005)
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