In this solo‑presenter video, Hannah Rose, LCPC walks viewers through Step 7 of the 12‑step recovery process – humbly asking a higher power to remove one’s shortcomings. She reframes prayer as an intention‑setting practice, allowing people whose upbringing makes traditional prayer uncomfortable to still engage with the step. Drawing on Melody Beattie’s The Codependent’s Guide to the 12 Steps, Al‑Anon, CODA, and other recovery literature, she explores how codependency, people‑pleasing, and enmeshment manifest as a fear of abandonment or a need to control outcomes. Practical guidance includes: making a list of personal shortcomings, praying for willingness, stopping unsolicited advice, and recognizing when to detach or set boundaries. Rose distinguishes humility (thinking of yourself less) from humiliation (self‑deprecation) and emphasizes that humility is about acknowledging one’s powerlessness before a power greater than oneself, whether called God, the universe, Tao, or any higher power. The video concludes by previewing Step 8.
Chapters
Hey everyone, welcome back to Day 8, Step 7. Now Step 7 is humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings. I see this very much as intention setting. So if you're familiar with yoga, oftentimes we're asked to set an intention at the beginning of the class to be present, to practice self-compassion, to meet our body where it is, And for me, I had a bit of a block against prayer because that sounded religious, and the terms God and prayer just didn't really call to me based on my upbringing. And so I got to color outside the lines and figure out what did work for me. And for me, I see prayer as intention setting. So humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings can feel like made an intention Every day to release that which is blocking me. I love changing up the words to better meet my needs. Now, in this book, The Codependent Guide to the 12 Steps by Melody Beattie, some of the questions at the end of step 6 can be really helpful in moving into step 7. And one of them is, do you believe it's safe to trust God and this process called recovery? And so, do you think it's safe to trust the universe to take care of itself if you stop, for lack of a better term, meddling in the affairs of others? Oftentimes it's not just, oh, I'm people pleasing, oh, I'm enmeshed, oh, I have no boundaries, oh, I'm codependent. It's— there is a deep feeling of what if something happens to this person if I'm not there to protect them? And that can feel like survival. And so Al-Anon and CODA, the steps and the literature, really help us to determine and define situations that do require a bit more oversight from us. But they also really help us to look at where am I creating patterns of unnecessary enmeshment because I think I need to be the one. There's a beautiful bookmark in Al-Anon that just says detachment, and there's a bunch of pieces about detachment. And my favorite one, which was very tough to me— for me to hear at first, was, just for today, I will not prevent a crisis if it's in the natural order of events. I was like, so if someone is about to experience a crisis, sometimes I have to let them The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins may also be a good book to pick up. But I will tell you what, when I was working at that inpatient rehab, even when the patient got better and got sober, I would watch the families continue to suffer because they were traumatized by their own powerlessness, and they continued to feel like, I had to help, I had to help. And I watched where helping was actually enabling Because if we are doing something for someone else, they may never learn to do it for themselves. And we may say, well, but if I don't, then they might fall on their face. Then they might fall on their face. One of my friends who's in recovery said the best thing that his mom did for him was completely cut him off when he was in active addiction, because he had to hit that rock bottom in order to have the willingness to get sober. Now that may be really hard to hear. Also, people die. People do die. And yet in Al-Anon, what we are taught is that we do not have the power to cause, cure, or control anyone else's addiction or recovery. So when you think about the people in your life, whether they have addiction or not, they're just existing in their own pain. We do not have the power to cure them or to control the outcome. Again, I'm talking about adults. I'm not talking about minors who, if you are their parent or their guardian, you know, they require you to take care of them and feed them, etc. And every situation is different. And also, we will find loopholes to make it feel like our situation is different. And that is our addiction to caretaking. Anyway, another question at the end of step 6 is make a list of everything you would like changed about yourself. So let's talk about self-worth, self-acceptance, and my favorite live session series that I do, Relationship with Self. If you made a list of everything you were ashamed of or everything you wanted to change about yourself, what would that look like? I encourage you to do it. And it brings us into step 7: humbly ask God or the universe to remove our shortcomings. So again, this is like intention setting, right? I don't like that I have a pattern of people pleasing. Every morning, can I set an intention or ask God or ask the universe, help me to catch when I'm about to people please and just pause? And oftentimes we need to pray for willingness to be willing. So it's like, I know I should change this, but I'm not ready to let it go because I'm scared. Okay, help me to be willing. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness are the 3 things that are necessary in recovering from anything. And if you're in this course, you are recovering from interpersonal dynamics that cause you harm. You're in recovery. Welcome. We're recovering from the human condition, which is a really tricky condition to exist in, and a beautiful one too. And so step 7, we are humbly asking the universe to remove our shortcomings. I think one really important piece is to look at again those barriers. What are your fears about becoming changed? Write them all. Sometimes we're afraid that if we change, we're going to lose relationships, and sometimes we do. I always tell people, especially when I'm doing one-on-one work with someone as their therapist or their guide of sorts, is you know when we're in a relationship, be it a friendship. Family, partner, and we are on a path of healing, but the other person is not, we have essentially 3 options. One, we inadvertently keep ourselves emotionally sick so that we can make the relationship work. That's very common. 2, we continue to get better, they do not get better, and We get really into codependency and trying to fix and change them, which then makes us more sick. Or we keep getting better, they don't, and we detach. Whether that means setting boundaries, taking a step back, ending a relationship. I would say the fourth one is the other person does get better too, and you're on a healing journey of recovery together, which is the only way the relationship will be sustainable. But if you've invited another person to this healing journey with you and they are unwilling, you cannot drag them along. And you have to look at what's my part. Back to that 4th step: expectations, control. Help is the sunny side of control. Helping is not bad by any means, but it is a means of trying to control an outcome. I try to only help when someone directly asks me and I have the capacity to provide it. But if someone does not ask me— oh, there's my dog barking again— if someone is not soliciting my advice or opinion or help, I am not to give it to them. Step 7: humbly asking whatever it is I believe in to help me so Stop giving advice and opinions and feedback when it's not solicited. Help me to release these shortcomings, these wounds that are causing continued stress and dysfunction in my life. Step 7 is about humbling ourselves in front of the universe, the Tao, whatever it is we believe in, and saying, I can't. If you were able to think your way out of this, you would not be in this course and you would not be still experiencing these things. And so the humbling portion is, I can't, maybe you can, and I'm gonna let you. A lot of times people sum up the first 3 steps as, I can't, he can, I'll let him. He refers to a higher power, but you can make it she or or they or it, but being able to acknowledge I can't do this on my own. If I'm truly powerless, I need a power greater than myself, and it has to be outside of me, like the universe, the Tao, God, a deity. It can't be you. And so I love that step 7 uses the word humbly. And in terms of being humble, I think oftentimes people equate humility with humiliation, but humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less. So if I'm thinking that I'm the biggest piece of garbage here, I'm still thinking about myself all the time. That's still ego. That's not humility. Being humble doesn't mean self-deprecating. Tomorrow we will move on to step 8. I'll see you there.
