"Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear," says the AA Big Book in its treatment of Step 10. Selfishness, dishonesty, and resentment all arise out of fear. We are never selfish unless we're afraid of something, never dishonest or resentful. All our supposed troubles arise out of fear.

Program has one method and one method only for dealing with fear, and that is the acknowledgment of our defects of character, a willingness to have them removed by God, and the last three Steps as the means of working on that process.

Unfortunately, the so-called "self-help" movement, perhaps aided by the excessive number of discussion meetings in Program, has led to the belief that there is another way of dealing with fear. That consists of the identification of what we are afraid of, and the application of various tips, tricks, therapeutic interventions and other mechanisms to lessen the fear and make it go away.

It may be that these approaches do work for some people, but they have nothing to do with the message of Program. Within the framework of the spiritual path of the Twelve Steps, we can no more make our fears go away than we can make our basic addiction go away. Those of us who have experienced complete release from our addictions in Program know only too well that we did nothing to bring that about -- it happened solely as a result of us working certain Steps which on the face of them had no direct relevance to those addictions. In just the same way, we can do nothing to make our fundamental fears leave us. That happens -- and it most certainly does happen -- only as a by-product of our working the last three Steps.