4th step inventory questions from the 12 and 12 AA book

The 12 Traditions and 12 steps book essays have been a constant inspiration and benefit to me as a practicing AA member and a sponsor. Here I have extracted the inventory questions from the 4th step chapter.

Page 50:

SEX QUESTIONS:

• When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me?
• What  people were hurt, and how badly? 
• Did I spoil my marriage and injure my children?
• Did I jeopardize my standing in the community?
• Just how did I react to these situations at the time?
• Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could extinguish?
• Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself?
• How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters?
• When denied, did I become vengeful or depressed?
• Did I take it out on other people?
• If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity?

FINANCIAL AND EMOTIONAL INSECURITY QUESTIONS:

Also  of importance  for  most  alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their behavior respecting financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed, possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst.Surveying his business or employment record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these:

• In addition to my drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial instability?
• Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me  with conflict?
• Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility?
• Or by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities?
• Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot?
• Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I double-crossed and undercut my associates? 
• Was  I  extravagant? Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was repaid or not?
• Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support my family properly? Did I cut corners financially?
• What about the “quick money” deals, the stock market, and the races?

Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many of these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic house-wife can also make the family financially insecure. She can juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spend her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.

EMOTIONAL INSECURITY:

The most common symptoms of emotional  insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this:

Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression

• Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? 
• Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands?
• Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? 

These  are  the  sort  of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct  and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.

Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself:

1) To what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs,am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?