Step 4 in AA is a written inventory of your resentments, fears, and past behavior, organized into structured lists. The Big Book describes it as a “fact-finding and fact-facing process,” comparing it to a business taking stock of its inventory to find damaged goods. The goal is to get everything on paper so you can see the patterns driving your behavior, particularly selfishness, dishonesty, fear, and inconsideration.
Most people find Step 4 intimidating because of its scope, but the process is more mechanical than it first appears. There are three distinct inventories to complete: resentments, fears, and sex conduct. Each follows a specific format with columns, and working through them one row at a time makes the task manageable.
The Resentment Inventory
This is the largest and most important part of Step 4. You create a four-column list covering every person, institution, or situation you resent. The Big Book puts it plainly: “In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper.”
Here’s what goes in each column:
- Column 1: I’m resentful at. List every person, place, institution, idea, or principle you feel angry toward, hurt by, or threatened by. Don’t filter or judge what belongs here. An ex-partner, a boss, a parent, a church, the IRS, a political idea. If it stirs up anger or bitterness when you think about it, write it down.
- Column 2: The cause. Next to each name, write what happened. Be specific. Not “they were mean to me,” but “they told my coworkers I was unreliable” or “they borrowed money and never paid it back.”
- Column 3: What it affects. Identify which parts of your life the resentment touches. The Big Book names seven areas: self-esteem, pride, emotional security, financial security (pocketbook), ambitions, personal relationships, and sex relationships. For each resentment, check off which of these were hurt or threatened.
- Column 4: My part. This is the column that changes everything. Setting aside what the other person did, you ask: where was I selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, or frightened? What could I have done differently? Was I inconsiderate? This column exists because the inventory is yours, not the other person’s.
A practical tip that many sponsors recommend: complete columns 1 through 3 for your entire list before going back to fill in column 4. This prevents you from getting bogged down in self-examination on every single entry before the full picture emerges. Some resentments will feel completely one-sided, and that’s fine. Not every row will have a clear “my part,” but most will reveal at least fear or self-seeking if you look honestly.
How Column 4 Actually Works
Column 4 trips people up more than anything else. It feels counterintuitive to look for your own fault when someone genuinely wronged you. The Big Book addresses this directly: “Though a situation had not been entirely our fault, we tried to disregard the other person involved entirely.”
The point isn’t to excuse what someone else did. It’s to find the patterns in your own reactions. Ask yourself these questions for each resentment:
- Was I dishonest in any way, even with myself?
- Was I trying to control the situation or the other person?
- Was I acting out of fear? If so, fear of what?
- Did I have unrealistic expectations?
- Was I being self-seeking, wanting something from this person or situation?
When you look across dozens of resentments, the same character defects start repeating. You might notice that fear of financial insecurity shows up in ten different entries, or that dishonesty about your own motives keeps appearing. These patterns are what the inventory is designed to reveal. The Big Book links them to the classic human failings: pride, greed, anger, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. You don’t need to memorize that list, but it helps to know the inventory is searching for those deep-rooted tendencies.
The Fear Inventory
After resentments, you move to fears. The Big Book says to review your fears thoroughly and put them on paper, “even though we had no resentment in connection with them.” Fear often operates underneath resentments, but it also stands on its own.
This inventory is simpler in structure. For each fear, write down:
- What you fear (being alone, losing your job, rejection, financial ruin, illness)
- Why you fear it (what belief or experience drives it)
- How it affects you (what behavior it produces, like isolation, people-pleasing, controlling others, drinking)
- How it affects the people around you
The Big Book frames fear as a failure of self-reliance. The idea is that when you depend entirely on yourself to manage life, every threat feels catastrophic. A fear like “being alone” might drive resentment toward people who don’t give you enough attention, which in turn fuels the drinking or behavior you’re trying to address. Writing it out makes those connections visible in a way that thinking about it never does.
The Sex Conduct Inventory
The third inventory covers your sexual and romantic history. This section makes many people uncomfortable, but it follows the same honest, structured approach as the others. The Big Book asks you to review your conduct over the years and answer specific questions about each relationship or encounter:
- Was I selfish?
- Was I dishonest?
- Was I inconsiderate?
- Whom did I hurt?
- Did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness?
- What should I have done instead?
The purpose isn’t to catalog every detail of your romantic life. It’s to apply the same lens you used in the resentment inventory: where were you selfish, where were you dishonest, and who got hurt as a result? The Big Book also asks you to consider whether each relationship was selfish or not, and to begin shaping “a sane and sound ideal” for how you want to approach relationships going forward.
Common Sticking Points
Procrastination is the biggest obstacle to completing Step 4. The inventory can feel overwhelming when you imagine it as one massive task. Breaking it into sessions helps. You might spend one sitting listing names for column 1 of your resentment inventory, then come back another day to fill in causes. There’s no rule that says you have to finish in one sitting or one week.
Perfectionism is the second biggest obstacle. Some people stall because they’re not sure if they’re “doing it right” or worry they’ll leave something out. The inventory doesn’t need to be perfect or complete. If you remember something later, you can add it. What matters is the honesty of the process, not the comprehensiveness of the document.
Another common issue is writing too much narrative. The inventory works best when entries are concise. Column 2 (the cause) should be a sentence or two, not a full story. If you find yourself writing paragraphs for a single resentment, you’re probably processing emotions rather than taking inventory. That processing is valuable, but save it for Step 5, when you’ll share this work with another person.
What Happens With the Inventory
Step 4 produces a document, not a transformation. The transformation comes from what you do with it. In Step 5, you share the inventory with your sponsor or another trusted person. This is why writing it down matters so much. Reading your patterns aloud to someone else turns private rationalizations into visible behavior. Many people report that the act of completing Step 4 already shifts something, simply because they’ve never looked at their own behavior this honestly before.
The character defects that surface in your inventory (the pride, fear, dishonesty, and selfishness that keep repeating across different names and situations) become the foundation for Steps 6 and 7, where you work on willingness to let go of those patterns. Everything that follows in the remaining steps builds on what you uncover here. The inventory is the map.