I’ve been thinking about how the Kitchen Table Method™️ naturally embodies the Twelve Steps - not as a deliberate overlay, but because both are trying to solve the same problem: how do we actually change from the inside out?

The Steps give us a map. The Kitchen Table Method™️ gives us a daily practice for walking it. They work together because they’re both after the same thing: honest contact with reality, with ourselves, and with God.

Step 1: Admitting Powerlessness

When you sit down and rate your dysregulation at the start of each Kitchen Table™️, you’re doing Step 1. You’re not trying to fix it or minimize it - you’re just naming what’s true. “I’m at a 7 today and I don’t know why.” That simple admission breaks the illusion of control and creates space for something else to happen.

Step 2: Coming to Believe

The Witness part, that steady, observing presence - is where you start experiencing sanity as something you receive rather than manufacture. You’re not talking yourself into feeling better. You’re learning that there’s a part of you (or maybe Something through you) that can hold steady even when everything else is spinning.

Step 3: Turning It Over

Every time the Loving Parent responds with care instead of control, you’re practicing surrender. Instead of forcing your way through the chaos, you’re learning to hand it over - to let something wiser than willpower do the work.

Step 4: Taking Inventory

This is just what happens when you move through the five parts. The Inner Child shows you the wounds. The Critical Parent reveals your judgments. The Teen exposes your rebellions. The Loving Parent names what’s actually true. The Witness records it all without spinning it. You’re doing a moral inventory every single day - but it doesn’t feel punishing because you’re doing it in relationship with yourself.

Step 5: Confession

Writing it down is confession to God and yourself. Sharing it out loud in a group completes it. When other people hear your truth and don’t recoil, the shame starts to lose its grip. That’s what James meant by “confess your faults to one another, that you may be healed.”

Step 6: Becoming Ready

After you write the first round, you start to see your patterns in real time - the control, the fear, the avoiding. You don’t force yourself to be ready to change. You just become ready by seeing the cost clearly enough. Readiness isn’t manufactured; it’s what’s left when denial finally exhausts itself.

Step 7: Asking for Help

When the parts finally settle and you reach that internal cease-fire, there’s usually a moment where you just… ask. Not in some formal way - just a quiet “God, please take what’s still in the way.” Humility isn’t a posture you strike; it’s what you feel when the fight finally stops.

Step 8: Making a List

The Critical Parent and Loving Parent often surface names - people you’ve hurt through neglect, control, or absence. At the Kitchen Table Method™️, you write them down. You feel the cost. You let yourself become willing to do something about it. The Spirit’s preparing your heart for repair before you take action.

Step 9: Making Amends

This one starts internally. Before you can make amends to others, you have to practice reconciliation with your own frightened parts. You learn to speak gently to yourself first. Then, guided by peace instead of guilt, you figure out which amends to make and how.

Step 10: Ongoing Inventory

The Kitchen Table Method™️ is Step 10. Every entry is a daily check-in and admission. Because you’re doing it regularly, no single mistake festers long enough to become toxic shame. This is where relapse prevention actually lives - not in abstinence alone, but in the habit of staying honest.

Step 11: Prayer and Meditation

The rhythm of the Kitchen Table Method™️, speaking, listening, settling - is prayer and meditation in motion. You’re not chasing mystical experiences. You’re just having a conversation with God through the parts. Prayer becomes dialogue. Meditation becomes listening. Contact with God becomes as ordinary as breathing.

Step 12: Carrying the Message

When you practice the Kitchen Table Method™️ in a group, you’re doing Step 12. You carry the message not by preaching but by being real in front of other people. Every time you let your inner family speak in a circle, you show that healing is actually possible. Service becomes authenticity. Witness becomes the work.

How It All Fits

What Happens at the Kitchen Table Method™️ | What It Cultivates

|1 |Rate dysregulation |Honesty |
|2 |Invite the Witness |Hope |
|3 |Let the Loving Parent lead |Trust |
|4 |Move through all five parts |Truth |
|5 |Share what you’ve written |Healing |
|6 |See your patterns clearly |Willingness |
|7 |Ask for help once you’ve settled |Grace |
|8 |Notice who you’ve harmed |A willing heart |
|9 |Practice repair internally first |Reconciliation |
|10 |Keep showing up daily |Discipline |
|11 |Listen for God in the dialogue |Communion |
|12 |Practice in community |Service |

The Twelve Steps describe the path. The Kitchen Table Method™️ gives you a way to walk it every day. You’re not “working” the Steps like a program - you’re living them. Each session is a small death and resurrection: the old self loosening its grip, the new self finding its voice, God becoming real in the space between the parts.

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” - Romans 12:2

That renewal happens here, one honest page, one small truce, one settled table at a time.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​