The action of Step 9 allows the releasing of the emotional stamps that people have collected over the years. The word stamp is short for psychological trading stamp. People over time collect stamps which can include resentment, grudges, anger, paranoia, envy and bitterness. Generally its any emotional unit that relates to negativity.
People who genuinely live a principled and meaningful life don’t tend to collect emotional stamps. This is because they don’t need to justify their life choices or hide themselves behind manipulation and games.
I do think its virtually impossible for one never to collect emotional stamps that have a pay-off. Even if its minimal such as having a bit of glee if someone who is rather unpleasant sets themselves up for being seen for who they are. While before they may have conned everyone into believing they were someone who could be trusted and worthwhile. However, this collecting of emotional stamps is much lighter weight and often does not have significant impact of ones life.
Anyway, the collecting of really damaging and damming emotional stamps is mainly related to individuals working towards a negative script pay-off. People can save these emotions and they contribute to episodes of their life that relate to something that is in the deeper parts of their script.
In addiction, we could look at individuals as collecting emotional stamps as this services the habit. It allows manipulative games, it allows deception, destruction, denial, anger and many other defects of character. The short term- pay-off is the justification to use whatever is the drug of choice or behavioural stimulation. The long term pay-off has much more dramatic consequences to the individual and anyone who is in their life.
Addiction is a form of suicide to the heart, soul and life. So many people die from this terrible illness. So many people are left broken hearted because of watching a loved one suffer and live in fear of their eventual demise.
Therefore we could look at this as the addicts script becomes so negative and they have collected so many emotional stamps to support and justify this destruction. How many stories are told of dire consequences and how many shares in meetings hold episodes of pain and chaos.
The script can be hamartic , destructive , loosing or a banal. All of these script processes have negative consequences for the individual. They relate to being misunderstood and collecting resentment stamps because of that. This then leaves the individual in the position of victim and feeling sorry for themselves which justify’s their addiction in coping with life.
You can collect depression stamps and turn to drink. You can then tell yourself that you need alcohol to feel better. Eventually you may cash in these stamps by the suicide this path will eventually take you on.
The harmartic stamp collector can use the emotions that have stacked up to harm others and even justify homicide. That they are only in the business of hurting others because they deserve it. That nothing is their fault and that they are blameless. I am pretty sure Henry the 8th was an addict with a hamartic script and the consequences were a lot of executions. SCAREY
The loosing stamp collector may collect harassment emotions because of paranoia with using. Then save these up to support their deluded case for being understood. Really the game is about going for retribution because one feels inadequate, negative and down. Instead the individual sets themselves up to fail which results in pain and shame.
The banal stamp collector may quietly collect passive emotions of anger. This can then fill someone up to the brim with anger, resentment, angst, pain and bitterness. This can result in psychosomatic aliments, using with the intention of getting obliterated because all the emotion stored is to much to hold. Other pay-off’s can be about the dis-placement of all this dark, dense and negative projection of emotion onto others. This can be done with powerful quite anger, projection of vile abuse onto someone or an explosion which can be seen as out of character.
The system of collecting emotional stamps towards a pay-off is diverse and vast. Within addiction the individual could have several networks of emotional stamp collecting going on which justify’s their using . They can carry anger and resentment and being misunderstood and the world is a horrible place in bucket loads. On the path of addiction the individual is without a doubt working towards an ending which is sad and has consequences all round.
The step 9 is about taking the action and with this we can see its also about letting any stamp collection go. Its seeing the option of a different life and thus different script. To let go of these stamps you are changing any negative pay-off that you may be holding. I see Step 9 as a form of disposing of these stamps by taking action which is different from cashing emotion in for negative pay-off’s. You are crossing over any negative system by challenging denial and taking action which is positive. This is what being willing to make amends and then taking action is all about.
To want to put wrongs to right is freeing of all this stuff collected over the years. You no longer need any emotional stamps to cash in for a negative script pay-off. You are swapping carrying this baggage for a more spiritually principled path.