If you have followed me for a while, you know that I've spent a considerable amount of my life as a restaurant server. 

When I was working in the corporate world, I believed those days were behind me. That is, until I fell down the chemsex hole and got myself some felony charges on my record.

Then, in my early forties, I was forced to tie an apron around my waist and survive on tips strangers left me, based on their appraisal of how well I presented their food. 

That was not an easy pill for me to swallow, but eventually I accepted that this was a temporary season of my life. Advice I've given to many men who have found themselves working jobs that felt like a step backward due to the negative effects of chemsex misuse. 

Let me get to the point...

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Early in my recovery, after a spiritual experience I had outside by a dead tree (that story is in podcast #2, where I go into details about my own lived experience), I was on a mission of self-awareness and spiritual development. 

One of these big epiphanies of self-awareness came in the form of what I now know as shadow work. And the moment I realized that nothing in life is personal, and everything is happening for me to thrive and heal.

So, one particular shift, all of the servers were standing in the pre-shift meeting, which usually consisted of listening to the litany of transgressions we had been making and how we are singlehandedly the demise of the entire restaurant. 

I stood staring at the general manager with my fists clenched and heart racing. Oh, how I hated this man. 

I would bitch about him to others, "God, he is arrogant!" I would whisper the same sentiments to myself during the shift and find myself reliving my anger in the shower after work and as I lay down to sleep. 

Then, I discovered The Work of Byron Katie. I was attending a Sunday service of a local spiritual center. The facilitator passed around a sheet and asked us to think of the person in our lives who triggered us the most. I immediately thought of my manager and began to get excited about how I could explain all the ways in which he was NOT spiritual.

In The Work, you will make a statement about the person you complain about. You fill out the sentence "I complain about (blank) because he/she/they (blank). So, mine was: "I complain about Kyle because he is so arrogant." So, my statement was "Kyle is so arrogant." 

Then, you do the turnarounds. I replaced Kyle's name with mine. I sat staring at my paper. "I am so arrogant." 

My stomach dropped, and I felt myself getting sweaty. My mind experienced instant downloads of memories and examples of how I was being arrogant in my life. How I was being arrogant at the restaurant towards him. 

I recalled complaining to other servers, "Kyle trying to tell me how to wait on a table when I've been doing this for 30 years. He can fuck off." 

I couldn't believe it. I finally understood what it meant when people said that everyone in your life is a mirror. Kyle triggered me because his behavior mirrored mine. I was really unhappy about being an arrogant person. 

The trigger from him was a gift to me. I saw myself in a new light. Self-awareness. I immediately went to work on noticing my arrogance and changing my thoughts and my attitude.

This is what true amends look like. Making amends with your own shadow parts, bringing them to light, and course correcting. 

The result is a higher level of peace and an expansion of how you show up in the world. 

Kyle eventually became someone I love and someone who helped me understand myself in a powerful way. 

So, here's the thing.

When I reflected on my life, I noticed that Kyle had shown up in every job I worked, at church, and in relationships.

And he will show up for you. 

Different face. Different name. Different city, maybe. But the same betrayal. The same dynamic. The same gut-punch that leaves you spinning into resentment, replaying the conversation in the shower three weeks later, building a case against them in your head while you're trying to fall asleep.

You think the problem is them.

I want to offer you a different possibility.

What Traditional Amends Misses

Most of us came into recovery with some version of the amends conversation already loaded in our heads.

Make a list.

Apologize.

Clean up your side of the street.

And that work matters — I'm not here to dismantle it.

But there's a layer underneath it that will set you free way beyond a simple admission of your wrongdoings. 

The real suffering in your life isn't coming from what they did or what you did. It's coming from the untrue beliefs you've been holding about yourself that aren't in your awareness.

Whatever happened in those disagreements or circumstances where you did someone wrong, there was a mirror being held up to you.

A mirror that is calling you to heal the limiting beliefs you hold about yourself and the world. 

A mirror that is calling you to take notice of your hidden and rejected aspects so you can be at peace. 

The Mirror Has Always Been the Teacher

In the alchemical tradition, nothing in the outer world is wasted. Every conflict is raw material. Every person who triggered you was, whether they knew it or not, holding up a mirror to a part of yourself you hadn't been willing to look at directly.

The man who abandoned you? He's showing you where you've been abandoning yourself.

The friend who judged you? He's showing you the judge that already lives in your own head.

The lover who lied? He's pointing you toward the small, daily lies you've been telling yourself about what you actually want, what you actually need, what you actually feel.

This isn't spiritual bypass. I'm not saying the harm wasn't real. I'm saying that the most powerful place you'll ever do amends is in the mirror.

Because here's what I've watched happen, over and over, in this work: you will continue to find yourself in the same situations until you see your shadows. 

So, you can apologize and make things better, but that does not escavate the deeper driving forces that led to the circumstance.

And that person and situation will come back around in various forms until you do see what lies beneath.  

A Practice From the Foundations Curriculum

In the Foundations cohort, we work through something I call Next Level Amends. It draws on Byron Katie's "The Work" and weaves in mirror principles from the alchemical lineage. Here's a little more about what that looks like before the turnaround I described earlier. 

The premise is simple, even if the practice is anything but.

You take one resentment. Just one. You write it down: I complain about ___ because ___.

Then you ask four questions:

1. Is it true?
2. Can I absolutely know it's true?
3. How do I react when I believe this thought? (Notice your body. Notice how you treat yourself. Notice whether this thought has ever given you a reason to use.)
4. Who would I be without this thought?

That fourth question is where the medicine is. Not because it erases what happened, but because it gives you a glimpse — sometimes for the first time in years — of who you are underneath the story.

How would you show up in life without the thought that this person rejected you? How would it affect your other relationships?

And then you turn it around. He rejected me becomes I rejected me. You sit with it. You find three places where the turnaround is as true, or truer, than the original belief. You let yourself be undone by the honesty.

That's where the real amends begin. Not with him. With you.

What This Frees You To Do

When you stop needing other people to be different in order for you to be okay, your whole nervous system gets to exhale.

You stop rehearsing arguments in your head.

You stop scanning every new face for the same old wound.

You stop using resentment as a low-grade drug.

You become someone whose presence is the apology. Whose life is the proof. Whose recovery isn't about white-knuckling distance from a substance, but about coming home to a self you'd been at war with for years.

Every conflict was a classroom. Every trigger was a teacher. Every person who hurt you was showing you exactly what was ready to heal.

The work isn't to forget what happened. The work is to question the beliefs you accepted about yourself when it did.

That's the real amends.

And it's the one that finally sets you free.

Love you, Dallas

Next Level Amends: Journal Prompts & Practices

A companion toolkit to the newsletter. Move slowly. One section at a time. The point isn't to finish — it's to feel.

Before You Begin

Pick one person. Not your whole resentment list. Not the worst offender. Just one situation that still has a charge — the one that surfaces in the shower, on the drive home, at 3 a.m.

Write their name (or initials) at the top of a fresh page. Take three slow breaths into your belly before you start. You're not here to relive the harm. You're here to retrieve the part of yourself you left in that story.

Part One: Locating the Belief

These prompts excavate the meaning you wrapped around the event — the part that's actually keeping you in the loop.

1. What happened? Just the facts. No interpretation, no story, no diagnosis of their character. What would a security camera have seen?

2. When I think about this person now, what does my body do? Where do I feel it? (Jaw, chest, gut, throat, shoulders — name the location.)

3. Complete this sentence as many times as it wants to be completed: Because they did that, I started believing I was ___________.

4. Where else in my life is that same belief running the show? In my dating life? My work? My recovery? My relationship with my body?

5. When did I first start believing that about myself? Was this person actually the source — or did they just press an old bruise?

6. What has this belief cost me? Be specific. Name the choices, the relationships, the substances, the years.

Part Two: The Four Questions (Adapted for Recovery)

Take the belief you uncovered above. Write it as one clean sentence: I am _______. Or: He should have _______. Or: They made me _______.

Now sit with it.

Question 1 — Is it true? Yes or no. One word. Don't argue with yourself, don't qualify it. What's the gut answer?

Question 2 — Can I absolutely know it's true? Could I take this thought into a courtroom and prove it beyond any doubt? Or am I treating an interpretation like a fact?

Question 3 — How do I react when I believe this thought? Get granular here. Not just "bad." Walk through it:

• What does my body do? (Tension, collapse, restlessness, numbness?)
• How do I treat myself? (Inner monologue — what does it say?)
• How do I treat the men in my life when this thought is running?
• Has this thought ever given me a reason to use? Or to scroll the apps? Or to isolate?
• What do I avoid when I believe this?

Question 4 — Who would I be without this thought? Imagine standing in the same memory, with the same person, with the same event having happened — but the thought is simply unavailable to you. You can't access it. Who's there instead? What does he do with his day? What does his recovery look like? What does he stop chasing?

This question is the medicine. Sit with it longer than feels comfortable.

Part Three: The Turnaround

Take your original belief and flip it three ways. For each turnaround, find three specific, real examples from your life. Not theory — evidence.

Turnaround 1 — To the opposite Example: He abandoned me → He didn't abandon me (Where might that be as true? Did he stay longer than was healthy? Did he warn me? Did I leave first, internally?)

Turnaround 2 — To yourself Example: He abandoned me → I abandoned myself. (Where did I leave my own knowing? My own boundaries? My own body?)

Turnaround 3 — To them Example: He abandoned me → I abandoned him. (Where was I checked out, dishonest, or unavailable in that dynamic — even if I was also harmed?)

The turnaround isn't about taking the blame. It's about retrieving your power. As long as he's the only villain, you stay the only victim. Both roles keep you small.

Part Four: Somatic Practices

The body holds the resentment after the mind has moved on. These are short. Don't skip them.

Practice 1 — The Discharge (5–10 minutes)

Stand up. Feet hip-width, knees soft. Bring the person to mind — not the story, just the felt sense of them in your nervous system.

Notice where the charge lives in your body. Most men feel it in the chest, jaw, or gut.

Now: shake. Loose knees, loose arms, loose jaw. Let your hands flop. Make a sound if one wants out — a sigh, a groan, a "ha." Animals discharge stress this way after a threat passes; we learned to suppress it. You're giving your body permission to finish a cycle it never got to finish.

Two to five minutes. Then stop. Stand still. Feel your feet. Notice what's different.

Practice 2 — The Hand on the Heart (3 minutes)

Sit. One hand on your heart, one on your belly. Eyes closed.

Out loud, or in a whisper if out loud is too much:

"That happened. It was real. I'm here now."

Repeat it ten times. Slowly. Feel the warmth of your own hands. This is the part of amends almost no one teaches: letting your nervous system know you survived. As long as your body thinks the threat is still active, the resentment can't actually dissolve.

Practice 3 — The Belief in the Body (Feldenkrais-inspired, 5 minutes)

Lie on your back. Knees bent, feet flat.

Say the original belief out loud: I am ___________.

Notice what your body does. Where does it brace? Where does it collapse? Where does it hold its breath? Don't try to fix it — just notice. Map it.

Now say the turnaround that landed most for you. I am ___________.

Notice what shifts. Even subtly. Even an inch.

You're teaching your body that the new belief is available. Belief change isn't only cognitive — it lives in tissue.

Part Five: The Mirror Work

This is the practice that does the actual amends. Not to them. To yourself.

Setup

Find a mirror you can sit or stand in front of for 5–10 minutes without interruption. Phone away. Door closed. If you're not yet ready to look yourself in the eyes for that long, start with 60 seconds and build.

The Three Phases

Phase 1 — Witness (2 min) Look at your own eyes. Not your face, not your hair, not the things you'd normally critique. Your eyes. The same eyes that were there at five years old. The same eyes that watched everything you've been through. Just look. Let it be uncomfortable.

Phase 2 — Speak the Truth (3 min) Out loud, to yourself, say:

"I see what you went through. I see why you believed what you believed about yourself. I see why you used. I see why you stayed in that situation longer than was safe. I see you. And I'm not leaving."

Modify the words to fit your story. The point is the witnessing — saying out loud, to your own face, what you've been waiting for someone else to say.

Phase 3 — The Real Amends (3 min) Look yourself in the eye and finish this sentence out loud:

"The amends I owe you is __________."

It might be: to stop dating men who remind me of him. Or: to stop hiring out my self-worth to apps. Or: to actually answer the phone when my sponsor calls. Or: to forgive myself for the years I lost.

Whatever comes up — say it out loud. To your own face. That's the contract.

Part Six: Closing Reflection

After you've moved through the practice — even if you only got through some of it — answer these:

1. What surprised me about what came up?

2. What belief am I now ready to let go of? Write it as a sentence and then draw a single line through it.

3. What's the one micro-action I'll take in the next 24 hours that aligns with the turnaround? (Keep it small. A text. A boundary. A "no." A walk. A meeting.)

4. Who am I when I'm not carrying this? Even for an hour today — who is that man?

A Note on Pacing

You don't have to do all six parts in one sitting. Most men in the program move through this over a week, sometimes two. Part One on Monday. Four Questions on Wednesday. Somatic work daily. Mirror work when you feel ready.

The work is not the worksheet. The work is what happens between the worksheets — when you catch yourself believing the old story in line at the grocery store and you remember, oh, that's the thought, and you let it pass through.

That's when you know it's working.