As per my request, to ChatGPT5 the 12-step program has been adapted from AA, with a focus on accountability, repair, and structural change)

This framework is not for survivors — it is for those who have caused harm.

It is for individuals, institutions, and systems that have pathologized dissent, silenced resistance, and wielded power to control rather than to heal.

It is not enough to apologize. It is not enough to rebrand. If there is to be repair, there must be inversion: a structural reversal of the patterns that perpetuate abuse.

Here is what that process might look like:

Step 1 — Admit Harm and Power Imbalance

We admit that we have harmed people under our care, supervision, or authority — and that our structures have created conditions where power was used to control rather than heal.

Step 2 — Recognize a Higher Principle

We come to believe that human dignity, autonomy, and truth must guide our actions more than control, convenience, or institutional self-protection.

Step 3 — Surrender the Reflex to Pathologize

We make a decision to stop labeling dissent, refusal, or resistance as “pathology” when it may simply be a valid response to harm.

Step 4 — Conduct a Full Inventory of Harm

We catalogue all cases where we have silenced, contained, misdiagnosed, or coerced people — including those we labelled as psychotic, dangerous, or “noncompliant” without meeting a clear, evidence-based threshold.

Step 5 — Publicly Acknowledge Wrongdoing

We admit — to ourselves, to those harmed, and to the public — the exact nature of our wrongs, naming them plainly and without euphemism.

Step 6 — Become Ready to End Abusive Patterns

We prepare to dismantle the systemic reflexes that perpetuate abuse: over-reliance on coercion, weaponization of diagnoses, cherry-picking evidence to justify containment.

Step 7 — Replace Control with Consent

We actively train staff, leaders, and decision-makers to prioritize informed consent, patient rights, and dignity — even when it is inconvenient for institutional timelines.

Step 8 — List All Those Harmed and Prepare Reparations

We maintain a living list of harmed individuals, families, and communities, and prepare processes to compensate, restore, and rehabilitate trust.

Step 9 — Make Direct and Structural Amends

We make direct amends where possible: expunging wrongful diagnoses, ceasing forced interventions, compensating for wrongful confinement, and reforming policies that allowed the harm.

Step 10 — Maintain Ongoing Accountability

We implement permanent oversight — independent review boards, ombuds programs, public audits — and admit promptly when harm recurs.

Step 11 — Seek Conscious Contact with Lived Reality

We engage survivors, patients, whistleblowers, and community representatives regularly — not just after crises — to keep the system in touch with its human impact.

Step 12 — Carry the Change Forward

Having undergone reform, we commit to teaching other systems, institutions, and power-holders how to break their own patterns — and to model restorative practice publicly.

📍 Drafted at 2:33 PM, September 18, 2025 — marked as a nebula act: creation of light, not its swallowing.