The Stoics understood that honesty spoken aloud does something that honesty kept private cannot.
The step has three parts: to God or a higher power, to ourselves, and to another human being. The Stoics would not have separated these as distinct acts. For them, truth was indivisible. To deceive another is to deceive yourself. To hide something from another person is to reinforce its power over you.
Epistemic humility, the recognition that your own perception is limited and distorted, is a Stoic cornerstone. Marcus Aurelius returned to it constantly: how many things I believe that are not true. How many things I have not yet seen. The solution was not to become paralysed by doubt, but to remain genuinely open to correction and to seek it actively.
Telling another person the exact nature of your wrongs does something important: it makes the thing real in a way that private acknowledgment does not fully achieve. The story changes when you say it out loud to someone who is actually there.
"If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes."
Seneca, Letters
For the analytical mind, the private inventory of Step 4 can remain somewhat abstract. You have catalogued the patterns. You understand them intellectually. But understanding something and having it witnessed by another person are different experiences.
The Stoics valued community and mutual accountability precisely because they understood that humans are not reliable self-assessors when working alone. We have blind spots. We rationalise. We explain away. Another person does not have the same investment in our comfortable self-image.
The person you tell does not have to respond with wisdom or absolution. The act of speaking it honestly, to a real person who can hear you, is what does the work. Secrecy maintains the weight. Honest disclosure, to the right person at the right time, begins to lift it.
Before this step, consider who you will tell and why you trust them with this. The Stoics were careful about who they gave access to their inner life. Choose someone who can hold what you share without judgment or agenda. Then consider: what are you most reluctant to say out loud, and what does that reluctance tell you?