12 Steps of Recovery from Alice in Wonderland

Most people remember Alice in Wonderland as a strange children’s story about a curious girl, a rabbit with a watch, and a very loud queen.

There is another way to read it.

Wonderland looks a lot like what happens to a nervous system after living in an upside-down world, the one where a child sees something deeply wrong, feels it in her bones, and is told to treat it as normal.

Logic bends.

Words do not match reality.

The people who are supposed to protect her either enforce the madness or quietly look away.

In that sense, Alice is not just a girl in a fantasy land. She is every person who wakes up one day and realizes, "This world I was handed is nonsense, and the nonsense is hurting me."

The Humble Pie 12-step framework follows the same arc. These steps aren’t a ladder you climb or rules you have to follow. They’re invitations or doorways you walk through at your own pace. You start where your needs are. Some days, you might return to the same step over and over. Another day, you might skip ahead. Healing doesn’t move in circles, but spirals, and pauses and returns, always carrying us closer to ourselves.

Below is a way to see Alice’s story as a map of that healing process.

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Step 1: Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

Theme: Admitting the crack: the fracture we hid is the same place light gets in

Alice is sitting on the riverbank, half numb with boredom, when she notices something odd. A white rabbit with a waistcoat and a watch. Talking to himself.

Curiosity wakes up first.

Then confusion.

Then the decision to follow.

In recovery language, this is moral injury, the moment when reality wobbles. Something is off. The rules you were taught no longer explain what you are seeing, but you do not yet have language for it.

Step 1 is the internal moment of Wait. This is not right. And if I keep pretending it is, I am going to lose myself.” The fall down the rabbit hole is that plunge into “Oh. This is bigger than I thought.”

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Step 2: The Nonsense Rules

Theme: Seeing through the fog; learning to name what was once blurred or denied

Once Alice lands in Wonderland, she encounters the “caucus race.” Everyone runs in circles. No one really knows why. There are no clear rules, and at the end, the Dodo arbitrarily decides that everyone has won and Alice should hand out prizes.

This is life inside a toxic system. You obey invisible rules that change without warning. Language is constantly twisted. You are always somehow wrong, no matter what you do.

Step 2 is about naming this nonsense. Seeing through the fog. Recognizing that you were not failing the rules—the rules were designed to keep you off balance.

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Step 3: The Pool of Tears

Theme: Turning toward ourselves; choosing self-love after years of self-abandonment

At one point, Alice cries so much that she creates an entire pool of tears and nearly drowns in it. Other creatures are swept up as well, trying to escape the flood she created.

This is what happens when feelings that were stored and minimized suddenly surface. The grief, rage, confusion, and fear that were never allowed to exist start to spill over. The pool is not madness.

It is backlog.

Step 3 is about staying present to your own experience instead of abandoning yourself when emotions rise. It’s learning to hold your ground internally, even when the feelings are overwhelming.

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Step 4: “Who Are You?”

Theme: The inventory we were never allowed, writing the story in our own words, without edits or erasure

The Caterpillar asks Alice the most unsettling question: “Who are you?” She cannot answer. Not because she never had a self, but because Wonderland has distorted it. She has been shrunk, stretched, shamed, and scolded. Her sense of identity is no longer stable.

Step 4 is about taking inventory, not of what you did wrong, but of who you became in order to survive. The roles you were assigned: the good girl, the problem child, the fixer, the peacekeeper, the scapegoat.

This is the inventory you were never allowed to take. It asks gently: “Who am I underneath all the roles I performed to stay safe?”

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Step 5: The Mad Tea Party

Theme: Speaking the unspeakable; letting what was silenced finally be said out loud

The tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare is one long exercise in absurdity. Time is broken. Sentences never finish. The conversation loops in circles. Alice is talked over, dismissed, and moved around like a prop. Everyone else accepts it as normal.

Many people recognize their family, workplace, community, or faith space in this scene.

Step 5 is where you begin to see: “This table is not safe. There is no version of me, however polite, that will make this sane.” This step is about speaking what was silenced and learning to get up from the wrong table.

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Step 6: The Queen’s Garden

Theme: Unlearning obedience; breaking the spell of “be good” that kept us small

The Queen of Hearts rules through terror. “Off with her head” is always one breath away. Cards shake as they paint the roses red, trying to hide mistakes and keep the peace.

This is what it feels like to live around fragile power. Everyone scrambles to prevent explosions.

Children learn to edit themselves in real time.

Step 6 is where you finally name this pattern: “I have been living in a world where my safety depends on keeping other people calm.” You begin to see that “being good” was survival, not virtue. The spell breaks when you realize compliance never actually kept you safe.

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Step 7: Drink Me, Eat Me

Theme: The cost of shrinking; seeing the toll of making ourselves smaller for others’ comfort

Throughout her journey, Alice keeps finding bottles and cakes labeled “Drink Me” and “Eat Me.” Every time she obeys, her body changes size. Too big for the room. Too small for the key. Never quite the right shape to fit.

This mirrors Step 7: realizing how much you have been shrinking and stretching yourself to fit around other people’s expectations.

The rules seem simple:

“Be kind.”

“Be humble.”

“Be easy."

But every time you follow them, you lose yourself a little more.

Step 7 is seeing that your adaptations have a cost. It’s recognizing the toll of all that shrinking; what it cost your body, your energy, your sense of self.

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Step 8: The Trial Scene

Theme: Repair without erasure; healing without rewriting the past or disappearing ourselves again

At the trial scene, everything descends into pure nonsense. The evidence is absurd. The logic collapses. Everyone is shouting, but no one is actually seeking truth or justice.

Alice watches this charade and begins to see:

There is no way to repair this system by participating in its rules.

You cannot make an unjust court just by being more compliant or smaller.

Step 8 is about recognizing that repair cannot come through erasure. You cannot heal by rewriting what happened. This step asks: What does healing look like when you refuse to shrink the truth?

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Step 9: “You Are Nothing But a Pack of Cards"

Theme: Choosing ourselves; learning to set boundaries, no more automatic forgiveness, only fair trials in our own court

Alice grows larger and larger, finding her voice, until she finally says the line that breaks the spell:

“You are nothing but a pack of cards.”

This is the turning point. Step 9 is not polite. It is not pretty. It is the moment of moral clarity when you see the system for what it is and refuse to participate in the lie any longer.

This step is about choosing yourself externally, setting boundaries, refusing automatic forgiveness, and holding people accountable in your own court rather than theirs. Once you say that truth out loud, the deck scatters.

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Step 10: Waking Up

Theme: Telling the truth in real time; no longer rewriting after the fact, speaking now as it happens

When Alice speaks the truth, the cards fly at her, and she wakes up on the riverbank. The dream is over, but the impact is real.

Step 10 is about waking up in your actual life and seeing what has happened with clear eyes. You are no longer in the fantasy that “if I just keep being good, this will get better.”

This step is also about telling the truth in real time, no longer staying quiet to keep the peace, no longer rewriting your experience to make it more palatable. You speak your reality as it happens.

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Step 11: Telling the Story

Theme: Letting grief be sacred; making space for sorrow as proof of what mattered.

At the end of the book, Alice tells her sister about Wonderland. Her sister listens, then imagines a future in which Alice will grow up and tell these stories to other children.

This is Step 11: allowing the story to exist in language and allowing grief to be sacred rather than shameful. You stop asking, “Why am I still upset?” and begin to ask, “Of course this hurts. What did it cost me? What does it say about how much I cared?”

Step 11 is where grief becomes a measure of how much you cared and how much it cost, not a sign of failure.

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Step 12: Life After Wonderland

Theme: Living out loud, without permission; claiming our voice, our joy, and our place unapologetically

The final image of Alice’s sister, grown and telling stories to the next generation, is the quiet ending many people forget. It is also the heart of Step 12.

Step 12 is where you turn your lived experience into something that can protect and nourish others. Not by fixing them. Not by dragging them out of their own rabbit holes. Simply by telling the truth about what happened to you, clearly and without self-erasure.

This is the step where you stop reenacting Wonderland and start building a world where fewer people have to fall quite so far. You live out loud, without permission.

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Why This Matters for Recovery

Stories like Alice in Wonderland and frameworks like the Humble Pie 12 Steps share a recognizable pattern. They are descent and return stories. You fall into chaos, lose the old rules, search for meaning, tell the truth about what happened, and then use what you learned to support others.

Seeing your life through this kind of story can soften shame and make room for grief. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” you can begin to ask, “What did I walk through, and what kind of person does it make sense that I became in order to survive it?”

Sometimes the first step out of Wonderland is simply realizing you were in it.

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Thank you for reading. If this stirred something in you and you’d like to spend more time with this work, you can explore The Humble Pie 12 Steps and learn more about how I support people as a trauma recovery coach.