My Personal Journey Through the 12 Steps to Overcome Automatic Negative Thoughts In my home, a quiet battle has been waging—a battle that parallels an even more personal struggle within my mind. On one hand, I face an invasion of tiny ants that seem to materialize out of nowhere, marching across my kitchen counter. On the other, I wrestle with automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) that creep into my mind, disrupting my peace and self-esteem.
Dear ESSAY, Recently my sponsor encouraged me to give program literature more authority in my life. He meant, take the literature as my personal truth and don’t divert from it—this is how I will get maximum benefit from this Program of recovery.
NEXT EDITION We're anticipating more wonderful articles in the February 2025 issue on the theme, “God As We Understand Him.” WE NEED YOUR SUBMISSIONS, though! If you already submitted something, it was lost when we tried to recover data and files after we suddenly lost Luc, our previous editor. Please submit (or re-submit) your ESH about “God As We Understand Him” to essay@sa.org.
My name is Raphael. I am a grateful, recovering sexaholic. I have been sober by the grace of God and with the help of all you in this program of SA since April 7, 2019. I am also currently serving a 50-month sentence for actions I took as a result of my addiction to lust.
My name is Abdelbarie, and I’m a sexaholic. Friends in America would pronounce my name Ab-del-BAH-ree, but to be honest, it’s the word “sexaholic” I’m still not used to. I never knew exactly what was wrong with me. I thought I was just a normal guy with a nasty porn and masturbation habit. As it turns out, I’m not normal at all.
My name is Dave, I’m a recovering sexaholic, and I’ve been sexually sober since August 1, 1985 by the grace of God and this wonderful Fellowship. I came into the Fellowship when I separated from my first wife hoping to save my marriage. After two years of sobriety, we still divorced, and by the grace of God, I knew absolutely that I had no business being in any kind of romantic relationship, much less a committed one.
I was unmarried when I entered SA at the age of 26. I got sober and stayed sober though several dates and relationships. I met my wife after 16 years of sobriety. I remained sober through our courtship and 12 years of marriage (so far).
After finishing my Step Four harms inventory, I was very grateful to notice that each consecutive person that I dated after I got sober had fewer harms. There are still things left to work on, but my ability to have healthy relationships has improved since joining SA. I'd like to describe some of the progress that I saw in my inventory.
I recently dated someone for three months. The first month was great, but by the second month, I felt like he was pulling back emotionally, and by the third month, we said our goodbyes.
There’s a great talk by Roy K. called “Sponsorship and Group Sobriety.” (If you are new to the Program, Roy K. was the founder of our Fellowship). In his talk, Roy K. shares about the highest purpose of sponsorship. It’s not to keep people coming to the Program, and it’s not to keep people sober, because only a Higher Power can do that. According to Roy, the highest purpose of sponsorship is not even working the Steps, although that is an integral part of it. He says that the highest purpose of sponsorship is introducing other men to the real Connection and bringing them into a way of living where the sponsee can experience having that real Connection.
