Magazine - The ESSAY Magazine

OCTOBER 2025

In this edition of “Overcoming Fear, Guilt, and Shame”, we will learn members’ understanding of these terms and how they have damaged their lives. We will also hear how working the Steps in Sexaholics Anonymous and working with professionals helped them to recover from these crippling aspects of the disease.

Download ESSAY-OCTOBER-2025-Online-Single.pdf
Download ESSAY-OCTOBER-2025-Online-Spreads.pdf

In Every Issue

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Enjoy reading all the articles of the current magazine below.

Weaponizing Guilt Into Shame
SA taught him that letting go of guilt was not only okay, but necessary Fear and shame were awaiting my entrance into the world. My grandmother was harassed and bullied for her parents’ financial struggles, language, skin color, and country of origin. So she resolved to protect her children from the same fate by refusing to pass down her native language, traditions, customs, or history, and insisting that they marry spouses who embodied her idealized notion of an acceptable national archetype.

READ
Play
Flooded With Value and Worth
She discovered the two things that make up her self-esteem. I learned very early that life was all about being a good girl, pleasing, being obedient and nice. I was being raised to be a good wife in the style of those days. My parents, of course, were blameless, giving me everything they knew to shape me as they had been.

READ
Play
Addicted to Shame
An elder member in SA helped him see that he was addicted to himself. “You’re the most arrogant [person] I have ever met!” Although a more colorful word was used instead of “person,” this statement still saved my life.

READ
Play
Grateful I No Longer Do That
His gratitude list was the hammer that crushed his guilt and shame. I didn’t think I was fearful. I was a strong, tough male who had gotten in fights before and played contact sports like football, hockey, and rugby. So I thought that I wasn’t afraid of anything.

READ
Play
Bringing the Inside Out
With his sponsor’s help, he learned to deal with shame and guilt. As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable (Twelve and Twelve 50).

READ
Play
Gift of Sobriety
She found the freedom to choose in sobriety. Sobriety is a gift that your wise decisions give you. Sobriety is not limited to stopping sexual relations with another person or with yourself—that is only the beginning. Sobriety is having sanity in the face of life. It is exercising the self-control that already resides within you, that was given to you by your Higher Power to choose between what is good for you and what harms you.

READ
Play
Eureka!
SA helped her see more clearly how she was holding herself back from healing fully. I haven’t taken much time as of late to consider the role that trauma plays in my consistent relapses. I was abused sexually by my father at 13, and I had sexually abusive relationships from ages 19-22. I entered SA in July of 2021 without realizing my last relationship had ended with me being sexually assaulted. The brain is a funny organ like that.

READ
Play
A Journey Called Recovery
A reflection on 30 years of working the Program reveals a life worth living. Thirty years ago today, August 8th, 1995, I walked into a church, sat down in a room full of strangers, and said: “My name is Bill and I’m…” Thirty years ago today, I started on a journey called Recovery.

READ
Play
Recovery: My Way Out of Shame
Step Nine showed him how to proceed without putting himself down. I am Tim, from Brussels. I discovered I am a sexaholic about two years ago. After a summer of destructive acting out, a painful rock bottom, and therapy, it became clear that I needed help from a 12-Step program. It was a great relief. I have been addicted to lust since my teenage years without knowing it.

READ
Play
Keep The Curtains Open
Taking a look at himself and sharing what he found let the light of recovery shine on his shame. An unknown SA member said, “If you want light, keep the curtains open. The curtains are made of selfishness.” I was not only driven by a hundred forms of fear, as the Big Book says, but also by a thousand forms of guilt and shame.

READ
Play