“I have come to the Step program because my life is out of control. Whatever I do or think or say seems to make no difference on the way that I feel right now. I feel out of control, and some other force is in charge of my life. I know also that this force, this power other than myself, this sadness has me captive and somehow I have felt unable to do much about it.”
Until today!
In our Home Study program of recovery, we use the Depressed Anonymous Workbook in conjunction with the Depressed Anonymous Manual, together let them lead us, Step by Step out of our depression.
The Depressed Anonymous Workbook facilitates a new self awareness by questions which we need to answer. Each Step is provides further meaningful thoughts from the “Big Book” of Depressed Anonymous. By reading certain noted paragraphs, as indicated in our Workbook, (Page #), we move through all the questions with that greater self-awareness of how depression controls every day of our lives. Actually, the Workbook, by its questions and my responses, continues to open up for me where my life can be lived with hope once again.
Example: Workbook question #1.9 “What areas of one’s life appear to be more out of control now that you are aware of how depression can isolate a person. What areas of one’s life appears more manageable now that you are aware of how you can change things around — choosing to feel differently?” Workbook, Page 9.
“It is in the admission that we are out of control that a remedy can be applied to our battle with depression. It is a paradox for our understanding of depression to learn that only when we give up control, do we gain control over what we want to be, think or do. If there is anything that creates a sense of hopelessness, it’s when we fee that we don’t have any control over our lives. When we are depressed, we feel dependent on all the forces that act on us and our environment. We feel that we are like the victims of the interminable feeling that we call depression. Depression can be like a hell or bottomless pit from which we feel we can never escape. It’s like being in an eighty foot hole with an eight foot ladder.” Depressed Anonymous Manual. Page 28.
Depressed Anonymous, 3rd ed., Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky.
The Depressed Anonymous Workbook, (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.Ky
Many Depressed Anonymous meetings use the Home Study as a meeting Step Study group
For more literature about Depression and the Twelve Steps click onto the Depressed Anonymous Bookstore.