In our “Big Book” Depressed Anonymous the statement is made:
” With our compulsion to sad ourselves, much like the alcoholic’s urge to medicate his or herself with alcohol, we need daily to turn our will over to God and ask for the Higher Power’s (God) guidance, eventually it is the conscious contact with the loving God that sets us free from the need to sad ourselves.”
11.1 Question: How do you see your depression as a compulsion? What are the triggers that cause you to spiral downward back into the dark pit of depression?
When you think of depression do you think of it like one big thing or do you see it for the many parts that make up a depression experience, namely, the way that we think, behave or feel. In other words, when we make it to be a thing, that is when we reify it – it holds power over us – like it came out of the blue – we talk about depression in medical terms such as I just had a bout of depression -like it came from outside of us like an infectious germ or virus. In reality, our depression is made up of many parts, such as particular depressiogenic ways of thinking, behaving and feeling.
11.1. Write the way that you perceive your depression? Can you distinguish the various parts ( thinking; feeling; behaving; physiological; motivational; spiritual ) that go to form what we call the depression experience? Which of the above parts continue to cause you the most anxiety/fear?
Which of the following Illustrations can you best relate to.
11.2. A need to be perfect!
11.3. A need to be successful!
11.4. A need to please others always!
11.5. A need to never get angry!
11.6. A need to have someone in my life before I feel I am somebody!
11.7. Please write down how one or more of the above items keeps you down, despairing and hopeless? Also, write about where these attitudes come from?
Please respond to the statement:
I can’t do anything to remove my compulsive behavior until I choose to live without it. It is truly living in the will and mind of God that will help us, one day at a time to stop being so compulsive in our rigid and automated thinking about people and things so that we do not let our dated emotions and thoughts predict what the outcome of our perceptions ought to be.”
The Home Study Program is an excellent tool for self reflection and a meaningful way to discover what needs to be changed in our lives. The Question and answers provided by the participant provides freedom from the issues (dated emotions) that continue to cripple us.
RESOURCES
(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd ed., (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.
(c) The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. pp79-80.
These and other helpful publications can be ordered online from the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore at our website www.depressedanon.com.