The following is an excerpt from The Promises of Depressed Anonymous. Page 4.
“Once the Steps begin to play an active role in our lives we begin to feel a shift in how we look at ourselves, our relationships and others. There is that small sprout of hope moving through our minds and spirit. We feel that our involvement in our fellowship group of Depressed Anonymous is a definite plus in how we look at life and our recovery. There is a certain tranquility that was never part of our lives before. Our sadness, pushed us down to the ground day after day. The more we dwell upon how bad we felt, the worse we felt, isolating us that much more.
The new happiness actually happens. We become living hope that in Depressed Anonymous a promise made is a promise delivered. There is no doubt in our minds that there is a Higher Power guiding us through each day of our lives. And to have this power, greater than ourselves, as stated in Step Two telling us that we “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” No longer do we have to beat ourselves up because we aren’t perfect as others in our lives tried to make us believe. Many of our lives were made miserable by all the expectations that others had for us growing up.
As it says in our Depressed Anonymous manual that we won’t change until we have some assurance that when we do change we will be completely happy. They want to have someone promise them that if they decide to change they will have no more problems and will be happy.
Dorothy Rowe tells us that ” this request is based on two assumptions, namely; 1) They who haven’t got my problems has no problems at all (therefore when my present problems disappear I shall have no problems); 2) Happiness is total certainty (therefore unless I know exactly what is going to happen I cannot be happy).”
To be happy we must seek out and live as God wills. We make a decision.
More on The Promises #2 tomorrow.
Resources
(c) The Promises of Depressed Anonymous,(2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.
(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition(2011). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY Page 110.
(c) Dorothy Rowe.(1991) Fount Paperbacks Foreword. Great Britain. In Forward to Second Edition of Depressed? Here is a way out! which was published in 1991 by Fount Paperbacks, a division of Harper Collins Publishing Group, Ltd., located in London, England.