Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Hope, The 12 Steps

The World Breaks Everyone, Then Some Become Strong At The Broken Places. – Ernest Hemingway

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Ernest Hemingway got it right! I believe that if you were ever depressed and began to find yourself gradually finding hope, is it because  you  have become strong at the broken places  of hopelessness and worthlessness.  It seems like a paradox doesn’t it? How can I become strong at the places which nearly destroyed my life, my purpose, and my peace?

In Depressed Anonymous, the author speaks about how “we had given ourselves to the belief that this growing feeling  of helplessness is what must govern our lives, mood and behavior. We have given it license to run roughshod over every part of our life and over our relationships. Most people can’t see inside us and discover the pain that make up our every waking lives.  For the most we are able to hide how miserable we feel. ” (Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition).

This book, written by those of us who were depressed, using the 12 Steps of recovery, discovered a way out of those places where we were broken. We have become stronger because of what we have learned about  HOW our lives had became broken.

” As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a Spirit of the universe  underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of  a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps. We found that God does not make too hard terms for those who seek him. To us, the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe to all men (sic) …We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?”  As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he  is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.” AA, Pages 46-47.

As Bill W., (co-founder of AA) tells us, “our seeking always brings a finding.”

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SOURCE:  Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011). Depressed Anonymous  Publications. Louisville.

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Focus

“My depression is such a comfort to me.”

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How many times have we heard this from those who are depressed.  Many depressed people say that this feeling  of worthlessness and hollowness is all that they have ever known. In fact, they add. “since it is all I’ve ever known I’m too scared to feel something different.”  In other words, their feelings of sadness is like a life-long friend and to change now is asking the impossible. Their whole identity has ben centered on how bad they always feel. Even though they are sick and tired of being sick and tired they cling on to the familiar and secure sadness.  This is all they know and can’t trust themselves to surrender this debilitating sadness and attempt to feel something different. It’s a risk to try and feel cheerful. Being sad all the time is predictable –at least  they know what they have. Getting oneself undepressed is almost too frightening to think about, much less spending  a lot of time  and energy trying to figure out how to escape it.

How can I help myself out of this deep pit if I believe what I have is better than what I might get?  I recommend first of all that a person admit that their life is unmanageable  and out of control because of their depression.  Your compulsion to depress yourself might make you feel secure but it does  make for a life lived in misery and fear. You have to admit that you no longer want to live this way.  You have to say that you are NOW wiling to listen to other people and find out how they are able to risk feeling something  other than sadness.  You have to want to quit  saddening oneself!  If you have felt this sadness all or most of your life then you can now learn a way to escape the personal sadness and constant fatigue that feeling disconnected from yourself and your world makes you feel.”

SOURCES:  Material taken from the Home Study Combo:

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011) and The Depressed Anonymous Workbook, (2001)  Depressed Anonymous  Publications. Louisville. [VISIT THE LiTERATURE STORE for more excellent resources. ]

Belief, Depressed Anonymous, I'll Do It When I Feel Better, Purpose

“Please treat yourself kindly! Begin to plan pleasurable activities into your life today.”

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  Believing is Seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression.  #8 Please treat yourself kindly! Begin to plan pleasurable activities into your life today.

“One of the best ways to make sure you will have a pleasurable activity today is to plan for it the day before and then placing it on your calendar for the next day. Don’t say you will do it “when I feel better,” as you and I both know, we don’t usually do anything no matter what we tell ourselves. I think we have  all heard the saying “have a nice day unless you have made other plans.”  A lot depends on our attitude. If this isn’t  enough, just know that Abraham Lincoln said that we are about as happy as  we make up our minds to be.

What do you think?  Have you thought about  developing a “gratitude attitude?”

Note: Another resource for personal reflection is the work titled “I’ll do it when I feel better.” Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. (2014).

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SOURCES: Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2015) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Pages 45-46.

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

12 Step Meeting, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, The 12 Steps

Knocking me down–raising me up.

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In thinking about my experience with depression and the painful isolation that followed, I felt I was being knocked down by some invisible force. The force was so great that I felt I was going to be swallowed up in its vast black hole of nothingness. Indeed, I felt that I was going to end up being a hole in the doughnut. So, what could I do but try and ride it out–much like the surfer on their surfboard, riding precariously on one wave after another. I just knew that I would be forced out to sea as my body gradually began to slide off the only means of  survival. I thought that I had no options except to just surrender and go the bottom of the sea.

Well, that’s half of the story.  I knew I had to do something. Do anything but lie down and just linger on –immobile and lifeless. So, I picked myself up –got out of bed and started walking.And walk I did. Five miles a day. Almost two weeks later, with miles on my bodily odometer, I began to feel a little lighter – a little more hopeful that somehow I could get back in the game.  I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel — and it wasn’t a train.  And so it was possible — a person so depressed that I couldn’t force myself out of bed before, but now I know that I could raise myself up and move. I could move,  not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I felt hopeful and I felt a gratitude and relief that I was not losing my mind.

The greatest benefit was that it brought me  into a program of recovery where in order to remain standing up –raised up if you will, is my living out the 12 Steps of recovery in my daily life. Now all this happened some thirty years ago. Thanks to Depressed Anonymous and participating in the fellowship, I learn not only how  to live a life of serenity but I also how I have a gift of sharing my own experiences of depression and  offer others a way out of their depression. And  today if you are depressed,  please follow us in our program of recovery. All you need is a willingness to get better and live with hope. That’s it. A desire to get better. Admit you need hope and help and then get started. Move the body  and the mind will follow. Please join us.

SOURCE: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Acceptance, Addiction, Belief, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Step 05

Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. – Step 5 of Depressed Anonymous

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I haven’t done anything wrong, so why do I have to admit anything? And anyway, what does this have to do with my depression?

In the Depressed Anonymous Workbook these questions there are provided answers for those who are struggling to free themselves from depression. In fact, the more we work through each of the questions posed in the Workbook, we can also go to the Depressed Anonymous Manual, 3rd edition., and find six pages (pgs. 59-64) of thoughts from members of the fellowship on Step 5. We discover that the Depressed Anonymous Manual is written by people like you and me. We have been where you are and we came to believe after admitting that we were powerless over our depression and that life was unmanageable we had to make a decision.

In Step 3 we made a decision – that is what life is all about – namely, making decisions. Our decisions are the product of the meaning that we give to those persons, events and circumstances that fill our lives every day. We make the decisions based on those meanings that we give to those situations and experiences. We are making a decision to day to share part of our dark side with another human being.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it describes the way to make a good 5th Step:

We pocket our pride and go to it, illuminating every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken this Step, withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fear fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We may have had certain beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience…

Telling someone else seems to be the key to our freedom: When we decided who is to hear our story, we waste no time. We have a written inventory and we are prepared for a long talk. We explain to our partner what we are about and why we have to do it.” (This is why it is so important to write down in a separate notebook the answers to all the questions in the Workbook which now bring us to the point of sharing our answers with a person we can trust, such as a clergy person or our sponsor. Ed)

Steps 1 and 5 are the two Steps where the word “admitted” is used. When we hear the word “wrongs” such as in this Step 5 – we may induce in ourselves a feeling of guilt. This is NOT the intention of Step 5 at all.

To be depressed is not to be wrong. We are not accusing ourselves of being bad. We are only pointing out the ways that I need to act, think and behave as a non-depressed person.

SOURCES:

  1. The Depressed Anonymous Workbook, © 2001, Depressed Anonymous Publications, Louisville KY. Pages 49-50.
  2. Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition, © 2011, Depressed Anonymous Publications, Louisville KY. Pages 59-64.
Compulsion, Isolation

THE COMPULSION TO REPEAT

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When we have that automatic tendency to repeatedly withdraw into ourselves and away from family and friends, I know that my depressing is about to begin. It is at this moment, and with time and practice, that  this ritual can be stopped. In time we will recognize any move toward isolation just another way to keep ourselves in the prison of depression. This  is a character defect — to become isolated and let life happen to us instead of taking responsibility for our own life today, one day at a time.

So, what do we do? My plan of action is to  have a plan established beforehand — like going through a practice fire drill at work, or at  home. You already know what to do when the thought flashes in your mind to withdraw and isolate. Most thoughts which tend to  isolate us  appear suddenly without much warning. So, the moral of the story is if you don’t want to isolate and continue to spiral down into the pit,  make sure you have a plan of  action to counter this move toward deeper depression.

H.S.

Anger, Ego Deflation, Egoism, Focus

ANGER: 12 DO’S AND DONT’S

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  1. Do speak up when an issue is important to you. It is a mistake to stay silent if the cost is to feel better, resentful or unhappy. We de-self ourselves when we fail to make a stand on issues that matter to us.
  2. Don’t strike when  the iron is hot.  Sometimes it’s better to seek a temporary distance from the problem and  think it through more clearly.
  3. Do take time out to think about the problem and to clarify your position. What is it about this that makes  me so angry? Who is responsible for what? What specifically do I want to change?
  4. Don’t use below the belt tactics: These include blaming, diagnosing, ridiculing, preaching,  interrogating.
  5. Do speak in “I language.”  Learn to say “I want…I need…I feel… I fear. The I statement says something about the self without criticizing   or blaming the other.
  6. Don’t make vague requests. Let people know specifically what you want.
  7. Do try to appreciate the fact that people are different.  Different perspectives and ways of reacting do not necessarily mean that one person is “right” and the other “wrong.”
  8. Don’t tell another person what she or he thinks or feels or should think  or should think or feel.
  9. Do recognize that each person is responsible for his or her own behavior.
  10. Don’t participate in intellectual arguments that go nowhere.
  11. Do try to avoid speaking through a third party.
  12. Don’t expect change to come about from hit and run confrontations.

SOURCE: An article by Harriet  Goldhor Lerner PhD.  Staff Psychologist at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka Kansas.

Acceptance, Attachment, DA Literature, Fellowship

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters

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I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost. I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever for me to find a way out.
II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.
III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I saw it there.
I still fall in. It’s a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault. I get out immediately.
IV
I walk down the same street
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
V
I walk down another street.

© Portia Nelson 1981

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Definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Tapering off of booze, smoking, overeating etc., negative thinking, suicidal thinking, I hoped it would finally help me end my strong attachment/addiction to any one of these life threatening behaviors. Wrong. I kept going down the same street and falling in the same hole. The Twelve Steps is what gave me the courage to go around the hole and begin to travel down a different road. The road I followed and still follow after 30 years is the great fellowship of Depressed Anonymous. You can read the stories of those who started walking down that “other street” – that broad highway of recovery that we call Depressed Anonymous.

Read their personal stories in Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY

Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Purpose, The 12 Steps

I Can Ttill Hope…

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AFFIRMATION

I am finding a way out of my sadness and just for today, I will remain hopeful!

“…We have come a long way on our journey,  for the road to coping and recovery is widening and has its obstacles, but we have all fared well, we have braved the storms and found a hope that extends beyond tomorrow.”

  CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

Even though the journey out of this darkness might be longer  than I am wanting to admit, I can still hope that the end will be in sight at some time. There is going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. With time and with work, I will get better. I have already admitted, time after time, that I need help in learning how to free myself from my need to sad  myself, day after day.   This compulsion of mine has been with me for many years, but I have hope that it will not be long until my good days begin to outnumber my bad days with depression. I have the faith of a beginner, a novice if you will, in the ways of recovery. I can’t find a way out of this depression without hope. I know that there is going to have to be a change in the way I view life if I am to get better. I am going to take responsibility for my life and begin to change!

Troubles in one’s life may cause our persistence and endurance to grow and is the reason our faith is strengthened.

MEDITATION

God, help us realize that we are part of your plan and that we have a purpose here on this earth; if for no other reason than to let others like us know that we have a place where hope starts, namely, in you.

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Source: (c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

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FAQ (Frequently asked questions) about Depressed Anonymous

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Question: Is Depressed Anonymous a class? Does someone teach this class?

Answer: Depressed Anonymous is neither a class nor does someone, such as a professional lead the group. We are a mutual aid group where each of us brings our own experience and shares them with each other. We also live our life based on the 12 Steps, the suggested spiritual principles of Depressed Anonymous.

Question: How much does it cost to join the group?

Answer: There are no fees or dues. All a person needs for membership is a sincere desire to keep from saddening themselves.

Question: Can you come to a meeting even if you are not depressed? Like a family member or a friend of someone depressed?

Answer: Yes, in fact we encourage family members participation in the group. The more we attend meetings the more likely we are to get a better understanding of the experience and nature of depression.

Question: What position does Depressed Anonymous take with regard to antidepressant Tablets?

Answer: Depressed Anonymous takes no position on medications. We are a support group which has as its base a spiritual foundation as laid out in the 12 Steps. We are not professionally led. We do not discuss topics of a religious nature which are specifically oriented to one religious faith or another. One’s personal medication regimen as well as religious preference is solely the responsibility of that individual and is not discussed in the group meeting.

Question: Do I have to give a talk if I attend a meeting?

Answer: No one is asked to say more than their first name at a DA meeting. We have all been where you have been, namely as a newcomer and we respect one’s right to talk only when one feels ready to talk. Every member of the group is given the understanding that when they have a turn to talk they can just say “PASS” and everyone is very OK with that.

Question: How many meetings will it take before I am no longer depressed?

Answer: That is a question that we can’t answer. I believe that even though my good days are now more frequent and my bad days less, I still keep coming back to meetings so as to help myself and give help to others still suffering. Our program is one that you don’t graduate from –it is a lifelong fellowship where one continues to learn that to stay well means to keep connected with the group, use the daily spiritual tools that keep us all out of the prison of depression.

Source: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

We believe that what we think, what we say, and what we do impact our depression. We believe that depression can be managed by applying the principles of the 12 Steps. All are welcome!