Category Archives: Depressed Anonymous

12 Step Meeting, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Focus, Mindfulness, Purpose, The 12 Steps

In getting my priorities straight, my depression got better

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CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

On this New Year’s Day, I find that my work for my life today is to reflect on a happy period of my life  where I have experienced   happiness and contentment.  If I can’t remember such a time,  then  I will construct a situation of contentment in my mind  and just imagine it happening right now.

In my relationship to God, I am beginning to realize that it isn’t so much that I don’t believe that I’ll ever feel better, but that I just  can’t know for sure. My first  priority is to admit that I do have a problem and that with God’s help I can get through my depression.

As soon as I give up my victim stance and begin to take responsibility for my feelings and my life, I can start to work as if my recovery is really up to me and that I will in time, succeed in getting out of this deep dark hole that I call depression. My priority  is to begin each day with the conviction that the Twelve Steps will be an aid in getting out of my depression. I know and believe without a doubt that WE have a solution for depression!

MEDITATION

God, we seek your guidance and your strength for our lives. Whatever we have lost or feel we have lost, please heal the holes in our soul and fill  it with your love and peace. In our quiet time today, show us what part of us needs to be healed.”

HAVE A NEW YEAR FILLED WITH PEACE !

VISIT THE STORE TODAY AND DISCOVER THE TOOLS THAT WILL BE THE PATHWAY TO YOUR OWN RECOVERY, DAY AFTER DAY.

An excellent tool that is highly recommended for the Depressed Anonymous  group use or individual study is the HOME STUDY KIT which is composed of Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) and The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) both published by Depressed Anonymous Publications. These two books give a complete listing of the Twelve Steps and a commentary for each Step. The Workbook provides a coordinated listing of Steps with its appropriate questions related to each Step in the Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition.

12 Step Meeting, Choice, Depressed Anonymous, Focus, Higher Power, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Mindfulness, Mutual Aid

I believe that misery is an option

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“If surrender of our wills to the ‘care of God’ is of the essence of the spiritual life, for anyone who truly desires to free themselves from a chronic and compulsive behavior such as depression, then the Twelve Steps can be your stepping stones to the path of a hope filled life.”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I used to hear the word “surrender” as it made me feel like I was in the hands and under the total domination of another.  It was like I had no control whatsoever as to what I was to do or what I was to be. I was blind to the fact that in reality I had already surrendered my life to my sadness so that whenever I wanted to hide, or isolate myself, I just saddened myself and  so didn’t have to feel anything. I am surrendering to the God of my understanding;  slowly my life is filling with light and hope and this is what I really want for myself. I am finding that the ‘care of God’ is much better than anything I could ever  wished for.  My life is one filled with hope rather than being hopeless.

The spiritual life for me is filled with the excitement of knowing that  this God of mine, as I understand him, is  today wanting to lead me further into the light of his healing power. My spiritual life is filled  now with a close and personal relationship with a God who loves and guides me on a minute-to-minute basis.

MEDITATION

We are going to get as close to God today as we choose to get.

SOURCE:  Copyright (c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups.  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Pages 257-258. December 29.

Affirmations, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Higher Power, Higher Thoughts for Down Days

I am responsible for me!

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Higher Thoughts for Down Days

I am responsible for me!

“Responsibility is the name of the game in recovery… people who want to change begin to swallow their pride and ask for help.”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

The ability to respond to the truth of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous comes particularly forceful when we have hit bottom in our lives and there seems to be no way out of what troubles us. This is where I begin to take responsibility for myself and ask others for help. Who is the best person to ask for help when you are depressed? Obviously, it’s that person who ha been where you are now. I believe that one of the biggest assets of being a member of Depressed Anonymous is the fact that so many people begin to live with happiness, peace, and hope after they have given up control of their lives to the Higher Power.  They indeed have hit bottom and there is no way for them  but up.

To say that my life is out of control is usually hard for any of us to have to admit. The pride that said that I had to please everyone to be happy, or in order to get other’s approval, had to do everything perfect, has resulted  in my depressing myself until I can hardly stand it. Now that I am telling it like it is and I begin to accept myself as I am and refuse to  let other’s opinions of myself overwhelm or dictate life to me, I begin to feel better.

MEDITATION

God, put your love into our hearts and your guidance into our minds as we struggle, day after day, to live with the understanding that we can only do your will by beginning to be responsible for ourselves.

SOURCE: Copyright(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for 12 Step Fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 244.

Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Isolation, The 12 Steps

Depression is different from normal sadness

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Depression cannot be reduced to a single factor. It is the result of the coinciding of different factors. Biological, historical, environmental and psychological factors play a certain role in the beginning and its evolution.

Many people never reach a state of clinical depression. Such depression, with the feeling of paralysis that it involves, is different from normal sadness. People with clinical depression, in general, demonstrate physical and psychic alterations; people who are not depressed manifest certain mental signs of sadness.

In addition, people often confuse depression with unhappiness. often one can hear the phrase “I feel depressed’, even though the person concerned only wants to say that he or she is not happy. Until, one has really experienced depression one cannot realize the enormous, difference that exists between being depressed and being unhappy. When we are unhappy, despite the scale of the tragedy that has afflicted us, we remain in contact with reality. When other people offer us consolation and love we can still feel gratitude for their warmth and support. But when we are depressed we feel like people who are excluded from the rest of the world. The comfort and love offered by other people do not penetrate our barrier and we feel neither consoled or loved. To experience real depression means to feel entrapped in pitch or suffocated by some dense, heavy material or buried alive in a dark tunnel. The depressed person is interested in nothing and nobody, and does not feel any hope.”

SOURCE: Jose Saraiva Martins

Comment: If you are a depressed person and are reading this you know the guy who is writing the above material knows what he is talking about. But, if you are a person who has been unhappy but never depressed, it is impossible for you to even begin to fathom what he is talking about. ” Yes”, you might say, “but I don’t see any plaster casts, no sign of physical brokenness and the guy or gal is always happy. You know, the life of the party.”

There is a night and day difference between being depressed and being unhappy. I know, as I have been depressed. I also have been very unhappy as well. Being depressed is a life threatening illness and for many the trajectory can lead to suicide preceded by thinking that is hopeless and suicidal.

The person who has experienced depression themselves and who seeks help to climb out of the dark pit now has friends in the Depressed Anonymous fellowship of the 12 steps. The new person coming into our group soon learns that the members know about the depression experience. Some have talked about trying to commit suicide.

My point is that persons depressed live in a world that they cannot touch, a world which they are viewing from the insides of an enclosed soundproof glass room. They are completely isolated and adrift — floating alone in a river of turbulence and dangerous currents. And when the time comes to flee this pain and isolation they run to the people who say they know what depression is. They also have a “toolkit” which they continue to use in their daily lives which helps them to forever stay out of that glass enclosed room. I am one of those persons who never returned to that past time in my life when I felt totally alone, without friends, purpose or meaning in my life. I owe my life to Depressed Anonymous and its powerful focus on hope instead of hopelessness.

Hugh

Blame, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Meditation, Purpose

“We can’t blame it on our genes, hormones or a chemical imbalance.”

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AFFIRMATION

I am taking full responsibility for myself and I am making a commitment to my own health and healing.

“Now that we have learned that we have to take care of ourselves and our recovery that we begin to look at the way we think and feel.  Even though we don’t want to blame ourselves for having been depressed most of our lives, we know now that we are responsible for finding a way out of this depression. We can’t blame it on our genes, hormones or a chemical imbalance.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I am aware for the first time since I have been working my program that my thinking is cyclical in that my negative thoughts constantly keep going around and around in circles. I have found that I need to stop the negative self-destructive thinking that has dogged me most of my life. I am able to break the cycle of hurt and my own self-inflicted pain and come to my senses. I do have some good things going for me and I plan to use these good character traits as building blocks for a future filled with hope.

I am learning to take good care of myself. I am more interested in my own self-care than  I am of what others around me want or need.  I am not being selfish as much as I am being concerned about my own growth and development. In the Third Step we declare that  “we made a decision to turn  our wills and our minds over to the care  of God as we understand God.  To be in the care of someone means that they are concerned about us and are burdened with a concern for us.

MEDITATION

“Restore our fortunes, O God, like the torrents in the southern desert that those that sow in tears shall reap rejoicing. Although they go forth weeping, carrying the seed to be sown, they shall come back rejoicing, carrying their sheaves. ” Psalm  126.

SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowships. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Depressed Anonymous

The risk of being willing to change!

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“When you and I begin to work on our life’s journey and start to make this list of people we have resentments against, and begin to forgive them, then this is the beginning of my making things right in our life. You might now be feeling better for the first time in your life as you continue to make a conscious effort to take responsibility for your sadness.  You realize the effort to take responsibility for your sadness.  You realize that you no longer want to stay depressed but instead are willing to risk feeling better (differently). This is taking the risk of being willing to change.

When a person stops smoking there is a residual craving for nicotine, and the craving is most painful for the first weeks after quitting the addiction.  Gradually over time, and due to being able to say no to the impulse to smoke  you feel stronger and so the painful withdrawal becomes less intense.  The same applies to the addiction of depression in that at first it’s sad thoughts, but with time and working our Twelve Steps and our active involvement  with the fellowship of Depressed Anonymous  we have the strength to say no to these sad thoughts and begin to choose hope and serenity instead,.”

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

Belief, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, The 12 Steps

When the pain gets bad enough, you will seek the cure

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“…Recovery is a gradual and pains taking process for both the person addicted to alcohol (depressive feelings)  and the person addicted to the addict…I had journeyed to counselor after counselor and program after  program seeking to get my husband well. But as the saying goes, “when the pain gets bad enough, you will  seek the cure.”  Recovery, however is looking for more than relief from the pain. In my case the cure involved a counselor, Al-Anon meetings, Al-Anon Adult children meetings, daily readings, meditations and new supportive friends. It also involved a constant struggle to be honest with myself, and to stop denying the feelings I had refused to recognize for  so long.  Recovery for me is a miracle. I still remember the craziness, but today my life no longer resembles a jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces that someone has dropped on the floor…Painful though recovery may be, it is well worth the effort and is definitely not as painful as no recovery at all.” The Forum, May 1991, Vol.39.No.5. p.11.

Comment: I know that recovery does take time and it does take work. Could this possibly be the worst thing a depressed person hears who wants to leave the prison of depression. Time and work? They tell us that they  can’t even get out of bed in the morning. They  have no desire to do anything, nothing, zilch!   I know what that  is all about. When I was depressed I too felt the pain of living  like a zombie. No energy. No motivation. Stuck in my own juices of nothingness. But like the person said,  quoted above, I knew that I had to do something because the pain became unbearable. That is when the  12 Steps of recovery pushed me toward a cure. They provided me   a way out of my own homemade emotional prison. I had to quit denying my painful feelings and get started  to work on myself. It was here at the Depressed Anonymous meeting that I was given my “toolkit” of recovery. There was no rush to get cured. There was only the desire to find a way to relieve myself from the pain of isolation and the lack of motivation to do anything for myself. My first job was to quit saddening myself.  With my “toolkit” and the 12 Steps I gradually, and with time, dismantled all that was keeping me prisoner.  I found the key that unlocked my prison door.

My life today is good. My feelings are no longer painful and crippling. The Depressed Anonymous Promises are true.  ” …a power greater than myself restored me to sanity.”

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

Please  VISIT  the STORE for literature resources. also, PRINT OUT MENU items from website for more detailed information about who we are and what we offer.

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook

Stick to the plan!

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Stick to the plan!  This is especially relevant for those of us who  try and live one day at a time.  I have found that by doing the same thing everyday, and in the same place everyday, that this in itself will provide the incentive to keep doing   the next right thing.  Doing the next right thing  will be the motivating power to get moving on our own recovery.  For many of us, we have found  that we have an established plan for our recovery in the HOME STUDY PROGRAM. Without a doubt, I have found that once we have felt a strong need to move out of the isolating deadness of depression, we no longer have to wait for something to happen, be that with  a prescribed medication or a twice a month or monthly therapy visit.  What do we do in the meantime with all this pain? What do we do til the medications kick in? Everyone knows that nothing happens over night. But something can happen  when we  do the same thing over and over again, every day,  Once we commit ourselves to the belief that something good can happen, especially with a concrete plan laid out before us, then change can happen. I know. Been there done that.

The Fellowship of Depressed Anonymous has developed an excellent toolkit for those of us who want a daily plan — a way to take our recovery a step at a time. We no longer have to wait to see if something happens, either with a medication or a therapy session. Don’t get me wrong, these are all possible routes to recovery, but why not do something that works in the meantime? There is a way out and the HOME STUDY PROGRAM provides just the right tools to give us insights as to how we got where we are today, namely depressed, and then provides ongoing insights for leaving our depression behind.

The two great resources in our “toolbox” is the Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition manual. This is the book written by those of us who were depressed and who wrote out our own reflections for each one of the 12 Steps. This exercise took 12 weeks of discussion by our  newly formed Depressed Anonymous group –no psychobabble here –just people like you and me sharing how the Steps had freed us from the bondage of isolation and despair.

Because not everyone was able to have a Depressed Anonymous fellowship in their community we saw a critical need for this Depressed Anonymous program of recovery to be used by any and all who were committed to leaving the prison of their depression. It was later that we developed The Depressed Anonymous Workbook that is used in conjunction with the DA Manual. So that is how the HOME STUDY kit  was developed. A person, possibly like yourself, can utilize a daily plan of action not only to help understand the nature of the depression process  but it likewise can help you answer questions about your own experiences. The two works, in combination, will enable you to clarify your own thoughts about how you got where you are today and then using the Steps to get where you want to be — depression free. Let’s be honest here, we all know that if we want to get out of the depression isolation it will take work and time.

To find out more about a program that works please visit the store and find out how to order this “toolkit” of recovery. You might also want to check our website to see if there is a group near you.

Stick to the plan! Do the next right thing. Get involved in your own recovery. You can do it. Just do it!

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

The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2015) Depressed Anonymous

Publications Louisville.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Belief, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Higher Power

Admit, believe, decide.

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These three words appear in the first three Steps of Depressed Anonymous.  These are the words that make us well. These are the words that start us on our journey to a life lived without fear. These are the words that will thrust us into a life filled with hope and meaningfulness. Of the 12 Steps of recovery, these are the first steps that one takes when they want to find peace and hope.

I remember so vividly when I took my first step over the threshold of despair  and isolation into the bright light of awareness and hope at my first 12 step group meeting. Just by walking through the door I admitted that I needed help. My life had spiraled out of control. It was on that day, at that meeting of the fellowship, that others heard my story, that I started to believe that  I could be restored to a purposeful life lived with hope and peace. It was on that day, at that meeting, that I made a decision to turn my life and my will over to the care of God as I understood God.

And here I am  today, 33 years later, not only with a life filled with a purpose designed to help others depressed but by doing so, have kept myself free from isolation and self-pity.

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

Depressed Anonymous, Negativity

Let’s get this straight…

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Let’s get this straight about  depression: it is a very serious illness and needs to be taken seriously as a potential life threatening illness. We already know about the rising number of suicides in the country, especially those from the ages of 18-35. Our mission is to let people  know that we are here (Depressed Anonymous) and we have a program that works.

What’s my point? My point is simple: know that depression is a life threatening illness and that society needs to get with it and learn how to reach those who feel hopeless and want to kill themselves. Because of those who come to our meetings and share how they have tried to kill themselves in the past but now have found hope in the fellowship of DA because of the acceptance of group members. They know they are not alone and can share their pain with members of the fellowship and gradually discover hope.

Rheatha  describes her situation of being overwhelmed and suicidal with her personal story in Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition, (2011). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.Pages 124-125.  Rheatha,  by making the 12 Steps a daily part of her life,  she found her life to be a gift  and not a burden.