Category Archives: Acceptance

Mental Health Strategies for Coping With Anxiety and Panic

The following are some of the ways that we can cope and deal positively with panic and anxiety.

  1. Remember that although your feelings and symptoms are very frightening, they are not dangerous or harmful.
  2. Understand that what you are experiencing is just an exaggeration of your normal bodily reaction to stress.
  3. Do not fight your feelings or wish them away.The more that you are willing to face them, the less intense they will become.
  4. Do not add to your panic by thinking about what “might” happen. If you find yourself asking “what if?” Tell yourself “So what.”
  5. Stay in the present. Notice what is really happening to you as opposed to what you think might happen.
  6. Label your fear level from zero to ten and watch it go up and down. Notice that it that it does not stay at a very high level for more than a few seconds.
  7. When you find yourself thinking about the fear, change your “what if” thinking. Focus on and carry out a simple and manageable task, such as counting backward by 3’s or snapping a rubber band on your wrist.
  8. Notice when you stop adding fearful thoughts to your fear, it begins to face.
  9. When th fear comes, expect and accept it . Wait and give it time to pass, without running away from it.
  10. Be proud of yourself for your progress thus far, and think about how good you will feel when you succeed this time.

Reprinted courtesy of the Mental Health Association. Understanding panic disorder.

Change always involves uncertainty

“When we listen we learn, and to learn means to keep listening. Is there anything today that you have learned by listening. Write down what you have heard that specially applies to you today. Write down what you have learned.
Dorothy Rowe wrote the following:
Dangers,perhaps even greater dangers threaten you if you leave your prison of depression for the ordinary world. There you might have to change, and change always involves uncertainty. The good thing about being depressed is that you can make every day be the same. You can be sure of what is going to happen. You can ward off all those people and events that expect a response from you. Your prison life has a regular routine, and like any long-term prisoner, you grow accustomed to the jail’s security nd predictability. The prison of depression may not be comfortable, but at least it is safe. ”

SOURCES; The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Ky Page 85. Question 11.19.
*Originally appeared in Rowe, D., Depression: The way out of your prison. Page 127.

Helen, gets it! “I have to take responsibility for my own life.”

The following excerpt is from a letter that Helen wrote to the Depressed Anonymous fellowship about her recovery from depression.

Her story is just one of the many stories, relating their recovery from depression, found in the Personal Stories section of Depressed Anonymous Pages 110-152.

“Now that I look back and see the way I was and see now how I am now,
I can’t believe that I ever knew that other person. This person is different altogether. I like this person now very much. I am thankful to the group. They are just wonderful. They are my family. They are my Depressed Anonymous family. I also have my church family. It is a wonderful feeling to know that there is a Higher Power that can take you through these things. At first, I thought, “I doubt that very much” when everyone was talking about the Higher Power and peace in my life. Then it happened to me. Every few days, the world dumps down on you and beats you down. That’s my life. I always think to myself that there is that extra strength that I didn’t have before. I feel that everything is going to be OK with me. I have that peace now myself.”

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous (1998) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. pp 145-148.

Being Addicted to the Outcome

“Being addicted to the outcome I came to realize after deep examination of my character defects that I am still being addicted to the outcome of situations in my life. Which means I am trying with all my might to control the outcome. I don’t want to accept what God has planned for my outcome in certain situations. I want to steer the situation and control iT into my absolute vision of what I want and needed it to be. My addiction here is the projected outcome of the situation. My character defect is control. Control is a very hard character defect to change and one that I strongly believe needs God’s help to see it clearly and be granted the willingness to change it. Most humans want and deeply desire control of something in their life, so much so, that they would do anything to sway the matter, thus control things deeply to obtain their desired outcome. But there is another serious character defect in this equation. Far more important to examine than our desired outcome to the point of being controlling. This is an amazing spiritual arrogance that we know better, than the highest power knows, what is the right and proper outcome for us. But there is another serious character defect in this equation. Far more important to examine than our desired outcome to the point of being controlling. This is an amazing spiritual arrogance that we know better than the highest power knows what is the right and proper outcome for us. We are essentially saying we don’t believe your outcome, God. We don’t believe you could possibly be as good and perfect as are our chosen outcomes. This is a serious mistrusting of God.

The next thing we must look at is acceptance. Because once we are able to let go of the strongly desired outcome, which we are addicted to, we must stop and allow ourselves to accept whatever God has lined up for the outcome. This is sometimes difficult. It takes a good close walk with our higher power every single day, which is exactly what develops the needed trust in God. Once we begin to move into a place where we accept that our higher power loves us and wants good things for us, it then becomes easier to let go and let God in all the outcomes. This is where the step 3 prayer, taken every day, is so helpful with acceptance of God’s will in our life, instead of our own will and dominating the outcome that we insist upon. We can’t possibly know more than God, so who are we to think that we know exactly what the outcome should be to the situation days from now. How arrogant to think that we know everything. Letting go and letting God and acceptance, are the keys to the overcoming of the defects of control and arrogance.”

Debra C. NC


Copyright(c) Debra Sanford. A Medley of Depression Stories. #35. Pages91-92.(First Edition) 2017. ISBN 978-197 4499601. This book can be purchased at Amazon.com.

I will try to improve my understanding of my behavior

LEAVING LONELINESS BEHIND: 12 DECSIONS

“DECISION 7: I WILL TRY TO IMPROVE MY UNDERSTANDING OF MY BEHAVIOR.”

All actions have consequences. and they are usually different from what we expect.

In a situation where we want our cake and eat it too, we always try to have both, but we learn that in trying to get both, we lose both.

If you are to improve your skills in understanding people, in order to rid your loneliness, working out the consequences OF what you and others do, is extremely important.

You really have to develop more flexible ways in dealing with the consequences when the consequence is anger.”


TOMORROW DECISION 8: I WILL BE MORE ACCEPTING OF OTHER PEOPLES ANGER AND NOT TAKE It PERSONALLY.”

Seeing another person’s point of view: How important is it?

DECISION 6: SEEING ANOTHER’S POINT OF VIEW.HOW IMPORTANT IS IT FOR LEAVING MY LONELINESS BEHIND?

By seeing things from another’s point of view has a lot to do with forming healthy relationships and coming closer to feeling part of another’s world. Dorothy Rowe asks “what does it feel like to be a mother. You are surrounded all day long by people only two feet high.” Any Mother can tell you that it is much different than being with a group of adults. Both of these worlds have their own uniqueness, by their very nature, possessing beauty and a diversity of their own. And one way to know someone, is to see life from their perspective. I call it one’s “lived reality.”

When we tell ourselves that we know what others are thinking, feeling, we are only confirming our own point of view. To find out if we are right, is to ask the question, “How are you?”

If we say that others think about us in a certain way, and if we do not check out their thoughts, we can claim that other people see things about ourselves, which will suit our purpose.

If we tell ourselves that we are boring and dull, we can refuse to talk with anyone. By being ruled by these negative thoughts, we don’t have to make the effort to talk to people. We continue to remain lonely. We build our own prisons, ultimately deepening our own lockdown. We create our own isolation. We cause our own loneliness.


TOMORROW’S DECISION 7: “i WILL TRY TO IMPROVE MY UNDERSTANDING OF MY BEHAVIOR.” LEAVING LONELINESS BEHIND. THE 12 DECISIONS.

Leaving Loneliness Behind (3) – Our Twelve decisions

DECISION #3. “I don’t expect instant results or results commensurate with efforts that I have made.
One of the mistakes which relatives and friends of those who are depressed make:
A. I have given the person my love and attention. Why isn’t he or she better?
B. I have given the person a good amount of my time and attention, why doesn’t he/she show any amount of improvement?
You can make similar mistakes. You can think:
(a) I have given the them my time and attention, so why aren’t they close friends with me now?
(b) And, I have given this person so much attention, why don’t we have a close friendship now?
(c) I have given them so much of my time, why haven’t I stopped from being lonely?
It can take a person quite a long time to get to know each other, so you need to be patient with other people. It will take you both some time to give up the habit of making friends just on appearances only, when risking the telling to others about yourself. This is not an easy thing to do. We don’t want to be rejected.
We must take into account how any society, has its rules and practices about meeting and making friends. Different cultures and nationalities have different ways of making friends, and even though they are different, doesn’t mean that they are better than my own. They are just different.
We need to spend quality time together to get to know each other. We need to listen to their life stories and they listen to our experiences.
Friendship is not a matter of getting persons to be interested in you alone, as it is about forming a relationship with another.It is most important for you to show interest in the other person.”

Tomorrow: (4) I WILL BE INTERESTED IN THE OTHER PERSON.

The Missing Piece

“There is a story about a circle that was missing a piece. The story centers on a circular shape-like creature missing a wedge-shaped piece of itself. It doesn’t like this and sets out to find its missing piece, singing,

Oh, I’m looking for my missin’ piece,
I/m looking for my missin’ piece.
Hi-dee-ho here I go,
Lookin’ for my missin’ piece.

It starts out on a grand adventure, searching for the perfect piece to complete itself while singing and enjoying the scenery. But after the circle finally finds the exact- sized wedge that fits it, it begins to realize that it can no longer do the things that it used to enjoy doing, like singing or or rolling slowly enough to enjoy the company of a worm or a butterfly. It decides that it was happier when searching for the missing piece than actually having it. So, it gently puts the piece down and continues searching happily.”


“The Missing Piece” by Shel Silverstein presents us with the lesson of the story that in some strange way, we are more whole when we are missing something.”

It is often said that the joy is in the journey. While most of us are on some type of journey or other, we admit that we also are searching for that missing piece. Our life is just not complete until that missing piece shows up, and of course, that could be one of a zillion things.

Remember, the circle finds happiness, not in the “thing” or “circumstance” that would make him happy and complete, but it is enjoying what lies surrounding him. It is right in front of him, in plain sight.

If we are seeking perfection in our lives, there is a strong possibility that we will miss what we are looking for. In other words, missing the joy of living in the NOW, the present. We gradually learn that What you seek, seeks you.

In my life today, I accept my own missing parts that I thought would make me happy. Surprisingly, just the joy of taking life one day at a time, living in harmony with others, plus walking everyday in what I believe is God’s will is for me, today.

I am part of a growing and positive fellowship, which is composed of hundreds of adventurers, each seeking their own missed part. The beauty of it all, is that we each have found what we are looking for, that is, a place, with others like ourselves, where there is no longer a need to keep rolling along, wanting it all, a perfect utopia. Instead, we are finding that wonderful acceptance from others in our live, just the way we are. This is the discovery of our grand adventure. It is progress that we are seeking, not perfection.

Hugh S., for the fellowship

Copyright(c) Dep-Anon: A 12 Step recovery program for families and friends of the depressed, Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. Pages 38-39. Quoted in (c) “The Missing Piece” from Shel Silverstein. (Children’s Picture Book) HarperCollins, 1976.

Is The Road That You Are Traveling, Taking You To A Place Where You Want To Go?

If you are going down a road and don’t like what’s in front of you, and you look behind you and you don’t like what you see, get off the road. Create a new path.
– Maya Angelou

When I was traveling down a road that led me into one brick wall after another, I made up my mind to find a new road–without all the brick walls.

The road that I am on now, a road which I have created, still exits with some obstacles, but no longer am I faced with unmovable brick walls. I got off this road.

What happened, you might ask. Well, to keep this brief, I ran into a bunch of people who were traveling on a very wide and level road, one which they said would lead me to where I wanted to go. (no, this is not the Yellow Brick Road of the Wizard of Oz). Amazingly, they all knew where I needed to go. This surprised me, as I didn’t even know where I needed to go.

With my God’s help, a fellowship of wonderful brothers and sisters, all fellow travelers, continuing to travel on this road, a personal path, filled with hope and serenity.

This path has a name, in case you are curious. It’s called the Twelve Steps of Recovery. This path is filled with signs of hope, those spiritual principles which are our guardrails, keeping us all headed in the right direction.

It’s even possible that I might even meet you on this path. I hope.

Hugh S., for the Depressed Anonymous fellowship

The Circle Dance

If you have ever been depressed or are depressed at this moment, you are familiar with the Circle Dance.

I know the dance steps well, and in fact, I could share with you some of the basic steps, illustrating familiar dance steps.

First of all, let me say that you already know those steps that automatically get you to perform the “Circle Dance. You get caught up emotionally, the moment certain negative thoughts come bouncing across the dance floor into your mind. You know them as that painful hollowness in your gut, a desire to quit the dance and lay down, or to bash yourself with thoughts of how bad you feel.

Sometimes, starting with those life events from childhood, when your caregivers, be they parents or guardians, made you feel worthless and unwanted. These thoughts and feelings are constantly triggered by those with whom you share this life. You avoid people, think of yourself as unlovable –and the dance goes on and on in your head.

The Feelings of hopelessness produces unpleasant feelings. The feelings produce an unpleasant mood and the dance begins. The mood speeds up the dance and whisks you away into that painful circle with its attendant anxieties, sucking you down into the mental quicksand, swallowing you with all the terror and fright of losing all hope, much less your future. The Circle Dance will take you, everyday and in every way, to where you know you don’t want to go.

This dance is familiar. It is like the helpless insect caught in the web of the spider. The why of this hellish addiction to sadness, is never fully addressed with any solutions or answers. We want to know how to stop it. How to control it. We ask ourselves, how is it that I am depressed? How did I get into this terrifying circle, this loop which keeps me locked in a mood of hopelessness and despair. Where did all this sadness, anxiety originate? Will I ever find a way out? Is the dance, on automatic pilot, going to destroy me? Am I, a victim, without a source of help? Is this the way life is for me to be–forever filled with misery?
So much of the time I feel like I am on a train, heading toward a precipice, with no way of stopping it or escaping disaster?

Through all this, pain and confusion, you become an expert dancer, in fact, you know of others who like you, are expert dancers — trapped in dancing within their own Circle Dance.

The dance, it is so familiar. It is a defense, a comfort. We gradually learn to use it to protect us from the pain, without ever having a clue as to how it took over my life.

“A famous psychiatrist, a Dr. Freud, once theorized “that the reason a person continues to do the Circular Dance within themselves, is an effort to touch an unpleasant early life behavior or that long since forgotten event, buried in one’s unconscious. The Circular Dance promotes our addictive nature and the compulsion to repeat, is an effort by our mind to remember what it was that is the cause of our present cycle of misery, spinning us around and around – looking for answers as to what we do and why we do what we do and feel the way that we do, but never able to unlock the prison of our sadness.”

The Depressed Anonymous 12 step fellowship provides us with a possible solution to this question of no longer allowing the Circular Dance to determine the our life’s direction.

It is my belief, after participating in Hundreds of Depressed Anonymous meetings, over three decades or more, that the compulsion to repeat these sslf-destructive thoughts and images, may be linked to early childhood periods, accompanied with their painful, traumatic events. It is in those early days, that our Circular Dance took root and began to keep us locked down in its circular loop.

It is here, in the 12 Step Fellowship of Depressed Anonymous, that those unpleasant feelings, resultant from physical. emotional and mental abuse by significant others (parents and/or guardians, others) can be shared, voiced and talked about safely, and confidentially in the light of the accepting fellowship that we experience in all of our mutual help meetings.

It is possible that with time, patience and work, that these early feelings of hurt and feeling worthless, to name just a few, can be identified and shown how they have affected us negatively in the way we feel about ourselves today. With the help and work of the group, we are able to locate and make conscious those early life experiences that have been pushed aside. Because the feelings were too powerful and painful to examine and so they were buried in our unconscious. Basically, we can say, that there is no longer a need for that compulsive and addictive Circular Dance that our mind had used to punish us with guilt and shame. We now have the freedom to live life, recover from the wounds of the past, and live life today with hope and purpose. That is my wish for you this day.. And for myself.

No one puts me down, for saying that I am depressed. We never hear a “Snap nap out of it” at our meetings. If we could “snap out of it” there would be no need for our meetings. With work, time and the fellowship we no longer need a dance that goes nowhere but down. Now we are spiraling upward. We thrive!

Hugh S., for the Fellowship


Copyright(c) Hugh Smith (1986, 2013) 2nd Edition. I’ll do it when I feel better. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.
Pages 64-65.