Category Archives: Stinking Thinking

Addiction, Step 12, The 12 Steps

I Am More Than My Addiction!

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“…Because addicted individuals generally  possess such strong feelings of shame, embarrassment and self-loathing, it is extremely curative when they learn that they can be viewed by others in a positive manner.

…Shame, a more profound feeling all alcoholics and addicts (saddicts)  struggle with implies “I feel bad because of what I am.”  Addiction from this view implies that group therapy must enhance the self understanding and the acceptance that one is worthwhile despite their strong feelings of self loathing and self-hatred.  (The Depressed Anonymous Fellowship Group. ED)   ….before a person can  be healed, they have to know they can heal another. …It is this opportunity to learn that one has the ability to help another in being a healer which supports the use of  group psychotherapy. In  fact, this is the very same principle which AA  (DA) applies within the Twelfth Step of its Twelve Step program for recovery. The alcoholic and the addict (saddict)  maintains their own sobriety by helping another alcoholic get sober.” Source excerpts: Group Psychotherapy with Addicted Populations.  , (1988)  Flores, Phillip J., The Haworth Press. NY

Likewise, the person depressed has a better chance of  overcoming depression when they hear someone else,  with the same situation, feeling better and overcoming their depression.

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

Comment

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

Fear, The 12 Steps

The Pattern Of Fear

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When we are afraid we feel a horrible sensation in the “pit of the stomach.”  This is the most distressing component of fear. However, the complete picture of fear includes all the symptoms induced by adrenaline: the sweating hands, churning stomach, racing heart, tight chest,. etc., as well as the spasm of fear left in our “middle.”

Normally we do not feel our body functioning, because parasympathetic nerves hold the sympathetic nerves dominate the parasympathetic and we are conscious of certain organs functioning. A healthy body without stress  is  a peaceful body.

The treatment of all symptoms depends on a  few simple rules. When you first read them you may think,” This is too simple for me. It will take something more drastic to cure me.” In spite of this, you will need to be shown how to apply this simple treatment and may often have to reread instructions.
The principles of treatment as laid out by Dr. Claire  Weekes is as follows:

Facing

Accepting

Floating

Letting time pass

Thee is nothing mysterious or surprising about the treatment and yet it is enlightening to see how many people sink deeper into their illness, by doing the exact opposite.

First, becoming unduly alarmed by his symptoms, examining each as it appeared, “listening in” in apprehension. He tried to free himself of the unwelcome feelings by pushing them away, agitatedly seeking occupation to force forgetfulness =–in other words, by fighting or running away.

A person is bewildered for not having a cure overnight. He kept looking back and worrying because so much time was passing and he was  not yet cured, as if this were an evil spirit that could be exorcised if only he, or the doctor, knew the trick. He was impatient with time.

Briefly, he spent his time:

Running away, not facing;

Fighting, not accepting;

Arresting and “listening in,” not floating past;

Being impatient with time,  not letting time pass.

I want to give credit to that wonderful Australian Psychiatrist,  Dr.Claire Weekes, whose  incisive thoughts, here and in other  excellent works on how to have peace, hope and help for one’s nerves. (See: Hope and help for your nerves.).

I personally have found her thoughts on anxiety and panic to be so accurate as I have experienced these feeling myself. In fact one occasion I remember with clarity as  I let my first fear  of panic over come me. The intensity of that first fear caused me to try and run away, not face the feelings, fight the feeling and continue to “listen in” and not just let the fear float on by, and with time our thoughts and feelings became calm and tranquil. I learned that if I could tell myself calmly, which I did,  when I felt the intensity of the first fear that the feeling is  ” uncomfortable but not life threatening,” and continued saying it like a mantra of sorts, until my heart rate went down, my hands were no longer clammy, and all together I regained my  emotional balance.

12 Step Meeting, Anger, Depressed Anonymous Workbook

We learn to be “nice.”

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” Because you are unaware of being angry does not mean that you are not angry. It is the anger you are unaware of which can do the most damage to you and to your relationships with other people, since it does not get expressed, but in inappropriate ways. Freud once likened anger to the smoke in an old fashioned wood burning stove. The normal avenue for discharge of the smoke is up the flue and out of the chimney; if the normal avenue is blocked, the smoke will leak out the stove in unintended ways…around the door, through the grate, etc., choking everyone in the room. If all avenues of escape are blocked, the fire goes out and the stove ceases to function. Likewise, the normal human expression of anger is gross physical movement and /or loud vocalization; watch a red-faced hungry infant sometime. We learn to “be nice,” which  means  (among other things) hiding “bad” feelings. By adulthood, even verbal expression is curtailed, since a civilized person is expected to be “civil.” Thus, expression is stifled, and to protect ourselves from the unbearable burden of continually unexpressed “bad” feelings, we go to the next step and convince ourselves that we are not angry, even when we are.  Such deception is seldom completely successful and the blocked anger “leaks out” in inappropriate ways…”

Source: The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2001) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 33.

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Some of my own feelings about anger have to do when anger is stifled or swallowed. I do know that a result of stifling my anger is the build up of resentments. If we want to really deal with our anger then we must be willing to express our feelings,  even though they might make us feel very uncomfortable. All I am saying is that  NOT to express feelings and stifle them will create more emotional pain and more damage for our lives. So, to my mind, the best way to get the anger out is to get oneself to a Depressed Anonymous meeting where we can get the help we need  and share those feelings that cause us so much grief.

Compulsion, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship

My depression just came out of the blue

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A question from the Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Step Eleven. Page  79.

Question: How do you see your depression as a compulsion?  What are the triggers that cause you to spiral downward back into the dark prison 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 depression oriented  ways of thinking, behaving and feeling.

Question #11.1   Write down the way that you perceive your depression? Can you distinguish the various parts that go to form what we call the depression experience?

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 never to get angry!

11.5   A  need to have someone in my life before I feel I am somebody!

11.6    Please write down how one or more of the above keeps you down,  despairing and hopeless? Also, write about where these attitudes come from?

Sources:  Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

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

Note: Both these books make up the Home Study Program combo. See Visit the Store for more literature that  is recommended for our 12 step fellowship.

Belief, Despair, Fear, Isolation, Shame

We are what we repeatedly do. – Aristotle

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“It is our own real, lived experience which leads us into the prison of depression. It is not a gene, or own hormones, or our dysfunctional and illogical thinking, our lack of faith, or our complexes and inadequacies which have brought depression  upon us, it is what happened to us  and, most importantly, what we have made of what has happened to us: it is the conclusions  we draw from our experiences.

That sort  of conclusions which lead us, finally, into the prison of depression was not drawn illogically or fantastically, or crazily, but were the correct conclusions to draw,  given the information we had at the time.

If, when you were a child, all the adults whom you loved and trusted were telling you that you were bad and that if you  didn’t mend your ways terrible things would happen to you, you wisely and correctly drew the conclusions that you were bad and had to work hard to be good. If, when you were a child, all the people you loved and trusted left you or disappointed or betrayed you, you wisely drew the conclusion that you must be wary of other people and that you should never love anyone completely ever again.  You were not to know that if we grow up believing  that we are intrinsically bad, and that other people are dangerous, we shall become increasingly isolated, the joy will disappear  from our life, and that we shall fall into despair….” SOURCE: Dorothy Rowe. The Depression Handbook. Collins. London.

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I believe that in my own case what Dr. Rowe points out is so true. Our childhood experiences are so important because they set us up for how we think about ourselves as we mature. I remember vividly when I was in the 3rd grade, a teacher shamed me in  front of the whole class because I couldn’t get something right. She told me that I  would never  be like my brother whom was brilliant or my uncle who was also brilliant. For many years after when I thought about that moment in the 3rd grade I could still feel my face getting hot with shame. The worst part is that what she said that day I believed. As I grew into middle age it became important to me that what she said had no bearing on me really, as I was not my brother or my uncle. And that that was OK.

Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Hope, Step 01, The 12 Steps, Victim Thinking

You can change the way you feel. You are not a victim.

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” Who better knows the pain and the isolation of depression  than the person who has been depressed? It is my personal conviction, both as a psychotherapist and as a person who has experienced depression that it was only when I admitted that I was depressed that I could start working my way out of this terrible and immobilizing experience. In my own experience, I thought  I was losing my mind, as I couldn’t cram another thought into my head and couldn’t remember a thing that I had just read or thought a minute before,.  I was tired all the time and would wake up early in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. But that’s the best news most people hear when they come to Depressed Anonymous meeting for the first time, namely, that they are not losing their minds. When you’re depressed, you feel your mind is made out of cotton and all life seems grey, cold and lifeless.

The important thing to remember about depression is that you are not a victim. You have bought into the belief that you can’t change how you feel.  You need to believe that once you change the way you think then that in itself can begin to produce a change in the way you feel.”

In Depressed Anonymous,(2011), the  guiding light of the  fellowship of Depressed Anonymous, a 12 Step program of recovery we read that we are not victims of depression.  In fact our basic guides out of the pit of depression are the Twelve Steps. What you have just read in the paragraphs preceding are some basic thoughts  that can help take down the walls that have built your prison of depression. Step One is where we all begin our life giving journey of hope. Step One states quite simply that “We admitted that we were powerless over depression and that our live had become unmanageable.”   By following this program of recovery, step by step, you will soon discover that you not only can be part  of a life giving fellowship but now you possess the tools to live a life free of depression.

SOURCE: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.  Step One- Page 29.