Category Archives: 12 Step Meeting

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Addiction, Affirmations, Anxiety, Attachment, Compulsion, DA Literature, Fellowship, Grief, Hope, Purpose, The 12 Steps

The Circle Dance

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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.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Affirmations, Choice, Community building, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Helpful, Hope, Isolation, Mutual Aid, Purpose, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, The 12 Steps

In Control

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The following is a passage from the Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY Pages 7-8.

Surrender and accept.
I want to admit that my life has been out of control for many years, but now that I am in touch with truth, I believe that my life can be lived out differently.
I can begin to use the Twelve Steps and begin the task of working myself out of the pit of depression. I believe that with time and with patience, plus the group fellowship and support, that I will be able to make some positive strides in feeling different about myself and my world.

A question: How many years, months, days can I remember being depressed? How far back in time can I remember always feeling sad and wanting to withdraw. Write out your experiences about these experiences.

Write down the number of people you have admitted to that you have been depressed.
Write down their reactions to your admission.
When you feel depressed what do you say to yourself? What action or behavior do you do when you feel this way?

Does it promote more isolation or being more connected with others? Please write these out.

Is your life more unmanageable now since you have admitted that you are depressed? Can you tell a difference now that you are admitting that depression is and has been a big problem in your life? YES? OR NO? Please write out these experiences.

These are just a few of the many questions that you may want to answer as you go through this Workbook.

Each of the Twelve Step chapters has a number of questions that will help you discover how you feel about certain areas of your life. Positive solutions are included in each chapter and can aid in your efforts to escape from your own prison of depression.

You can answer these questions, possibly some of which have never crossed your mind before now. The Workbook, can be answered in your own privacy. Or, you may want to answer them with a friend or sponsor.

You can discover more about our fellowship of Depressed Anonymous and discover you can be part of a growing group of those persons like you, who are also searching for a way out of their depression.

Our website is https://depressedanon.com with listings of daily DA meetings (no fees or dues) online as well as literature, like this Workbook, which may be ordered online.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Avoidance, Belief, Choice, Community building, Faith, Fellowship, Focus, Helpful, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Honesty, Hope, Mindfulness, Mutual Aid, Negativity, Pain, Prayer, Step 01, Step 08, Step 09

101: How to eliminate wild weeds (Negative Thinking)

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Eliminating weeds from our gardens or from the Spring beauties who show their marvelous colors every year, makes it our major task to dig the weeds out, cutting down these thriving seeds of destruction. They become a pest when allowed to grow and take over what was hoped to be something beautiful and bountiful. Negative thinking is likewise that noxious weed- It yields no good fruit!
Our strategy, is to knock them out before they can get a root- hold, destroying our hard work and handiwork. Seeing the first sign of the noxious weed (negative thinking) tells us that more are on the way.

This I believe, serves as a metaphor for when a mind has been taken over with negative thinking and accompanied by a sense of hopelessness.
Our mind, if filled with uninvited negative thinking, cycling us down with a feeling of loss and hopelessness, we find it’s time to get into action, take a crack at that first negative thought–before it even gets a chance to sabotage our thinking, our feelings and motivation to change.
When the negative thoughts begins–say STOP–don’t go any further with a debate about that first thought. We refuse to get entangled with this tangent thought, always leading us to places where we don’t want to go. We have been at this point of thinking far too many times. We know now how to dismantle this crippling form of negative thinking. Change the script. You do the managing of what you think about.
First, cut the thought down to size–don’t let it scare you, but tell it “I’m not going to believe this anymore.” Another reccuring negative thought, for example might be, “You are worthless.” When this thought appears, we can replace it with a positive “sunspot.” This “sunspot” can be a positve recent mental image of a past event or a positive affirmation of ouselves. And with your own weed control operation, tell yourself as many good things about yourself as you want. What you can accomlish at this point is to see the weed (thought) for what it is. Cut it down, like a bad weed, and dig it out. Have an affirmation ready at hand, to replace each and every negative thought. Positivty thinking is what you are all about!

AFFIRMATION
“Making direct amends and using a personal inventory continues our progress and helps free us from all the hurts of the past. We know now that we can’t afford to think long about real of imagined hurts, or we will throw ourselves back into saddening ourselves once again.”

REFLECTION
One of the things that is toxic for the depressed peron is negative thinking. This thinking continues to grow, once nurtured by my attention into a large and uncontrolled wild weed, taking all the attention from the good things happening in my life. I know that I can no longer give into that first thought allowing to pound me to the ground. My negative thinking is very much akin to drinking for the alcoholic. Once I give into that first moment of self-bashing, the cycle of depression begins. There can be no second negative thought!
Hurts from my past continue to grow stronger the more I allow them to dominate my thinking and my behavior. Hurts are best eradicated (Seep 4 and Step 5) when I deal with them openly and honestly.

MEDITATION
The spirit hopes in God as we begin today with a prayer and a belief that this day can be a good one, like the days that I have had in the past.”

Copyright(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for 12 Step fellowships. Depressed anonymous Publications.Louisville, Ky. Pages 153-154. (September 17)

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous. Third Edition (2011). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Choice, Community building, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Helpful, Higher Power, Love, Mutual Aid, Prayer, Purpose, Spirituality, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, Supportive Actions, The 12 Steps

There is no spot that God is not

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That is great assurance when we wonder if God is with us. Obviously, God is. And why is it obvious? Because, everywhere we look, we see th work of God’s creation. Someone once commented that there is more of God’s creative life under our feet than what surrounds us above ground. In a clod of dirt, there are billions of life forms engaged and interconnected with each other –much like any loving community.

“Good bye” is a common expression when we leave someone’s company.
Actually, the original saying was “God be with you.” WE can always appreciate that departure gift.

From my standpoint, and from my own experience, I have found the Higher Power, or God as we understand God,, manifesting itself in our group recovery program of Depressed Anonymous. I call it the “Miracle of the Group.” Most time, I find that there is more talk of God, and God’s presence in one’s life, than you could imagine.

Many times, I have heard members of our fellowship speak of how there was a “before” and “after” in their lives as they began their recovery from depression. Once they came to believe that a power greater than themselves could restore them to sanity, life began to change. Again, and not surprisingly, we personally find that “there is no spot that God is not.” The freeing spirituality of the Twelve spiritual principles of recovery, the Steps, shows how God loves us just the way we are. Even though we may feel broken and alone, when we come through the door of recovery, we gradually feel a special presence of God, surrounding us each, with it’s love, acceptance and guidance. That love and sharing creates a mutually supportive community, above and below ground.

COPYRIGHT(c) Depressed Anonymous, THIRD EDITION (2011). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.

For more information on ordering our literature online, please see The Depressed Anonymous Bookstore at Depressedanon.com

12 Step Meeting, Choice, Community building, Dep-Anon: Family and friends, Fellowship, Helpful, Helpful Thinking, Hope, Mutual Aid, Serenity, Service, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, The 12 Steps, Uncategorized

I wish my family had a depression support group

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If you are reading this blog today, and are a family member who is depressed and wishes they had a family that understood how the disease of depression has taken over our whole life, then this Dep-Anon 12 Step recovery group is for your family.

Starting this Monday, August 22, at 2PM EDT and 1PM CST our first Dep-Anon meeting will LAUNCH with its own group program of recovery. The Dep-Anon manual will be used for all our meetings, either on ZOOM or at face to face meetings.You can read more about the Dep-Anon manual on our website at depresedanon.com.
JOINING THE MEETING<

To JOIN the meeting, please use MEETING ID: 846 6885 1123 and the password is: serenity (lowercase).
You can also use the link to enter the meeting by emailing us at [email protected]. This link can be used at all recurring meetings.

Over the years i have heard this statement, “I wish my family had a depression support group tp go to,” voiced more times than I can count. Since depression is a family illness, each of us who are or have been depressed, know the importance of a family supporting their depressed significant other. But that is not always the case. Because of a lack of understanding of the illness of depression -the focus of the family is mostly focused on attempting to cure, heal, or change their depressed loved one.

Now, we know, from personal experiences, that the focus needs to be where it belongs–on the person(s) who need to be changed. That would be the family members. Recently, Dep-Anon, a 12 Step recovery program for families and friends of the depressed has been developed. There is nothing new to our approach as we are modeled on the successful Al-Anon program of recovery. Their focus too, is not on their alcoholic family member but is focused on their own need to understand the nature and disease of alcoholism. They learn as families, helping other families, how alcoholism affects not only the alcoholic, but affects the whole family system. It’s a family disease. By putting into use, for their own personal lives, growth and health using the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dep-Anon, has but one purpose, to help families of the depressed. Here too, the family uses the 12 spiritual principles of Depressed Anonymous–a program geared for family to family support and encouragement. These families gather together, supporting each other, encouraging and sharing their own successes and ways that work for them. They continue to learn about the serious nature of depression. Instead of being critical and frustrated trying to get the depressed to do what we want them to do, for example, trying to get them out of bed, or telling them to get a job, or to “snap out of it.” Family members, many times discover that their methods of helping don’t help, but instead, push the depressed further into isolation.

Dep-Anon can be a key for a family to give the best support that they can to their loved one. This is examen, in a group setting with other family members, learning and discussing with each other what depression is, what it feels like (to the depressed person) and how it effects their total thinking, feeling, and behavior. The Dep-Anon family group will help family learn what depression is and what it is not. We learn how to keep the focus on ourselves, our own self-care, and living in the solution of positive ways to take care of ourselves. Again, we focus on ourselves. In a very real way, it is in taking care of our selves and being provided with a solution focused understanding of what depression is, that we will provide our loved one a positive family environment, where there is respect and which gradually creates harmony and healing among all its members.

What is created here is a symbiotic relationship between the depressed member and the family. What one does positively in helping themselves in recovery (Depressed Anonymous fellowship) will have a positive effect on the other. (families supporting other families).

Remember, Dep-Anon ZOOM meeting Monday at 2PM EDT and 1PM CST.
MEETING ID: 846 6885 1123 Password: serenity (lower case-no Capitals).

12 Step Meeting, Addiction, Community building, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Honesty, Hope, Mutual Aid, Positivity, Purpose, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, Step 11, Step 12, Stress, The 12 Steps

In helping others I helped myself. Gloria’s story, continued.

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The following story continues from page 140 of Gloria’s story In helping others,I helped myself

“There are four of us who were there together first on June 6th 1985. We had become very good friends. I still remember the things from the very first meeting that the counselor told us. I’ve seen people come and go. Some helped from the very first meeting. Some wanting a wand waved. It has helped me over the rough spots., and gave me courage and to go on as a widow, I have found a peace in life, a special joy in knowing and loving people. In helping others, I have helped myself. I know my background in life has made me degreased at times. My mother was abusive and I realized later in life that it was an emotional illness. I forgave her.

I will continue to attend Depressed Anonymous. Every meeting is different and who knows what mystery each group holds? One never knows who needs me, who needs a smile or hug, who needs to feel that they are not alone, or who needs to know that there is a God that loves all.”

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous. THIRD EDITION (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY 140-141.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Choice, Community building, Courage, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Helpful, Hope, Mutual Aid, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03

In helping others, I helped myself. Gloria’s story.

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” I remember my first night at a Depressed Anonymous meeting. It was the 6th of June, 1985. I went into the room of people I didn’t know and was afraid, I wondered what it would be like and sat at the back of the room so that I could leave if I wanted to. I was withdrawn with the pain of depression, so I knew I wouldn’t open my mouth to these people I didn’t know. The man in charge took me out to another room and asked me a few questions. I found out later it was to see if I needed medical care. When it came my turn to talk at the group of nine people, I refused. Everyone had a very sad story to tell. When I came home, I decided that I didn’t need any more sadness, so I wouldn’t return the next Thursday night. I didn’t. However, the next Thursday, I was ready To
go try again.

After my fourth Thursday, I opened up a little. I didn’t trust these people yet. As the Thursdays past, I became more relaxed and realized they could become good friends to me. I felt a closeness to these people, and I always liked helping others, so I opened up more and more.

After meetings we would go to a restaurant for coffee and food. One night I was laughing and talking, and our counselor in charge said “Gloria you have opened up like a rose. Petal by petal you have opened up.” Well, I felt special and very good inside. It had been a lot of work, and it was noticed by him. I felt proud.”
-Gloria’s story is continued tomorrow here at the blog.

Hugh S., for the fellowship

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous Publications. THIRD EDITION. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. Page 140.

You can find 30 other positive recovery stories and literature at Depressedanon.com. See The Depressed Anonymous Bookstore. You can order online.

A new publication by DAP is their new manual, Dep-Anon, a 12 step recovery program for families and friends of the depressed. This book is also available at the bookstore.

12 Step Meeting, Community building, Dep-Anon: Family and friends, Depressed Anonymous, Faith, Fellowship, Helpful, Mutual Aid, Positivity, Service, Step 12, Supportive Actions, The 12 Steps, The Promises

Dep-Anon, a 12 Step, online ZOOM meeting, for family and friends of the depressed is now available.

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A new book, DEP-ANON: A 12 step recovery program for families and Friends of the depressed (2021) is now available. This new book also serves as a manual, used at all meetings, providing family members and friends of the depressed, important information related to the crippling and isolating nature of the depression experience. It also provides family with practical ways for coming together as a strong support group, much like the 12 Step Al-Anon groups, enabling family members to start focusing on them selves –on their own recovery — and not on their depressed significant other. We need to change ourselves first. Trying to change someone else is usually futile.
Dep-Anon will have a positive symbiotic relationship with the depressed family member’s own recovery program, Depressed Anonymous. Not only will the family group become more alert to their own needs and issues, but will be helped spiritually, physically and emotionally as they work together, using the 12 steps. These twelve spiritual principles, mutually strengthen each other as they share their own their own experiences, hope and strengths.

ZOOM MEETING INFORMATION
Note : Please contact us with the zoom Meeting ID:846 6885 1123
password: serenity

>>>>>>>> MONDAY August 22 2PM EST <<<<<<<<<<<

12 Step Meeting, Choice, Community building, Helpful Thinking, Hope, Mutual Aid, Positivity, Purpose, Service, Supportive Actions, The 12 Steps, The Promises, Uncategorized

There is a time for holding on and a time for letting go.

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There are times when we are barely holding on and times when we have to let go.
The United States is in the beginning of weather changes that have never before been seen by most of us in this country. There are the wildfires that are burning out of control in the Western regions of the country, and flooding that most people have never experienced in their lifetimes. Just recently, in my on State of Kentucky, thirty-eight people lost their lives in an early morning flooding which affected sixteen counties in Eastern Kentucky. The extent and magnitude of this flooding was so huge that older Kentuckians had never witnessed such devastation. Previous to that, Kentucky was blasted by a Tornado 12 miles wide and 200 miles in length. It sped through Kentucky 150 miles an hour. Whole communities were wiped out. Again, another example of the powerful changes in our weather.
Sea levels rising, as ice caps continue melting in both poles. The whole planet and its’ people ( including you and me) are holding on for things to come. Some of us, more than we know, are holding on to their lives. So many losses, so much of what we have valued are gone. With all of that we are still going through the pandemic. We are holding on.
We are finding that the grief and destruction that is ours, as family, community, nation, is beginning to turn our world upide dwon as we know it.
In a positive way, some of us are holding on to what has given us hope with a sense of security. By this I mean, that when we become afraid, depressd and isolated we can still spiral out of the bad mood over all our losses and enter into a new mood of hope and serenity. And how does this happen? For those of us who are depressed, we discovered a program of recovery that works.This is a 12 Step program of rcovery called Depressed Anonymous. It is a program where persons with the same faith and practice of the Steps, come together in a fellowship and mutually support each other, in ours times of loss. We hold onto the promises of DA,where we learn what happens to those of us when we place our trust in a God of our understanding. We not only begin to hold onto the belief that we will get better, we also begin to discover and root out those personality defects which keep us imprisoned and isolated. We felt there is no help in sight. Not true. Members of our recovering fellowship show us how by putting into effect the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps how our lives begin to change for the better.
It is in the “letting go” of the areas of our lives that made life feel hopeless and ourselves worthless. We soon found that the negative ways that we talked to ourselves were counterproductive. Once we began to affirm the good in ourselves, we were able to find ways that gave us new hope.

We came to believe that there was a God of love on our side, who manifested its power, daily working out in our mind and body, the belief that we too are able to find peace and help as we continue to live with meaning and purpose for our life.
Hold onto the belief that the God of your understanding will bring you peace and a new way of living. This new way of living will give you resources, plus a beloved community, supporting each of you on your journey of hope.

Please go to our website at Depressedanon.com and find out more of who we are and what we believe. You will be happy that you did.

With a gratitude,

Hugh S.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Choice, Courage, Ego Deflation, Faith, Fellowship, Higher Power, Mutual Aid, Prayer, Purpose, Service, Supportive Actions

Acceptance that “we are partners in a common effort”

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How wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be.

Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted, solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things, these are the satisfactions of right living for which no pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions could possibly be substitutes.

SOURCES
The Twelve and Twelve/Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Ny, NY.
–Quoted in DEP-ANON: A 12 Step Recovery Program for Families and Friends of the Depressed. DAP. Louisville, KY 40241. Pages 14-15.