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Want to help yourself out of depression? Good, get a plan

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it? The working out of a plan might not be simple but it does hold a promise once the plan becomes active,something good will most probably happen. Now if I was still depressed I would have stumbled over the word “probably” and say to myself, see “it won’t work.” I used to think that everything had to be perfect. No more.

Here’s the point: a plan is an active small goal oriented operation in which you take each step one at a time. In our program of recovery you have 12 steps and you don’t move on from one to the other til you have finished working the step before. You give each small goal as much time as you need or as little time as you think you need. We have heard the question “how do you eat an elephant? Answer: “one bite at a time.” By setting up small attainable goals, you can gradually get at the root of your problem and move slowly on developing answers to what is bothering you and causing you to feel sad and anxious inside.

Let’s make it clear here that I cannot promise that this is an easy road to take but a plan that once activated (put into practice on a daily basis) and will give you the best chance for ongoing recovery. How many times have I tried a program and I failed. It’s like buying something that you have to assemble yourself. You know how that goes (or at least familiar with it) because initially you are excited about getting the thing up and running. But you miss some essential step along the way. You either have to go back and reread the instructions, and start over again and pay close attention to the plan’s directions.

Depressed Anonymous has a plan which is like a map indicating the right direction. The beauty with an activated plan, the 12 Steps such as the one that guides our mutual aid groups with a positive result, serenity and hope. Even though you might be in therapy or on meds, you can work this plan every day, anytime of the day and find yourself hopeful about something good happening for your life. Now you have a workable plan. You don’t have to wait around til your meds take effect. You can get started right now.

When I had used this plan of Depressed Anonymous, I felt that a Workbook would be a helpful way to guide myself gradually and with others toward serenity and a hopeful life. You also can read the DA book, Depressed Anonymous with its thirty stories written by members of the DA group who have activated a plan, worked the 12 step program into their daily lives and found hope and happiness. No longer are they feeling helpless. The Workbook provides, by questions, in response to each Step, covering every facet of your life’s major life’s transitions. Also, the personal issues specific to one’s own life situations can be broached.

The Depressed Anonymous Manual and Workbook both contain commentaries on each of the plan’s 12 Steps and helps elaborate on depression and how to deal with your own situation and the severity of one’s depression. Every person depressed has a unique depression experience, even though symptoms may be similar to others, it remains that your experiences are totally your own.

Our website www.depressedanon.com has a home page with menu items where you can check out your own question about the plan and how it works. You might also want to read some past issues of the Newsletter (See archives) and that can be helpful in understanding abut your own experience with depression. One can also review almost 1000 past blogs at the site which will give you a quick look into the nature of depression and the many tools provided for its recovery.

Depression is constructed with many symptoms. Our recovery plan attacks each of the symptoms in one way or the other. Formerly depressed individuals, have written about their success of finding the 12 Step map that took them out of their sadness and aloneness into life in a community of light and peace. In fact, all of our books are written by those of us who are recovered from depression.

Our program and plan is a “we” plan. We come together in groups and as individuals seeking that path that brings hope and healing. When will you activate your plan?

For more information about Depressed Anonymous literature available, please click onto
THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS BOOKSTORE.

“We do not have to ask anyone’s permission to exist.”

 

There  are two problems about deciding things for yourself. First, it means you can’t blame anyone else when things turn out badly. (But you can take the credit when  things turn out well.)  Second, other people can get very angry with you for not doing what they want.

Valuing yourself is a risky business.

Which risk is preferable? The risk of making your own decisions or the risk of not valuing yourself?

Undoing the training of our early years, when we learned that we weren’t good enough, that we had to be good to earn the right to exist, and never even think about, much less question, why and how we were taught this, is not easy. If you have spent all the years you remember feeling that somehow you have to prove yourself by your achievements , so that you have to earn the right yourself by your achievements, or that  you have to earn the right to breathe by working hard in devoted service to others, for if you don’t prove yourself to be brave or a hard worker, some vast hand will come down from heaven and pick you off the face of the earth like a flea off a dog’s back and cast you into nothingness, if this is how you have spent your life, then deciding that you are simply going to be and that you accept your being is a revolution in thought that you aren’t likely to achieve  in the twinkling of an eye.

Though some people do  it, just like that. They say to themselves. I’m not going to go on carrying this load of  s __t  that other people have dumped on me over the years. I’m dropping it now. And they do. They are free, just being themselves.

But some people, I find, don’t even know what I am talking about when I say, ‘Just be yourself.’

So we have to begin by saying, ‘Do we have a right to exist?’

If we exist, we have the right to exist.

We do not have to ask anyone’s permission to exist.”

SOURCE:  Beyond Fear.   Dorothy Rowe., PhD.  ( 1987) Fontana Paperbooks. London. Pages 383-384.

WEBINAR: A Depression Epidemic. Saturday February 23rd, 10AM (Central daylight time)

WEBINAR sponsored by a gathering of  Depressed Anonymous fellowships in Russia will be featuring Hugh S., member of a  USA Depressed Anonymous fellowship..  The program A Depression Epidemic will be in English and translated into Russian for the Russian gathering.  Everyone, from anywhere is welcome to attend!

Please check on the Internet to determine what the 10AM central daylight  time is in their time. zone.

All those interested are welcome to attend the WEBINAR free.

To link to register please use this  link to receive a link to the WEBINAR.

https://goo.gl/forms/IRzUsEGU6FDpzpLu1

For more information about the WEBINAR contact us at [email protected].

 

If we are fooling ourselves, a competent advisor can see this quickly.

How true that “if we are fooling ourselves, a competent advisor (sponsor)  can see this quickly. And, as he skillfully guides us away from our fantasies, we are surprised to find that we have few of the usual urges to defend  ourselves against unpleasant truths. In no other way can fear, pride, and ignorance be so readily melted.  After  a time, we realize that we are standing firm on a brand-new foundation for integrity, and we gratefully credit our sponsors whose advice pointed the way.

— Bill w., in As Bill Sees It. Page 248.

 

So what is the power of Depressed Anonymous?

 

What is the power of Depressed Anonymous? Well, first let me say that when I started attending  Depressed Anonymous meetings, I went for a couple of months and then stopped. I stopped going because my depression was so bad that I didn’t want to leave my apartment. I didn’t want to be around to talk to anyone. I just didn’t want to do anything except crawl in a hole somewhere and isolate myself from everything. Then after about six weeks of isolation, I called the residential treatment facility where I had been a client to see if I had received any mail there and one of the members of the Depressed Anonymous group where I attend answered my phone. I spent a few minutes talking to her and there was something in her voice that told me that for some reason, it was important for me to be at the meeting. I attended the next Depressed Anonymous meeting. After the meeting was over, I suddenly realized the importance and power of Depressed Anonymous.

So what is the power of Depressed Anonymous? For me, it’s just like attending the first meeting. I was a little scared and apprehensive at first, but then I found that the Depressed Anonymous meeting was a place to go where there were other depressed persons just like. They could relate to and understand what I was going through. They didn’t judge me or think of me as crazy. I was accepted.”

A member of Depressed Anonymous tells his story in the Personal Stories section of Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. Page 133.

For more publications on Depression and recovery, please click onto THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS BOOKSTORE at VISIT THE STORE.

From victim of depression to survivor to a life with hope. This is my story.

I remember well how a person’s personal narrative  describes their experiences with depression.  I hear it almost daily; read about it almost daily; and respond to it almost daily. As a victim, survivor of depression,  I have gradually morphed into a communicator of hope for the depressed,  family members and friends.   Because  they believe in heir own  narrative of hoplessness and helplessness and all the while  discounting  the fact  that things will ever be alright.   I can tell people all day long that it is “gonna be alright”  and the response usually  is,”great, but when?” Let me tell my story.

Since 1985, as a person depressed myself, and using tools that I learned along the way  to becoming   a survivor,  I gradually learned of a plan. It was a simple plan. It was based on 12 simple spiritual principles.  By spiritual, I  mean   simple spiritual principles,  that there is a God that loves me. I call this my Higher Power,  that deep inner  loving force which gives us the power to respond, especially in our deep personal crises,  giving us  strength, making it possible to use our mind and heart to trust in its power.   Our trust and our own surrender to its will for us,  that divine guide, will lead us out of the darkness.  After a time, I was more and more intent on listening to  the voice in my head that said, “you are going to make it!” Not the voice that said, I was hopeless and worthless.

I have dedicated much of my life,  always with  hope  that you and I and all the depressed,  can survive the isolation, self-hatred and helplessness  that we have built   and creating  the  prison of depression  which afforded us no escape. We really believed that we had been served a lifetime sentence of being in an emotional and mental lockdown .  Gradually , our own thinking and deepening moods of hopelessness and helplessness  became life threatening.

Once free of the depression shackles I began to share with the depressed my plan! Actually, I had nothing to do with formulating this plan of recovery and survival.

The  plan was developed by two guys, one a stockbroker and the other an MD. Both came from being victims of alcoholism to being survivors. They lived out their recovery  plan  by sharing the route, their own experiences with each other and those others who were gathering around the message of hope  and that  power that led them.   This plan is spelled out in  what is now called the 12 Steps  of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Their plan worked for the alcoholic in the late 1930’s and it continues to work its power in the 21st century.

We have applied the Steps  and have found the  plan works equally well for the depressed. As we well  know, many, have faced life with despair and  without hope–they had no plan. For some, suicide was the only way out of this endless agony.

So, let’s consider what each one of us can do.   Look at what each of us can do who are depressed or who have been depressed.  For myself, I have shared   my story of being  victim, a survivor. As a victim, I had no knowledge of what was wrong with me, no way of knowing what to do to get out of the mental mess I was in and so I did only what I knew–to run away from it. Like Forrest Gump, I began to walk, and walk some more, every day,  each day. Finally my mind cleared, and I sought help. I knew that since the Steps worked for the hopeless alcoholic they had to work for someone  like me,  who was  filled with shame and guilt and despair. This is when I found that working the Steps, one after another would produce not only sobriety but an enduring  hope, one day at a time. And the way to get this hope and to strengthen its power in our lives  was to gather others around us who feel the same as I did.  We were no longer alone in our struggle. Others spoke the same language as did  myself. They got it!

I have spent  the last three  decades of my life, sharing   my story, attempting to  to give hope to those still suffering. That is my mission. I believe that is why God provided Bill W., and Dr. Bob with that spiritual  awakening,  lighting  up their own path in recovery.   They made it possible for all of us who wanted this light, this plan, and then to take this light and help others find what we have found.

I follow a roadmap-a plan developed by two guys who saw no way out except by helping other men and women who were looking for someone to give them hope and a path out of their addiction to alcohol.  They both knew, as do we  in the program, that to live out the plan in our daily lives it is essential that we carry our message of hope to others. That is the message of the plan. Give it away. Don’t put your treasure under a basket. Let the light shine. I really think that Bill W., and Dr. Bob were the two angels god sent to give all of us, those of their own time, for us today and for the future, a reason to stay alive. They had a simple plan. They each told their story to the alcoholic of how life was before and then how life was being lived  now-with sobriety and hope.  They shared how their life was before their recovery and then shared how their life was  now.  They didn’t preach. They had their story. And they told hurting  men and women that they could be free.

I too have my story, I have a message of hope, and like the 12 Steps of AA, on which Depressed Anonymous is modeled, it is slowly beginning  to reach  people who  can now hope.   Depression is in epidemic  proportions  effecting every nationality and region of the earth. Later this month a Depressed Anonymous group from Russia is sponsoring a Webinar  about depression and mutual support.

I have  a story to tell. A story that  provides  hope and a way to live, every day of our lives. And this is my story.

This is my passion. With gratitude!

————

Thank you for reading this story of hope and healing. Please share with that person who needs hope–included with  a plan that works!

Hugh

 

Getting my priorities straight.

AFFIRMATION

On this New Year Day, I find that my work for my life today, and only today, is to reflect on a time in my life that I have experienced a feeling of happiness and contentment. If I can remember a pleasant situation from the past, I will construct a happy situation and imagine it occurring right now.

“In getting my priorities straight, my depression is better,”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

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.

MEDITATION

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

SOURCE:  Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. January 1, 2019.

I get it!

It took awhile, but finally I “got it.”

In the work Depressed Anonymous, which provides a step by step commentary for individuals and group members, Dr. Dorothy Rowe points out that if you want to get yourself depressed this is what you must do. You must hold these six options as if they were real, absolute and immutable truths

  1. No matter how good and nice I appear to be, I am really bad, evil, valueless, and unacceptable to myself and others.
  2. Other people are such that I must fear, hate or envy them.
  3. Life is terrible and death is worse.
  4. Only bad things happened to me in the past and only bad things will happen to me in the future.
  5. Anger is evil.
  6. I must never forgive, least of all myself.

What I envision as the best possible world for the depressed and to prevent relapse and recurrence is a model that may include the medication treatment, the psychotherapy interaction between therapist and client and then the holistic model of the mutual aid group, to name a few. What happens in the group support system is basically a replication of what happens in a person’s childhood environment. We can determine if trust is there, can the child have the assumed permission to show initiative, is the child made to feel safe and can the child venture out beyond the boundaries of his home and feel safe? Or does he come from a home which is closed and the world perceived as enemy and unsafe- indeed a setup for a mistrustful attitude about life. All this comes into play in early childhood development. We need to look again at anything in a child’s life where he/she experienced a loss, a separation or a life filled with anger and hurt.

The community in which the child is raised presents all types of messages and this in the beginning is how he or she sees the world. Chemicals in the brain don’t produce thoughts that say ” I’m worthless or unacceptable,” etc. It’s more the messages that one receives when one is in the formative years of one’s life that may predict how one perceives his or her future.”


You might want to ask yourself this question: What messages did you receive as a child growing up. Did you feel that the messages you received give you freedom to explore the world and your environment, or did you feel unsafe and insecure?

SOURCES:
(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications.Louisville. KY
(c) I’ll do it when I feel better. (2017) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. Pages 25-26.

What we seek-seeks us

I think we have all heard the saying “when the student is ready the teacher arrives.” I believe that’s true. They call it synchronicity. It’s like persons who have dreams. How many young people dream that when they get older they are going to be a baseball player, an actor, great pianist etc? It works out that what we hold onto — holds onto us.

But to get where we want to go includes pain and struggle. We have to pay some price-sometimes a large price and sometimes even to the point of giving up our lives. There will be obstacles along our way and we try and handle them as best we can with the resources that we have at the time.

But let me say this, no matter how bad things get, there is usually a path laid out before us, where we can find what we have been looking for. I think the same happens when we experience depression and live with that sinking mood of feeling helpless and hopeless. But there is always hope. We learn how to use the tools for change and recovery. (See Personal Stories in Depressed Anonymous).

And we know that “change” is painful. The first step is really the beginning of the end of our pain. By admitting that we are in pain is that which paradoxically begins the release from our pain. This is the paradox of letting go as we have learned from Step Three which suggests that we “make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” From this point on, as we follow the Twelve Step path of freedom from depression, we begin to believe that there is a chance for me to get well.

That’s a Promise of the Twelve Steps. Get on board and find what you are looking for.


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

Feel empowered! Go to a Depressed Anonymous meeting

The group meeting is where trust and openness is promoted among the fellowship. My defenses gradually lessen at every meeting and now I find myself speaking about myself. I now believe that with my new openness no one will discredit or abandon me. I now feel secure in this new fellowship of persons who are just like me. I can live in hope and not despair. I learn that trust leads to freedom.

In the personal testimony portion of the Depressed Anonymous Manual, on pages 110-152, a Depressed Anonymous member, Starr, shares how the group meeting gives a feeling of empowerment to those who want to share their story as a person that has suffered depression since childhood.

I can say that until you start to open up, share your hurts and feelings, listen to members of the group, watching them as they grow from the support of the group, you will not be able to get out of the prison of your depression.”


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

Copyright (c) I’ll do it when I feel better. (2017) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.

Please VISIT THE STORE and discover other publications at the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore. You can order all material online.