Dear Readers
For those of you who are subscribers to the DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS NEWSLETTERS, you can read the latest issue of the VOLUME #2 FALL 2018 ISSUE of the ANTIDEPRESSANT TABLET. Please visit our website <http://depressedanon.com> and look at the NEWSLETTERS ARCHIVE at the drop down menu list (NEWSLETTERS ARCHIVE) of issues past and present.
Thank you,
Hugh S/Editor
The following are a few of the BLOGS from the past which I have selected to share with you in this FALL ISSUE. I hope you find their content helpful.
Just a note today to share with you something that you already know, namely, how the continuous thinking of unpleasant thoughts wears us out. One day, quite by accident I discovered a secret. I discovered how my mind was trying to fool me by making me believe that I was tired, worn out and needed to lie down and just sleep.
So again, I was wearing myself out with my gloom and doom thoughts when I believed I was too tired to do anything. I suddenly thought, “Hey, wait a minute, I don’t have to keep running from myself and let this fatigue force me down on my back.” So, what did I do? I went to my computer desk, and began to write. It was like driving through a blasting blizzard with nothing to be seen ahead of me except the hood of my car. I continued to write. The fatigue persisted. And then gradually with about ten minutes under my belt, my negative thoughts slowly replaced with thoughts focused on what I was banging out on my keyboard. I felt a resurgence of energy.
Now I wanted to continue to write. Gradually I began to feel the light of hope coursing through my arteries. It was like someone had turned on the light and gave me the secret to keep on my feet, so to speak, and regain the energy that I wanted to sleep away.
I distracted myself. I pulled away from the gloomy thoughts and focused all my attention on creating something brand new. I now know that I can walk away from that which would have continued to immobilize my desire to be free.
Try it. It works for me. It can work for you as well.
Originally published 1-8-2016
If you really want to begin to “live outside the box”, a description of what the box feels like and looks like might be helpful for you. First of all, a box has an identifiable shape. It is a box mainly because it contains something -whatever that something might be. And when we speak of the subject of depression, we talk about depression having us boxed in.
The box as it is used here, is a metaphor for feeling enclosed from which there is no exit. It is like being trapped or like in a prison. Now, in order to live outside the box we want to live creatively, which means that we are having to learn how to live outside the box. Now, if you find this hard to believe, I will explain what I mean.Just briefly, my own experience with depression can be used as an example.
First of all, when I was depressed, I thought that I was losing my mind. The box that I put myself in was getting more restricting by the day and making my life hell. I could see no way out. I was trapped. “What could I do?” I asked myself. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t just will these feelings and thoughts away – like taking a broom and brushing them out of my life. No matter which way I turned, I hit a wall. With no answers forthcoming on how to keep my head above water, my body slowly was being sucked down into the quicksand of despair. The thought came to me, much like that small glimmer, a tiny light so far away, but nevertheless a light. It was like the lighthouse which warns seafarers that rocks were nearby and to be watchful before approaching.
My mind began to race here and there for a way out of the box and suddenly it hit me – I needed to get moving. Move the body. Get busy. The key out of this prison was already in my hand. And now, those of us here in the Depressed Anonymous program of recovery, who have been using “out of the box” ideas to work in our daily lives, want to share what has worked for us. We know if you actually use them for your own recovery, they are bound to ultimately free you. That is the promise I share with you today.The following activities, listed below, are some of the tools that will get you “out of the box” when you get serious about using them. I think taking a close and personal look at the following tools will not only help you get “out of the box” but can be tools that you will be able to utilize, day after day, as you continue your recovery.
We can take our time to evaluate our response to each of the tools listed and so make our own notes as how to use these recommended ideas for our own recovery.”NOTE: At the site menu page (depressedanon.com) you can click onto the drop down menu TOOLS FOR RECOVERY to read more about the tools and how to use them.
Hugh
Originally published 1-17-2015
So far today God, I’ve done all right’
I haven’t gossiped.
I haven’t lost my temper.
I haven’t been grumpy, nasty or selfish.
I’m really glad of that.
But in a few minutes,
God, I’m going to get out of bed, and from then on,
I’m probably going to need a lot of help!
In our ongoing discussion of the ecology of the depression experience, and looking at the personal, biological and environmental facts that are each part of the whole, we are able to make some observations about how to overcome this human and life threatening reality. Environmentally, we have seen the post-industrial society, at least in America, become a nation of diminished size of families (1 in 4 Americans now live alone), fewer family farms and more persons living in isolated and disconnected environments. It appears that we all are moving away from that wholesome community form of life toward an individualistic and SELFIE generation. The “we” society is gradually turning into the “me” generation.To quote David Karp (Speaking of Sadness, Pg.195) he states:
The estimated 11-15 million people suffering from depression and the million more with anxiety disorders are the victims of a society that has lost sight of what I now see as a shared sociological and spiritual message. It is that our individual emotional health and health of society are inseparable. If we do not nourish society by revitalizing our individual responsibilities to it, we pay the price in terms of individual illness.
In this way, those millions pained by affective disorders are part of a dialectical process in which the extent of collective suffering eventually causes an urge to change the social structures that has made so many of us ill. During this current of cultural discontent we may be better able to appreciate the spiritual message that all of us are connected to and responsible to each other. Although we can never return to the small, intimate communities of the Nineteenth century, such a communitarian vision is the necessary starting place of efforts at social reconnection and thereby the creation of a more generally happy society.
In another place Karp contends “we may be at a juncture where we are ready as a culture to see the wisdom in the spiritual idea that our individual well-being is inseparable from that seamless web of connections…”At our Depressed Anonymous group fellowship meetings it is evident how the “we” trumps the “me” at every turn and how the “we” of the fellowship produces, not only societal recovery from isolation and being disconnected, it also provides the tools in which a community of people who care about each other is built. Won’t you care to join in this community building adventure? Search our website menu at depressedanon.com to find a Depressed Anonymous meeting in your community. If there was none, then you might want to check out the HOME STUDY PROGRAM from our website and determine if this would be an appropriate route to take for your own recovery.
You can also contact the author of this BLOG at [email protected].
Hugh
Originally published 11-30-2015
There are presently 4 individuals who are working with the Home Study Program of recovery: two in the USA, one in the Netherlands, a Step Study group (25 members) in Iran. See more information about the Home Study Program of Recovery from our website.
Also, good news for those who speak Spanish (1/3 of earth’s population is said to speak Spanish). Depressed Anonymous Publications is making it possible to have our Depressed Anonymous Manual, the 3rd edition, translated into Spanish. Hopefully, this work will be completed shortly after the New Year. The translator lives in Louisville and is a native of South American.
A DA member from the Netherlands is translating our work into Dutch so that she can share this program with those interested in her country. She is also working with a member of a 12 Step person from Portugal desirous of setting up an International DA Step Study SKYPE online group.
Our group literature is presently published in English, Farsi (Iran) and Russian (Ukraine).
Dep-Anon is a support group for family and friends of the depressed. This program is similar to AL-ANON where family members gather to help each other learn how to detach and cope with a loved one’s alcoholism. In the same way, DEP-ANON is an effort of family and friends to gather together and learn to live with and cope with their loved one’s depression. Now is a good time, I believe, in the history of our 12 Step Fellowship to spend time refining and detailing strategies for helping family members and friends of the depressed to understand help support the depressed. In fact, the name chosen for this companion to Depressed Anonymous is DEP-ANON.
The recovery program of DEP-ANON is based on the 12 Steps and each step featured as an individual chapter in the DEP-ANON manual. A commentary is included for each Step for family members and friends to use in their group or as individuals. Also, each Step chapter concludes with a questions section providing material for group discussion.
An important note is that this seventy-seven Page manual was written and developed by two members of the DA fellowship. They came to Depressed Anonymous wanting to learn more about depression. One of the members lived with a depressed husband. The other member had a depressed daughter. By sharing together their experiences and applying the principles of the 12 steps to their situations, they came up with the idea for a DEP-ANON. We all are grateful for these two women for putting together a book that uses the 12 Steps of recovery for their own lives, friends and families of the depressed.
For recent and past issues of the Depressed Anonymous Newsletters, please click onto NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE at our website menu. Thank you.
CONTACT US AT:
Depressed Anonymous Publications
Website: depressedanon.com
Email : [email protected]
2018 FALL NEWSLETTER
( Go to Newsletter Archives Menu for articles)
ARTICLES
1) Thinking unpleasant thoughts wears me out–Until I did this.
2)How to live outside the box? The Depression box.
3)So far today
4) The World of the “selfie” mirrors a world of the isolated and disconnected.
5) TRUE OR FALSE?
6) Depressed Anonymous Spanish edition (2019)
7) Dep-Anon Family Group manual: A Twelve Step Support Group for Families and Friends of the Depressed. (Visit the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore)
Welcome to the new DA meeting Sunday night in San Jose, California
EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT
Meeting place: Alano Club
TIME: 7 PM
East 1122 Fair Avenue
San Jose, CA
Today is the beginning of a new school year. The yellow buses are out in force. In our metro area we have at least 600 yellow buses on the road today and for the rest of the academic year. A family member of mine, who lives in a county school district, has four children starting school today. Each child climbing onto a different bus. At his home the four buses come to his home (not at the same time) and there pick up a High School student, a middle school child, a special needs child and an elementary child. Each child will have an unique story to tell their Mother when they get off their bus today.
I remember my first day at school. It is etched in my mind. Another new first grader, Freddy, refused to walk into the classroom where he was to be joined by 45 other kids. All newbies. His Mother, having lost her patience, had junior by the scruff of the neck, carrying him into the classroom, with him screaming and crying. “I ain’t comin’ in.” That is all I remember of my first day of school. Or, should I say, Freddy’s first day of school.
Many of us have memories of that first day of school and I hope that yours was more pleasant than Freddy’s or mine.
Now fast-forward the tape thirty years later. I was being forced to go to another type of school. I had to attend a 12 Step meeting because of an addiction. I used the same words that Freddy used, and whispered to my self that “I ain’t goin’ in.” Actually I did go in. I took a seat and forced myself to listen to people talking about their addictions. I found everyone friendly and supportive. They welcomed me like a long LOST brother. Let’s put the emphasis on the word LOST. I definitely was down with my face in the dirt.
That was 32 years ago this coming December. Do you know what I learned that first day of life’s schooling? I learned to take one day at a time. Keep life simple. Be honest always. Admit I needed help. Have faith in a power greater than yourself. Stick close to your classmates (group members). Help others who like myself, are still suffering. Tell your story.
Hugh
Depressed Anonymous Meeting
Wednesday 7:30pm-8:30pm
Capital District Recovery Center
45 Colvin Avenue
Albany, New York 12206
Questions: Contact Bill R. 518-768-1865
Saint-Exupery said that to “be a man, a woman, an adult, is to accept responsibility.” And during those years that are bracketed by the dawning of conscience and end of adolescence (seven to ten) we must –by slowly expanding the dominion of what we can be responsible for –become our own grownup.
We must start claiming as ours the welter of hungers and angers and conflicts that dwell inside of us. We must also start learning to tie our own shoes. And as we extend the realm and the reign of our consciousness and competence we will find ourselves moving farther and farther from home. In the phase that Freud labeled “latency” …we leave the benevolent fortress of family life. Our job as a latency kid is to acquire the social and psychological know how without which we cannot manage this new separation, these new necessary losses.
As healthy adults we feel our self to be lovable, valuable, genuine. We feel our self’s “selfsameness.” We feel unique. And instead of seeing our self as the passive victim of our inner and outer world, as acted upon as helpless and as weak, we acknowledge our self to be the responsible agent and determining force of our life….
Because as healthy adults we know that reality cannot offer us perfect safety or unconditional love.
We many be a long time learning that life is, at best, “a dream controlled” –that reality is built of perfect connections. ”
SOURCES: Necessary Losses, Judith Viorst. SImon and Schuster, NY. 1986. p. 142-143; 168-169. ( Quoted in The Antidepressant Tablet, Volume 3:2. Page 6. 1991.
Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.
Step Two of Depressed Anonymous
“Came to believe that a Power Greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
“Jane was given an ultimatum to get help by her daughter, who saw the Depressed Anonymous group as a last chance for her mother, who was suicidal and despondent over the death of her husband a few months earlier. Jane didn’t want to come to the meeting-she came only to please her daughter.”
To give an ultimatum has a familiar ring to those of us who have been physically exhausted as we have tried to get our Depressed Significant Other up and moving.-but to no avail. Ultimatum’s hardly ever work when we are concerned. We have learned the hard way, that by trying to force our DSO into help many times backfires as rescuing someone who doesn’t want to change –continues to frustrate our efforts at helping. So we have finally learned that the real source of getting others well is to first get ourselves refurbished and filled with faith in our self. That is what Step Two is all about.
We have now made a personal commitment to our own healing by sharing with those in the Dep-Anon family group our feelings of aloneness, inadequacies and the direction that our lives should take. So often it is our anger that keeps breaking through the surface of our lives. We are angry at our DSO. We are angry at ourselves for putting up with all the things the DSO keeps pulling on each of us. By our frustration and irritability which actually mirrors the DSO –we fill our minds with greater feelings of guilt and shame.” Dep-Anon Family Group, 37.
FAQ
QUESTION
What exactly is Dep-Anon? Is it like Al-anon? A 12 Step approach for family members?
ANSWER
DEP-Anon is a support group for family and friends of the depressed. This program is very much like Al-Anon where family members gather to help each other learn how to detach and cope with an alcoholic loved one. In the same way, Dep-Anon is an effort of family and friends to gather together and learn how to live and cope with their Depressed Significant Other (DSO).
At a planning meeting for Dep-Anon family members were asked to list all the feelings that they experience while living with a depressed loved one. From the discussion we were surprised to learn some amazing facts. 1) That the feelings family members were experiencing were very similar to those which their depressed loved ones were experiencing, and 2) these feelings were also having an equally destructive effect in the lives of their family members.
It is the above information provided by family members that helped us decide that we needed to do something for these family members who were in need of help and who were hurting. When one member of a family is hurting the whole family hurts. We are hoping that this brief informational encounter today with our Dep-Anon program of recovery will help family members know there is a support group for them just as with Al-Anon.
In the days to come we hope to be sharing more information on Dep-Anon at this site: depressedanon.com .
We hope to hear your comments about this effort and welcome all your thoughts here at this site or email us at [email protected].
Thank you.
Helen, member of Depressed Anonymous tells it like it is in her Personal Story.
“Now that I look back and see the way I was and see how I am now, I can’t believe that I ever knew that other This person is different altogether. I like this person 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 help you through these things. At first, I thought, “I doubt that very much ” when everyone was talking about the Higher Power and having peace in my life. It happened to me. Every few days, the world dumps down on you and beats you down. That’s just 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.
It can’t happen overnight. I know what the people who come to Depressed Anonymous for the first time feel. When you go through the long weeks and days and give it all you got, it will happen to you just as it happened to me. There is no magic cure. Thee is no magic pill. It is a long process. It will happen and does happen. It is so much better than staying in their dark hole and not getting anything out of life. No longer could I blame this one or that other one for causing me pain. I know that it was me that was beating me up. I was unequipped to handle the problems of my life without the Higher Power, without the tools and material to build the better life.”
PS Helen, tells us that she had to get her priorities straight which she did. She is now undepressed because she DID get her priorities straight.
SOURCE: Pages 147-148. Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Personal Stories section #28/31
AFFIRMATION
I know that just by being alive, I am gaining new insights into how to live and this, in itself, is continually giving me more and more energy to exist as my Higher Power would have me live..
“So we have to begin by asking, “Do we have the right to exist?” If we exist, we have the right to exist. We do not have to ask anyone’s permission to exist.”
CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT
Like it says in the famous Desiderata, I have every right to be in this universe. I have a right to be here. I need not shrink or fear anything or anyone. The times that I have felt so guilty for being alive, I now know it is my sense of not being worthwhile or acceptable to myself or others that keep me down.
I no longer need other people’s approval, just my own. Everyday as I keep my mind and heart focused on the solutions, the problems seem less oppressive and frightening. Today, when I want to hide, avoid others, or just climb into the security of the comfort of my depression, I cease to exist. I know that I am breaking free form my sadness by working the 12 Steps and listening to the voice inside of me that promotes my self-respect.
I now have permission to give myself a real boost by discovering that I can free myself from my sadness and my desire to sadden myself.
I give myself permission to risk living life to the fullest.
MEDITATION
God, we learn from our friends in the group that we were somehow, somewhere in our development led to believe that life is terrible and death is worse. This kept us from your joy and sense that we were really someone. Now our feelings are shared and we are feeling better already. (Personal comments).
COPYRIGHT(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for member so 12 Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. April 23. Page 82.
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