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Website: www.depressedanon.com
ONLINE DA GROUP MEETINGS
REMINDER: Everyday there is a scheduled Depressed Anonymous International SKYPE meeting Online at 12:30PM Central Standard time, and 1:30 Eastern Standard time. Go to your browser and type in: https://join.skype.com/
There please sign up or log into SKYPE. You will see something that says “join meeting.” You will be sent a link that will enter you into the meeting. Great meeting with those who are working their DA program of recovery. Don’t miss it.
A HIGHER THOUGHT FOR TODAY!
Today I will do one thing, just for myself.
“Treating yourself kindly means looking after yourself and accepting yourself in all your humanness. You are not the most perfect, wonderful person that has ever walked on this earth. Neither are you the worst, most imperfect, wicked person that has dared to draw breath.”
CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT
This “treating ourselves kindly ” might not fit into one of our personal beliefs. I think this is particularly true when so often we want to compare ourselves to others who are more beautiful, more popular, wealthier. And because of this, we might have a strong impulse to want to please others. Remember the book, “Looking for love in all the wrong places” this leads to a dead-end of disappointment and sadness. Is this not true for most of us as we keep searching for the fountain of youth, that lucky lottery number giving us millions?
Let me tell you that more often than not it makes everything worse because these “pie in the sky” wishes never materialize. Obviously these thoughts do more harm than good. We ruminate how bad we are and life is and how we think that things never work out for me.
But now that I am in recovery, working the powerful 12 steps of recovery, I am guided by a different standard.
I am beginning to realize, thanks to my program of recovery and my Higher Power(the God of my understanding) that I am not as bad as I thought I was. I am beginning to see that the more I live in the present, and live out my in today, the more I become myself and learn to love who I am.
My way of looking at the world prevents me from seeing the world, all creation as a wonderful manifestation of a Power which by its diverse and marvelous creations sends me a personal message of hope. Like the great poem Desiderata tells us, we have every right to be here–depressed, unhappy, happy or whatever. Also as it says in the 12 step programs, we are all equal in our fellowship. I am not ashamed to admit that I am or was depressed. I now have a way to free myself from the bonds of depression. The lockdown–the mental bars of my imprisonment are gone. I now believe that my own depression has made it possible for me to help others. “It takes one to know one.” I believe with all my heart that this is my purpose–this is what gives me meaning–this purpose and meaning leads me to the next person seeking freedom and release of the shackles that bind us and keep us unmotivated and helpless.
And so “to be kind to ourselves” reminds us that we are to treat others as kindly as we would like to be treated.
Send email to us at :Depanon@netpenny.net if you would like to talk with a member. Thanks. Hugh
(C) Higher thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts for members of 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. March 23.
Order online at The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore.