AFFIRMATION
I WANT TO CARRY THE MESSAGE OF HOPE TO THOSE OTHERS WHO ARE DEPRESSED.
“I (Dr. Dorothy Rowe) said what I so often said, that the best way depressed people can help themselves is to help one another. Form a group, get to know one another, support one another.”
REFLECTION
They also think that all I have to do is just be cheerful and my mood will automatically change. It’s like telling someone to stop their diarrhea as if they have any control over it. My depression took time to develop and so it will take time and work to remove. The people who are the most supportive are those who have been depressed themselves, they won’t tell you to “snap out of it!”
I best support myself when I find other people like myself and try and help them.
MEDITATION
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Personal comments).
SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 Daily Thoughts and Meditations for 12 Step Fellowship Groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Ky. Page 201.
I know how important it is to personally have suffered from the symptoms of a depression: it all became real to me just as I was about to begin my counseling career. I know the feeling that made me think that I was losing my mind. I knew the intense hollowness in my gut; I knew the inability to hold a thought in my head or remember something that I just read. I knew the desire to sleep all the time; I knew the feeling that I was worthless and unacceptable to myself and others; I knew the shame and guilt that continually washed over my mind. All in all it was as if I was suffering from a total toothache that enveloped my whole person. All I could think about was the pain that sapped all my energies. To even get out of bed or desire to do any of those activities that once gave me pleasure were futile.
So yes, it takes one to know one.
Attending a twelve step program to reach out to others this evening I am a little overwhelmed but I will do this , I can just keep moving and life will unfold as it should.
That’s the real deal–just keep moving forward. The dis-ease of depression is isolation and being disconnected with the world around us. Tell us how the meeting went for you.