All posts by Hugh Smith

Acceptance, Fellowship, Hope

Today’s Hope: Depressed Anonymous

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  1. Today  I can experience hope. I will believe I can live this day with pleasant, thoughts. I will do one activity that will give me hope and light for today.
  2. Today I will “not” dwell on the past and the losses that have occurred up until those times and space.
  3. Today I will  “do” whatever I can put movement into my life. Any  small effort will help lessen the feelings of the stagnant sadness of depression.
  4. Today I will look forward to seeing a rose, the sunshine, a precious person – be it a baby laughing, a child at play, an elderly person on a park bench, and let myself believe that we are “all” of infinite value and vey loved.
  5. Today I will embrace myself in some small way and this may be going to lunch with a friend over coffee, or ice cream or a good brisk walk to the park or around the mall, or just a smile into my mirror and back at me. I will believe that I am worthwhile and worth the effort to recover today.
  6. Today I will believe I can live this entire day “hopeful” and that I can return to the above activities anytime and as many times as I need to just for today.

 

Mary- A Member of the Depressed Anonymous Fellowship

SOURCE:   Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. (Personal Stories #21.)

Focus

Talk is not cheap! Walk the talk!

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When I first attended a 12 Step mutual aid group meeting  I found  the members   talking about their feelings, life situations, and other painful memories. Talk is not cheap! It cost everyone in  the group who wanted to talk about their lives that sharing themselves comes at a certain price.  At the same time,  they discovered that by opening up to others and talking with others, an   important  shift began to take place in their thinking. Many  times when  they were sharing they found others in the group who  also wanted to talk about these same  problems.  Even though each of us was a unique individual , we all suffered from the same compulsion and addictive attachments.

The price that each of us paid at these meetings was an investment   in personal freedom releasing  us  from what had kept us locked down in despair.   For some, this talking with others was the first time they were able to share their hurt and pain with others.

For some, including myself, it took   awhile to trust others. It is only when someone else talks about a life situation  that I was given the   prompt   to  talk and share how we had the same experience. Talking helped me to see that I too could be accepted and loved–just for me. Talking helped me believe  that from this time on I was not alone.

Talk is not cheap. If you don’t talk, it could possibly cost you a lot more.

Hugh

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

DA Literature, Faith, Fellowship, Hope, The 12 Steps

Did I build my own prison of depression?

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How could that possibly be? Build my own prison of depression?  Impossible. Wait. There might be a possibility if I go back to my childhood and think about some of the things that happened to me growing up.

The following are some of the examples that others (my clients)  might have experienced   unconsciously or consciously influencing their thinking, feelings and behaviors in their later teens and adult life.

EXAMPLES

*My  parents fought all the time and made me scared. (They added   a few   bricks to the structure of your prison).  I would go in my room and hide in the closet.  ( The foundation for our prison is being built).

*Because my Dad was a town drunk he would show up at my school and make a fool of himself…I felt shame and anger at these   times . (Put a few more bricks on that foundation.).

* I was bullied at school and I just wanted to die. I felt worthless. I felt no one liked me… (Bullies added more bricks   to my  prison. The walls are getting higher and higher).

*I was told that I was not allowed to get angry. I was not allowed to cry. I was not allowed to tell my parents how much I hated their drinking.  No expression  of feelings were allowed in my family.  I wasn’t able to trust anyone with my feelings.

*Another message that I always got was  “You’ll never amount to anything,” or “you’ll never be like your older brother.”  (An especially large row of bricks is laid here  when a Third grade teacher tells you this in front  of the whole class and your face  always turns crimson when you think about this shaming event).

*I was given the message that the world beyond  my family was dangerous and threatening. ”

*It was at this  point that my teenage years were spent behind the walls of a nearly finished prison. I was locked down and there was no way out of my prison. No one gave me a key.

*All these  building blocks that produced a prison  for myself all came with  early life relationships.  The messages that I got growing up gradually and effectively locked me down. I was   growing up with out hope. All the messages were  like  building blocks  which further imprisoned me.

Now that I am an adult, I have  begun to take  bricks away, one by one and the structure  is being dismantled,  one brick  at a time. And how did this happen?

It all happened when I became sick and tired of being sick and tired.   I needed help. I needed someone, something, other than the alcohol and opioids that I was abusing  to turn my life around.

Yes, I built my prison and I was not even aware that  each block carried to my structure was imprisoning  me. So many of my toxic relationships, growing up,   all came with another brick to put into my prison.

Taking the wall down, brick by brick we have to have a plan. We have to find ways to remove the bricks and free ourselves from those deadly feelings  of personal worthlessness and feelings that we  are unacceptable  to ourselves and to others. I know now that   I was not to blame for being in a prison and that  I had no idea that all those messages given to me when I was growing up,  influencing my life so directly,  they all were only  other people’s opinions of me. These opinions determined my future. They were responsible for building  my prison. No child or young person wants to live their life in a prison–especially which is not of their own making.  The tragic point here is that their imprisonment is not their fault.  For some youngsters and even older adults the tragedy is that they believed what was told them so that their pain is so great they take their own life.  They wanted  to be free, be  happy and have people around them who love them  and support them in every way possible. The real problem is that none of us  had  a choice when we got our parents,  teachers and relatives.

I think Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous says it best when  gives us hope when he   wrote the following:

“We must never be blinded by the futile philosophy that we are just the hapless victim of our inheritance, of our life experiences, and of our surroundings –  that these are the forces that make our decisions for us. This is not the road to freedom. We have to believe that we can really choose.”  (c) As Bill Sees it. A.A. World Services. NY. 1967.

Now the plan that is working for many of us  is  to discover   that when we live out the solution in our lives,  that we focus on the solutions for removing those bricks from   the walls of our depression, that  it wasn’t our doing that the prison was built.  We didn’t choose to have the wall built. Who chooses to live in a prison  anyway? We didn’t know when we were young that these messages were never true but we believed them.   We do not take the blame today for our depression and feeling worthless and unacceptable. We know that blaming others doesn’t do us any good either.

What works for us is a well thought out plan of recovery.   We can begin to learn how to   prize  ourselves and  realize and celebrate who we really are and  the person whom we desire to become. The 12 Steps will get you there!  You will have the tools to rebuild and you will see results. That is a Promise. (See page 109 in Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition where it lays out the PROMISES of the Steps  for those who choose to use them).

By using the spiritual principles of the  12 Steps we have begun to choose to dismantle all those negative and hurtful messages from others  that were never true in the first place.

If you want to write your own story as how the 12 Steps helped you remove the blocks from your own prison, please let us know by writing to depanon@netpenny.net., as we would love to hear from you.

Also, please read the   personal stories of those who have chosen to  free themselves from the prison of their own depression in our Big Book:

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

Click onto The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore at our website www.depressedanon.com. Online purchases of our literature is  available.

Fellowship

Acceptance!

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“When  I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away. From that moment on, I have not had a single compulsion to drink.” Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The people of AA  had something that looked much better than what I had, but I was afraid to let go of what I had in order to try something new, there was a certain sense of security in the familiar. And acceptance is the answer to all problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place or thing, or situation -some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place or thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.  Nothing, absolutely nothing hapens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism (insert: depression ), I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms. I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate  not so much on me and on  what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes…AA (DA) and acceptance have taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of  us and a bit of the bad in the best of us…We are all children of God and have every right to be here on this earth. When I focus on what’s good today, I have a good day. And when   I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases…When we deal in feelings, we tend to come to know ourselves and each other much better.”  Bill W. , Co-Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. SOURCE:  Alcoholics Anonymous,  pp.449.

“The world is round, and the place which may seem like the end may also  be only the beginning.”  Iva Baker Priest

That one sentence describe in  a few words what our recovery is like.

Since our mutual aid group, Depressed Anonymous is based and modeled after he 12 Step recovery  program of Alcoholics Anonymous, we have discovered that they are a powerful source of healing when used to recover from the life threatening reality   called depression.

Even though our fellowship is composed of many varied types of addictive behaviors, alcoholism being one of them, depression  is intimately connected to all compulsive and addictive behaviors.

Live in the problem and you deepen the problem. Live in the solution, and you deepen the solution. For samples of the many persons who no longer are depressed, thanks to their belief in the power of the spiritual principles of the 12 Steps, read their own personal stories of recovery in our Manual,  Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) DAP. Louisville. Ky.

For more information about this book, and others like it, please go to the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore and find how to order online.

Choice, The 12 Steps

People have the seeds of their own recovery within themselves

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” Having spent time researching causes of, and vulnerability to depression, I know that I was a prime candidate for the disorder.  The person typically diagnosed as depressed is likely to be a married woman who is also  a mother, and beset with practical problems.: Children, interpersonal relationships, and spouse concerns. What I learned from my own depression and recovery and try to practice when working with clients, is that people have the seeds of their own revival within them. I want to ask the right questions so that people can hear what they say, recognize what changes they want to make, and how they can choose to make them. Specific time limits are met, and I prefer to focus initially on people making changes in their behavior, rather than mood. I explain that although  the depressed mood colors the whole world, it  has not been shown to be causally related to improvement, whereas behavior has.

When clients know that there are specific and tangible things they can do, they begin to experience an immediate upswing.  A specific time limit is often motivating.  People begin to see themselves making positive changes in their behavior,  and can begin to change attitudes about themselves.  They begin to see themselves controlling aspects  of their environment, and as this happens, helplessness and hopelessness begin to dissipate and self- esteem level rises proportionally. People see themselves to be improving as a result of their own efforts. Nothing can  be more rewarding to a depressed person.”

Sources:  Wounded Healers. V. Rippere. Pages 86-87.

The Antidepressant Tablet  Vol. 2:3  Spring 1991.

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

Uncategorized

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

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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.

DA Literature, Fellowship

Why can’t I think my way out of depression?

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Good question. You know, I tried to do just that. First, I asked why?  Then I moved on to what is going on here in my body?  I just knew, mistakenly, that all I had to do was just say a prayer (even though that is always a good idea) or change channels of thought in my mind. Click!  I was back where I wanted to be.  Back into life again.

I knew that life had changed drastically for me in the last few months. I had gotten myself on a path that led deeper and deeper into a very low mood, one that quite frankly worried me.  I didn’t feel sick or like I had the flu. I just started to feel irritable and moody. It was like I was emotionally sliding down a slippery slope and there was no way to stop the downward motion. I was in a free fall. That is what really got my attention. That is when it was time for me to yell help!

That is time for me to just sit and think and try and figure out this mysterious circumstance in which I found myself.  It was as I was trying to watch a video of myself  these last few months and to sort  out what had caused this gradual deepening spiral  which ground my life to a halt. I ran out of physical and emotion gas.  All my best thinking couldn’t get me to budge. I was down and out. Even my mind couldn’t  do anything for me –it was busy conjuring up all sorts of awful and frightful symptoms that convinced me that I was losing my mind. My concentration was zilch! I felt more than worthless. My mind and my body became enemies. My bed and sleep became my  best friends. And then, the moment came.  It was like a far- away voice that whispered to my psyche  “do something. Do anything! Move it! I did what the voice suggested. I moved my body. I began to walk and walk some more and I began to feel like I was starting to spiral upwards.

I had an “aha” moment at this time. Thinking wasn’t the way out–it was moving the body that was the clincher. It was the exercise of every nerve and limb in my body that got me back on track. I  began to believe  that I couldn’t think my way out of my isolation any more than I could fly. My mind had me go around in circles always ending up at the same desolate place.

I will cut to the chase now and share how my life came back together. It’s when I began to hook  up  with a bunch of people like myself. I had heard that they were freeing themselves from depression by coming together and sharing their feelings, hope and strategies for getting back on track with their lives.  The people in the group made me feel welcome right away. I knew I was home and that they had a message that gave me hope. It was that belief in myself that helped me choose the way out of my depression. It was the tools they provided me that helped me find a way to live free and without depression. It was like a miracle really.

This group is Depressed Anonymous. There is no charge and it is organized around people like myself who were depressed and who found recovery, unity and the opportunity to help others just like themselves. And just as our body and spirit got strengthened, so did our thinking.

 

SOURCE: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY  40241

 

 

12 Step Meeting

International Depressed Anonymous SKYPE Meeting ONLINE/ 14.30 CET (ENGLISH)

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NOTICE: Whenever a blog post mentions an online meeting be sure to consult the page Online Depressed Anonymous Meetings for the most up to date and correct information. If the blog post is more than a few days old there is a chance it could be incorrect.

PLEASE CHECK TIME ZONE IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY OR REGION

Please attend our International Depressed Anonymous ONLINE meeting

@ 14.30 (Central European Time) Sundays In English.

Join: https://join.skype.com/l8xfouW4hYUW

The meeting will follow the DA meeting format process for ONLINE group meetings. You all are welcome. Please click on and join us.

Thank you,

Hugh

Depressed Anonymous

How soon and how quick can I be free from the pain and isolation of depression?

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Recently someone wanted to know “how quick could they be free from the pain and isolation of their depression?” How soon can they get back on the playing field of life? It was like, how can I hurry this mess up in my life, and get going full steam ahead. They wanted to feel the way did before they got knocked down by those feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Well, I guess they thought it would be like going to the doctor and asking how long this flu or cold would last? Normally, that would be a fair-enough question to ask. We all have asked it. We have all asked it because we were sick and tired of being sick and tired. We wanted relief. The jitteriness and hollow feelings which depression was causing was just too much to live with.

But as we all know this question can only be answered with time and the frequent and active participation in the fellowship of the group. It is by reading the texts of the Depressed Anonymous manual and attempting to put these principles into daily effect in one’s life. Also, one can begin to feel some improvement in their lives as they slowly gain a belief, a faith if you will, that they too can get better. If others can do it “I can as well” they tell themselves. Yes, this will be their truth.

With time, patience and sharing they begin to accept themselves for who they are and change what they don’t like in themselves. By the fact that one comes to a meeting is in itself half of the battle in overcoming one’s depression. It is this interminable isolation that keeps the depression at its height and intensity. It is only when a person can admit that their life is out of control and begin to trust the group with their story: a painful journey describing how they got to the point where they are today – isolated, anxious and hurting. Much like a full-body toothache.

The program is a very simple one-but this doesn’t mean that it is easy. All change is painful and if we are to grow we have to change. We have to resolve some of these old issues that keep popping up in our lives. They want our attention but we continue to cram then back in place and don’t want to took at them. But the only way to get free from these feelings of painful despair is to face these feelings, as difficult as they are, and move along with one personal change after another. We start by making choices which benefit our new feelings of hope and serenity.

The first step in getting past our depression is to first get into the door of a Depressed Anonymous meeting. And if you don’t have a Depressed Anonymous meeting in your town then you can find literature at our website (www.depressedanon.com). This will be a great start in gradually chipping away at our fears, our pain and debilitating isolation. There is no quick fix. All good growth is gradual – even with medication it still takes time to tell if the medication is working for you.

In the meantime, check out articles on our website where you will find articles talking about what you are feeling now and with a promise that you too will feel better.

Hugh

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

Click onto the VISIT OUR STORE and go to Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore to see what literature is available. You can order online.

The 12 Steps

When opportunity knocks – open the door!

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Yes, that is great advice. When something comes your way,  and you refuse to even consider it–that could be  a BIG mistake. Let me give you an example.

Many years ago, I met a fellow who was very depressed. He felt like there was nothing that he touched that didn’t result in a personal disaster. The more he resisted the opportunities, the greater his frustration grew. He wondered why? Was it because he saw the opportunities as something  other than a possibility for growth and success,  or did he see them as out of reach for him personally.  I didn’t know  what he thought but this I did know, that whatever he thought, he never opened the door! His continued low mood eventually spiraled down so that he closed the door permanently. Suicide became his only option and that sadly was the door  he opened.

Years ago, in my own life, I had the opportunity to open a door that provided me with a  storehouse of possibilities for my life.  I walked through the door and found hope and access to a plan for my life that came with a warranty – a lifetime guarantee for personal  hope and serenity.

That warranty is as good today as it was when I heard that knock more than 30 years ago. Now I am  sharing with others how they will find sobriety  and serenity  if they answer the knock and enter a new world of hope. The  same plan comes with a promise that is being fulfilled in the lives of thousands today, “sometimes quickly-sometimes slowly.”

The door that I am talking about is the door of Depressed Anonymous which when opened provides untold opportunities for peace, hope and a plan. All one has to do is find others like oneself and hear and read how opportunity knocked. They were ready to find out what so many others had discovered for their own lives.

31 people have shared their own personal stories in Depressed Anonymous and have not only  did they “get” the plan for daily living they also got the warranty that promises a depression -free way to live. Will you open that door today?

 

Source: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. (Contains 31 personal stories)