All posts by Hugh Smith

Anger, Fellowship, Purpose

Do you want a new way of living?

Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

“I now  have a new way of living!

“But with OUR new way of living and thinking we are going to stay in the now. We know tomorrow produces anxiety and fear. Yesterday is there with all the past hurts and anger. All I have is the now!  If I live in the now I can begin to  try to stay out of yesterday  with all its old wounds  and hurts and resist living in tomorrow with its unknown problems.  Negative thoughts about our past or those about tomorrow can numb our feelings so that we don’t have to feel the pain of whatever it is that isolates us from the world around us. We also admit,  like any one person addicted to a person, thing,  place,  chemical or drug, that our lives are out of control. We have to admit, that by depressing ourselves, we have chosen saddening ourselves as our drug of choice. We medicate ourselves with sadness any time we might have to change the way we live our lives. Sometimes, our depression or sadness arises out of guilt as we continue to turn our personal mistakes into giant catastrophes – this continues to make us feel as if we are nothing and valueless. This all adds to our frustration and the feeling of our being out of control. We know that if we just give up our struggle against depression and admit our powerlessness over it, we can begin to surrender it to our Higher Power and practice letting go of it. I can decide that I want to feel happy and put this constant sadness and hollowness behind me once and for all. I know that no longer will I have to retreat or flee from   those sad feelings and escape with sleep, over activity or drugs.  I know that, whenever my sadness seems unending, I then just admit that I am not helpless and that I can do something about it because I have the tools and I can learn the skills that I didn’t know were available to me before.  Now I am deciding to think, act and behave differently, much to my personal credit and a new-found trust in the Higher Power.  I am a sailor who sees the land, knows the right direction and does the rowing to get where I want to go.  The Twelve Steps are my compass. I also   know that this group of people which we call Depressed Anonymous will help me assume a sense of no longer feeling out of control.”

SOURCE:  Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd ed., Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. Pages 34-35.

12 Step Meeting

We shall look for progress, not perfection.

Leave a comment

In the Depressed Anonymous Manual, 3rd edition it says

“ Responsibility is the name of the game of recovery and it is here that we need to focus our attention.  As we get into a discussion with other people who are depressed-much like ourselves, we see that they talk about feeling better while at the same time acting on their own behalf. These people who are doing better are also talking about taking charge of their lives and doing things for themselves instead of constantly trying to please others.”

12 Step Meeting, Love

It takes hard work and faith to free oneself from depression.

Leave a comment

MY AFFIRMATION FOR TODAY

I believe that with time and work I can feel better about myself.

“But don’t expect that one psychologist can tell you just what the trick is to get out of being depressed. There  is no trick, just hard work.” Dorothy Rowe. The way out of your prison. 2nd ed. (1983, 1996). Routledge. London.

The first three Steps of the Twelve  Steps are about faith and the remaining nine Steps are about action. One has to have faith that there is truly something bigger in this world than  one’s own depression and one’s perspective. I formerly used to believe  that I was stuck forever in these moods where I just didn’t want to live anymore. I was sick and tired of being sick  and tired with the feelings of despair. But now my program is a spiritual one and the spiritual way is the way out of my depression.

If I truly want to be free of my fears and anxieties, I will have to have faith that the God of my understanding is not going to  let me down.

My energies and commitment used to be directed toward finding ways to live always with the predictable and secure feelings that my sadness provided. I am working another program, one which will help me find a way to live a lifer filled with serenity and hope.

MEDITATION

God, help us know your will so that we may start today filled with hope. (Personal comments).

SOURCE: (c) Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Fellowship

Puff Wheat or Cornflakes? What’s it gonna be today?

Leave a comment

“Every decision that we make alters the world of meaning which we have created. Deciding to eat Puff Wheat instead of Cornflakes for breakfast may not be a major change, but abandoning ‘I am bad and unacceptable‘ and replacing it with ‘I accept and value myself‘ is. Every decision you have made since you decided that you were bad and valueless was based on the decision. Now, all these conclusions need reviewing and changing. ” Dorothy Rowe.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

Making a decision is the first step in getting free and being liberated from my depression. From this step follows the many other steps that are to be taken that will allow me to begin to see how the thoughts  I think definitely do affect the way I feel. The next step is to review the different ways in which I can value myself.  My first new response to my own negative  thinking about myself is to believe that I will today begin my exit from the prison of my own negativity  and pessimism.

My struggle to wrest myself free from depression means that I am to make some initial steps in my own health. I want to believe that it is the fact  that I want to value myself and my life that I will no longer allow myself to sit and wallow in self-pity but will start to make an effort to take mastery over the way I feel and think.

MEDITATION

We will let go of our ignorance about how this universe is operated. I let the God of my understanding  take charge as I continue to dip my oars into the water of life and let God be the rudder master,”

 

SOURCE:  Higher Thoughts for Down Days. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. September 3rd. Page 155.

Choice, Fellowship, Focus, Mindfulness, The 12 Steps

If there is one thing that you crave when you are depressed it is certainty

Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I am willing to live in the imperfect moment and focus on the now, not yesterday’s now or tomorrow’s now.

“So it is if we are to make changes in our lives we must be courageous.  Such courage can be found relatively easily in two kinds of situations. When we are certain that the new situation in which we shall find ourselves will bring us every advantage and happiness; when we are certain that the situation we are leaving is totally and absolutely bad.

Thus if the new situation promises perfection, or if the old situation is totally imperfect, we have certainty, and if there is one thing you crave when you are depressed, it is certainty. ” Dorothy Rowe.  Breaking the Bonds.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

My thinking always had been very black and white when I was depressing myself. I know that if I want to continue to live in uncertainty, in time, my depression will also be left behind me in the darkness of yesterday, as I live in the light of today.

The only certainty that I have today is that I want to free myself from the attachment that I have to sadness.  I must be willing to risk giving up the certainty that my life will always remain the same. I know that it is only by living with some uncertainty, that my life can be lived with any hope.

MEDITATION

Today, we pray for the courage to remove as much fear from our lives as possible. We pray that God will let us live with the conviction that our  lives can be one without fear of people, places, or situations. We believe that once we begin to live without the every present need for certainty in our lives that our fears can be diminished.

(Personal comments: See  March 12, 2015 in the Archives of the Blogs.)

SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 daily thoughts and  meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowship groups. Depressed  Anonymous  Publications. Louisville. KY.  September 1.

 

Fellowship, Love

CODE BLUE! CODE BLUE!

Leave a comment

If you have spent anytime at all in a hospital or nursing home you know what these two words mean. Basically they mean, drop everything your doing and go immediately to the area (patient)  that needs immediate assistance. There is no waiting around. You go!

I personally believe that our country’s mental health system is in a state of Code Blue. I also believe that  with all the old and new antidepressant  drugs now available  to resolve this epidemic, (yes, an epidemic) there are more depressed people now than ever before. It would appear that  there would be less depressed persons because of all the medications available, specifically  designed to deal with this national mental   health emergency of depression.

In 1985 I was able to do something about the emergency when I founded a mutual aid group called Depressed Anonymous. The group is modeled after the successful Alcoholics Anonymous program of recovery. The emphasis was on mutual aid and a group  focused solution for those depressed.  Persons who came to the group were many times in a Code Blue situation and needed immediate help. Most times they needed the help of other persons depressed who were speaking the same language as they were.  In fact, when they  did attend meetings they gradually knew that they were not alone and that others were  going through the same things as they had experienced. And  by attending meetings week after week they felt the strength  of hope  and began living their life  with a renewed sense of purpose and meaning.

The following is Lena’s story and how she began to live a life filled with hope and purpose.

“During my first night in the hospital, a member informed me of a support group known as Depressed Anonymous. I decided to give it a try. By telling me about this wonderful, miraculous, and very spiritual program, this person had not only worked the TWELFTH STEP, but had also given me a key, a key which would open many doors  for me. Walking through these doors was like admitting defeat.  I was playing first base in a ball game in which I would eventually win.  If I struck out, I was back on Step One. By playing ball with a positive attitude, I was allowing my Higher Power to walk the Steps to recovery with me.  With the help and the positive sense of fellowship that I enjoyed in the group, I began to understand God’s will for me. With the love, support and true friendship of three faithful members in the group, I began working on my driver’s license, which had been another step toward independence for  me. Within a year, I earned my license when two members of the group took me for my road test. A new sunnier life had begun for me. The worst was finally over.”

The account of her recovery is just one of many stories that one can read in the Depressed Anonymous manual (Depressed Anonymous, (3rd ed.) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. Page 113.  )

A total of 31 stories, in the Personal Stories section of the book,   are powerful testimonies of how  members of the DA   group who are living out the Steps in their individual and  group life.  No more Code Blues

 

For more information about the Personal Stories and Depressed  Anonymous literature click into THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS  BOOKSTORE

 

 

Fellowship, Mindfulness, Purpose

What’s in your backpack?

Leave a comment

Have you ever embarked and planned for a camping trip where you set up camp  for a couple of days. Remember how you would load up your backpack with what you thought you needed? Gradually, it became clear  that you had too much stuff. How could you possibly carry all that stuff on the  mile long trails?  It was obvious that now you had to figure out what to leave behind.  That is the trick: what do I leave behind?

Almost a year ago, my wife and I moved to a new home. We were downsizing. Again, the metaphor of the backpack comes into play. What to give away. What to throw away. It was now that we realized that we no longer needed what we had accumulated over the years. As Ecclesiastes tells us, there is a time to plant and a time to root out.

The American naturalist Sigurd Olson shares that “years of walking through wild country has taught him a great deal about traveling light. Backpackers learn, sometimes the hard way, that simplicity is always a question of knowing what to leave behind.”

I relish listening to the old tape of George Carlin who gives his spiel about  our “stuff.”  We all have more “stuff” that we know what to do with.  We all carry our “stuff” where ever we go.   Too late are we  aware of what our backpack is carrying. I am referring to the “stuff” of   our sad moods  which if not dealt with, will by the sheer weight of it all, overwhelm us.  Our backpacks could be filled with rage, fear, anger, suicidal thoughts and everything else that weighs us down. Not only our body but our mind  is immobilized.

Most of the time now, my backpack has only the essential items  for my life journey. I have opened up my  backpack, looked inside and removed all the situations and feelings that I no longer felt were positive and life giving. Today, I know perfectly well what is in my backpack.  Along with all the solutions that I carry with me day after day, I have my guide book, giving me a Step by Step plan for living my life with serenity and grateful heart.

I no longer let a negative and unpleasant mood spiral  down  so that my backpack becomes heavier and the depression mood darkens a path ahead. Today after years on the road, I now can tell when I need to get on the unpacking thing, take out what I don’t want or need, and move on.  We can  leave behind that which weighs us down

If you want  to know what might be in your backpack, and want to take out that stuff you no longer need or want on this life journey, please join us, get your guide book, and walk with us. In time and with a lighter load, you can join us (Depressed Anonymous).

Together we will get where  we need to be and with what we need to continue to travel on this broad and wide road, not alone but with each other.

Hugh

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

Visit The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore where you will find your plan for the way out of the wilderness.

Fellowship

Moods produce feelings and feelings produce behavior

Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I am going to believe that today is all I have and when I begin to feel better, I will not kill this feeling by telling myself that it won’t last. I will refrain from criticizing myself now.  I do have a choice. All of the Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires…they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few steps are harder to take than Step Five. (10).

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

The other night at a Step meeting one of the participants suggested that the reason she continued to stay depressed was the fact that she was still  living a life that came natural to her. In other words, she was still continuing to think the what she always thought in the past.  Now that she is living and working a program that is spiritual, her natural inclinations are not the driving force in her life. Her natural way of living kept her depressed. Her recovery program of living  in the Twelve Steps is providing her with some serenity.

Hugh’s comment

I want to add my comments here in response to the Depressed Anonymous participant quoted above. When she started to feel better she would put herself down–much like I did when I was beginning to feel better.  When my sad mood was beginning   to lift, my  first reaction was to tell myself “it’s not going to last,” which shot that good feeling  down almost immediately. I got hooked back  onto my old natural self of negativity and hopelessness.  It took me a while to get back on  track.  I realized that I scuttled myself. I had always scuttled myself with a running diatribe  against my self. And when I finally got free of my natural inclinations to beat myself up, primarily by living out in my daily life  the spiritual recovery program of the Steps. I also began   participating in the fellowship of Depressed Anonymous. I began to listen, not to my natural self, but to the  Steps of recovery,  now armed with the  spiritual armor provided to me,  I began the reconstruction of my life–one day at a time.

In a helpful look at depression and mood, Jonathon Rottenberg  tells us that

“Our perspective here is that, although depression’s pain is never entirely welcome, moods offer meaningful information about our status and prospects in the world. Without trivializing  how difficult it would be to “listen to depression” to extract evolution’s warnings, to find the signal amid the pain, this listening particularly in its aftermath, can be a vehicle to foster rebirth and transformative life change. Certainly it will be difficult to learn from depression if we don’t listen at all.”  (The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. Basic Books. NY.2014. Page 195.)

***********************************************

It is intended that my life be filled with hope and commitment to myself so that I can live out my life with a peace that overcomes fear. “To admit to  God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.” (Step Five).

This is not the natural way to live. The naturel way to live is to deny that we have a problem. The more I work and live out my program, the better I am beginning to feel.

MINDFULNESS

We believe that the God of our understanding will help us visualize ourselves as happy and free persons. We will visualize in our mind all the good things that can happen to us if we believe that they can.  If God is with us and cares for us, why worry? (Personal  comments).

SOURCES: Copyright(c)  Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for Twelve Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Kentucky. Pages 169-170.

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. (1998,2008, 2011). Depressed ANONYMOUS  Publications. Louisville. Ky.

 

Step 02, Step 03, The 12 Steps

The total surprise of living.

Leave a comment

 

I’ve finally found how to live.  I guess you could say it was pretty much a round -about- way.   Surprisingly, it all came about with my face to face struggle with the dark forces of depression.  Included in these  waves of darkness appeared  the demons of shame, guilt, fear and isolation.  All these foes of serenity and happiness entered through the  door of my life and settled in. I was imprisoned.  It took all my energies to mobilize my will to even get out of bed in the morning.

I reached down deep into my soul and made a commitment to myself and to my wanting to live.  I discovered a “power greater than myself” in a belief that told me that I could free myself from this strong attachment to sadness and despair. I moved my body. I began to force myself to get up and walk. Almost like Jesus telling the man paralyzed from birth to get up, take up his mat and walk.  And that is what I did. I got out of bed and started walking.

Later I realized that I had put a goal into my life. I had a purpose. It wasn’t some grandiose plan to free myself from the demons of fear–it was  a simple action that put meaning in my life. I lived every day  with a purpose to survive whatever had me by the throat.

“I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore  me to sanity.” That was Step Two of the Twelve Steps of Depressed Anonymous. That was the moment I made a decision to trust that the God of my understanding would give me back my life. This is indeed what happened.

As it states in our  Manual, ” We found God does not make too hard terms with those who speak seek its guidance. To us, the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, and never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek it. It is open, we believe to all men and women.

We believe that to be conscious is to have been able first of all to listen to someone or something that expresses God’s desire to free us from the misery as soon as  we are willing to turn our minds and our wills over to it.  Somewhere  along the way, we were convinced that that the only safe way to  make this life bearable and predictable was to  continually sadden ourselves, withdraw into our little shell and make sure that our own small world was completely under our control. It was a perfect little world, this world of ours. It was dark, gloomy and painful, but at least we knew what we had. It is this predictableness that makes life inescapably  hell for all of us, even though we’d rather have this than the total surprise of living.”

Scott Peck, in his best selling book, The Road Less Traveled makes the statement in the first sentence of his book  “That life is unpredictable.”  Yes, life is definitely unpredictable. That is what can make it an adventure of discovery instead of  completely removing all spontaneity  and joy because of our being imprisoned in that small, painful, and ongoing total isolation of depression.

Break free! Push on!  In time you too will live and enjoy the daily adventure of living life.  Be surprised by the daily joys of living life!

SOURCES: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. Pg. 97.

Please VISIT THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS  BOOKSTORE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

 

Fellowship, Purpose

Is there life after depression?

Leave a comment

The question is a surefire cause for reflection.  In my own case, I can say that   my life  took a new and exciting direction.  As therapist I quickly learned  that my own painful depression experience gave my life and work a special path.

A recent author, in his work The Depths,  shares with us how his experience with depression provided new meaning for his life and work. It was when his depression ran it’s course did he realize that this experience had provided him with a purpose for his life.

“The specific enterprises that  will create purpose in life will differ from person to person and emerge from his or her history and needs. Your mileage will surely vary. There’s no ready made formula for discovering  and rebuilding life purpose (or purposes) after depression. It can and should emerge over time from solo reflection, as well as from conversations with spouses, friends, and therapists.  This diverse process is worth pursuing. This diverse process is worth pursuing. I expect what is common among people is that however purpose is created, it can hold depression at bay…”

Since 1985, my experience with depression  in the midst of my Graduate studies in Psychology,  provided me with a “life purpose” which I live out everyday in my life.  I didn’t just pick up where I left off before my depression but I used what I learned from my experience; used the tools given  to me while in recovery,  and now continue to share my experiences with thousands of people around the world.

Because of my participation in the 12 Step fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous, this program of recovery I used as  a model of recovery and hope  for those of us who were depressed.

As Jonathon Rottenberg shares in his work, The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic (2014) Basic Books, NY.,  that

“This again is a reminder that we may be better off if we think about recovery, not simply as the absence of depressive symptoms, but as a set of active qualities or practices that prevent low mood from taking root, despite the presence of liabilities elsewhere. ” Pages 194-195.

I do hope that you have the opportunity to read this book as the author shows us in many different ways how the depression experience will not only provide purpose in our lives but also that  strength we  call hope.

Hugh