Fellowship, Spiritual Heroes

God grant us the serenity—

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“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

” We treasure the Serenity Prayer because it brings a new light to us that can dissipate our oldtime and nearly fatal habit of fooling ourselves.

In the radiance of this prayer we see that defeat, rightly accepted, need not be a disaster. We now know that we do not have to run away, nor ought we again try to overcome adversity by still another bulldozing power drive that can only push up obstacles  before us faster than they can be taken down.”

I think that Bill W., sure got it right on this one.  He tells us that defeat, rightly accepted, need not be a disaster. Well, initially when I felt totally defeated, I did not accept it. How could I? My life was falling apart and the pain so great that I did  want to  run away. Hide. Disappear. Anything but face what I knew I had to face.  But eventually when I did face up to my defeat,  my defeat didn’t turn out to be a disaster. Bill got it  right.  With time, work,and the 12 step fellowship my life started to straighten out.  Now, these many years later, I see how God made it possible to use my own defeat to help others overcome theirs. In other words, my Higher Power  gave me the necessary courage to change the things I could. One day at a time.

Fellowship, The 12 Steps

Soldiers, Suicides, and Support groups.

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I think that most of us have read or heard   through the media about suicides among our nation’s military. Even though there are less suicides recorded this year  among members of the Armed Forces,  our National Guard units have experienced  a rise in suicides among its members this past year. One suicide among us is one too many!

So what is going on? From my perspective as a civilian who works with persons every day who are depressed, I think that because of the nature of their roles as men and women  committed to putting their lives on the line, especially combat,   this fact in itself is enough to present  a person with stress and the many  resultant symptoms of depression.  I do know that stressful  life events, and the thinking  about them, can grind us down psychologically, physically  and psychically.

Depression must be taken seriously! Telling a person depressed to  ” snap out of it.” is not helpful at all.  This basically invalidates my own feelings  of hopelessness and helplessness.  I can’t just turn my depression on or off like a faucet.

I just hope that those with the capacity to help our soldiers who are depressed can help all our  soldiers to be better prepared by making available  support groups designed specifically for men and women depressed.  As one top military put it, he thinks that just by making available someone to talk to–and telling them that it is  “ok,  to admit feeling helpless about circumstances in one’s life and  that you are spiraling down into an abyss and can’t climb  out.” Most person depressed feel especially out of control, I also think that men in our culture, because of needing to be strong and brave, find it most difficult to share these deep emotions of feeling helpless plus dealing with something that can’t just be willed  away.    Shame and guilt are real obstacles to getting help. Depression not only paralyzes our wills but makes moving out of our isolating behavior just that much more difficult.

It would be my recommendation that the military continue its efforts in establishing  support groups which deal specifically with issues of depression and suicidal thinking and behavior. Would the military consider using material modeled after the 12 steps off AA and which has been established as a remedy, since 1985,  not only for the military but for all who are looking for support. .   Depression is a global problem. We feel that Depressed Anonymous  is such a therapeutic  approach and one  which our military deserve.    And as a nation we need to “pass muster” and give our troops the best that we have to give.

Hugh

Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Negativity

THREE OF THE WORLD’S WORST EXCUSES. HOW WE RESIST CHANGE WITH OUR NEGATIVE SELF TALK!

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” But I’ve always done it this way.”

“But I have always been this way.”

“This is just how I am.”

Stuck!  How often does someone tell us one of the above excuses or all of the above on first showing up at a Depressed Anonymous meeting.  They tell us that they are “sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  They come to those of us who have said the same thing in the past. Like those  who stick with the fellowship of persons like themselves, persons depressed, they learn how   our lives were before participating in our program of recovery and how our life is today.  The change that we talk about is like night and day.   The BEFORE describes a life of darkness and despair and the NOW describes a   life filled with light and hope.

Now, by using the four stage process of change: 1. Be aware 2) Be motivating 3) Be doing 4) Be maintaining  we can examine our past. We begin to see how our excuses which keep us imprisoned in depression many times originate growing up in a dysfunctional family. This  loss of trust and love and in   some cases,  even loss of provision for basic survival needs such as food, shelter and physical  safety, conditions us to a feeling of being helpless and depressed. Sometimes this chronic depression is masked and defended against by compulsive activity and perfectionistic kinds of striving. Becoming “tireless” and “limitless caretakers of others defends a person against his or her own neediness and yearning to be care for.

So, how can we promote a positive change? How does this change come about?  Well, first of all, we admit we have a problem. For some of us, a life-threatening problem. We became aware something is wrong. Then  we believed that we had to do something about this problem. We came to the DA group. We discovered that the members of the group learned how  to motivate themselves and get into action. We found a way that gave us hope. We found a map that continues to lead us out of the darkness.  Finally, one’s motivation is followed by action. We got into action  and   continued to find ways to change ourselves.  We have the tools  to change our selves,  one Step at a time. We are no longer alone. No more excuses.  We now have a solution.  How about you?

Mania, The 12 Steps

Remember that an oak tree was once an acorn. Recovery means taking one step at a time.

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11/20/2014

AFFIRMATION

I am growing in my faith in myself and believing that today is going to be a better day than was yesterday. That’s a promise!

“Remember that an oak tree  once was an acorn, recovery begins by taking one step at a time and accepting responsibility for moving from depression into peace and serenity.”

REFLECTION

How often must I learn not to get caught up in the mania of racing thoughts and flights of grandiosity as I flee from the depths of my sadness. I will not run from my sadness but, instead, will focus on the fact that that I have to stake my claim and say, this is it. I am going to get well, starting right now. When I was manic I feel panicky and very jittery, but  when I am depressed or feel myself slipping down into the abyss of darkness.  I run as fast as I can until I no longer can stop my racing thoughts nor find an end to the obsession of wanting complete perfection in everything that I do.

What this means is that I am going to believe that I am about to be released from a terminal illness. My sadness has dogged me throughout my life. I no longer am willing to give in to  this Black Dog of sadness often labeled as “melancholia”. I have tried  all the pills  to rid myself from the anxiety of my soul until there were no more pills, no more solutions and no more avenues of escape.  I could escape the pain from time to time, but not a lifetime of hurtful human experience. I am taking one step at a time — recovery is what my day is about today! The steps are my solution.

MEDITATION

God, you call each of us by name. Give us the power to name anything that is blocking us from growing in the wisdom of your will for us today. Lead us in your peace, today.

SOURCE: Higher Thoughts for Down Days:365 Daily Thoughts and Meditations for Members of  12 step Fellowship Groups. Depressed Anonymous Groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Pgs. 230-231.

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HOW CAN I CHANGE MYSELF FROM SAD TO GLAD? THE DOING STAGE.

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Well, for one, it takes work to change our behavior. It takes time. It also takes a plan for getting done what needs to get done. You remember the saying: “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.”  There is some truth to that as I know firsthand from personal experience. How often did I tell myself that I would do this or do  that, when I felt better. Can you relate to that? Most of us can. But when I was depressed I never felt better – to do anything–at least to do the stuff that I needed to do to  escape  my comfortable  cocoon of inactivity. It was hardly comfortable. At least I didn’t have to make any decision to get better. I guess that was the comfort.

First of all, I knew that after being painfully aware that I was spiraling down into a place where I could not just snap my fingers and I would feel good again. My will power was powerless to help.  So, my awareness  told me that I had to get motivated and start to move–I mean physically move. I had to force myself out of bed. I did that. I motivated myself to move. I Got up the force to move my body and this gradually and with some reluctance moved my mind to do more. So then I placed myself into the doing stage. I had to change, I told myself

I then started a process  of removing from my thinking those thoughts that told me how futile my life was, plus how worthless I  considered myself.  I started to replace all those negative statements about myself  in my head with positive statements. Positive affirmations.  I began  to repeat over and over my mantras where I began to say good things   about myself, while discarding the negative and unpleasant thoughts about myself;  thoughts that continued to paralyze me. These mantras are the mental thinking loop which I repeated dutifully hour after hour, day after day. ” I will build a new life”;  “I am stronger than my sadness”; ” I have the courage to go through this painful experience”;” I no longer blame myself or others for my sadness”. “I do not have to wait for someone else to make me glad;” “I am focusing on my stars, not my scars;” . “I can do it;.”  “Yes, I can.”

Now that you are AWARE of being powerless over the sadness in your life, what are you DOING  today to continue MOTIVATING  yourself?  I will change myself.

12 Step Meeting, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THE 12 STEP DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PROGRAM OF RECOVERY?

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Depressed Anonymous  

1) Educates and informs us about our experience of depression. 2) Nurtures us so that we can begin to share and to trust our unpleasant feelings with others.  3) Accepts us and does not make   judgements  about  our experiences with depression. In other words, we don’t hear “snap out of it” in the group. 4) Teaches coping skills by our frequent meetings and group  membership interaction.  It provides us with a  “toolbox” of new skills we can utilize in our overcoming of sadness. 5) Empowers us to believe that there is truly a way out of our depression. One of the major benefits of our group is you can hear how other persons depressed have made it out of depression. (Read the Personal Stories in Depressed Anonymous).   It is clear that the program works best for those who keep coming back to meetings.

There are multiple benefits that come to those of us  who  are committed to being  active participants in our fellowship of Depressed Anonymous. I should know, I am one of the active participants.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Higher Power, Step 02, The 12 Steps

Test Drive This Idea

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The car I drive is a manual shift (stick) and has 5 gears. I like the stick shift better than automatic–it seems that I can feel the power of the engine when I go from one gear to the next.
When I bought an older Honda this last month, I made sure it was a shift. I gave it a test drive and the gears shifted smoothly from one gear to the next. I bought the vehicle.
How does this Test drive idea apply to depression? I’m glad you asked. Many times people when they come to a Depressed Anonymous meeting for the first time–it’s similar to test driving a car. They want to check out how many miles the car gets to a liter/gal of gas. Like, they want to know if this group will give them all that it promises . Is there a warranty with the group? Well, as a matter of fact there are. On page 109 in the Depressed Anonymous book the warranty itemizes everything that is yours. You will see them as the Promises of what can happen if you work the recovery program as outlined in our manual. I guess you would call the Depressed Anonymous book our manual. In fact, it has been written by persons who test drove the program and found it helped propel them into a life of healing and a fellowship of those many others who found it did what it promised. It always put them on the road.
When I was setting up Depressed Anonymous, a spiritual program of recovery in a State Prison a number of years back, one of the members of the group told us that he didn’t believe in God. He had been test driving the program and discovered that Step Two, (Gear 2?) “came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.” “Well,” he said his “Higher Power was his Prison DA group.” This is the engine that gave him the most mileage. In fact, after test driving it for weeks it was just what he was looking for–a trust worthy vehicle that would take him to the end of his journey–one day at a time. This group was the only engine with a warranty that was good all day, every day, and was good for the life of the engine. Since everyone in the group were all affected by depression, or the same engine problems they could speak to each other in the same language. No one was alone and isolated. The toolbox was there for each of the group and all of them had engines that were humming because they were all familiar with each of the gears and knew how to keep learning more about how all the gears (steps) were to work together.
Sign up today if you would like to test drive our vehicle of tested quality. We have everything you would like to know about our vehicle. Keep in touch. There is always a “pit crew” standing by to offer help.

Acceptance, Higher Thoughts for Down Days

I am not perfect–so what?

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Copyright(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications Louisville, Kentucky
An excerpt with some modifications and additions from Higher Thoughts for today, November 15.
AFFIRMATION
 NO LONGER WILL WE ACCEPT OUR PAST THINKING THAT OUR WORTH IS BASED ON OUR ABILITY TO PRODUCE.
REFLECTION
I am going to be alert to those times during the day today, when I give myself the message that I could have done something better. These messages are from an old hypercritical tape from my childhood. Guilt rides roughshod over us when we fail to live up to the expectations we have of ourselves or those held by others about us. ( My 3rd grade teacher compared me to my brother, who was very smart, and said that I would never be like him, meaning brilliant. She was right, I am not brilliant. But it was only until I was in my 30’s did I realize that I had other qualities. Like it really didn’t matter anymore what she thought.) Since I have admitted that I am depressed, (Aware, motivated, doing, and maintaining positive behaviors) I am able to change certain old ways of thinking and behaving.
Our worth comes from the earliest childhood memories. The more we are able to get in touch with early images and feelings that we hold about ourselves the more clearly can we see that what we feel as adults is many times based on early childhood emotions. I am depending more now on my Higher Power to get me safely to those early days and those feelings. I will also talk to a friend today about my childhood experiences. I am not perfect–so what?
MEDITATION
 With God on our side, we can’t fail. God loves us just the way we are.

Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Spirituality, The 12 Steps

MOTIVATING STAGE

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Today, we can look at the Motivating Stage –One of the Four. We have talked about the first stage, namely that of just being Aware. And in the context of BLAMING ourselves, others or God, we have made ourselves aware of a character defect where blaming others works against our self. It is in the Aware stage that we realize that “something is really wrong with me” as David Karp points out in his insightful book Speaking of Sadness. I know the feeling. I knew that I couldn’t just stay in bed but had to do something to get rid of that all encompassing fatigue as well as reduce the tremors in my limbs and eliminate that horrible jittery feeling in my gut. This led me to make a decision –to get motivated— hoping against hope that I wasn’t losing my mind. I wasn’t going crazy.
In the Motivating Stage we are using our awareness to show us how our negative thinking and talking to ourselves has helped continue our sadness. It’s like we have a “wake-up” call telling us how all this negative and emotion laden self talk is making us depressed. And now I am making up my mind to change the way I talk to myself as well as motivate myself to follow the spiritual program of recovery–step by step. I also am trying to live in the present. All I have is just this 24 hours. This Motivating Stage prepares me to move to the DOING stage. I will do all it takes to quit the BLAME game and gradually accept responsibility for my life.
MOVE THE BODY AND THE MIND WILL FOLLOW!

Depressed Anonymous

HOW DOES A PERSON CHANGE? ARE YOU A BLAMER?

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In order for us to escape from depression we need to be aware of the process of how people change. That process for change is of the nature of a spiral instead of a straight line. In other words, now that we are willing to risk feeling differently we have been gearing up to improve our situation. In other words we are making a very important decision right now about our lives.
As we illustrated yesterday there is a process of how a person chooses to change. First comes an Awareness stage. Then comes the Motivating stage. A Doing stage is then put into motion, and finally we have the Maintaining stage where a person continues to do all that is necessary to sustain and be responsible for positive changes.
In the DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS WORKBOOK, it asks the participant to apply all of these four stages as antidotes to those character defects which may keep us imprisoned in our prison of depression. Today we want to examine the character defect of BLAMING. Now let’s put to use our formula of the four stages. Today, I am going to share just one of the four stages with the example of BLAMING. For me, being aware meant that not only was I aware of what I was doing to cause me to heap blame after blame on myself but much later I discovered through Step Four of Depressed Anonymous the many good things that I had going for myself. I learnt that working the Steps is a gradual process developed for changing myself.
(1) AWARE. Now that I have admitted I am powerless over my depression and that it serves no purpose to blame myself for my depression and bashing myself with daily reminders of how bad and unacceptable I am. Now I am: (1) AWARE of my need to discover what there is about myself that I do find acceptable and wholesome?
Tomorrow, we apply the Motivating stage to our BLAMING. Then this will be followed by a segment on the Doing stage. Finally, the Maintaining stage will be considered. I hope to meet with you again tomorrow.

My thoughts: I share my own thoughts here. When my whole body became physically incapacitated and I could hardly get out of bed of a morning. My whole insides felt hollow and a strong, vague feeling that something was totally wrong inside of me. I felt full of “jitters” and anxiety. I was totally clueless as to what monster had me in its clutches. I had to admit that I needed help. I was powerless. I was not only AWARE I was scared. Know what I mean? If you do, please comment. So how do you change? Can you admit what is possibly keeping you depressed? Hugh

Hope is just a few steps away!