Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask how he was doing, he would reply, “If I was any better, I would be twins!”

He was a  unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the  waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. if an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one  day I went up to Jerry and asked him, ” I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning  I wake up and say to myself, ‘ Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood. I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,” I protested.

“Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life  is all about choices.  When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a  good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant business to start my own business. We lost touch, but often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business :he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers. While trying  to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quick and rushed to the local trauma center,

After  18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital; with fragments of the bullet in his body.

When I visited him in the hospital, I told him how amazed and happy I was  that he pulled through like he did. All he said was when he was on the operating table and the Doctors told him the seriousness of his injury, and were  about to remove the bullets, he told me that ” all I could think of at that moment was  I had a choice. I could either live or die. I chose at that moment to live.”

–By Francie  Baltazar-Schwartz

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AS Bill W., tells us in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book, that when we are looking for an “easier and more comfortable way” to deal with our  addictions is when we  we plan to fail. Our need to isolate and withdraw from those around us can produce no good. If you want to get out of the hole of depression-stop digging!

In Depressed Anonymous we read and understand that those of us who had a “spiritual awakening as the result of these steps (12 Steps of recovery), we tried to carry this message to the depressed, and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.”

And as Francis tells us  that  “those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others” discover they are empowered by empowering others with a daily plan to live with hope and serenity. For us there are no magic wands waved over our heads that will produce instant serenity. No, it takes work and some time.   For  some it may involve therapy and medications . But best of all, it can include   the ongoing support from the Depressed Anonymous Fellowship, in  face to face encounters or  online at SKYPE.

The time that we admit that our lives are out of control and unmanageable, that is the time that we begin to find a way out of our depression. And it is in the context of the loving  community of Depressed Anonymous that we leave the comfort of our isolation and join with the  fellowship of others like ourselves who have left the  safety of the shores of sadness.  “Our sadness, like any other addiction, is merely a symptom of some deeper compulsion that manifests itself in our need to seek comfort and safety in sadness.” How well I remember this symptom of depression,  trying to figure out why I feel the way I do and then giving up hope that I would  ever feel anything different.

Now,I find myself almost daily trying to give  hope to others who find themselves locked down in the shackles of sadness. I have been doing this for over 30 years and hopefully will continue till  I am unable. HOPE!

Continue to come to our website (www.depressedanon.com) where you will be inspired daily to continue working your way out of depression.

SOURCES: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd Edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

“All of what I have written down so far(see articles for July 22,23 at this site) has to do with creating meaning. Humans have as their occupation  to constantly create meaning for their lives. Whatever we do has to have meaning. Most important of all, I felt alone, worthless, and especially unacceptable to myself. During this time I had the thought that if someone were seen laughing or having a good time –this made me angry. How dare anyone could smile while I felt so miserable? This unfamiliar feeling made me  think that my brain was made out of cotton. I couldn’t  shove another thought into my head. It was as if the cells of my brain were filled to the brim.  Like they were saying “sorry, we’re full.”

NOTE/ Please tune in tomorrow and discover how  my life finally got turned around!

SOURCE:   I’ll do it when I feel better.(2014) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 3/Ch.#1-How it all began.

“To this day I can tell you exactly the place and time when I began to feel this terrible sadness suddenly and dramatically come upon me. I felt myself sliding down and over a dark precipice from which I was not able to climb out of for over a year of painful months. An unfamiliar  feeling of inner pain and numbness descended upon me.

At the time I truly thought this descent into hell came from “out of the blue.” But like all feelings that we experience, I now know that because of situations in my most recent past, and my reactions to them, that these thoughts and feeling had accumulated a wealth of debt whose note had come due on this particularly warm day in August.  Starting with this day, I began to move through a fog that not even will power could lift.

I realized in time, unless I started to do something about the way I felt and take responsibility for myself and my behavior, my situation most probably would worsen.”

COMMENT: And my depression did just that–it worsened. Tomorrow the story will be continued. Stay tuned.

Hugh

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SOURCE: I’ll do it when I feel better. (2014) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. (Chapter One: The Depressed Anonymous Story. How it all began. Pages 1-2.)

as

“Our ultimate resource is our willingness to believe that we will in time and work get better. We can feel better too. You will finally come to a group of people who have the same desire that you do, namely the desire to free oneself from the feeling of despair and hopelessness. But if my 30 years or more in the program mean anything –it is that I can become my own best resource for living a life free from fear, shame and anxiety.  I am a believer that my ultimate resource  is the God of my understanding. For some the Higher Power is the group. You know, “two heads are better than one.”  We also believe that the spiritual awakening that the program promotes is absolutely  an essential feature of the program. I have finally trusted the God of my understanding that it will get me through each day, even minutes, hours at a time. I truly believe and know that I can choose the way I feel! So will you. That’s a promise. Come join us.”

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Source: I’ll  do it when I feel better. (2014) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 57. (Quote referenced from Chapter 6: Compulsions and Choices: The addictive nature of the depression experience.)

“My mind was blank and my feelings were on edge. I felt as if a large hole with jagged edges was located in the center of my psyche.  It was at this time that I began to feel like I was walking in a fog.  The anxiety was exacerbate by the fact that I was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. The pain that this hole produced became a daily reminder that something was not right and so I took comfort in sleep. I went to bed as soon as I got home from work. I thought that I could shake off with sleep whatever held me by the throat. All that had held interest for me–all my interests in people -my future career as a therapist –I lost interest in everything. Nothing provided any pleasure  for me at this time. My life was on hold. The only thing that I was interested in was sleep.  I just wanted to sleep.”

Comment

This is taken from the 1st chapter of I’ll do it when I feel better. It’s the story of how my own depression gave me the impetus to set up and organize a group of persons   depressed, following the program of the Twelve Steps.  This 1st chapter tells how it all began.

In the following weeks we will take excerpts from this work and help give an idea of what some of our basic beliefs are about. Please join us here.

Hugh

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SOURCE: I’LLDO IT WHEN I FEEL BETTER(2014) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 2.

One of the many ways that we rationalize and make excuses is to put off what needs to be taken care of today. You don’t put off  today  from taking care of what could be a life threatening illness  or disease tomorrow.  We all have said to ourselves, “I’ll do it when I feel better.” This procrastination is also operative in those of us who want to wait a little  longer before we see the dentist, for example, or get a check up for  an unrelenting stomach ache and for whatever  else that may  ail us.

The same with depression and its ongoing symptoms of anxiety, fatigue, constantly ruminating  about all the bad things that have happened to us or all the things we feel shame and /or guilt about. These negative feelings just never seem to end.  One solution is just to stay in bed, pull the sheets  over our head and sleep. We then say to ourselves, “I’ll get help when I have the energy and when I begin to feel better.”

I know all about this procrastination business and this interminable sadness that had me by the throat that  it was only until I became worried enough to do something about it, that I got moving.

In our book “I’ll do it when I feel better” published in 2014, that I give a  look at some of the ways we can get busy today, to do something about our lethargy, constant negative thinking, and total lack of physical activity. All this is undergirded by the spiritual principles of the 12 Steps of Depressed Anonymous. It is when we realize  we are part of something bigger than ourselves that we can finally quit rolling the stone up the hill like Sisyphus in the legend of old. The way to get ourselves out a  hole is to stop digging!

SOURCES: I’ll do it when I feel better.(2014)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

Hello

If you happened to land on our Depressed Anonymous site here on the Internet and you think you are depressed, we have some thoughts to share with you.

First of all, we welc0me you.It’s not easy to admit that something is happening in our body and it is not getting better. What is it? Well, it has been over thirty years ago that I experienced those same feeling —  gradually losing control over how I felt and finding myself  sliding slowly down a slippery slope. I didn’t have a clue of what was happening to me. It was as if I could see myself, in slow motion, losing my grip on anything to hang onto. I couldn’t get enough sleep; lost weight; bashed myself continually for past personal situations that ended up badly in my life; lost girlfriend; guilt and shame filled my thoughts, every day and every hour. I think you get the picture.

And with all these negative emotions running through my  veins –wouldn’t this bring any body down? And I was down.

Thank God, I already  had begun a 12 Step program of recovery three years prior (for another addiction)  to this experience with depression and I knew it had the power to help me out of this depression prison that I had  me locked down.

Then I made  a  decision and admitted I had a problem and needed  to act quickly or my sadness would completely put me down and out. I started walking five miles every day for weeks hoping this would take  away this interminable jitteriness and anxiety that was keeping me less  able to function. I knew that I couldn’t lose my job. But I couldn’t get out of bed as well. So, walking was a solution that I settled on. I would have to see a Doctor  if the pain didn’t stop. In time it did stop. I came to believe that a Power greater than myself would restore me to sanity. I made a decision to do something. I knew if I moved the body, my mind would follow. For the past year my mind, body   had been stuck in “park.”

Did  I get better? Yes. And then I became a member of Depressed Anonymous and told people how the Steps can help one get better with the Steps and the fellowship of Depressed Anonymous.

By studying the Steps and reading the literature everyday, I finally understood what the depression experience will do to our relationships, our mind and our  physical body. The one great advantage for me was the fact that I could talk to people just like myself. It takes one to know one. To have friends who neither put me down, or who thought I was crazy,  or told me just to “snap out of it” was a  great healing for  me.

Slowly the mental fog lifted and I began to feel like my old cheerful self as I   began to live in the freedom of  that Power greater than myself who was now at the center of my life.

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 SOURCES: (C) Depressed Once-Not Twice (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.