Category Archives: DA Literature

Depressed Anonymous

Bill W., co-founder of AA meets Father Ed who made a pilgrimage to talk with Bill

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“For the depressed person, giving up old ways of thinking and acting is much like giving up any other addiction. At first letting go of the behavior makes us feel uncomfortable. The old behavior wants to cling on to our spirit like swamp mud hangs on to knee-high boots. Before your participation in Depressed Anonymous you would go home from work, get by yourself and ruminate on how bad you felt. The new behavior will help you think differently about yourself. You will find that the Higher Power, or the God of your understanding is not the same God that you might have met when you were young. When you were a child, you came to believe that first, God was watching you, ready to punish you if you were not perfect. You will begin to develop an adult new way of being related to God, as you understand God to be. With time, persistence and patience, you will gradually trust your life to this Higher Power. ”

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

When Bill W., (co-founder of AA) had his spiritual awakening in the hospital room he tells us that “the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. I lay on the bed, but now for the first time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, “So this is the God of the Preachers.!”

RESOURCE:

(As Bill Sees it. Pg.2 )

Belief, DA Literature

My beliefs make my world one of opportunities or danger!

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AFFIRMATION

I CAN DO WITH MY LIFE AS I WILL.

“Each of us structures and so creates our own world.  Because we are free to create  our world  and ourselves, we are free to change our world and ourselves. We can choose to see ourselves as capable of change, and doing so, the future opens up before us as an infinite array of possibilities, or we can choose to see ourselves as unable to change. Forced to live our lives as we have always lived them.”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

So often my belief is what makes my world one of opportunity or one of danger. It’s how I look at my world through the lenses of my life experiences. These condition me to see the world as I see it and understand it.  If I think that I am always going to be depressed, I most likely will stay depressed because that is what I believe to be true. We hold these beliefs as unchangeable. Fixed.  I believe that I can’t change because that is not possible. I become a believer when   I see other people slowly taking mastery over their lives and starting to feel better. (See personal stories in  DA “big Book”)

MEDITATION

We make decisions how to love ourselves, to know that the God as we understood him is leading us into those realms of positive changes that will gradually help us walk out of my darkness into the light of God’s presence. Daily will we make that conscious contact with our God and pray that we might do it’s will.

RESOURCES:

(C) Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step Fellowship groups. Hugh Smith. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY  Pg. 11. January 17th.

(C) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.   ( See Personal Stories )

Books can be ordered online from Publications Bookstore at depressedanon.com.

Belief, DA Literature, Fellowship, Hope, Journaling, Love, Meditation, Mutual Aid, Prayer, Purpose, Spirituality, Victim Thinking

That which doesn’t kill you will probably make you stronger – Nietzsche

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Stress  put me in the hospital two years ago. First, pneumonia  put me in the hospital for a week.   Then, following  a diagnosis of clogged arteries with other assorted problems,  open  heart surgery.  Cardio/rehab for 24 straight weeks gave me my life back. But this was not my first experience with stress and /or depression.

Nietzsche had it right. In my case at least.  What made me stronger and saved my life was not only heart surgery but my new way of  dealing with stress. I now see stress for the trouble maker that it really is. The  stress in anyone’s,  continues to impress me how dangerous living under stress, of any kind, can be.

I know that the daily stress that I  had put my mind and body through every day,  every month, gradually destroyed my immune system’s ability to defend against  constant fear, worry and anxiety. Because of the environment  with which I was living in, day after day, finally caught up with me: pneumonia and then open heart surgery. So you might wonder  how can stress do all this damage to your mind and body?

THEN

This takes me back to my first  experience with sadness. It didn’t kill me, but it did force me to look  at my lifestyle, staying in a bad  situation and the ongoing ruminating which poured adrenaline into my veins, hyping up fear   and anxiety day after day.  Finally, all this  weakened not only my body but my mind  as well. My thinking started circling  around  and around as I tried to figure out exactly what the problem was  knocking me off my feet.  Not only that, I couldn’t concentrate. I would read a sentence or so  and then would forget what I had just read. I was always tired.  I always wanted to sleep. I never laughed anymore. My sense of humor went out the door. I started to isolate. I pushed friends away. I always had an excuse for cancelling meetings and appointments. Every morning I woke up, dead on arrival.  No energy. No purpose and nothing to look  forward to. I was losing all spontaneity and replacing it with boredom. I gradually was being sucked down intro the quicksand of futility and hopelessness.

After a year and half of this    pain filled  life I gradually walked out of the fog. I walked at least five miles a day-like a forced march looking forward to regaining my life. That was 1985.

NOW

Now,  I am stronger because I know all the red flags that pop up in my mind, wanting to  suck me back down into that environment which almost killed me in the first place.  I am definitely stronger now that I have a sponsor, a  12 Step   program (Depressed Anonymous) and  a daily plan   for my ongoing recovery.

My heart is stronger now. My commitment to taking good care of myself with proper rest, good healthy food, and physical activity at least three times a week or more. I also know that keeping in touch with those “still suffering from depression” by email, Home Study, website BLOG (depressedanon.com), phone and reading Depressed Anonymous literature.  What we give away comes back in countless ways. For me, continued sobriety and hope!

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

Online Depressed Anonymous International Skype meetings ( Check website Menu for listing and links).

Order online: The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Journaling, Purpose, Spirituality, The 12 Steps

I can’t do anything to remove my compulsive behavior until I choose to live without it!

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REFLECTION

I know that I have to continue to work on myself and the way that I speak to myself on an ongoing and daily basis. My letting go and let God take over my life doesn’t mean that I’ll just sit back and let God do all the work. No, it means that I will work on myself and leave the outcome up to my Higher Power. I know that my life can be lived differently if I make the effort to choose to become conscious of the thoughts that I let myself ruminate and think about during my day. The more I monitor my thoughts, the more I  am able to filter out the negative thoughts and have them replaced with positive and constructive thoughts.

So often, when I am depressed I continue a thinking style that was learned as a small child. I am not even counscious as to how I would always select the negative attribute about myself to reflect upon, instead of   thinking  positive and hopeful thoughts about myself and my relationships. The more I believe that I have a choice as to how I am to  feel, the more I become conscious of the thoughts that influence the way I feel.

BECOMING MINDFUL

God, let me just for today, dwell on your mercy and kindness that you desire to bestow on us. We pray that our awareness of your love for us will free us from our sadness.

Resources:

(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous  Publications. Louisville, KY  December 14th.

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

(c) The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.

Put a HIGHER THOUGHT in your life every day. A spiritual vitamin will increase your spiritual metabolism so that you  begin to replace negative thinking with thoughts of hope and serenity.

You may order online from the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore at www.depressedanon.com

Courage, DA Literature, Fellowship, Focus

With the compulsion to sad ourselves…

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In our “Big Book” Depressed Anonymous the statement is made:

” With our compulsion to sad ourselves, much like the alcoholic’s urge to medicate his or herself with alcohol, we need daily to turn our will over to God and ask for the  Higher Power’s (God) guidance, eventually it is the conscious contact with the loving God that sets us free from the need to sad ourselves.”

11.1 Question: How do you see your depression as a compulsion? What are the triggers that cause you to spiral downward back into the dark pit of depression?

When you think of depression do you  think of it like one big thing or do you see it for the many parts that make up a depression experience, namely, the way that we think, behave or feel. In other words, when we make it to be a thing, that is when we reify it – it holds power over us – like it came out of the blue – we talk about depression in medical terms such as I just had a bout of depression -like it came from outside of us like an infectious germ or virus. In reality, our depression is made up of many parts, such as particular depressiogenic ways of thinking, behaving and feeling.

11.1. Write the way that you perceive your depression? Can you distinguish the various parts ( thinking; feeling; behaving;  physiological; motivational; spiritual ) that go to form what we call the depression experience?  Which of the above parts continue to cause you the most anxiety/fear?

Which of the following Illustrations can you best relate to.

11.2. A need to be perfect!

11.3. A need to be successful!

11.4. A need to please others always!

11.5. A need to never get angry!

11.6. A need to have someone in my life before I feel I am somebody!

11.7. Please write down how one or more of the above items keeps you down, despairing and hopeless? Also, write about where these attitudes come from?

Please respond to the statement:

I can’t do anything to remove my compulsive behavior until I choose to live without it. It is truly living in the will and mind of God that will help us, one day at a time to stop being so compulsive in our rigid and automated thinking about people and things so that we do not let our dated emotions and thoughts predict what the outcome of our perceptions ought to be.”

The Home Study Program is an excellent tool for self reflection and a meaningful way to discover what needs to be changed in our lives.  The Question  and answers provided by the participant provides freedom from the issues (dated emotions) that continue to cripple us.

RESOURCES

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

(c) The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. pp79-80.

These and other helpful publications  can be ordered online from the Depressed Anonymous Publications  Bookstore at our website www.depressedanon.com.

Acceptance, DA Literature, Fellowship, Kindness, The 12 Steps

A secure base providing recovery: Depressed Anonymous.

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One of the areas of my life, when I was depressed, was to begin looking for that personal and secure base    providing me with  hope  and resources for a complete recovery.  My first attempt at finding this refuge and secure base was preceded by a search for answers. Why was mind  always distracted? Why couldn’t I remember anything? I would read a paragraph and within no time I couldn’t remember a word of what I had just read. I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I was always tired and just wanted to sleep. Coming home after working all day I would hit  the sack. My mind was like in a dense fog.  I felt like I was driving a car at night with my headlights on off. I was lucky just to be able to get to work. For me it was do or die. No job -no  Master’s degree. My job paid for my education. It was that simple.

What can I do? What is wrong with me? I have never in my life felt so filled with anxiousness. Constant jitters.  I even began feeling tremors in my hands. That is when I got worried.  I didn’t have a doctor to consult. Since I lived back in the “stone age” there was no Internet. So, here is what I did. I forced myself out of bed every morning and I started to walk. I went to a mall located where I lived  and walked. I mean I walked miles around that store. Early morning walkers, like myself, were allowed to walk before the store opened. I  can relate to Forrest Gump in the movies. It was boring but I did manage to do it for over a year.  And then it  happened.

A feeling of lightness came over me. Wow! I almost wanted to shout with joy.  That horrible jitteriness stopped for a moment. I felt a cheerfulness that I thought would never come back. My mind was clear. Momentarily I began  reflecting  that something good had just happened.  And then the words, flashing across my mental screen, began spelling out  the words, It won’t last!”

And just as quick as the words flashed in my mind, with it’s lifting mood, it too disappeared.  I retuned downcast to my walking. And then slowly everything started to feel different for me. My mind cleared, my mood spiraled upwards and I began to feel like my old self–now, a renewed guy with a deep gratitude that all my walking paid off. I gradually began to see everything coming back into place.  Whatever it was (it was only later that I could put  a label on my experience and call it what it was, depression.)

Eventually, I designed a pilot project at my university using the 12 spiritual principles of Alcoholics Anonymous to determine if those depressed persons gathered in the  program would respond to the power of the Steps.   The Steps continue to help the alcoholic to recover from alcoholism.   Now we learned  that the 12 Step discussion groups, would also help others  make  progress, like our depressed participants in the study,  as their moods lightened over the 10 week pilot discussion period.  Today, the group that we call Depressed Anonymous is spreading worldwide and its Big Book (Depressed Anonymous)  is now translated into Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Farsi and English.

If you are looking for a secure base, that is a group, where everyone speaks your language of depression, and where you can be accepted and introduced to  a program of recovery that promises healing  and a brand new start in life.

 

RESOURCES

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

You can check out our literature at The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore at www.depressedanon.com.  You may also order books online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Purpose

“Dreams of dying but yet managing to come back to life…”

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” I am a thirty-four year old single female who has been suffering from depression for a long time. Most of my depression was brought on by feelings of insecurity, such  as not being able to express my inner feelings of insecurity, such as not being able to express my inner feelings, being controlled by a dominating adult, loneliness, stress, workaholic, anxiety attacks (related to work  and everyday pressures of living), too much sleep, nervousness, lack of motivation, being tired all the time, sadness, weight gain, digestive problems, a feeling of being trapped, self consciousness, not trusting myself, dreams of dying but yet managing to come back to life, withdrawal from family, or loss of interest in meeting with the opposite sex.

It seemed that I was living in another world until my parents gave me a phone number of Depressed Anonymous. The Depressed Anonymous meetings, plus reading the Depressed Anonymous manual have provided me with the tools to live without being  depressed. Most important  of all, the Twelve Steps mentioned in the book have made me understand that God (my Higher Power)  will give me the strength to deal with my depression and get on with my life and be happy with myself.

The book with its Twelve Steps has taught me that I am not the only one who is suffering from depression. It has taught me to believe more in my Higher Power and to let it handle my depression.

All these new tools have helped me and will continue to do so. They also taught me not to dwell on my past, but to live life one day at a time, and to look toward the future, but not live there. It will take me  a  long time to deal with depression, but I am glad that these tools are available. Life can be good for a change. Please don’t give up.”

– Anonymous

COMMENT  

Even though this anonymous writer was suffering from innumerable problems and life situations, she found   solutions  in the form of meetings, specifically geared to the depressed. By reading the Depressed Anonymous literature she is daily gaining a new motivation  to use the tools that  are promoting positive solutions to her  seemingly insoluble and negative realities. 

The tools mentioned in her story,   showing  that   by using a piece by piece  approach   to dealing with her problems, these have  brought her back to life.    We know there is always hope –please don’t give up!

Hugh

NOTE : For more stories of HOPE please click onto THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS BOOKSTORE.  The Depressed Anonymous  literature  is available by ONLINE ordering.

Resources:

(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd ed., (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.  Personal stories : # 29.  I am no longer alone. Pages 148-149

+ International Online Skype Depressed Anonymous Meeting (See Homepage Menu (depressedanon.com )for Link. Meetings Thursdays and Sundays. Format is same as a f2f DA meeting.)

+ See Homepage (depressedanon. com)  drop down Menu for TOOLS OF RECOVERY.

Depressed Anonymous

I have found a peace in my life

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Gloria reminisces about some of the feelings that she had experienced at a few of her first Depressed Anonymous meetings. It was there at these 12 Step meetings where she not only found herself but some friends who were going through the same battles as herself. When asked if she would like to share her thoughts with a wider audience she agreed that would be a good thing for her to do. In her testimony she shares how she knows that in helping others she helps herself.

The following comments are taken from the Depressed Anonymous manual where her story is included in the Personal Stories section.

Depressed Anonymous is now meeting at a church. I’m a facilitator whenI am needed. Something I never thought I could do five years ago. I pray before I go to meetings and ask God to speak through me to help these people. I always go to a new person, as I vividly remember my first meeting, and make them feel welcome. There are four of us who were together first on June 6, 1985. We have become very good friends. I still remember the things the counselor from the very beginning told us. I’ve seen people come and go. Some helped, some for just one meeting, some wanting a magic wand waved. It has helped me over the rough spots, and gave me courage to go on as a widow. I have found a peace in my life, a special joy in knowing and loving people. In helping others, I have helped myself. I know my background in life has made me depressed at times. My Mother ws abusive and I realized later in life that it was an emotional illness. I forgave her.

I moved to Evansville ten years ago. It is hard to make friends in a new city. But through my support groups at church, I have made lots of friends, super friendly people.

I will continue to attend Depressed Anonymous. Every meeting is different and who knows what mystery each group holds? One never knows who needs me, who needs a smile or hug, who needs to feel that they are not alone or who needs to know that there is a God who loves all.”

Higher Thoughts for Down Days

To please everyone made me into a doormat

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If we are ever sad about people we have hurt or even more  angry about people who have hurt us over the years,  we need to get this out into the open. We also need to share the anger that we feel inside of us that has been swallowed for so many years and which  need to get expressed.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

Finally, I can give myself permission to express my feelings. I have held in many strong emotions over the years. Now, thanks to my friends who are in recovery with me, I have been assured that that it’s alright to express my strong emotions. It has been said that depression is anger turned in on itself. It should also be said that anger unexpressed flattens all feeling, especially the pleasant ones. Today, I know and believe that it is alright to first identify my feeling, secondly to own it, and then thirdly, to express it.

I am learning much from the old axiom that we “first have to be true to our own self.” I am also learning that my need to be perfect and to please everyone made me into a doormat. I thought that I didn’t deserve any better.

Anger has its root, usually from a hurt or an old grievance. The soil that gives nurturance to this hurt is resentment. The best way to get rid of my need to be vindictive is to find out what triggers my anger.

MEDITATION

God show us your mercy and let our trust in you heal all our hurts and let trust be strengthened as we go about our activities today.

(C) Higher thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditation for members of 12 step fellowship groups. Hugh Smith (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. Pages 224-225. November 11.

“Depressed Anonymous is not the place to have people feel sorry for you. Depressed Anonymous is a spiritual program where you will find people like yourself, honestly, openly and willingly dealing with character defects – gradually admitting that they will have to change their lives and lifestyle if they are going to be a whole and honest human being. The decision is yours. You make the choice. The Twelve Steps and your own personal story can now be shared with others and can help them on their own life’s journey.

(C) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. Page 126.

To order these publications online, contact www.depressedanon.com at the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore.