Category Archives: DA Literature

I can manage whatever comes to me in these next 24 hours!

July 29, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

As our Depressed Anonymous mutual-aid group began to grow, I felt that something was missing. We already had our Big Book, Depressed Anonymous and the accompanying The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. We needed something practical for our groups, giving them a unique boost for each day of the year. This boost would be short reflections, namely a Higher Thought, giving each of us, an affirmation that when applied to our own struggle with depression, would counteract the negative thinking and behaviors ruling our life. The beauty of this very unique daily book of meditations and reflections, centers our efforts to overcoming depression, using the 12 spiritual principles of the 12 Steps.

What matters most for those of us in the fellowship and newcomers to the program of recovery is to have a meditation book that deals with depression and the spiritual pathways that lead away and out of depression. The 213 pages, along with reflections for everyday of the year, help keep the focus on ourselves, on what depression feels and looks like with multiple solution focused possibilities of recovery.

At the end of every Higher Thought reflection we have a powerful short meditation keeping us centered on the belief that a power greater than ourselves will restore and help us reconnect with life, plus presenting us with hope and a belief that life will get better.

We are happy to be able to have such a book in our hands which talks to us where we live and is dedicated to march us toward the finish line of sanity and serenity.

Here is a sample quote from Higher Thoughts for down days for July 28th.

I surely know collapse and despair because of my sadness and depression that follows me like a dark black cloud wherever I go. My depression doesn’t have to last forever and, in fact, it is irrational to think that it does. I believe more than ever in this caring and loving Higher Power who is always waiting for us to seek its presence. Without a doubt, most days I have the belief that my Higher Power is gradually going to see me through my depair and frustration. I know that my faith in a power greater than myself is going to restore to me a serenity and joy that I have never experienced much in my own life.

My faith is going to ensure that my life will be better today than it was yesterday. I am positive about the new consciousness of my Higher Power working good things out in my life. I have opened the door. I welcome Him into my life.

RESOURCE

(C) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.KY.

Visit the Store for more info about this book. One can order it online.

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook

Root canals and depression: what they have in common

July 25, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

When I gradually found myself in a mental and physical lockdown, due to a battle with depression, I did what most of us with the symptoms of depression do, I began to isolate. If not physically, at least in my mind.

For those of us who have experienced a root canal, you know what I am speaking of when it comes to suffering pain. Maybe today, the root canal of yesterday is not as bad today because of advancement in this dental procedure. But with my own depression I felt a terrible pain and total physical exhaustion. I just wanted to be left alone. I needed to try and figure out what began as a worry turned into being a continued ruminating about my own mental abilities. Because I couldn’t just ask my dentist to drill down and remove the cause of my pain, I chose to hobble away quietly and begin to medicate it with sleep and avoidance of everything that I had held dear in my life. I was not dealing with a decaying tooth but with a powerful mental anguish, sapping me of any positive solution to a life gone sour.

And just as a dental procedure provides a solution for my tooth, so is there a solution for finding healing and help for my depression. I believe that for most people who suffer from depression there is hope. There is a healing that is available. For many persons their depression lifts of it ‘s own. It’s been said that 85% of us who have had only one episode of depression in our lives that this will be the only one we will experience.

Many seek out medication, some therapists, some psychologists, and most a combination of these resources. But for those who also seek out understanding and who can find a friend to talk with, these are the ones that gradually find hope and a solution for their misery.

In my own life, I found a group of men and women ( Depressed Anonymous) , of all ages who come together and speak about their isolation and helplessness and find others in the same boat as themselves. It became clear that this is a positive experience and a resource that gradually gave me an anchor to help me survive the storm. No longer did I feel that the waves of sadness and feeling hopeless would drown me. It also provided me with a group of people, coming together as a group, continuing to provide me with tools to leave my self constructed prison of depression. Now I am free of living always inside my mind and beating myself up with guilt and shame.

Take charge of your life, piece by piece. Take one small goal at a time. Get busy. Walk everyday. Go to gym. Find that friend to talk with-especially good if they belong to a Depressed Anonymous group and they use a plan that provides a pathway to hope and help. Get a DA Workbook and DA Manual (3rd edition) and follow it’s plan, one day at a time. Learn about the 12 spiritual principles/Steps of Depressed Anonymous and apply them to your own life. If you do these simple steps, you will find that just as going to a dentist for help with your teeth, so will getting involved with people like ourselves provide healing and focus on taking good care of ourself and our life without the debilitating pain of depression. That is a Promise!

RESOURCES

Depressed Anonymous

THE DRUNKEN MONKEY

July 22, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

One of the problems from my past was my need to worry about things. I worried about everything. Depression in particular incited me to worry about the past, the future and the now. I couldn’t escape the hold that it had on me.

All I needed to get the ball rolling was an event from my past for which I felt responsible and which I felt I had not sufficiently worried about. Not only did this thinking of this problem cause me a lot of pain, it also stimulated in me a low mood, pushing me deeper into that dark well of hopelessness.

“Somehow when I spend time worrying about whether or not I am loved or whether this or that awful thing will befall me, I spiral down into our familiar state of hopelessness and anxiety. Worry helps to keep me isolated from others as I need to know whether this or that calamity might happen to me. My guilt about what I have done in the past or perceived to have done, is incessantly forcing me to examine in detail my every fault and mistake.” Higher Thoughts for Down Days. July 20.

With worry, we tend to think that we can fix whatever we are worried about. But then when we begin ruminating about the matter at hand, we give more power to the cycling mind to go deeper into the quicksand of hopelessness and despair. Now our low mood begins to take its toll and sadness begins to deepen till our body is physically weakened and our mind gradually exhausts itself.

A solution that I have found helpful when worry gets the best of me is to initiate the LAW OF THE THREES. Basically what this amounts to is that when the worry and rumination begins its circling we imagine a Stop sign to halt the incessant negative thinking, and replace them with three thoughts which are upbeat and positive. Of course there is no magic in all of this, but just plain old persistence and keeping focused on the solution. I have also learned that when a negative thought pops into our minds, we usually have only about 3 seconds to dismiss it for what it is. We must take charge and immediately replace it with three positive thoughts which build us up and are not allowed to start spiraling us downward.

The best thing is to prepare ourselves for those times when thinking gets “stinking” and irrational. Most of these thoughts turn out to be catastrophic with dire predictions about our future. Practice of the Rule of theThrees Law can be the tool that will eventually free us from being dominated by thinking which is irrational and despairing. Even though the low mood begins to deepen into a state of depression, believe that you can stop the cycling with a STOP command and start thinking of positive thoughts, one after another.

Another solution which I have found to work is to tell yourself that your worry time is for only 20 minutes a day. You will also set that time at any point of the day that you choose. That’s all the worry time you will allow to take up your time. So worry all that you want. Twenty minutes. That’s all.

Be sure that you will have an activity to put your mind and energy toward when the 20 minutes is up. It is at this point that the mind will have to be reined in, because it has been conditioned to act like a “drunken monkey” and jumps from one thing to another.

These are just suggestions and I hope that you give them a try and see if they can work for you. They work for me. Takes practice and perseverance but it’s a tool that can work and can bring peace and serenity to your mind. Tell that monkey to take a leap!

Please visit the store for more information on publications which are available. Ordering online is available.

Depressed Anonymous

I will not be locked in my depression forever

July 16, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

When I was depressed a few years back, I believed I couldn’t escape this self-imposed lockdown. It was like looking down a stretch of highway with no end in sight. The mystery of the whole thing was trying to figure out how I got in this fix in the first place?

That’s the problem with depression. Where does it come from and how to get rid of it? Like getting rid of a cold or the flu. We all know how this ordeal begins: slowly and with that intense grip that sticks to us like swamp mud. And then comes the backing away from family, friends and those with whom we are closest. Our enclosure is much like the prison cell, excepting that we have the key that could free us. Only I have the power to free myself.

So now, today, I can share how in my own time in lockdown I found the way out. At first I really didn’t know what I had, just that something had me. I had had this experience before when I was addicted to a substance that I felt I could not live without. But for thirty years of days sober and serene, my recovery was accomplished by living a program that not only promised hope and peace, but a program that actually delivered on that promise.

I want to share that book with you, just as Dr. Bob and Bill W., shared their recovery experience with others like themselves and now thousands of grateful recovered addicts.

In 1998 the thoughts and miracles of others who were depressed, who use the 12 Steps have their own book, describing in detail, Step by Step, how they unlocked their own personal prison. Actually, it is a book that has HOPE written all over it. It provides a way out for all of us who thought that there was no way out–and that suicide was our only escape. We all know how depression and its debilitating isolation completely immobilizes and deadens us to all hope and meaning.

To set a goal for our own recovery is possible now with Depressed Anonymous. We know. We’ve been there. Depression doesn’t have to last forever. Now this is not some “pie in the sky” stuff. Read the stories of those who did find hope and recovery, and see how they put their trust in that power greater than themselves. They made a decision to give it their all, finding a meaning for their lives. and a reason to live.

We all were able to gradually free ourselves from the fog, the isolation, and begin to find a continual hope with the support of our Depressed Anonymous Fellowship.

If you want to find out about this hope-filled message for yourself or for a friend/ family member, please check it out here online or at your favorite bookstore. You can also order online from the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore here at this website depressedanon.com. If you are depressed today, this book can be what you have been looking for.

Higher Thoughts for Down Days

PEACE OF MIND?

July 11, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

I am committed to replacing every negative thought about myself with a positive and recreating thought.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I always wondered how can I possibly bring peace to others when I feel so low and down in the mouth? It is my wish to help others who are still suffering and living without the hope for ever feeling better. It is by doing what I have to do everyday plus living today for all it’s worth, that I will be able to stay in the now and try to change my moods as they start their usual spiraling downward I believe that ‘Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the Steps we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all of our affairs. Thus, I can help others.

Happiness is a side product of my letting go of myself and thinking of some larger effort or goal in my life. It is in setting a goal to work on myself just for today so that I can get in contact with my Higher Power, or the God of my understanding.

We ask God to point out to us where our areas of self-will lie so that we can start to work on these areas. They can and do block us from using all of our talents in the furthering of our goal to reach out to those others still suffering from depression.

Today is my day to live out what I believe and to continue to use my daily Higher Thoughts for Down Days to not only recreate hope in myself but in the lives of others.
(C) Higher Thoughts for down days

Fellowship, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, The 12 Steps

I can get out of this mess!

June 26, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I am not going to let my mind drift out of where I want it to go.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I know from the way that I live out my life, the way I think, act, and believe, my life is far from simple. I have created this monster called depression because of my fears, anger and general feelings of disgust about myself. I do know that it is by admitting that my life has been very complicated, my thinking centered on my unworthiness, that I became depressed. I want to learn how to keep my life simple. I plan to do that by, first of all, admitting that I am powerless over my depression and that my life is unmanageable. I also believe that I can get out of this mess by focusing on respected and workable solutions rather than keeping focused on my ever present difficulties.”

COPYRIGHT (C) Higher Thoughts for Down Days:365 daily thoughts and meditations for member of 12 Step fellowship groups. Louisville, KY. June 26th. Page128.

Depressed Anonymous

That Vital Spiritual experience helps us become conscious of God’s light within each of us

June 15, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

“If we have worked the Twelve Steps on a daily basis, I do believe we now realize the value of surrender and the power that releases in us. Just by making a decision at Step Three “to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God” is the beginning of reconnection with life and with our selves. Now, we are conscious how our own isolation paradoxically isolated family, friends, loved ones from us. The more our friends tried to help us the more we went deeper into the darkness. Our darkness and their inability to comfort us in turn pushed them deeper into their own feelings of helplessness and isolation. Many times the desire to help the depressed pushes the helper deeper into the isolation of the depressed –mirroring the reality of the depressed person.”

(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. (Appendix B: The Vital Spiritual experience.).

(c) The Dep-Anon Family Guide (2000). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.KY. ( This important work will soon be reprinted and published at the end of 2019.)

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook

Running out of gas?

June 8, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

MY LIFE BEFORE

Running out of gas is a scary proposition, especially when you know the nearest town and gas station is fifty miles away. Your mind starts cranking up some o f the most dire scenarios one can imagine . Running out of gas has not been a problem for me in recent years. I have learned that it’s best to keep an eye on one’s gas gauge. That usually takes care of any problems of being stranded on the highway.

For me, being depressed is like running out of gas. Even though I was going about my life as usual, I began noticing my energy level (physical gauge) was reading close to empty. This didn’t cause much concern at first and I kept plodding along. I didn’t give the thoughts too much attention.

Suddenly, yes, it was suddenly like some huge hand reached into my head, turned the mental ignition switch off, with my life spiraling down into a bottomless pit. I was out of gas, emotionally, spiritually and motivationally paralyzed. My battery was dead and my tank was empty. What to do?

MY LIFE NOW

“The important thing to remember about depression is that you are not a victim. You have bought into the belief that you can’t change how you feel. You need to believe that once you change the way you think then that in itself can begin to produce a change in the way you feel.”

It’s been more than 30 years since I spiraled into the bottomless pit. I continue to live, one day at a time, with the strength that daily replenishes me with hope and confidence. That strength I call my Higher Power, or my God as I understand God. (Step Two).

My battery is charged by those others in the Fellowship of Depressed Anonymous who as my companions on this broad highway of recovery, who speak the language of hope. Each time that I read and reflect on the thoughts in the big book of Depressed Anonymous (Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition) and stay in touch with a weekly meeting and my sponsor, I find my strength and resolve renewed.

If you are visiting this website for the first time or the hundredth time, know and believe that you too CAN rise up and resist all those hopeless and helpless thoughts trying to crowd out these new feelings of hope and resolve.

RESOURCES

For more information about ordering material online please click onto VISIT THE STORE at THE DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS BOOKSTORE.

12 Step Meeting, DA Literature, Fellowship, Spirituality

Depressed or unhappy?

May 23, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

Depressed Anonymous bases its healing and recovery on the premise that once depressed persons admit they are out of control, even to the extent of attempting suicide, they come to believe that a power greater than themselves can restore them to sanity, while at the same time, making a decision to turn their minds and wills over to the care of God, as they understand God,

The God, as we under stand God, is what appeals to more and more persons as we admit our helplessness over our compulsive, depressive thoughts, actions, or behaviors. We feel we have lost all control over everything including our thinking. The depressed person is aware that their unpleasant thinking is a cyclical and spiraling process where there is never a respite. This obsession, driven by one’s one feelings of guilt, shame and worthlessness is the fuel that that continues our own isolation. This experience is not so much a psychopathology as it is a way for the human spirit to comfort itself. The depression is more of a disease of isolation and being disconnected than a biological disorder.

The Twelve Step program helps people to become God conscious. It is in working the program while making no excuses for the spiritual nature of our recovery. We can begin to attribute our new found sense of hope and peace to the Higher Power. For the active member of Depressed Anonymous, there begins to glimmer in the distance the bright light of hope.

By recognizing how it feels to be depressed, more people will have the help and guidance that will get them through their depression. Lives will be saved as well. Besides reading the Twelve Steps at each meeting, the group learns on a firsthand basis about the “miracle of the group.” It is in the sharing and getting connected with the other members of the group where one’s recovery begins.

RESOURCES:

Please click onto The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore for more information on Depression, spirituality and recovery.

Depressed Anonymous

DEPRESSIVOS ANONIMOS (Spanish edition) PUBLISHED TODAY(MAY 1).

May 1, 2019 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

Today, Depressed Anonymous Publications has published the First Spanish Edition of DEPRESSIVOS ANONIMOS. (This Spanish edition is the English edition of Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition).

This Spanish edition provides the 12 Step fellowship with a Step by Step program of recovery.

See our website at www.Depressedanon.com for information on ordering online.

DEPRESSIVOS ANONIMOS can be ordered from Amazon.com and/ or from the Depressed Anonymous website at www. depressedanon.com.

For more information email at depanon@netpenny.net.

Hope is just a few steps away!