Category Archives: Helpful Thinking

Courage, Fellowship, Isolation, Kindness, Mutual Aid, Purpose

I’m having cabin fever during this pandemic self-isolation. How are you doing?

April 9, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

Updated 29 Dec 2020: The US based ZOOM meetings are no longer being held.

Getting a daily rhythm during this time of self-isolation is getting to be a must for me. How about you? After a month of isolating myself this isolation getting old. And, it appears that it isn’t going to be over for a spell. We are all created as human beings to be close to others. We love the fellowship of groups. Ironically, this is what will kill us or make us very sick at the very least. Physical/social distancing is a must now.

I am getting my stride. Athletes talk about getting into their rhythm. I am much aware that I can’t fiddle my time away – getting myself depressed, or just staring out the window, watching TV , streaming on my computer or just sleeping through it.

So, I have developed a schedule. I make sure that I eat every day and at the same time. I use my 12 Step literature for prayer and reflection in the morning. I also do some writing on my online WordPress blog . Because I have gone through self-isolating when I was depressed – I definitely do not let it happen again. In my schedule I go to the park and exercise everyday and at the same time. I spend a part of the afternoon catching up with friends and members of the Depressed Anonymous fellowship. At these times I connect with member s of the large DA fellowship in Iran and other DA members outside US. (Everyone with whom I have contact are going through the same pandemic as we are.)

The Depressed Anonymous fellowship have an International daily DA SKYPE online meeting. I am able to contact and participate in this group in early afternoon. Then there is a new ZOOM online fellowship that has just been formed. You can find times and places at our Depressed Anonymous website. Or on Facebook. Please try and attend these meetings. Great resource for keeping in touch and helping to maintain our recovery – one day at a time. In the late afternoon I follow our Governor’s daily TV meeting(Kentucky) where he keeps us up to date on things that we have to do to keep each other safe and out of harms way. Then evening news and then other news sources. So by night time I am saturated with news – mostly sad news about how there is so much suffering and isolation among all of us who need each other so much.

I am especially grateful for our 12 step fellowship where we can see each other f2f and maintain our sanity and sobriety. Please check out our recent blogs at www.depressedanon.com or FB Depressed Anonymous. Today is the first day where we are offering our eBooks for $1.00 a piece. These are the 3rd edition of Depressed Anonymous and The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Both of these eBooks can be downloaded on the computer or printed out on your printer. These are the books which we use at our Online group meetings. If you want these books today, they are yours for downloading. We felt that now is the time to make these books available to as many people as possible. We wanted to make them available on line free – but somehow that was not possible. So we went for $1 buck apiece. I do hope others take advantage of this opportunity – especially most of us who might be hard pressed to come up with any money now when food and shelter is our most critical need. Depressed Anonymous Publications is a very small business operation and all our work is done by volunteers – including me.

My suggestion is to do the same thing everyday, have a schedule for each day and now that the children are home, and with the kids out of school, they will always need some help with their eLearning classes.

Do some fun things for yourself – I personally liked the old Three stooges, Jim Carey’s movies and older comedies keep me laughing. It sure helps lift my mood.

Plan to call at least one older person who is alone. Maybe a neighbor who needs food. My wife and I are now trying to make some strategic decisions in our food purchases and TP. Trying to make do with what we have, sharing what we have with others.

Call your sponsor everyday or a fellow member of our 12 Step fellowship group.

Finally, get into your own rhythm – take it one day at a time-make a schedule and as a family get together and decide how we all can decide how we want to spend our day.

Thank you and may all of us remain safe and secure. This too shall pass. We are all in this together. We are going to get through it. We are going to get through it together.

Love and peace to you all.

Hugh, for the fellowship

Choice, Faith, Hope

A Pathway To Hope

March 25, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

Ray, a member of DA, tells us how to talk about the various parts that make up one’s progress on the path to recovery.

“I think most depression sufferers go through a time of hopelessness. This feeling is very disabling for many of us. But with most problems or illnesses there is always hope. Hope that our problems will be solved or that we will get better. So if hope is part of the solution, how do we find our own path to hope? Before we take that path I think it is important to see how the path is formed.

The first item is choice. We make choices everyday for ourselves, some simple and some complex. These choices may affect us for the rest of our lives, that is, what do I want from my life? What are my goals in life? Our lives are formed and maybe our own meaning of what life is, is revealed to us. So our path is first formed with the choices that we make.

Next comes acceptance. Acceptance for who and what we are, accepting our own ideas, values, feelings and emotions but even more important is accepting the fact that we can change our ideas, values, feelings and emotions. Accepting the fact that these changes can and will be made by ourselves, as other people can’t do that for us. They can only add to or detract from those changes, By accepting our choices and taking responsibility for these choices for our journey on the path of hope has begun.

The third item is trust. Trust in ourselves to make the right choices. Trust, in ourselves to overcome any obstacle we face no matter how difficult it is. Also, trusting another person, especially when that person loves, cares or just believes in us. Trust is important, it tells us we are not alone and we can accept and trust in another to lead us down our chosen path as well as trusting in ourselves.

The last item is faith. Faith in ourselves that things wil be solved even when no answer or situation is in sight or seems impossible. Faith in others to help us when we need help and that they will be there for us. Faith in God or our Higher Power and through Him our anguish, our sorrow, our pain will be lifted. Faith in our path of hope.”

The path of hope for depression sufferers is not easy to build or to find sometimes. That’s why I think it is so important to take your medicine, if medications are prescribed, see your Doctor, counselor, 12 Step sponsor or therapist. Go to a Depressed Anonymous meetng as often as you are able. Remember – when all seems to be lost, there is always hope.

Resource

Please go online and click onto DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS BOOKSTORE for more literature on the 12 Steps and depression. You’ll be happy that you did.

Choice, Fellowship, Higher Power, Mutual Aid

I can make it through the next 24 hours. We will show you how

March 11, 2020 Hugh Smith 2 Comments

AFFIRMATION

My best chance of surviving and living through this sadness that is worse than death is to hold on to the conviction that it will not last forever.

REFLECTION

I now can see how the Depressed Anonymous group program changes people from week to week. The longer a person attends DA meetings, online or face to face, I can see a change in their physical features as they seem not so brooding and preoccupied. The people who work the 12 Step Program of recovery begin placing their trust in their Higher Power which gives them the courage to resist falling back into that old familiar and comfortable pattern of saddening themselves. Each new day brings with it a stronger sense of hope as living becomes less restrictive and harsh.

My sadness began so long ago that the interminable feelings of hopelessness and despair seems to me so much of being human that is, until others tell me that this sadness is not their own experience. Then I knew I was different but that with time and help, I would be feeling better about myself as I discovered some of the ways I got the way I am. The more I hear the stories of others recovering members of Depressed Anonymous groups (See Depressed Anonymous book/Personal stories section) , the more hope I have. I now believe that in time I will begin to feel better.

MEDITATION

Seeds with proper nourishment grow strong and healthy. Some plants grow well at night and in a cooler environment. Some in daylight. We pray that God will let us go through our present darkness completely turning our will and life over to its purpose.

RESOURCES:

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

Fellowship, Journaling, Love

The 12 Step program of recovery is helping me learn how to love myself

March 3, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I have hope that I can accept myself today and just let fly by all the old messages from old tapes of childhood.

“You desperately wanted people to love you, but you became very wary of giving your love to others. You reasoned that the less you loved another person, the less it would hurt when the inevitable rejection came.” Dorothy Rowe

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I have been so holed up in my own little world of feeling hurt and rejected that to attempt to love someone else seems the greatest challenge of my life. I desire so badly to be loved by someone else, that this lack of another’s love makes my isolation from others so hurtful.

After witnessing the miracle of the group of Depressed Anonymous, where depressed people come with their feelings of being hurt and rejected, I find that other’s love and nurture challenges me to hope once again. I can share with the group the fact that I haven’t measured up, that I am angry and that I want to just lay down and die.

I am open now to let the light of love from others, who like myself, realize that I am not alone and that I am beginning to affiliate and give of myself fro someone else’s good. In the program of recovery I am starting to love myself.

MEDITATION

We are going to make a mental decision right now to let God, as we understand God, guide us and instruct us on how to love ourselves.

(c) Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.KY. Pg. 38. March 3rd.

Purpose, The 12 Steps

Our whole outlook and attitude upon life changes. A sense of purpose transforms us.

February 25, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

To really believe, possibly for the first time in one’s life that I can free myself from the prison of depression and begin to feel better. I know I’m needing to be proactive in my efforts at self recovery. But what causes our outlook and attitude to emerge?

I have to begin to believe that hope and healing is possible. Once we have gone through some painful inner changes, such as dealing with our character defects and our isolating tendencies we see there is a way out. We have to have a positive attitude that will move and motivate us to want to go get to the next step. Watching someone actually take these steps week after week and watch that feeling of wellness rise up in them and can promote a belief that with work and time, their lives do improve. Soon we see that a sense of purpose begins to manifest itself the more time and work, into our personal recovery.

A door opens ever slightly, and there appears a potential route to freedom. A way out! I do believe that when my hope and faith and recovery rises, my symptoms of depression go down.”

Resource:

Order online from The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore at our website www.depressedanon.com.

Belief, Choice, Fellowship, Focus, Meditation, Spirituality

Discover the patterns of behavior from your own life. Example: How you think about yourself.

February 18, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

AFFIRMATION

I want to believe that my God, as I understand him, will continually make a path for me through life. I want today to listen to its leading.

“Our patterns are more successful than the fortune telling arts, since we expect our patterns to prove true, and expecting this, we usually find that they do. Edmund Carpenter once wrote,
“We say, ‘If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it, but the phrase should be, ‘If I hadn’t believed it with all my heart, I wouldn’t have seen it.'”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I usually expected bad things to happen to me because bad things usually did happen to me, as Dorothy Rowe points out in her six immutable beliefs that make up the prison of our depression. I used to believe that God punished me for all the bad things I did in my life and for my being the bad person that I believe that I am. But now, I am changing my beliefs about my depression and that I am only a passive victim. I believe that I will survive this time of depression.

It’s as if my depression is like a rotted tooth, a thing that can be extracted. I am slowly believing that it is important what I believe about myself and how I have a responsibility to extract myself from my own lifestyle of sadness. I do know this, that if I continue to think the way that I have over the last couple of years, I will stay stuck in the deep pit of depression. If we do something over and over again, day after day, we can say that we have created a pattern of thinking and behaving. Some say that our life is on auto-pilot.

I now believing with all my heart that I will get better with the help of my own resources and through the help of others and the Twelve Step program of recovery.

MEDITATION

God, you can make all things new but you never infringe your will upon any of us. But the more peace we receive from turning our will over to yours, the more I can predict that my future will be more according to your design.”

RESOURCES

(C) Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 Daily Thoughts and Meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups. Louisville, Ky.

(C) Believing is Seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression (2017) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville Ky.

Order Online from The Depressed Anonymous Bookstore here at our website www. depressedanon.com.

Choice, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Journaling, Mindfulness

Did I create my own prison of depression?

February 6, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

You know, that’s a great question for us who have been , or who are presently depressed. My own reflections about my own experience with depression wasn’t a question that I asked myself. Actually, that came later in my recovery. I really didn’t care who or what created it – all I knew was I had to get rid of it. In fact, the experience was much like Noah’s in the belly of the whale. I was just walking along one day minding my own business, and suddenly bam! physically feeling swallowed up by some invisible creature who was devouring me. And that was that. From that moment on, the feeling continued to overwhelm me for the next year and half.

Because I had no label to pin on this “whatever it was,” and I thought nothing important to talk to anyone about, but only that the feeling of helplessness had me locked down. Oh, I still went to work, trudged through Graduate studies and continued my relationship with others, never revealing my interior mysterious sense of isolation and despair.

My only distraction was to get up early every morning( biggest challenge of the day) and walk for miles, round and round, thankful I was still able to function.

Long story short, during this period, I gradually felt small lift’s in my spirit but they never lasted. So I continued walking until I managed to walk out of the fog. I was feeling hopeful again, able to face life with hope. Finally feeling fully freed from the hopelessness that had isolated me from my world, disconnecting me from everything, everybody, even myself. That was then.

Now reaching back into the past, looking at my life before ” whatever it was” that had me, I began discovering that I’d unconsciously constructed my own prison and confinement. My ruminating on fearful scenarios of losing my job, not able to handle negative life issues and constant frightful thinking plus the continuous feeling deep painful moods, all grinding my body, mind and spirit into the ground. The feeling, best described this is like someone scraping their fingernails on a blackboard all day without end. If you are old enough to remember this particular feeling, (or even a blackboard) then you know it was that painful knife-like feeling thrust through your stomach that echoed throughout your whole body. Well, that was the way I felt all the time, particularly in the morning each day. I wanted never to get up. Here is where motivation follows action . Move the body and the mind will follow.

When I speak of the pain that threw me to the ground and ended the familiar life that I knew, the members of the Depressed Anonymous group know exactly what I am talking about. Depression is physically painful. Usually when I tell someone I was depressed, they normally don’t understand, unless of course, they have been depressed themselves.

In my case, I unconsciously caused and created my depression, and allowed the symptoms to grind me down until I took steps to feel differently. The steps that I took was to attend the “miracle of the Depressed Anonymous group ” where I could share my own experiences, strength and hope, make the 12 Steps a daily part of my life, and to share this message of hope with all who feel the same way as I did.

Believing in a Higher Power greater than myself continues to keep me sane and living one day at a time. It works. It can work for you as well.

For more information contact us @

Depanon@netpenny.net and read what we are about @ depressedanon.com.

Resources:

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publicatiuons. Louisville, KY 40241.

Home Study Program of Recovery (See DA literature here at The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore).

Acceptance

Now that I have admitted to myself and to others that my life is out of control…

February 4, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

I’ve admitted that my life is unmanageable because of my depression. My fears and anxiety have taken over my life. The admitting for me was the hard part. I then made a decision to walk through the door that led me into my first 12 step meeting. I had to surrender and I told myself “OK. Here goes nothing.” Actually, to my surprise, my life has never been the same since then.

I discovered that the reason I have been depressed so long is not as important as the fact that I admitted that I was depressed.

Once I feel safe to say that I am depressed or that I have been depressed most of my life, this is the beginning of freedom for me. The depression mutual – aid groups are making it Ok to say ” I am depressed.” Most people now recognize that depression is a way that we have constructed our world in which we can survive. To admit that we are depressed is really half the battle. Once I began to take charge of my life and choose to recover from this emotional sadness, I am able to get my life back.

This is the first step toward recovering from my attachment to sadness: namely, admitting through no fault of my own that I have spent many a year of my life avoiding life. I have closeted myself up in the cocoon of isolation. Now I know that I have work to do and, like others before me, I am finding a brand new life opening up for me day after day.

MEDITATION

We now know that God knows all about us and our situation. We cannot hide from God as did Adam in the garden of Eden. Adam’s nakedness became his shame before God. Being vulnerable is to be naked to the threatening gaze of strangers. By sharing the shame of ourselves with others like our self we will gradually and in time, deliver ourselves from the threatening situation. Our dependence on our Higher Power or God as we understand God will get us through today. God can do the same for you!

RESOURCE

(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. February 4th, Page 22. (Your personal comments welcome.)

Spirituality

I am coming to believe that “what goes around comes around”

February 3, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

I am coming to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. I look forward to my meetings because it is there that I am accepted and I feel worthwhile.

“Seeing yourself as basically good reduces the need for other people’s approval… but if you see yourself bad then you need everybody’s approval.”

REFLECTION

So often I think of myself as mentally deficient because of the way my sadness keeps me from having a sense of mastery over my life. and withdrawing into my own little world of ruminating about how bad and worthless I am.

Now, thanks to the Twelve Steps, I am seeing that I am not alone in my sadness. I can, in time and with work, get out of this thing that I myself unknowingly have created over time. The more I “carry the message” of hope and how the Twelve Step program works for me the more I am feeling better about myself. By helping others I help myself.

I think I would be less than honest if I said I didn’t need other person’s approval of me. The problem is in never wanting to hurt other people’s feelings. I’m afraid that I might not have said things just the way the other party liked to hear them. I sometimes feel guilty because I have to disagree with a friend and then beat myself up over it for days later. Is something wrong with this picture? I now know that I need my approval of myself first of all. That is most important and above other’s approval of me.

MEDITATION

It is one of the immutable truths of the universe that the more we give out in love and hope, the more that love and hope come back to us. What we give can come back to us. If we begin to see how we fooled others into seeing ourselves as less than worthy to be alive, then we give the message to others “kick me.” What goes around comes around.!

RESOURCES:

(c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of Twelve Step fellowship groups. (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. February 2nd. Page s 20-21. (Please add your own personal comment).

Journaling, Purpose, The 12 Steps

How to work the 12 Step program of recovery and put them to use in your everyday life

January 28, 2020 Hugh Smith Leave a comment

When someone new comes to a Depressed Anonymous meeting they will hear about people in the group working on the 12 Steps. What this means is that since the group of people are into working the 12 Steps they intend to live out what the Steps mean.

The first Step that all of us make when we walked through that door into our first DA meeting was our admission that we were helpless over our depression. We needed help.

We need to admit that at the present time our will power is powerless over this constant sadness and emptiness that we have been carrying around most of our lives. We just need to talk to someone who will understand us and respect us and not tell us to “snap out of” our depression.

Working the 12 Steps means reading all we can about the Steps and how these Steps relate to my own sense of aloneness and sadness. The manual, Depressed Anonymous is specifically designed to help the depressed person learn about each Step is treated with it’s own chapter in the book.

In order to have a change of feelings we have to work the Steps, which means putting them into practice in all our daily affairs. It means that we have to try and live out the message of the Steps one day at a time.

A person needs to take each Step and reflect on how that particular Step speaks to our own life. If a Step that we are studying is unclear as to how it applies to us then we need to bring that up in a group discussion so that other members can share how that Step has been applied to their own lives. Sometimes persons who have been in recovery for a long time have more experiences with the Steps and they can share how this or that Step has helped them. We know that at the DA meetings there are people who are each at different levels of the understanding of the Steps.

Steps Four and Five really have to be faced head-on if our depression is to go away. Step four and five are all about cleaning house. We must square off with ourselves and begin the rooting out processes that will in time free us from our sadness and our “feeling less than” as a depressed person. So often a person depressed is afraid, panic stricken really, in facing some issues that were never their fault in the first place.

It is possible that our anger hasn’t as yet been released over some things that have been done to us as children.

Step Twelve speaks about practicing these principles in all of our affairs – that means exactly what it says – we have to practice these Steps day by day. We have to say I’m sorry as soon as I am aware that I have said or done anything that is out of the way. We again need to study each Step, tear it apart and get every ounce of truth from the Step as it relates to ourselves. We then write down how each of them has a special application for my life. We also have a practice of finding quality time everyday of our lives for making room to listen to our Higher Power, or God as we understand God and how that power is going to operate in our lives today and everyday. It is like we must learn to let go and let God operate in our lives.

For all of us who have had a dependency on depression and sadness, it is hard to let go of the sadness and thinking that somehow gave us an identity to our lives. Depression can serve as a safe defense and haven againt the uinpredictableness in our lives.

Practicing these principles in al our affairs or as we say “walking the talk and working the Steps” means that we have to be ever mindful through our times of prayer and meditation, which is a way to find out what God’s will for us is for my life. Hope appears on the horizon.

Practicing these Steps, for me, means they will promote an ever growing awareness that the Higher Power is leading me according to its will and promise.

RESOURCE:

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

Ordering online is possible through this website at www.depressedanon.com.

Hope is just a few steps away!