Category Archives: Helpful Thinking

Choice, Hope, Negativity, Step 01, Step 04, The 12 Steps

I’ve had it living with feeling out of control

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If you really want to leave behind your painful sadness, the daily fears, and the feelings of worthlessness, then begin now to admit the unmanageability   of your depression. You have had it with feeling out of control.

That’s the way it is with depression –over the years you get comfortable with feeling miserable which doesn’t mean that you like it, but that you’re just too afraid to risk something different. When you want to change and leave your depression behind, the choice that you want to make is immediately dashed to the ground because you just feel that there is no hope for you. “I can’t pull myself up by my bootstraps and start to feel better,” you tell yourself. Most of the time, we tell ourselves that we’ll do it when we feel better. Folks, let me tell you something – you’ll never feel better until you begin by physically get moving. We all know that we feel better only when we get in gear and get busy – distracting ourselves from those ever present miserable thoughts whispering how bad we are  and how hopeless life seems to be.”

____________________HELP IS ON THE WAY! ___________________________

SOURCE:         Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 32.

Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Hope

I am choosing to live now-today!

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AFFIRMATION

I am choosing to ask the God of my understanding to help me be open to all the persons like myself who are getting free of their hopelessness.

“Being constantly on guard against the future is exhausting, but it does have the advantage of directing your attention away from the present. Since the past and the future are ideas in our minds we can insist that the past and the future are exactly as we see them.  The trouble with the present is that it has the habit of suggesting that my ideas may not be entirely right.”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

To live now takes more courage, on some days more than on others.  What I need to do is to attempt to live right now. The living in the present will make it possible for me to gradually learn some new truths about life and myself.  This opening myself up to the present moment will give me the opportunity to hear how I can live with hope and serenity.

No longer do I have to choose to live in the encapsulated  and isolated prison of my own fears and prejudice about the past and the future.  The past is always full of hurt and unexpected anger. The future never seems to be without its colossal fears and “what if’s.” Now is the time to accept the fact that I want to change the way I think, act and believe. Right now I am wanting a change and am willing to face the challenges that making changes bring. To do this is called living.

The Third Step tells me that I have made a decision to turn my mind and my will over to the care of God as I understand him. This is the freedom that I am looking for. This is the source of my strength today, namely, these healing Twelve Steps. Granted that I have to clean house and admit that I have unknowingly constructed my own depression  (See Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition)

MEDITATION

I will make a decision. This is the first step in getting free. I make a decision to choose freedom  over the security of isolation and a life that is lived in the past.

SOURCE:  (c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of  12 Step fellowship groups. (1999) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. January 7. Pages 4-5.

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

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Prayer, Spirituality

Choices: To be or not to be!

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For many, just knowing that they might have a choice and be able to choose to feel differently can be a startling revelation.  I can choose to be happy or I can choose to stay miserable.  ” Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) DAP. Louisville.

The following is a story of how one person, deeply depressed told her story of how by letting go she was able to hang on.  And she not only  was able to hang on but she was able to help others and hang on  and live life to the full.

” I started sleeping more, stayed in bed mostly and let the house and the children go.  I felt empty inside. No one or anything could help me. If I hadn’t thought that suicide was the cardinal sin, I would be dead today. So one night I lay on the floor crying and praying from my heart. In the past when I prayed I wanted God to do all the work, while deep down I  didn’t want to let go of my miserable, yet safe way of life. And as long as I wouldn’t  really let go, God seemed to have no answers for me. This time though, I was at his mercy. Life for me could no longer go on this way. I prayed the most releasing prayer. I offered up my entire self to him. Nothing magical happened after this except the sudden urge to call my Church for Christian counseling. They referred me to this very affordable, warm, lady counselor, who I had seen in the past. She suggested that I start attending Depressed Anonymous,  a Twelve Step meeting. This was a great effort for me. I was SCARED AND SKEPTICAL  Since that first night I’ve been attending weekly Depressed Anonymous meetings and reading Depressed Anonymous literature. I also attend drug free therapy, attend church and church activities and continue to pray and walk regularly.  I know that my life is being richly blessed. I am also using the Depressed Anonymous literature and  listening to the people in the  Depressed Anonymous  meetings where I have received valuable tools which I put to daily use.   The moment that I read that I had a choice to stay in depression, I immediately knew that I could make the choice to get out of my depression.”

And finally, a word from Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous who tells us, “When we look back, we realize that the things  which came to us when we put ourselves in God’s hands were better than anything we could have planned.”

SOURCE:  Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Personal Stories section.

NOTE: For more information on a broad variety of subjects dealing with depression and the Twelve Steps click onto the VISIT THE STORE.

Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Focus, Journaling, Mutual Aid, Service, Step 12, The 12 Steps

Service Gladly Rendered…

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Carrying the message of hope to those still suffering from depression.

“Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self constructed prisons, the surety that we can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things –these are the satisfactions of right living for which no pomp or circumstances, no heap of material possessions, could possibly substitute.” Twelve and Twelve, AA World services. Page 124.

Also, in The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) we read

“The part about carrying the message is so important if we are to remain out of the clutches of depression. It is important to keep in touch with the newcomers and others in the program. It is in this carrying the message that reminds us that we once needed help and it was through the unselfishness of the older members of Depressed Anonymous that got us through our depression.” Page 85.

“We soon discover in the program that no compulsion can be controlled by will power alone. It must be surrendered to the Higher Power or to the care of God of our understanding. It alone can remove in time the burden from our backs. This is the spiritual awakening that keeps us free from sadness as we take the message of healing to others in the group who are new to the program. We admit that we make no promises to anyone and that there will be no magic answer and quick solutions to their saddiction.  No, it all takes time and this is the message of the group. Such slogans as: “Take it easy,” “Keep  it simple,” and “Easy does it” are all meant to help you and me to live one day at a time and continue to try and live with serenity. When we practice these steps on a daily basis, starting our day with asking the Higher Power for guidance for the rest of the day we can then be  assured of God’s presence and help in our lives.”

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 106.

12 Step Meeting, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, I'll Do It When I Feel Better, Miracle Thinking, Purpose

I am investing in myself

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“I am making my recovery my highest priority. I may have been on all the antidepressant medications and I may have seen all the best counselors, psychiatrists and doctors, but now finally, I am going to a room full of depressed people  who understand  me. These people  I discover are investing in themselves. What will I find there? I will find some of the most caring people on the face of the earth. Some of the group will have been coming for months. They say they are having more good days than bad and its getting better.   The more meetings they attend the better they feel and the more support they receive. They are feeling empowered. It’s the miracle  of the group.  Instead of living with a compulsion to  repeat old negative and life negating thoughts and feelings, we now have a compulsion to live with hope plus a desire for a brand new way of  living. We are now about to change  the way we live and not just the way  we talk to ourselves. We are going to get a new life.”

SOURCE: I’ll  do it when I feel better. (2013). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.Page 59

12 Step Meeting, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Focus, Mindfulness, Purpose, The 12 Steps

In getting my priorities straight, my depression got better

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CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

On this New Year’s Day, I find that my work for my life today is to reflect on a happy period of my life  where I have experienced   happiness and contentment.  If I can’t remember such a time,  then  I will construct a situation of contentment in my mind  and just imagine it happening right now.

In my relationship to God, I am beginning to realize that it isn’t so much that I don’t believe that I’ll ever feel better, but that I just  can’t know for sure. My first  priority is to admit that I do have a problem and that with God’s help I can get through my depression.

As soon as I give up my victim stance and begin to take responsibility for my feelings and my life, I can start to work as if my recovery is really up to me and that I will in time, succeed in getting out of this deep dark hole that I call depression. My priority  is to begin each day with the conviction that the Twelve Steps will be an aid in getting out of my depression. I know and believe without a doubt that WE have a solution for depression!

MEDITATION

God, we seek your guidance and your strength for our lives. Whatever we have lost or feel we have lost, please heal the holes in our soul and fill  it with your love and peace. In our quiet time today, show us what part of us needs to be healed.”

HAVE A NEW YEAR FILLED WITH PEACE !

VISIT THE STORE TODAY AND DISCOVER THE TOOLS THAT WILL BE THE PATHWAY TO YOUR OWN RECOVERY, DAY AFTER DAY.

An excellent tool that is highly recommended for the Depressed Anonymous  group use or individual study is the HOME STUDY KIT which is composed of Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) and The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) both published by Depressed Anonymous Publications. These two books give a complete listing of the Twelve Steps and a commentary for each Step. The Workbook provides a coordinated listing of Steps with its appropriate questions related to each Step in the Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition.

The Promises

Mindfulness, serenity and the present

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Let’s start with the power called The Present. This reality is like the sun, shining  its light on what lies before us in perfect illumination. This is our guide  as we proceed on the path of life. This  light illuminates our mind and where we stand right now. The Present takes in all that we are, where we are and how we are.  If you traverse outside its boundaries, mostly in the yesterdays and the tomorrows of your life then there may be problems.  If you do spend more and more  time in what was and what might be, then the illumination casts its bright light away from the NOW and into a path not yet taken.  All I have is the Present and the NOW. Today is all that I have and the 24 hours that make up this light and darkness of my daily life.

Mindfulness means the awareness with how we live out our lives in this 24 hour time period. To be mindful is to be aware and conscious of all our surroundings, both those  inner and external realities that make up our world. Mindfulness also relates  powerfully to how we talk to ourselves in the Present and in the NOW. Are we aware of our feelings that break through and into our immediate consciousness? What do these many feelings, pleasant and unpleasant tell us about ourselves? Are these feelings fearful? Or are these feelings filled with peace and hope for ourselves in the NOW and in  The Present? And for a time, have we denied these feelings of darkness and despair and managed  to blunt them, numb them with mind altering substances, with numbing thoughts that keep us in the dark?  Is there a way out of this powerlessness? Yes. Simply stated.

Speaking for myself and the many, many folks who now are mindful of another way of thinking about their selves and what is going on in and around them have experienced this  bright light. A path is revealed. All of us who have been in the darkness are finding hope, serenity and the stepping stones to help us to continually  walk with hope. We are mindful  NOW of how to live in the Present and how to gradually walk this wide road with so  many other mindful travelers. Because we have been willing to see where this light leads us, we NOW know that healing is ours and that we are never alone. We have risked living in the light –refused to live in the darkness of the past and march on today using as our guide the Twelve Steps of recovery. I am now mindful of a Power greater than myself. Because I came to believe in a power greater than myself (finally- tired of living in the hell of despair)  I “surrendered”  and made a “decision to turn  my  life and will over to the god of my understanding.”

So, in order to be free of unconscious living I am always mindful (at least I try to be) of the work to be done that lies right in front of me. I’m sticking to the plan.

I  am mindful of all the “red flags” that warn me of potential dangers that could throw me back into those life threatening days of depression. I am mindful that when my mind turns to resentments, self-pity, hopelessness, hostility toward others,  and negative thinking and isolating behaviors, that I need to get back into the bright light of hope, serenity, prayer,  a daily meditation(Higher Thoughts for Down days)  and the Fellowship of our mutual help support group, Depressed Anonymous. I also talk with a group member of the fellowship whom we call a sponsor.

All of what I have written above can produce what all of us are yearning for, namely, that peace that rests the mind and relaxes the body. Serenity is what we want. We want to leave the mess of our lives, get a grip on  how to change it, and choose to live with hope. Oh, there will be problems, as always, but now we have the mindfulness, to recognize where  lies the hope and  the freedom for living…in the NOW, with Mindfulness!

Do you want to live in the Present, in the NOW, with mindfulness and serenity?  Please think about doing what I have done and as has countless others, to be a part of this great human fellowship bound together by our living out the Promises of the Twelve Steps.

I hope to meet you along this path someday. Please join us!

Hugh

SOURCE: Copyright (c) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011).  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.

VISIT THE  STORE : Check out the literature for more help on how to be part of this fellowship.

12 Step Meeting, Choice, Depressed Anonymous, Focus, Higher Power, Higher Thoughts for Down Days, Mindfulness, Mutual Aid

I believe that misery is an option

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“If surrender of our wills to the ‘care of God’ is of the essence of the spiritual life, for anyone who truly desires to free themselves from a chronic and compulsive behavior such as depression, then the Twelve Steps can be your stepping stones to the path of a hope filled life.”

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

I used to hear the word “surrender” as it made me feel like I was in the hands and under the total domination of another.  It was like I had no control whatsoever as to what I was to do or what I was to be. I was blind to the fact that in reality I had already surrendered my life to my sadness so that whenever I wanted to hide, or isolate myself, I just saddened myself and  so didn’t have to feel anything. I am surrendering to the God of my understanding;  slowly my life is filling with light and hope and this is what I really want for myself. I am finding that the ‘care of God’ is much better than anything I could ever  wished for.  My life is one filled with hope rather than being hopeless.

The spiritual life for me is filled with the excitement of knowing that  this God of mine, as I understand him, is  today wanting to lead me further into the light of his healing power. My spiritual life is filled  now with a close and personal relationship with a God who loves and guides me on a minute-to-minute basis.

MEDITATION

We are going to get as close to God today as we choose to get.

SOURCE:  Copyright (c) Higher Thoughts for down days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 Step fellowship groups.  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Pages 257-258. December 29.

Acceptance, Compulsion

Spirituality requires risk

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Alcoholism (depression) and addiction , characterized as they are by the rigid clinging of obsession and compulsion, help us to understand the experience of release. Perhaps the greatest paradox in the story of spirituality is the mystical insight that we are able to experience release only if we let ourselves go. This is the paradox of surrender. Surrender begins with the acceptance that we are not in control of the matter at hand –in fact, we are not in absolute control of anything. Thus the experience of surrender involves the “letting in” of reality that becomes possible only when we are ready to “let go” of our illusions and pretensions (our unreality).

If surrender is the act of “letting go” the experience of conversion can be understood as the hinge on which the act swings – it is the turning point, the turning from “denial” as a way of seeing things to acceptance of the reality revealed in surrender. The self-centeredness that reflects a false relationship with reality, and that false relationship begins with distorted seeing, with some kind of false understanding about the nature of reality and our relationship with it. Breaking through that denial and confronting reality is what members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Depressed Anonymous mean by “hitting bottom.”

The experience or release most frequently comes at the point of exhaustion, at the moment when we “give up” our efforts to just be…

What blocks release more than anything else is the refusal to “let go” that comes from the demand for security, for certainty, for assured results. Release, like spirituality, requires risk.”

SOURCE: The Spirituality of Imperfection. (1992) Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum. Bantam, NY. , Page 173.

12 Step Meeting, Miracle Thinking

How Depressed Anonymous Works

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This  following is read at each and every meeting of Depressed Anonymous.

“You are about to witness the miracle of the group. You are joining a group of people who are on a journey of  hope  and who mutually care for each other.  You will hear how hope, light and energy have been regained by those who were hopeless and in a  black hole and tired of living.

By our involvement in the group, we are feeling that there is hope – there is a chance for me too – I can get better. But we are not the  people with the magic pills and the easy formula for success. We believe that to get out of the prison of depression takes time and work.

We all have been wounded in different degrees by the experience of depression. We also know that there is a method to regain control over our lives that is practical and workable.  It is successful for all those who want to change their lives. Some of us believed that there was no hope and that suicide was the only way out.

In this natural world, one of the first laws is that all growth is gradual – that belief is the bottom line for all of us who are depressed and who want to get better.  The more we attend meetings, the more we will learn and see the various ways to escape from depression. We also learn how important it is not to give up on ourselves.”

SOURCE:   Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.