Category Archives: Stinking Thinking

Acceptance, Denial

I have to say I never really admitted I was depressed. That seemed too heavy and embarrassing to me

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           A Medley of Depression Stories. 2017. (With permission of the author Deborah Sanford.) This work can be found available  at Amazon.com.

                               Cindy’s Story of regrets.

”  I am realizing what a young woman I was when I had my kids. Now at 32 with 13 and 11 year old sons, I can barely find the energy to just live through today. I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulder to raise them, to teach them morals and care for them and keep them out of trouble.  Since both are diagnosed ADHD, I spend a great deal of time at the school fighting the administration on their behalf. It is exhausting. I hear myself saying in my thoughts: “I just want it to be over.” I feel depressed so often. I think how I just want to run away and leave my husband to raise them. When will  it ever be time for me? Their father works all the time. I would on most day’s trade places with him gladly. The house stays a mess. and their dishes, cups and glasses stay  seated where they leave them. It  doesn’t seem fair.  I don’t remember asking for this job. How could a busy robust life turn into this?  I can’t find the hope to be anything or do anything anymore. By the time I get them raised I will not qualify for any jobs except  spreading peanut butter and jelly on bread!  Some days I think I just could start over but I know I can’t go back 14 years ago. I love my boys to pieces but, I feel so trapped, so hopeless and so valueless. After this ongoing heavy feeling of hopelessness, I found a good therapist who also told me about a local Depressed Anonymous meeting for depression. I have to say I never really admitted I was depressed, that seemed too heavy and embarrassing to me. I didn’t think I was depressed anyway to even search for a depression meeting. I just thought everything in my life was just wrong and messed up. And I just needed  to “figure how to fix it.”   She (therapist) assured me that I had fallen into a depression and that a support group would really benefit me! She was right! I can’t find the words for how much the Depressed Anonymous meetings have helped me. I have been able with help to put things into perspective. I’ve learned to take it one day  at a time. The boys are teenagers and truthfully I wouldn’t have them but for a few more years. I want to treasure the little bit of time left that I will have. And my therapist encouraged me to hire a housekeeper for just three hours a week to mop and catch up laundry  and dishes. My problems are solvable! Thank God! I haven’t  felt trapped and stuck for quite a while now. My husband is always going to have to work long hours but my life has become more manageable in the meantime. And I have met new friends at the support  group who have kids and feel like I was feeling. It’s so nice to be able to relate to them. I am so very grateful for Depressed Anonymous.”

–Cindy is a member of Depressed Anonymous. Her story is part of a collection of 35 stories,  all centered on persons depressed who have found   help and hope in the fellowship of Depressed 

             *************************************************

NOTE: The author, Debra Sanford, is the Founder of Depressed Anonymous groups in the North Carolina communities of Elizabeth City and Edenton, NC.  We thank her for the permission to post this inspiring story on our Blog today.

  SOURCE: Below you can   get more information  on the new book,  (c) A Medley of Depression Stories.

                        https://the depression stories. wordpress.com/

                        Email: the depressionstories@gmail.com

 

 

Fellowship, Hope, Victim Thinking

Today, I will begin to dig myself out of the deep hole that is depression.

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On this New Year’s Day, I find that my work for my life today, and only today, is to reflect on a time in my life that I have experienced a feeling of happiness and contentment. If I can remember a pleasant situation form the past, I will construct a happy situation and imagine it occurring right now.

In getting my priorities straight, my feelings of depression lessened.

Clarification of Thought

In my relationship to God, I am beginning to realize that it isn’t so much that I believe  that I’ll ever feel better, but that I just can’t know for sure.  My first priority is to admit that I 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 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.

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 souls and fill them with your love and peace. In our quiet time today, show us what part of us needs to be healed.” See Steps 1, 2, 3.

SOURCE:   Copyright(c)  Smith, Hugh. Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 Daily Thoughts and Meditations for 12 Step Fellowships.  Depressed Anonymous Publications.  Louisville, KY. Page 1.

Despair

The difference between depression and despair is…

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The difference between depression and despair is that despair is static, whereas depression, underneath its lassitude, is all about transformation. Depression is a temporary opting-opt, to enable you to adjust to life more successfully. The process has its own dynamic, like water, and you can float on its surface, if you trust its buoyancy.

Despair is much more  dangerous because it insists on a fixed position. Even when adopted as part of an intellectual fashion, it doesn’t  allow for a way out of its own stance.  It won’t release you, as depression  does, as a matter of course. No doubt it has its pleasures, but it’s a mask that merges eventually with your face..

When despair is a statue, depression is a waterfall.

For wisdom moves more easily than motion itself; she is so pure she pervades and permeates all things…she is but one, yet can do all things, herself unchanging, she makes all things new.”

The Wisdom of Solomon, Chapter 7: 24-25, 27. The Apocrypha. The Revised English Bible.

* Comment: “…depression is a temporary opting out..” is a great way to say that I am no longer able to stay focused on what is before me…only what is past and what lies in the future. I cannot and will not stay in the present. My opting out is a way of saying I am attempting to  gather my thoughts and senses, so that I can figure out why I feel the way I do and what is the way out for me. I need this time away from me and my pain to lick my wounds.  I was trying to escape and run from whatever was  chasing me.

Hugh

Choice, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Focus, Higher Power, Journaling, The 12 Steps, Victim Thinking

If you want to eat an elephant, the best way to do it is one bite at a time

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The following quotation is taken from our “Big Book” Depressed Anonymous (3rd edition) as it appears on page 95.

“All of us who are substance addicted (compulsivre overeating, alcohol, cocaine, pre- scription medication) or process addicted–addicted to a behavior ( the workaholic, sex, gambling, depression) know that in order to free ourselves from the intoxicating experience, we have to first want to give it up and live without it.  We best do this   one day or one hour at a time. Don’t say you will quit a self-destructive behavior for one year at a time and see how you do. No, trying to live one day at a time is a lot easier.  As someone once said “if you want to eat an elephant, the best way to do it is one day at a time.” We know from past experience that our  sobriety, our disappearance of sadness is due to letting go and admitting my powerlessness over my sadness. It  is turning it over to my Higher Power and letting it take care of my sadness. I can’t do anything to remove my compulsive behavior until I choose to live without it.”

***

If you happen to be part of our HOME STUDY PROGRAM OF RECOVERY, you will want to turn to page 80 of the Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Both the Manual and the Workbook come together as important tools in overcoming our attachment to the ruminations and isolation that depression brings upon us.

“All of our efforts so far in this Workbook have been directed toward overcoming  –cleaning house if you will —so that our will might be properly disposed to God’s will and that we might feel free and no longer hopeless. We know that our enthusiasm to change will grow the more we desire that change. The more we change the more  we will cast off the shackles from our lives that keep us imprisoned and isolated.”

COMMENT  Like the quote of how to eat an elephant, we also are most aware that you can’t just wish to get rid  of an obsession or addiction, it takes time and work–one day at a time. There is no easy or comfortable way to battle our demons except through work, prayer and meditation. And for me, one of the best ways to overcome my addictions is to use the 12 spiritual principles of the 12 Steps every day of my life. And again, it’s one bite, one step at a time.  Don’t wait. Do something today. Don’t tell yourself the lie, “I’ll do it when I feel better.” Take the plunge.  If there is no meeting in your  community then work with a DA sponsor/guide and participate in our HOME STUDY PROGRAM OF RECOVERY. Go to the main site depressedanon.com  menu under the title HOME STUDY PROGRAM. The program is operating presently.

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SOURCES:   The Depressed Anonymous Workbook, (2002) Depressed Anonymous          Publications. Louisville. Page 80.

                             Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Page 95.

Please click onto The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore for more helpful literature on THE HOME STUDY PROGRAM OF RECOVERY  and information on how to order online.

If you would like to participate in the Home Study, please contact the director at Depanon@netpenny.net. Thank you.

 

Denial

Halloween, false faces, masks and other disguises

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Holloween is a great time to pretend to be someone else. It’s a day when we can all live out our fantasies of being someone than our selves. On this one night of  the year we  are given permission to be  a super hero, a great army leader, an Olympic champion, the world’s greatest athlete. This year there was a great number of Supermen running around, accompanied by a few   Spidermen for the evening , plus the  little Princess and the powerful Wonder woman.

It was great fun. Parents walking with their little one’s, going from door, carrying the bags of booty, like little pirates, with such dreadful threats as “Trick or Treat” belted out  like they meant it.  I recognized some of the monsters and figures of fame, and most I didn’t.  But we all had a great nite acting like we were someone else.

This reminds me of a friend that shared with me his great secret and who he was pretending to be. This wasn’t Holloween though. He was  a doctor addicted to cocaine and other addictive substances. As he gradually removed the mask from his face, tears streaming down his face, and he told me his story. The painful and gradual sinking into the abyss of darkness. He told me  the following and I will never forget the emotion with which he shared this secret of himself.

“I just wish, I wish I could go to the roof of this hospital and tell everyone, those who respect me the  most, as what a fraud I am. I can’t. I want to do it.  I haven’t the courage or the guts. ” And of course he never did. He kept his secret until he died of an overdose.

I took off my mask years ago at an AA meeting. And yes, I told them I was a fraud. Alcohol had given me the best false face a person could have. A fun guy.  A happy Jack who never met a stranger. Then it was time to share another secret, my depression. How I always had a smile pasted on my face even though the tormenting demons of fear, anxiety, and isolation were my constant companions.

What freed me? It was others just like me–all telling  their secrets and paradoxically becoming free. We, all of us in the Depressed Anonymous Fellowship no longer have “to fake it til we make it.”

If you want to tell your story, join us in the new  online group called the Home Study Program. Sign up before November 15th. Here you can have a one on one  Home Study program, with a sponsor and guide.  Check out  the story of Kim at our NEWSLETTER   issue #5. Read how Kim’s life has been changed by working the DA HOME STUDY combo, composed of the Manual and Workbook.

The title of our new Newsletter is THE ANTIDEPRESSANT TABLET, ISSUE 1, FALL, 2017.

hugh

 

Denial

Halloween is always a great time for false faces!

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This past week we all had a great time being somebody else. It was great fun to see the little Princess, the Cowboy, a super hero, astronaut and all the rest. Don’t you think that all of us would like to be somebody else for awhile – even just for a short time on Halloween eve? Yes, we all would like to be somebody important, somebody who was a mover and shaker, somebody whom everyone loved. You know, like a comedian, a super hero, a great military leader or a great statesman, like Abraham Lincoln. Yes, Halloween is a great time to act like we are someone else. To put on a false face. Everyone wants to know who that is behind that mask?

Have you ever imagined yourself someone else and felt like it fit you quite well? A perfect fit, so to speak. It’s obvious that it brings great fun and laughter all around. We all know that it won’t last long and I can be me again, but not so magical when we are someone else.

I remember when it was Halloween every day, for over a year at a painful time in my life. I was no grand champion of civil rights for the down trodden. I was no medal of Honor recipient for his or her valiant deeds. I was just me – still wearing my false face from Halloween. I never took my mask off. I had to always wear it because I could not let anyone see me, the real me, the hurting and isolated me, imprisoned in my habitual self, serving time till someone freed me from my anxiety.

Years ago, I had a friend who was a medical doctor and who was addicted to opioids and other addictive substances. I still remember his words like they were spoken just yesterday. He wore his false face well. As we talked late one night he shared with me his soul, the mask peeled gently from his face , the tears streaming down his face, as he told me something he never was able to tell anyone else. He told me, hesitatingly, that if “I had the courage and the guts, I would get as high on this hospital roof as I could and shout for everyone to listen up. For everyone to look at me – a horrible and pitiful addict. I would tell them what a fake I have been all my life, that I am a fraud. I the healer telling every one how to live their life and I can’t even begin to live a day without the shot, the pills, alcohol. I want so badly to just be me. Me, to tell others who I really am.”

My visit that night with the doctor has stayed with me all my life. It has stayed with me because I too was at a point like him later one in my own life.

It came upon me so slowly, the feelings of hollowness, the jitteriness and fear. Always the fear. Fear, that someone would discover someone else behind my mask.

Anger, Attachment, Choice, Fellowship, Higher Power, Journaling, Mutual Aid, The 12 Steps

Drinking Depression

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Drinking depression: One man’s story of recovery from alcoholism and depression and the parallels between the two.

I have had experiences with alcohol abuse since childhood. I have also struggled since childhood with depression. I quickly learned to rely on both.

I call this paper “drinking depression” because that’s exactly what I did when I no longer had the alcohol. The following thoughts will express my feelings and the parallels that I have seen between these two addictions.

RELIANCE

There was always an excuse to drink, mostly I was upset with something. I should really say angry, for it was anger at the root of my depression that I was trying to suppress  in medicating myself. Later, I learned to do the same thing with my depression except to be in a depressive state High. I didn’t even have to leave the house and after awhile I didn’t want to break the cycle of reliance that dependency had begun. When I was absorbing alcohol into my blood stream I was now injecting the depression into my soul and absorbing it like a sponge.

FAMILIARITY AND COMFORT

As a recovering alcoholic I can look back on my drinking and see when I took comfort in being drunk because after awhile the numbness became the only way I could feel better because when I was drunk I could retreat into myself and not have to deal with everyday life.

The same escape tool was used in the form of depression. I could ball up like a woolly worm and the outside world was not going to hurt me. However, the more I wallowed in the darkness of my depression the deeper I got stuck in the mud of despair and hopelessness.

DESPERATION

In order to deal with alcoholism and depression I had to hit rock bottom. I had reached a point in both, that I had to call out for help or drown in my addiction. I called on my Higher Power to help me with my depression. With guidance of the holy spirit I am harnessing   my talents now and I am seeing incredible results. My recovery has not been overnight, but it is a day by day and step by step recovery process.

THE PHYSICAL

After some time had passed, the drinking affects the physical body breaking it down. Once I saw a film in which the brain of a heroin addict and the alcoholic were very similar. The depression I experienced also has physical implications. For over twenty years the way my body would respond from too much emotional stress was to pass out. Instead of blacking out from   alcohol I was using depression to numb my brain and myself.

THE SPIRITUAL

When I was drinking I felt alienation and guilt. I felt professing  Christians did not drink  and the more I drank the more guilty I became. I felt that much more distant from God the more I drank and spiraled further down into a cycle of despair.

In my depression I felt God had no time for me and that I was unworthy of his love. Again it was a carousal filled with guilt and anger going round and round so that I couldn’t get off the merry go-round.

SELF ESTEEM

When I was drinking, I was sure that no one cared or understood what I was going through so I had many pity parties and I was the guest of honor. Why should I care if no one else cared- this was my way of thinking.

From painful experiences in my childhood I felt I was of no worth  and just taking up space. It has taken therapy and the support of family and friends to finally look in the mirror and begin to like what I saw.

HOPE

I have been sober over two years although  I often have the desire to drink.  I daily call on my Higher Power for help and march on one day at a time experiencing serenity and a release from my need to  take the first drink.

I have been in therapy for almost a year off and on, although in order to recover one has to stay with it. I have to take my emotional and spiritual healing like my drinking.– one day at a time and know when I can make it because it is only opening the door to the past can the light of the present get rid of the darkness today and have hope for the future.

It is my hope and prayer that this has helped you, the reader,  in some small way. It has helped me by writing about my experiences. May God put walls of protection around you so that the way ahead for you may be crystal clear and that today be your first step towards recovery.

God bless.

—Steve P.  A member of the Louisville Depressed Anonymous Group.

 

12 Step Meeting, Despair, Fellowship

A remedy for depression

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” Years ago, Dr. Alfred Adler prescribed this remedy for depression to a patient: “You can be healed if every day you begin the first thing in the morning to consider how you can bring a real joy to someone else. If you can stick to this for two weeks, you will no longer need therapy.”  Adler’s “prescription,” of  course, is not much different than the suggestion that we work more intuitively The Program’s Twelve Steps to rid ourselves of depression. When I am depressed, do I keep my feelings to myself? Or do I do what friends in The program have suggested that I do?  (Author’s emphasis)

Today I pray

May  I turn myself inside out, air out the depression which has been closeted inside me, replace it with the comfortable feeling that I am cared about by real friends, then pass along that comfort to others caught in the same despair.

Today I will remember

The only real despair is loneliness.

SOURCE:   A DAY AT A TIME.   Hazeldon.  September 10

12 Step Meeting, DA Literature, Faith, Fellowship, Hope, Isolation, Step 01, The 12 Steps

No pain – no gain! We pay a price to free ourselves from any and all addictions

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First of all we know that the first step to freeing ourselves from the deadly clutches of any and all addictions is to ADMIT that our life is out of control, unmanageable and that  we are powerless  over what has us by the throat! Our lives have hit the wall and there is no place to go but to seek HELP. Humbling it is. To ask for help. But it is absolutely necessary if we are to free ourselves from the pain of any addiction.

I am speaking from my own experience with that deadly and scary reality that we all know as  depression. I finally came to the frightful reality that if I wanted my life back then I would have to do something that I had never done before.  I had to admit that I was beat. I had it. My life was a mess and I had created it by gradually drifting away from taking care of my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual life. Just by my admission that my life was in shambles, I realized, begrudgingly, that I had to take full responsibility for cleaning up the mess. And where was I to find that  solution to the cancer-like illness  which was eating me up with each depressed and hopeless breath?

From Alcoholics Anonymous I found my solution. They told me that my pain was the door that I had to go through if I was ever to find any peace for my troubled life.  And so I went through that door which opened me up to hope and belief that there truly was a way the  out of the daily mental grind of sadness and despair. It came  to me that the fellowship of those using and working the 12 Steps of recovery  had all found a home.

“There was a time when we ignored trouble , hoping it would go away. Or, in fear and in depression, we ran from it, but found  it was still with us. Often, full of unreason, bitterness, and blame, we fought back. These mistaken attitudes, powered by alcohol, guaranteed the destruction, unless they were altered.

Bill W., continues sharing,     “Then came A.A. Here we learned that trouble was really a fact of life for everybody – a fact , that had to be understood and dealt with. Surprisingly, we found that our troubles could under  God’s grace, be converted into unimagined blessings.”

“Indeed, that was the essence of A.A. itself: trouble accepted, trouble squarely faced with calm courage, trouble lessened and often transcended. This was the A.A. story, and we became a part of it. Such demonstrations  became our stock in trade for the next sufferer.”

Because of my own terrible pain of an insufferable depression I founded a group centered on the 12 Steps  and which made these spiritual principles part and parcel of my daily life.  This group is aptly called Depressed Anonymous.

Yes, I still have troubles, but now I can help others by sharing my own story of hope and serenity . Even though we may not be alcoholics, we can have a hope that these Steps can help me as well to leave the prison of depression.

For more information about who we are and what we are about please take a look at the menu that appears on the first page of our website Depressed Anonymous.

The Depressed Anonymous Workbook  tells us  how “Where humility had formerly  stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity.

This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come out of painful ego puncturing. Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.

We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the fact  of suffering. Then in A.A., we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets.  We heard story  after story  of how humility  had brought strength out  of weakness. In  every case pain had been the price of admission into a new life.  But this  admission price  had purchased more than we expected. It bought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to  be a  healer of pain. We began to fear pain less and  desire  humility more than ever. ”

Are you will to pay the price?

SOURCES:    As Bill sees it: The A.A. Way of life…selected writings of A.A.’s co-founder. Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc., New York.

  The Depressed Anonymous Workbook (2002) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. pg.60-61.

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

For more literature please VISIT THE STORE. Also note that the HOME STUDY SELF HELP STUDY combo can be purchased together. All purchases can be made online at this site.

 

Acceptance, Victim Thinking

Now you can have a renewed sense of purpose for your life! This is a Promise!

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The   Fifteenth (15) Way out of the prison of depression.

BELIEVING IS SEEING.

Excerpts.

Depressed Anonymous believes that we are not to think of ourselves as “depressives” or permanent sufferers of depression. We believe that we can move out of our depression and help others out of their depression. To label ourselves as “depressives” is counterproductive to our own recovery. We will not define ourselves solely by our painful and personal experience with depression.  We are not victims. We also believe that once you have worked your way through and out of depression that you will continue to receive our support and appreciation. You can continue your recovery by reaching out to those persons still suffering from their depression.

We don’t have the magic pills and the easy formulas for success. We do admit that the time you spend in the group might seem wasted and of no avail in terms of removing quickly the pain of depression. But if you stay with the program and make as many of the meetings as possible, plus reading the literature, you will in time discover that your feelings and depressed moods will gradually be diminished.  Freedom from isolation, fear and pain will now grow, like a beautiful plant, well watered and nurtured with love and care.

If you are presently reading this, and happen to be depressed you might not believe it can be done. This is usually the reaction from those of us who have not found any solution to our everlasting sadness. But if you keep coming back to meetings and live out the beliefs listed here, plus putting them into practice, you will find a change occurring in yourself. The good news is that over time you will be experiencing a new feeling and a new view of the world, yourself and the future, one day at a time. You will  discover that you not only now have a renewed sense of purpose for your life, but your life continues to grow brighter. That’s a promise!

BELIEVE!!! 

SOURCE:  Copyright(c) Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2017). Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Pages 69-71.