Category Archives: 12 Step Meeting

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Belief, Choice, Courage, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Focus, Helpful, Hope, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, The Promises

I will try to improve my understanding of my behavior

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LEAVING LONELINESS BEHIND: 12 DECSIONS

“DECISION 7: I WILL TRY TO IMPROVE MY UNDERSTANDING OF MY BEHAVIOR.”

All actions have consequences. and they are usually different from what we expect.

In a situation where we want our cake and eat it too, we always try to have both, but we learn that in trying to get both, we lose both.

If you are to improve your skills in understanding people, in order to rid your loneliness, working out the consequences OF what you and others do, is extremely important.

You really have to develop more flexible ways in dealing with the consequences when the consequence is anger.”

TOMORROW DECISION 8: I WILL BE MORE ACCEPTING OF OTHER PEOPLES ANGER AND NOT TAKE It PERSONALLY.”

12 Step Meeting, Community building, Helpful Thinking, Hope, Mutual Aid, Positivity, Purpose

Depressed Anonymous Conference on Hope

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Date: Saturday 4 March 2023
Time: 11:00am – 4:00pm Eastern time
Zoom Meeting ID: 851 593 3239
Passcode: hope
Direct  link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8515933239

The theme for the conference is hope.

There will be 5 time slots. Four of the time slots will be speakers sharing their story of recovery and weaving in the topic of hope. One of the time slots will be a brief meditation session and a brief yoga session.

All sessions will be recorded and shortly after the conference an audio only version will be available on the Depressed Anonymous website.

We hope to see you there.

If you would like to download a file containing the pertinent conference information please click: DAHopeConference.ics and then open the file on your phone or computer to add it to your calendar.

If you happen to use Google Calendar you can add the conference directly to your calendar by clicking:

Here is a link to a flyer if you want to distribute to others: DA Hope Conference

Do you want to hear what happened at the first Depressed Anonymous conference? Recordings can be found here: Depressed Anonymous Conference Recordings

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Avoidance, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Helpful Thinking, Isolation, Love, Mutual Aid, Supportive Actions, The 12 Steps

Leaving Loneliness Behind (3) – Our Twelve decisions

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DECISION #3. “I don’t expect instant results or results commensurate with efforts that I have made.
One of the mistakes which relatives and friends of those who are depressed make:
A. I have given the person my love and attention. Why isn’t he or she better?
B. I have given the person a good amount of my time and attention, why doesn’t he/she show any amount of improvement?
You can make similar mistakes. You can think:
(a) I have given the them my time and attention, so why aren’t they close friends with me now?
(b) And, I have given this person so much attention, why don’t we have a close friendship now?
(c) I have given them so much of my time, why haven’t I stopped from being lonely?
It can take a person quite a long time to get to know each other, so you need to be patient with other people. It will take you both some time to give up the habit of making friends just on appearances only, when risking the telling to others about yourself. This is not an easy thing to do. We don’t want to be rejected.
We must take into account how any society, has its rules and practices about meeting and making friends. Different cultures and nationalities have different ways of making friends, and even though they are different, doesn’t mean that they are better than my own. They are just different.
We need to spend quality time together to get to know each other. We need to listen to their life stories and they listen to our experiences.
Friendship is not a matter of getting persons to be interested in you alone, as it is about forming a relationship with another.It is most important for you to show interest in the other person.”

Tomorrow: (4) I WILL BE INTERESTED IN THE OTHER PERSON.

12 Step Meeting, Act As If, Anxiety, Avoidance, Depressed Anonymous, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fear, Isolation, Mutual Aid, Purpose, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03

LEAVING LONELINESS BEHIND – DISMANTLING THE BARRIERS

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Leaving loneliness behind. Dismantling the barriers.

THE TWELVE DECISIONS
What is loneliness?

“Loneliness is the state of being cut off from other people, through fear of other people. Loneliness is felt as a barrier and an emptiness between yourself and other people. You reach out to other people but the barrier intervenes. You take a step toward other people, but there is no place to put your foot. People come towards you and your loneliness shuts them out.”

“It is your loneliness rather than the absence of other people that leads you to be alone.” Dorothy Rowe. Ph.D
The only person that is going to take your loneliness away is you. This is what you do. You make 12 decisions and carry them out.

DECISION 1. BECAUSE I VALUE MYSELF AND ACCEPT MYSELF I WILL END MY LONELINESS.
In our planned conversation about how to leave our loneliness behind, I have noticed my own presence, as at a Depressed Anonymous meeting, whether on ZOOM or Face to face, each of us is provided a way to risk telling others who we are and what we are not. This presence gradually instills in our mind the fact that “Hey, I feel more with others when I can share.” I no longer feel so alone now. After our sharing at a DA meeting, others in the group connect with who we are.This personal sharing tells others how we intend to live out our lives. We share how our lives were before coming to the meeting of others like ourselves.

I believe this personal sharing and risking things about ourselves, will carry out beyond this one hour of meeting, having a gradual and positive effect in our world where we live out our lives. Now, you are able to maximize a good experience (group sharing) being being accepted and loved. This online group or a face to face group, is like a surrogate family. Whereas, when you were born into a family–not of your own choosing, you make a decision to choose this DA group as your family. I make a choice as to who I share my life. By making the decision, you will begin to value yourself as a worthwhile person. At the meeting, people really listen to what I have to say.

It helps to get close to others by helping them tell us who they are. We will hear their stories. And to get closer to others, you can do this by asking questions, asking how they are, what they are interested in, and other areas of their lives. They will begin to let you into their private world. You will let them into your world. A barrier has been dismantled.

This sharing at our DA meetings, a place of feeling safe,I can allow myself to chip away the barriers that once made me feel alone and afraid. THe old thoughts that we once felt we had to defend ourselves against, by erecting walls, built during our childhood days, will no longer be needed.

It is this first decision that we make, to value and accept ourseves and risk sharing my story with others. This will be the start, for breaking down those barriers which kept me from telling others who I am.

Tomorrow, we will Share Decison 2: “I will take the risk of approaching others.” Stay tuned.

Hugh S.

NOTE: Quotations are from Dorothy Rowe’s “Breaking the bonds. Understanding Depression, finding freedom. Fontana, 1991. London, UK.

12 Step Meeting, Community building, Fellowship, Mutual Aid

Stay six feet apart, Wash your hands, Stay home

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Stay six feet apart. Use sanitizer. Wear mask. Stay clear of large gatherings – especially indoors. Everywhere we went, we got the message, that life suddenly became threatened by an unseen enemy, the covid 19 virus. Most times, the virus took the lives of our elders, who were most vulnerable. Our Grandparents, our elderly loved ones in nursing homes, were decimated

Today, we now use the terms, Pre-pandemic and post pandemic. It’s almost like it never happened. Things are getting back to normal. Almost, but not completely. It has ravaged our businesses, workers without jobs.

It’s still here. Everywhere we go, with floor markings still looking up at us at the post office, pharmacy, the grocery store all reminding of a past where more than 1 million Americans died from this deadly virus. It definitely has turned our lives upside down.

In Kentucky, the Bourbon center of the world, distilleries were using the alcohol, normally for making whiskey, switching to making sanitizer hand lotions.

For many of us, who had the covid 19 , and survived, are “the long haulers” who still carry within them, some of the symptoms, including anxiety, depression, fatigue, insomnia and other health conditions, much of which continue to threaten our own mental health.

The pandemic is taking its toll on us, our youth, our elderly and those who struggle with other serious respiratory illnesses.

What used to energize us and make us, as humans, social creatures, the virus came along and made us into hermits, alone, isolated and fearful.

The “pandemic brain” is a name given to those who are the “long haulers” and whose cognitive abilities are affected and who still face some of those debilitating symptoms which can plague them everyday.

HOW CAN WE FIND THE HELP WE NEED?

I would look for a mental health person or group resource where others like ourselves, who are having the same issues, resultant from the traumatic effects of the pandemic.

Because depression is one of the major issues that are the result of the pandemic, find a support group or mental health agency that devotes its time and care to those of us who are having trouble functioning in this post pandemic world.

As a depression support group, the 12 Step Depressed Anonymous recovery program is now online, offering meetings on a daily basis for those who seek a safe place, with persons like themselves. We do have a voice in this mutual aid fellowship, where we can choose to share our story, or remain silent, listen, feel accepted, and find ourselves among kindred spirits. We are all here to help ourselves, and by that, help ohers at the same time..

Please free to attend our daily meetings on OUR ZOOM virtual fellowship group of Depressed Anonymous. Go to our website at depressedanonymous.org, sign on, go to the meetings menu at the Home page, and it will take you to the link, taking you to our daily schedule of meetings, here in the USA and internationally.

We look forward to seeing you at our meetings. There are no fees or dues.

For the fellowship, Hugh S

12 Step Meeting, Community building, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Gratitude, Helpful Thinking, Mutual Aid, Prayer, Purpose, The 12 Steps

What is an emotional laryngitis condition?

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Have you ever experienced laryngitis, that inflammation of the larynx, often accompanied by a temporary loss of your voice. Most probably you have have had that experience. It’s more of a nuisance than anything. But nevertheless, a problem that lingers around for a short time. This is a case which if you want to be heard, you have to whisper really loud.

Now how about your experience with an emotional laryngitis condition, a metaphor for being unable to voice unpleasant feelings, which causes you to be stuck in the dark pit of depression.

To experience an emotional loss of your voice, usually starts at a young age. You remember the saying, “Children should be seen and not heard.” And as it works out, that is precisely what happened to so many of us growing up. We lost our voice. We couldn’t share our feelings of hurt and loss.
We stuffed our feelings. We buried the pain of growing up, where we felt abandoned and unloved. We tried to forget about them. Which we did. Buried in our unconscious.

When we wanted to have a grownup, a parent, a family member listen to what we had to say, nobody cared what we had to say. We felt invisible. Also, to cry was forbidden. The message that we heard was “Little boys don’t cry.” Or, “just get over it.” Or, “suck it up.”

I remember on one occasion, standing near my mom and dad, I tried to tell them something. They ignored me. I remember feeling hurt that they didn’t want to listen to me. Strange, it was that one time which I do remember and I still wonder why I remember that one time. Does this mean my voice was always heard and that this time was an exception? I don’t know.

How often do I hear adults tell me HOW their home life was chaotic, filled with anger and fighting parents.
Usually, it was because of one or both of the parents were alcoholics and they NEVER wanted or even suggested, that they wanted to know how we felt or what was happening in our lives. In fact, our whole family didn’t want to hear from us. They never seemed to make time for us in their lives. We didn’t feel safe, and definitely we did not feel love. And what do we do? We began to hide, isolate ourselves creating our own little fantasy worlds. We wanted to have someone hear our voice. But there was never anyone that would listen to how we were feeling. We were the lost child.

Fast forward. As adults now, we discovered we have been addicted to alcohol, or opioid or gambling.or pornography. Anything to remove the pain.The core of all of these addictions, both substance and process addictions, were my attempt to fill the hole in my soul. Not only had we lost our voice, but we almost lost our lives. We lost the purpose for our lives. Not being able to tell people who we are had robbed us of the one thing that might have saved me – my voice. I was too scared to use it.
I needed to tell my story. How I survived. I never wanted to lose my voice again. Today is a good day.

Not until I became an adult did I attend a Twelve Step Depressed Anonymous meeting. It was here that I would use my voice and tell total strangers about all the losses in my life. It is here, that all my feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant are voiced. They heard me. They heard my voice. They listened to me. They didn’t judge me. I had RECLAIMED my ability to use my voice. I could talk about my feelings. My worst life hurts could now be shared and voiced. i was no longer the lost child. No longer was I the victim, the martyr, a clown seeking attention. And, all the time seeking for someone to tell me that I was loved.

It is here that my emotional laryngitis, accompanying me throughout my life, would no longer keep me from voicing who I am and who I want to be. No longer were my feelings shut down and no longer was I invisible. I am here–deal with it!

If you, are having an emotional laryngitis condition, and need a way to use your voice, and share you feelings, then we have a group for you. We call ourselves the fellowship of Depressed Anonymous. You will always be welcomed into our fellowship.

For more information about who we are, click onto our website at depressedanonymous.org. Attend our Depressed Anonymous daily group zoom meetings and begin to hear the voices of hope. Come and share your own VOICE.

Copyright (c) Depressed Anonymous, (3rd Edition) 2011. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Ky.

Hugh S., for the fellowship

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Addiction, Affirmations, Anxiety, Attachment, Compulsion, DA Literature, Fellowship, Grief, Hope, Purpose, The 12 Steps

The Circle Dance

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If you have ever been depressed or are depressed at this moment, you are familiar with the Circle Dance.

I know the dance steps well, and in fact, I could share with you some of the basic steps, illustrating familiar dance steps.

First of all, let me say that you already know those steps that automatically get you to perform the “Circle Dance. You get caught up emotionally, the moment certain negative thoughts come bouncing across the dance floor into your mind. You know them as that painful hollowness in your gut, a desire to quit the dance and lay down, or to bash yourself with thoughts of how bad you feel.

Sometimes, starting with those life events from childhood, when your caregivers, be they parents or guardians, made you feel worthless and unwanted. These thoughts and feelings are constantly triggered by those with whom you share this life. You avoid people, think of yourself as unlovable –and the dance goes on and on in your head.

The Feelings of hopelessness produces unpleasant feelings. The feelings produce an unpleasant mood and the dance begins. The mood speeds up the dance and whisks you away into that painful circle with its attendant anxieties, sucking you down into the mental quicksand, swallowing you with all the terror and fright of losing all hope, much less your future. The Circle Dance will take you, everyday and in every way, to where you know you don’t want to go.

This dance is familiar. It is like the helpless insect caught in the web of the spider. The why of this hellish addiction to sadness, is never fully addressed with any solutions or answers. We want to know how to stop it. How to control it. We ask ourselves, how is it that I am depressed? How did I get into this terrifying circle, this loop which keeps me locked in a mood of hopelessness and despair. Where did all this sadness, anxiety originate? Will I ever find a way out? Is the dance, on automatic pilot, going to destroy me? Am I, a victim, without a source of help? Is this the way life is for me to be–forever filled with misery?
So much of the time I feel like I am on a train, heading toward a precipice, with no way of stopping it or escaping disaster?

Through all this, pain and confusion, you become an expert dancer, in fact, you know of others who like you, are expert dancers — trapped in dancing within their own Circle Dance.

The dance, it is so familiar. It is a defense, a comfort. We gradually learn to use it to protect us from the pain, without ever having a clue as to how it took over my life.

“A famous psychiatrist, a Dr. Freud, once theorized “that the reason a person continues to do the Circular Dance within themselves, is an effort to touch an unpleasant early life behavior or that long since forgotten event, buried in one’s unconscious. The Circular Dance promotes our addictive nature and the compulsion to repeat, is an effort by our mind to remember what it was that is the cause of our present cycle of misery, spinning us around and around – looking for answers as to what we do and why we do what we do and feel the way that we do, but never able to unlock the prison of our sadness.”

The Depressed Anonymous 12 step fellowship provides us with a possible solution to this question of no longer allowing the Circular Dance to determine the our life’s direction.

It is my belief, after participating in Hundreds of Depressed Anonymous meetings, over three decades or more, that the compulsion to repeat these sslf-destructive thoughts and images, may be linked to early childhood periods, accompanied with their painful, traumatic events. It is in those early days, that our Circular Dance took root and began to keep us locked down in its circular loop.

It is here, in the 12 Step Fellowship of Depressed Anonymous, that those unpleasant feelings, resultant from physical. emotional and mental abuse by significant others (parents and/or guardians, others) can be shared, voiced and talked about safely, and confidentially in the light of the accepting fellowship that we experience in all of our mutual help meetings.

It is possible that with time, patience and work, that these early feelings of hurt and feeling worthless, to name just a few, can be identified and shown how they have affected us negatively in the way we feel about ourselves today. With the help and work of the group, we are able to locate and make conscious those early life experiences that have been pushed aside. Because the feelings were too powerful and painful to examine and so they were buried in our unconscious. Basically, we can say, that there is no longer a need for that compulsive and addictive Circular Dance that our mind had used to punish us with guilt and shame. We now have the freedom to live life, recover from the wounds of the past, and live life today with hope and purpose. That is my wish for you this day.. And for myself.

No one puts me down, for saying that I am depressed. We never hear a “Snap nap out of it” at our meetings. If we could “snap out of it” there would be no need for our meetings. With work, time and the fellowship we no longer need a dance that goes nowhere but down. Now we are spiraling upward. We thrive!

Hugh S., for the Fellowship

Copyright(c) Hugh Smith (1986, 2013) 2nd Edition. I’ll do it when I feel better. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.
Pages 64-65.

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Affirmations, Choice, Community building, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, Fellowship, Helpful, Hope, Isolation, Mutual Aid, Purpose, Step 01, Step 02, Step 03, The 12 Steps

In Control

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The following is a passage from the Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY Pages 7-8.

Surrender and accept.
I want to admit that my life has been out of control for many years, but now that I am in touch with truth, I believe that my life can be lived out differently.
I can begin to use the Twelve Steps and begin the task of working myself out of the pit of depression. I believe that with time and with patience, plus the group fellowship and support, that I will be able to make some positive strides in feeling different about myself and my world.

A question: How many years, months, days can I remember being depressed? How far back in time can I remember always feeling sad and wanting to withdraw. Write out your experiences about these experiences.

Write down the number of people you have admitted to that you have been depressed.
Write down their reactions to your admission.
When you feel depressed what do you say to yourself? What action or behavior do you do when you feel this way?

Does it promote more isolation or being more connected with others? Please write these out.

Is your life more unmanageable now since you have admitted that you are depressed? Can you tell a difference now that you are admitting that depression is and has been a big problem in your life? YES? OR NO? Please write out these experiences.

These are just a few of the many questions that you may want to answer as you go through this Workbook.

Each of the Twelve Step chapters has a number of questions that will help you discover how you feel about certain areas of your life. Positive solutions are included in each chapter and can aid in your efforts to escape from your own prison of depression.

You can answer these questions, possibly some of which have never crossed your mind before now. The Workbook, can be answered in your own privacy. Or, you may want to answer them with a friend or sponsor.

You can discover more about our fellowship of Depressed Anonymous and discover you can be part of a growing group of those persons like you, who are also searching for a way out of their depression.

Our website is https://depressedanonymous.org with listings of daily DA meetings (no fees or dues) online as well as literature, like this Workbook, which may be ordered online.