Category Archives: Supportive Actions

12 Step Meeting, Isolation, Mutual Aid

I don’t have to be alone

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

…I had the conviction that a person depressed could find the same strength and serenity as did those who, sick and tired of being sick and tired, had found when they stumbled into their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. It (Depressed Anonymous) began as a pilot project at the university where depressed people gathered as a mutual aid group. I discovered that people of all ages, beliefs, and occupations could gradually get out of the prison of depression if they were part of a support group, especially if the group followed the suggested Twelve Steps of the group now known as Depressed Anonymous. I saw that a Twelve Step program centered specifically around the subject of depression could help people escape isolation and the painful sense of hopelessness. They would no longer feel alone.

Copyright(c) Depressed Anonymous., 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, Ky. Page 22.

NOTE: If you are tired of looking at the four walls during this time of Covid-19, we have help. If you are depressed and seeking relief, there are a number of places where you can go online for help. Depressed Anonymous now has a meeting everyday from 12:30PM (EST). This group is peer led, which means they have been depressed or using these Steps of recovery today to help maintain hope and healing in their lives today! These are excellent groups to attend to find help and hope. You can join and share your story or you can listen to the stories of others. Either way you will find the power at work in your own life.

There are now five scheduled DA ZOOM groups operating in the US and being made available to the Depressed around the world. These ZOOM groups with the SKYPE groups are ensuring that the message of HOPE continues to spread with it’s powerful message. Please join us if you are looking to free yourself from isolation.

We thank all of those who chair these meetings with such dedication and faithfulness. They are true witnesses to the “miracle of the group(s).”

Hugh

12 Step Meeting, Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Faith

Isolation and Covid-19 – We Offer Skype meetings – Check Our Past Posts On The Blog Here For More Info

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NOTICE: Whenever a blog post mentions an online meeting be sure to consult the page Online Depressed Anonymous Meetings for the most up to date and correct information. If the blog post is more than a few days old there is a chance it could be incorrect.

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

In our basic text, Depressed Anonymous, one of the words that show up most frequently are the words, Isolation, trust and surrender. It is not surprising that the word isolation is at the top of the list. Isolation is one of those behaviors that can keep us in depression, alone, and deepening a mood of feeling hopeless.

With the corona virus causing death, terror among all people of the earth, it has also forced us to quarantine ourselves from everyone else. Our isolation, in this case, can save our life and keep us from getting infected and suffer a painful death.

Let’s say I am depressed already and isolating because of my need to withdraw from, family and friends and suffer with my pain alone. What do I do now? Who and what can help me? I am feeling desperate. I used to go to the market, the park and at least get out of my apartment. I could feel part of the world and the life around me. At least I had the knowledge that I could go out and be with others, without having to talk or even say hello. Now I feel like I’m all alone on a deserted island.

If you are depressed and reading this now, you can find help online at the Depressed Anonymous website www.depressedanon.com. There are also daily meetings of the group International Online Depressed Anonymous which hosts the meeting via SKYPE meeting at 12:30 pm (EST).

We hope that you can take advantage of these peer led 12 step meetings. I recommend them to you. Please come and join our fellowship. We are people with hope.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

For the fellowship.

Belief, DA Literature, Fellowship, Meditation

Depression gradually dies in the light of day….

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The best way to live TODAY is to be fully conscious of the present moment and create that strong desire to be part of it. Let’s not live in yesterday -the rent can kill you.

How often do I spend time in tomorrow and so miss the joy of today? I think one of the more serious occupations (aren’t they all serious?) of the depressed is just to sit and think , and think some more about how bad life is and what awful people they are. The self-bashing makes one’s ability to change even more difficult, as  continued depressive ruminations promote a great sense of unworthiness and confusion. We feel that we have no control over what happens in our life. Actually, we are not so sure   that we should care.  Everything seems hopeless. Living in yesterday is to pay some high price rent – and when you are done paying the rent, you still have nothing to show for it.

I want to be responsible  though I feel it’s difficult to face the fact that one of the ways of getting out of my prison is to stay and feel the pain of my sadness. I have to live in the here and now – I can’t run and hide in the unknown of tomorrow or disappear into the gloomy fog of yesterday. We begin to get mentally healthy when we take it upon ourselves to admit 1) I have a problem, and 2) secondly, I need to change the way I think about myself and my world.  Again, no one need to blame us for that that we got ourselves depressed – but once we know and believe that we are depressed – we learn that we need to take full responsibility for our recovery.  And one of the best ways to break our dependency on our sadness is to share and admit our depression to members of our Depressed Anonymous group. We know how depression flourishes and grows in the privacy and solitude of our minds.

Depression gradually dies in the light of open sharing and frank discussion. We are only as weak as the secrets we keep and strong as the secrets we share.”

Copyright(c)  Believing is seeing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2020) Hugh Smith.  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY. Pgs. 39-40.

Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Journaling

All it takes is one good person to restore hope – Pope Francis

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This statement is so true. All it takes is one good person to restore hope. This is a reality that I personally experience each day of my life. I find these individuals every day – carrying the message of hope to those others who are looking for a way out of their pain and suffering. These good people who lead are sharing their own hope, strength and experience with those who still suffer alone, and without hope. These good people take it upon themselves to communicate to others how they found hope and now want to share their recovery with others. They are using the fellowship of hope by the electronic systems such as ZOOM, SKYPE, FACEBOOK and the many face to face groups outside of the virtual world. These various communication tools enable us to reach around the world bringing fellowship to those seeking hope.

Recently, individuals in Poland decided to set up their own SKYPE meetings. Just recently in America two ZOOM group are operating, with one more about to get up and running. There is also a phone – in meeting operating. in America.

We are here at depressedanon.com (Depressed Anonymous) offering hope to those who come to our website. A Blog is offered a number of times a week. There are those good people who are not members of Depressed Anonymous who use their resources and talents to keep our websites, our ZOOM and SKYPE online programs operating with a myriad of technical skills. All in all, good persons continue to find hope and share what they have with others. so that they too can experience the hope that is real and offered freely to them.

Depressed Anonymous website at depressedanon.com will lead you to the places where you can go and join up with others at a 12 Step Depressed Anonymous meeting.

Like Francis tells us “All it takes is for one good person to restore hope.”

Won’t you be the next “one good person?” Will you join with us on this great journey where we all discover the hope of recovery and personal serenity?

The Fellowship of Depressed Anonymous

Prayer

Recovery and decision making according to Bill W.

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“In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for awhile. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is  not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.”

AA Pages 86-87.

12 Step Meeting

Welcome to the Depressed Anonymous groups in Warsaw, Poland

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We wish to welcome the Depressed Anonymous groups in Warsaw, Poland. They have been around a long time and now they want to start translating the Basic Text (3rd  edition)  and The  Workbook into Polish. Great news. Hopefully they will join us on SKYPE or ZOOM. We look forward to your presence here.  Our SKYPE meetings are becoming very international  and I know that they will get a warm  welcome here from all of us.  We all speak the same language here – hope and healing.

See you soon.

Hugh

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

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

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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

Fellowship

Depressed Anonymous ZOOM meetings

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

Dear Depressed Anonymous Fellowship,

The following is an email where you can gain information on gaining access to the ZOOM Depressed Anonymous Meetings which gather twice a week.

The admin advised me that persons wanting to join the meeting can contact her at this address to get the ID Code and the Password Code. We are doing this to protect the participants and the site from being hacked. We thank you for your understanding.

Contact: rebeccairene8@gmail.com

12 Step Meeting, Mutual Aid

A red thread, a beautiful tapestry, patterns and God’s will.

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Some of us, in groups and individually, work the Steps according to the month. What this means is when April 1st (4th month) arrives, we start spending quality time studying our Step #4. This Step states that we “Made a fearless moral and searching inventory of ourselves.” For many of our members, myself included, we use our Depressed Anonymous Workbook in conjunction with our Depressed Anonymous book to discover the patterns of our lives that keep us from being our best selves. The patterns have formed habits and these habits can end up becoming addictions. Could it be that these patterns of our thinking, feeling and behavior keep us imprisoned in our depression? Is it now that we feel we are continually circling around in that morass of hopelessness and helplessness? Like any addiction, we feel there is no way out.

It is here I want to quote from Maria von Trappe (Maria of musical The Sound of Music) who shared this thought:

“It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry …. in looking back we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the will of God. ” Quoted in the Publication: Give us this day. Liturgical Press. Collegeville, MN. March 26,

As I examine my life, attempting to discover that red thread, I have found that there actually is a red thread moving through my life tapestry. The red thread is there for me and it is like looking into a rear view mirror showing me where I have been on this life journey. There are these life patterns consistently appearing during the good times and the tough times of our lives. Even a pattern in which I see life as difficult and the world a dangerous place. Many of these negative patterns and fearful thoughts may start in our childhood and gradually become even more pronounced as patterns. But that red thread continues its weaving through our life tapestry into our adult lives. For some the red thread moves forward along with a pattern of pessimism, while providing us at the same time with hope. And as I look over my own past life, I see that my negativity, always following me into most of my relationships. Now as I look at the whole life tapestry as part of my fourth step inventory, stretching as it does from birth to this day, I am able to see patterns which have formed over time, crippling and making feel less than. But even during the painful times I can still see that that red thread, the will of God, has always been there operating in my life, accompanying me on my life journey, invisible, but still there like the silent whisper of the wind, providing me with hope. Now I can see that the red thread hasn’t just formed, it has been there as for long as I can remember. My present belief in a power greater than my depression is gradually setting me free. Today. Everyday.

I know how some Depressed Anonymous groups work this Fourth Step Study on an ongoing basis. For example, there are International Depressed Anonymous Skype Group meetings who come together everyday of the week on the Internet. You can access these group meeting by going to https://join.skype.com and then signing in at 2019depanon@hotmail.com. The leader for the meeting that day will sign you up and you can join the group. Meetings start at 12:30 PM Eastern Standard PM time.

Look back on your life up to today and see if you can recognize how that red thread weaving through your own life, no matter how difficult, how despairing, it is the fact that God has always been there with us and we gradually come to believe that He will always be there with us. And as a member of Depressed Anonymous I want to share with others how that red thread never abandoned me or deserted me, no matter how bad things became. And so when you do your inventory you too will discern that it has always been God’s will that the hope he provides will free you.

Hugh