Category Archives: The 12 Steps

Choice, The 12 Steps

People have the seeds of their own recovery within themselves

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” Having spent time researching causes of, and vulnerability to depression, I know that I was a prime candidate for the disorder.  The person typically diagnosed as depressed is likely to be a married woman who is also  a mother, and beset with practical problems.: Children, interpersonal relationships, and spouse concerns. What I learned from my own depression and recovery and try to practice when working with clients, is that people have the seeds of their own revival within them. I want to ask the right questions so that people can hear what they say, recognize what changes they want to make, and how they can choose to make them. Specific time limits are met, and I prefer to focus initially on people making changes in their behavior, rather than mood. I explain that although  the depressed mood colors the whole world, it  has not been shown to be causally related to improvement, whereas behavior has.

When clients know that there are specific and tangible things they can do, they begin to experience an immediate upswing.  A specific time limit is often motivating.  People begin to see themselves making positive changes in their behavior,  and can begin to change attitudes about themselves.  They begin to see themselves controlling aspects  of their environment, and as this happens, helplessness and hopelessness begin to dissipate and self- esteem level rises proportionally. People see themselves to be improving as a result of their own efforts. Nothing can  be more rewarding to a depressed person.”

Sources:  Wounded Healers. V. Rippere. Pages 86-87.

The Antidepressant Tablet  Vol. 2:3  Spring 1991.

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

The 12 Steps

When opportunity knocks – open the door!

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Yes, that is great advice. When something comes your way,  and you refuse to even consider it–that could be  a BIG mistake. Let me give you an example.

Many years ago, I met a fellow who was very depressed. He felt like there was nothing that he touched that didn’t result in a personal disaster. The more he resisted the opportunities, the greater his frustration grew. He wondered why? Was it because he saw the opportunities as something  other than a possibility for growth and success,  or did he see them as out of reach for him personally.  I didn’t know  what he thought but this I did know, that whatever he thought, he never opened the door! His continued low mood eventually spiraled down so that he closed the door permanently. Suicide became his only option and that sadly was the door  he opened.

Years ago, in my own life, I had the opportunity to open a door that provided me with a  storehouse of possibilities for my life.  I walked through the door and found hope and access to a plan for my life that came with a warranty – a lifetime guarantee for personal  hope and serenity.

That warranty is as good today as it was when I heard that knock more than 30 years ago. Now I am  sharing with others how they will find sobriety  and serenity  if they answer the knock and enter a new world of hope. The  same plan comes with a promise that is being fulfilled in the lives of thousands today, “sometimes quickly-sometimes slowly.”

The door that I am talking about is the door of Depressed Anonymous which when opened provides untold opportunities for peace, hope and a plan. All one has to do is find others like oneself and hear and read how opportunity knocked. They were ready to find out what so many others had discovered for their own lives.

31 people have shared their own personal stories in Depressed Anonymous and have not only  did they “get” the plan for daily living they also got the warranty that promises a depression -free way to live. Will you open that door today?

 

Source: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky. (Contains 31 personal stories)

Acceptance, Choice, Step 04, The 12 Steps

I Can’t Make A Decision!

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AFFIRMATION

I make a decision today to read one of the newsletters listed at the Newsletter Archives on this website (www.depressedanon.com.) or the BLOGS from the past week.

“Psychiatrists regard a person’s statement, ‘I can’t make a decision’ as a symptom of an illness, when really it is a reasonable effective defense…if you are trying to shut out all the matters which you find uncontrollable, threatening and confusing, you cannot give those matters the careful scrutiny they need if you are to make a decision about them. They create such turmoil in our mind that you decided that it is best to not decide. You can say ‘I am depressed. I cannot make my decision.’ Spending the day with the blanket over your head is as much a result of a decision as is going out and facing the world.

CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT

Most times when I am depressed, I don’t want to think about  changing anything. Everything is hopeless and  useless anyway so why try and  use all that mental  energy to sort it all out. This is the type of thinking that continues the fuzziness and the confusion. It is a refuge from having to do something. about where I am today.

But when  I decide that I’ve had enough, I get my dander up and declare to myself, and really to the world around me, that I am going to play my cards differently. This is a good place to begin working on the Fourth Step, that “I will make a fearless and  moral inventory of myself.”

Meditation

God help us change what needs to be changed today and let us know what it is and what is OK with us as well. Help us sort out the fog and fuzziness of our mind so that your guidance will create in us a desire to help ourselves.”

SOURCES:             Higher Thoughts for Down Days: 365 daily thoughts and meditations for members of 12 step fellowship groups. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY. February 7th.

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

  I’ll do it when I feel better. (2018) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.

 

Fellowship, Isolation, Mindfulness, Prayer, Purpose, The 12 Steps, Victim Thinking

Today is your day!

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If you are depressed, this is your day. Yesterday is gone forever, except in our memories. Tomorrow is not here yet, except in our imagination. This is all we got. This 24 hour period of time is my time. This is the space in which we will be living for the next 24 hours. For some of us, it won’t pass fast enough. But think about it: we’ve told ourselves thousands of time that we will not face who we are and what we want today but only when we feel like it. I will do it when I feel like it. Sound familiar?

The physical and mental pain of our sadness won’t allow us to think about anything BUT my pain. I feel like I am in a prison and no matter what keys I am supposed to have to get out, nothing will work. I won’t accept that I have options for my release. Once depressed –always depressed, that’s my mantra.

Today is your day. This is the day you are going to make a break ! This is your day to do something different. Namely, to listen for that other voice inside your head. You are going to hear that there is another way out. The lockdown is over. You don’t have to live this way. Isolated. Imprisoned and without hope.

In “I’ll do it when I feel better is written for all of us who are waiting. Waiting. Waiting for what, I ask? Yes, I know what you are waiting for–you are waiting for the depression to just disappear. Poof! And it’s gone. But you and I know better than that. We have been depressed for so long we can’t accept that we can do anything about our life sentence of misery. I have personally been at this struggle for so long that I know something very important about leaving behind the misery of our lives. The fact is that when we begin to take charge of our thoughts, feelings and lives, good things will begin to happen today. How? Talk to a person who has been there and is now recovered-living that life of hope. Read the hopeful material from folks who have successfully found that making today decision day is today.

Let’s be honest. I once faced the same feeling of being hopeless and despair. I never thought that I was able to dig out of the hole that I had been living in. My continuous negative and hopeless thinking eroded all the motivational energy that I might have had to try something that might work for me.

This is your day! You still have hours left in this day to make a decision to start the life that you have been wishing for. Throw the sheets off–get off the couch-call a friend–check out this website depressedanon.com discovering how to get motivated for something that will work for you. Why? Here you will find the written accounts of folks, just like you and me, who have begin to live one day at a time. They are making the most of each day. Many of us begin each 24 hours by saying this prayer, the moment upon awakening:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

It’s similar to putting your toe in the water. Too cold? Too hot? No, just right. Why? Because there is hope here. There are folks here who are available for you to talk with. There is an International online SKYPE group that meets every Sunday. People who need to talk with others about their own recovery using the 12 Steps of Depressed Anonymous.. People who are in recovery. These are those who are spending today reaching out to others for assistance. They find kindred spirits everywhere.

You can read hopeful stories of people like yourself in Depressed Anonymous who have made a decision to live each day with hope. For example, the following is Gloria’s story of how her “today” was on June 6, 1985. (First meeting of Depressed Anonymous was founded at this time).

“There are four of us who were together first on June 6th, 1985. We have become very good friends. I still remember what the counselor from the very first meeting told us. “I’ve seen people come and go. Some helped, some for just one meeting, some wanting a magic wand waved. It has helped me over the rough spots, and gave me courage to go on as a widow. I have found a peace in life, a special joy in knowing and loving people. In helping others, I have helped myself. I know my background in life has made me depressed at times. My Mother was abusive and I realized later in life that it was an emotional illness. I forgave her.

I will continue t attend Depressed Anonymous. Every time is different and who knows what mystery each group holds? One never knows who needs me, who needs a smile or a hug or who needs to feel that they are not alone, or who needs to know that there is a God who loves all. ”

Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (1998, 2008, 2011) Depressed Annonymous Publications. Louisville.KY. (Personal Stories section. Page 141/In helping others I helped my self).

“On awakening, let us think about the 24 hours ahead. We ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity and from dishonest or self-seeking motives. Free us of these, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be on a higher plane when our thinking begins to be cleared of wrong motives. If we have to determine which course to take, we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought, or a decision. Then we relax, and take it easy, and we are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for awhile.

We usually conclude our meditation with a prayer that we are shown all through the day what our next step will be, asking especially for freedom from damaging self-will.” Bill W.

TODAY IS YOUR DAY! WHAT CAN YOU MAKE OF IT?

For more information please contact: depanon@netpenny.net.

www. depessedanon.com for BLOGS and information about depression and recovery tools.

Visit the Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore for more information on how to order books online

SOURCES: (Copyright) Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition (1998, 2008, 2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.

(Copyright) I’ll do it when I feel better. Hugh Smith (2017) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Page 101. Louisville. KY. (Quote from As Bill Sees it. The AA Way of Life… selected writings of A.A.’s co-Founder. AA World Services Inc., New York. 1967. Page 243.)

12 Step Meeting, Depressed Anonymous Workbook, The 12 Steps

Our hunches are more right than wrong.

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We think about the 24 hours ahead when we wake up, and attempt to live the day in honesty and peace. We ask God to  ward off thoughts of self-seeking, dishonesty and false motives.  As Alcoholics  Anonymous says,  with the indecision about something, we then ask God for inspiration and we let go of struggling for an answer. Alcoholics Anonymous says that you will be surprised at how the right answers will come after we have practiced this way of living. It also comes to pass that our hunches are more right than wrong. We also pause throughout the day when we are fearful, puzzled or anxious. We pray  to the Higher Power for which direction to take. I like this suggestion the best when Alcoholics Anonymous says : We constantly remind ourselves that we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “‘Thy will be dome,’ ”  We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.  By coming to the meetings and admitting our addictions, we finally get in touch with those emotions that have all but shut down from an early time in our lives, when to feel hurt too much.  We now have  the chance  to let these feelings get displayed and expressed in the supportive and trusting environment of our newly chosen  family of the Depressed Anonymous group.”

SOURCE:   Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011) Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky.  Page 101/Step 11.

NOTE: Even though most of us who join the Depressed Anonymous group, do not suffer from alcohol addiction,  Depressed Anonymous is  modeled after the 12  spiritual principles of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have based our  program of recovery on  the 12 steps of recovery and using them on a daily basis. The 12 Steps are now universally used as the basis for a myriad of recovery tools  for those who are trying to free themselves from addictive behaviors and attachments.

 

VISIT THE STORE at the DEPRESSED ANONYMOUS PUBLICATIONS  BOOKSTORE. at www.depressedanon.com. One can order online.

The 12 Steps

Is Depression Contagious?

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A good question. Yes, depression can be contagious. Even though depression is  not a thing , like a cold or the flu with its  virus or a bacterium.  When a depressed person  sneezes in your face who has the flu or has a cold, you will not contract a depression. It just doesn’t happen that way.  But, instead you might  get a cold or catch a flu.   On the other hand, persons with depression create an environment which  presents a low mood  in their relational  environment. An employer who is controlling and moody,  can themselves create a negative and debilitating atmosphere.

On the other hand, it has been proven that those of us who  live or work with a person depressed,   might  begin to experience the same low moods  as the person depressed.  Let me explain. A few years go, two women wanted to start a Depressed Anonymous group for family members and friends of the depressed. The results of  their efforts is a group  called the  Dep-Anon Family Group.  When they started to write some of their feelings about their own life experiences with their  depressed family member,  they discovered they were feeling these same feelings as those of  the depressed family member.

Do  we remember our own  struggles with depression and how we wanted to isolate and  withdraw  from family members and our friends? We lived alone in the prison of our own making.

Depressed persons create their own atmosphere of depression.  This is where the family member begins to notice how their own mood begins to  mimic the depressed member. Let me quote from the Dep-Anon Family Group manual  in which our two founders of Dep-Anon share their own feelings of the contagious nature of depression  and how they experienced it.

“At a planning meeting for constructing a Dep-Anon group these two family members were asked to list all the feelings that they experience while living with a depressed loved one. From the discussion,  we were surprised to find out some amazing facts, 1) that the feelings family members were experiencing were very similar to those which their depressed loved ones were  also experiencing, and 2)  these feelings were also having an equally destructive effect in the lives of family members.

When family memebrs were asked to prioritize, describe and list which feelings they experienced most often and most intensely, the following are those which  were  documented

  1. Feeling overwhelmed and burdened by a family member’s depression.
  2. Feeling restricted around the depressed, feelings of something similar to the expression of “walking on eggshells”.
  3. Feelings of helplessness.
  4. Anxiety about the situation and not knowing what to do about the feelings they were experiencing.
  5. Feeling emotionally drained.
  6. Feeling inadequate faced with loved one’s immobility and lack of motivation.
  7. Feeling anger and frustration at the depressed.
  8. Beng an enabler
  9. Feeling that one was living an unproductive life as one was stymied by the depressed’s unproductive depression.
  10. Having feelings of  irritability and impatience.
  11. Feeling inadequate.
  12. Unhappy.
  13. Feeling betrayed in retirement by spuse’s  late life depression.
  14. Indecisive
  15. Lack of confidence in oneself.

The amazing fact here is that these two women were having the same feelings as their own family who were depressed. It is ironic that as I went down the list of feelings the two members  were feeling, that   these were some of my own feelings when I was depressed. So Is depression contagious?  From what has been written here so far,  it is obvious to most of us that a loved one’s depression definitely has a negative  effect our our lives.

Dep-Anon can be a great source of help and hope, just as Al-Anon has been a great help and resource for the family members of an alcoholic.  I believe that Dep-Anon will be a good resource and fellowship to help family members and friends develop their own program,  based on the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps.

Dep-Anon  places its focus on creating a relationship with the depressed that is not only supportive, but also creates an environment where the whole family can find healing. Also, the Manual finds ways on how we can help our depressed family member find the necessary support so that a future relapse can be prevented. There are a number of routes that can be taken to ensure that this happens and we will discuss them in our Dep-Anon Manual.  We all have choices  and we  will be proactive in our own healing.

As one of the founders wrote about her own experience with her depressed husband , she tells us that now  “she is going to mind her own soul.” We might not be depressed, but we will still have the feelings of being helpless and without hope. That has changed now that we are  taking  care of ourselves using the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps in our own lives.

The program we have offered here is the personal hope of two persons,  believing that by taking care of themselves first of all, they will best be of great help to the depressed family member.

SOURCES:  Copyright(c) Dep-ANon Family Group.(1999) Depressed ANonymous Publicatins. Louisville, KY Pages A-G.

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

Spirituality, Step 12, The 12 Steps

The Prompter

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The prompter  is a person who prompts; specifically one who cues performers when they forget their lines.  Other speakers use Tele-Prompters, which enables the speaker to read their  speech from a screen.

In the Depressed Anonymous program of recovery, we  find ourselves listening to a spiritual Prompter —  an inner  voice, a Higher Power, providing us with a brand new line of thinking. An action oriented  prompt, where we come to believe in a Power greater than ourselves nudging  us to change the way we think and behave.

But who is this Prompter? What is its name? And why  am I hearing it’s voice now. I am hearing it now because I am ready to hear it. Fair enough?  I have surrendered.  Once beat down by my addictions, I now no longer follow the cues which produced for me  a life of negative moods and behaviors. I told the  God of my understanding that I’ve had it! No more beating myself up   with blame and  negative thinking.  Negative thinking  produced those painful  moods  spiraling me   down into feelings of hopelessness and depression.  I had the  feeling that all my efforts at finding hope were futile.

The  Prompter which I have been  listening to in the inner depths of my soul has been leading me towards serenity and filling me with a powerful meaning for my life. After having been introduced to the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps I continued to listen  to the Prompter in the quiet of those daily moments of meditation and prayer.

It was my decision to put my life on a brand new trajectory of wellness and healing. I had a spiritual awakening, ever so gradually. I just knew it was the Prompter itself who was placing a new life script into my heart.

Each and every day of my life I pray, I quiet the chatter in my mind, and draw near to the God of my understanding.   When we draw near to God, God draws near to us. What you seek, seeks you.

I believe that  my daily conscious contact with  God in prayer and meditation  I am able to  discover that we  are no longer dependent on our will but on God’s will for us. And just as Bill W  tells us  in Alcoholics Anonymous that when we are faced with the indecision about something, we then ask God for inspiration and we let go  of struggling for an answer.  He tells us that you will be surprised at how the right answers will come after we have practiced  this way of living. It also comes to pass that our hunches are more right than wrong. We also pause throughout the day when we are fearful, puzzled or anxious. We pray to the Higher Power for which direction to take. I like the suggestion the best when AA  says,” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self pity, or foolish decisions. We become more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we  are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves..”  (Depressed  Anonymous, Page 101).    We  all know that our new life script which  the Prompter has provided us  gives our life  direction and meaning.

Depressed Anonymous   shares with us Meister Eckart’s thoughts on that  Vital Spiritual Experience which comes to each of us when we surrender our lives and wills to the  God of our understanding.

“This work (birth), when  it is perfect, will be due solely to God’s action while you have been passive. If you really forsake your own knowledge and will, then surely and gladly  God will enter with his knowledge shining clearly. Where God achieves self-consciousness, your own knowledge is of no use, nor has it standing. Do not imagine that your own intelligence may rise to it,  so that you may know God. Indeed when God divinely enlightens you, no natural light is required to bring that about. This natural light must in fact be completely extinguished before God will shine in with his light, bringing back with God all that you have forsaken and a thousand times more, together with a new form to contain it all.” (Depressed Anonymous, Page 161).

“Made a decision to turn our will and lives   over to the care of God as we understand God to be.

SOURCE:  Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. (2011)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY.  Page 101, 161.

Acceptance, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Honesty, Hope, Mindfulness, The 12 Steps, Victim Thinking

Was finding this phone number a coincidence?

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Helen shares her story about finding help–when she needed it most.

“I finally knew after two year or more of sleepless nights that someone had to help me. I found a card saying Depressed Center, in the back of the phone book. It has a phone number and that was all. I talked to a man on the other end of the phone. I said to myself this man is too busy to talk with me, but anyway I made the first appointment myself. I made myself go. I thank God I did. I thank God that I went for help. It was a whole new beginning for me. I wanted to get well so badly. I think people do have to want to change. I went in with an attitude that I have to get well. I had heard things about counselors that scared me, but this was just all the old negative feelings that caught up with me and boxed me in. I got better and started to think differently. I started to get rid of some of my negative thoughts. I began to feel better and I continued to see my counselor. I started in Depressed Anonymous some weeks later.”

If you are curious about how the mutual aid group changed Helen’s life you’ll need to read her full account in the Personal Stories section of Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition, pages 169-172.

She also has something powerful to say about pleasing people and how she needed to get her priorities straight and begin taking care of herself.

Sources: Seeing is believing: 15 ways to leave the prison of depression. (2017). Hugh Smith. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville, KY.

I’ll do it when I feel better.(2018) Hugh Smith. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. KY

12 Step Meeting, Belief, Counseling, DA Literature, Depressed Anonymous, Fellowship, Focus, Hope, Journaling, Serenity, Step 03, The 12 Steps

Faith Appears To Be Good For One’s Health

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Joyce  was a client of mine a few years back. She was in her early sixties and just recuperating from   a successful  open heart surgery. She also was very  depressed.  That’s where I come in. I was asked by my clinical supervisor  if I would spend some time with her and see  how I might be of help to her.  I agreed to do what I could do.

In the midst of counseling and listening to Joyce’s  story, I discovered her  strong faith,  which included her personal faith in God which gave her the belief that she was going to get through whatever  that had her  in lockdown.

She wasn’t aware of our Depressed Anonymous group and so I shared my story with her and the fact that I too  was once depressed. I told her how I became a  believer in the spirituality of the Twelve Steps and how my belief in God  delivered me from my symptoms of depression. Now don’t get me wrong -my own story is that it took me over a year to finally  get free of this noose around my neck.  Also, because of my faith in a program and the  recovered  people who lived it out in their daily lives,  I started on the road to recovery.

My faith told me if I would follow some of the simple steps outlined in this recovery program I would get better. My faith got me off of my seat,  out of bed and out my door to begin walking.  I believed  walking might be the key that unlocked my prison of depression. I read  that some Doctors in England were writing out   prescriptions for exercise for their depressed patients. I figured that it worked for them and so why wouldn’t exercise work for me.  After a year of walking everyday I finally walked out of the mental fog, lost the jitters and became free of depression. My faith in a Higher Power and my getting my body moving on a daily basis produced the healing effect that I had hoped for.

Back to Joyce. She and I had ten sessions together and I suggested to her that she start to think about the things that she did before her depression. What provided the satisfaction  and those pleasant events previously in her life. She talked about how she at one time was a cartoonist as well as a lover of writing poetry. So, that is what I suggested — that she involve herself with these pleasant activities again.  She said that she believed that she could do it–even though her mind and body rebelled at moving out of her comfort zone of doing absolutely nothing. The main defense for doing nothing is the oft repeated mantra from all of us when  we are depressed which  is “I’ll do it when I feel better.”

With each new session she would share with me a cartoon or a poem which she had created the previous  week. As she continued doing what she liked, I  noticed more energy in her voice as she shared her feelings about her new  creations.  All the while, she was compliant with her own physical recovery from heart surgery. Her pleasant moods  gave her a feeling of being in control of her life and her future.  She came to believe that a power greater than herself would restore not only her sanity but her health as well. Her faith was renewed in the God of her understanding while restoring  her belief that her  health was going to get better. Not only did  she have a plan to follow but she made the spiritual principles of the Twelve Steps her way out of depression. She continues to follow this map to this very day.

The following quote is from a work  titled,  The Secret Strength of Depression written by Frederic Flach, M.D., K.H.S.

“Faith appears to be good for one’s overall health. Cardiovascular illnesses are more frequently seen in depressed individuals, in patients with coronary ischemia, depression worsens the outcome, possibly due to alterations in platelet function and changes in autonomic tone. Depression is also associated with a higher mortality rate following acute myocardial infarction; for those patients who survive, the recovery process is often a more complicated  one. Studies suggest that the recovery rate from medical and surgical procedures, from the repair of hip  fractures to coronary bypass surgery, is faster among believers. Moreover, patients undergoing such treatment appear less likely to have serious complications or die.” Page 239.

SOURCES:  Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications.  Louisville. Ky.

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

Copyright)(c)  Believing is seeing:15 Ways to leave the prison of depression. (2017)  Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville. Ky.

DA Literature, Fellowship, Spirituality, The 12 Steps

I Am Not Broken

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More than 30 years ago  I felt that I was a broken human being. We all have heard the old saying that  “what  doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” Looking back over the time I spent dealing with the darkness within,  I now can see my recovery time  did  make me stronger. That recovery forced me to use tools that I had never realized existed and fit for what I needed to raise myself up. These tools   gave me strength for  survival. The  saying was true: move the body and the mind will follow. Instead of my mind and life spiraling further down into the pit of hopelessness I began  spiraling upward with hope.    In the beginning of my descent into nothingness I  believed  that  the inner war that was  going on in my body  was going  to kill me. I did believe that I was coming apart, unglued and a danger to myself.  I was like a nomad in a  wasteland where all the guideposts for directions  had disappeared.  My life had lost all meaning. My mind resisted thinking about hope and the  future.  I felt that I was in a state of limbo–no moving forward–only backward and down. My personal pain and anxiety kept me tied down in my own desperation.

Many have found my own  story to be  a positive  statement  in which almost on a daily basis I am able to share some of my thoughts about this journey which I am on and which you too  can be on. Our own story of recovery is really a tool that others can put to use for their own lives,

My depression experience has  provided me with a life purpose and given me meaning which I never dreamt would be my own recovery gift  for others “still suffering” to use for their own recovery;  the repair of their own personal brokenness. My own life and the Twelve Steps has provided a key which helped me unlock the prison of my depression.  The Steps provide ample guidance and direction for those of us who continue the spiral upward, living out in our own lives the hope and   purpose which have been promised to those of us who desire a life after depression.

Hugh

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

You can read the author’s story  in the Depressed Anonymous book, plus 30 more personal  accounts of those  who have also  used the recovery tools for their own freedom from depression.

Click on to The Depressed Anonymous Publications Bookstore for more literature which deals effectively with depression and recovery. Orders can be made online.