Step One
"You have to admit that you're powerless over this depressed behavior and likewise admit that your life is unmanageable. You don't want to go on living this way. In fact, some days you feel that you just want to lie down and die, but deep inside you, there is that Spirit, call it God, Higher Power, or whatever, that keeps you searching for a way out..."
1.1 Please write down your feelings about the above statement. Do you feel ashamed to talk about the fact that you are or have been depressed? Or hospitalized for depression?
[Answer] This quote hits pretty hard because I spent over twenty years ignoring my depression. After all, it felt like a failure if I admitted that I was suffering from depression. Multiple times in those 20 years, people who cared about me have asked if I was doing okay or if I needed more help than I was currently getting. I refused every offer for help even when others could see that I was struggling so much. After the first attempt in high school, I should have asked for help, but I felt nobody would take it seriously. I have felt shame that I needed inpatient treatment to finally get help. I also feel even more shame because, after my first inpatient treatment stay of nine days, I was readmitted twenty days later for even worse suicidal thoughts that we so bad that I spent my first week in treatment still wanting to hurt myself. I could not pull myself out of the funk I was in then. I have only told my closest friends that I was hospitalized and why because I did not know how others would react. I attempted at once while in treatment to talk to my family about the fact that nobody checked on me after the molestation. Still, I was told that they were trying not to play into the poor pitiful Tamara story, so that has added to my shame since even my mother thinks I brought all of this on myself.
Depressed, A. (Ed.). (2001). The Depressed Anonymous Workbook. Depressed Anonymous. P. 4