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Depression Wellness Resources for the Santa Barbara Community
I offer this web site from my heart with the hope that it will resonate and possibly help other people struggling with depression. See Lessons Learning for some ideas to consider if you are in the midst of depression. I hope that this web site will provide support and resources for families and friends to see that there are things they can do to help a loved one who is depressed and that there is light at the end of the tunnel. My goal is to de-stigmatize this condition and increase compassion for people with this illness and provide some ideas and pathways for people to explore as they search to find their way into wellness.
if you would like to contact me, share your story, or be part of a peer or family support network, please email info@outofthewell.com
Disclaimer
Please do not consider anything on this site as a form of treatment, or substitute for professional services. It is offered for educational purposes only.
HI, I’m so pleased to come accross such very effective useful infomation in which I definately can relate to. So much of what has been written explains my currant situation. I would like to be part of your family support network.
Thank you
Ann.
Thank you for creating such a valuable web site. Good and generous things don’t happen without effort, and I appreciate yours. I particularly like the wonderful quotes and the entry “Stopping the worry”.
I am nearly 60 (next month!) and have spent much of the last 40 years overwhelmed, hating myself, depressed, and quite withdrawn; I’m still not sure what causes what, but it has been, until a couple of years ago, a reliable constellation. Even , until VERY recently, I would be lost into one escapist book after the other; lost to my wife, myself, my feelings, my work, life.
Three plus years ago I started going regularly to ACA (and later OA, BDA, and WA) 12 step meetings. I’ve been to nearly 500 now. They are not a magic wand, but better than books. better than therapy, better than drugs for me.
I now have a little higher order of problems. I have not been depressed for 2+ years–sad, scared, unhappy, extremely self critical, but not depressed. I can begin to look my life and the truth of my situation “in the face”, so to speak. Begin to see my fear of connection, my lack of skills in that crucial direction. Begin to see the momentum and consequences of 3 1/2 decades of compulsive eating, buying, hoarding, thinking, working.
What Carl Rogers refers to as a “curious paradox” of no change until complete acceptance still feels to me like a tragic truth, but that is beginning to shift.
Thanks again.