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What does your bog look like?

I want to tell you today about the difference between a  bottomless pit and a bog.

But first some background.

As someone who lives with clinical depression, I have regularly grappled with feeling stuck. Sometimes the feeling passes in a day or two and sometimes it lasts for several months. 

During my appointment with my own therapist this week, I explored this stuck feeling and what to do about it. Since I work with an art therapist, we often use images and metaphors to get to the heart of whatever I am struggling with.
The images that came to me during this exploration were a bottomless pit and a bog.
Let me explain the difference.
A bottomless pit is that feeling that you are never going to stop falling deeper and deeper into chaos, hopelessness, indifference, pain, despair, or whatever that yucky feeling is that's keep you stuck.
When I experienced the bottomless pit a few years ago I had no idea when I would start feeling better, and I honestly didn't think anyone around me could catch me from that fall. I kept falling deeper and deeper into my despair despite all the wellness tools and strategies I had learned. I kept falling and falling, and the falling went on for so long that at one point I couldn't even recognize myself. I was a zombie in a never-ending horror movie, and it was non-stop awful.
Medical intervention, regular counselling, support groups, an Ayurvedic retreat, friends and family, and God (as I understand Her) stretched down into that pit and eventually lifted me out. Otherwise I would likely still be falling.
The bog, on the other hand, has a different quality. The bog is a slimy, murky, smelly place, but the good news is there is a bottom. There is ground.
From time to time since I recovered from my last major depressive episode I have found myself in the bog.
When I realize I am there, the first thing I do is put my feet down.
What that looks like in the real world is first I get honest with myself about how much energy I am spending doing the things that get me off balance and flailing. For me that's: TV binging, poor eating, scrolling social media mindlessly, unnecessary busy-work, negative self-talk, staying up too late, avoiding my loved ones, and over-sleeping.
I make a change, even if it's a tiny one.
Next, I return to the behaviours that keep me grounded: yoga, meditation, walking, petting my dog, and phone calls or text exchanges with a couple of ride-or-die friends. 
I let myself lean on them all, and I breathe for a minute.
Once my feet are on the ground it is much easier to look around me and evaluate the best way to get out of the bog. It's only once I accept I am in the bog and put my feet down that I can get the creative juices flowing of how to climb my way out. 
What I call the bog you may know as "stuck in a rut".
This is a very different experience than being lost in the bottomless pit.
Sometimes I am in the bog but I worry because for a while it actually feels like a bottomless pit. And as I thrash around, I forget that my feet need to hit ground first. 
I think this flailing and worrying is common for people with chronic depression. We just never want to fall like that again. We also need to remind ourselves that the bog is normal and part of the human experience...and we also don't have to live there all the time.
The last two years have felt like a bog for many of us, whether we live with mental illness or not.
Maybe it's time to put our feet back on the ground and begin devising a way out of here?

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