When Depression is in your bed
This podcast looks through both a professional and personal lens to explore the impact depression can have on individuals and on relationships. It takes a non-judgmental, destigmatizing view of mental health that encourages true, holistic healing and growth.
The host, Trish Sanders, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Advanced Imago Relationship Therapist. In addition to her experience in the office with couples and depression, both she and her husband have lived with depression for most of their lives. Trish shares with transparency and vulnerability, while bringing hope and light to an often heavy subject.
Follow Trish @trish.sanders.lcsw on Instagram for support in how to have a deeper connection and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life.
Subscribe to When Depression is in Your Bed and share it with someone who you think may benefit from hearing it.
- If you are looking to take the first step towards improving your connection and communication with your partner, check out this FREE monthly webinar on "Becoming a Conscious Couple: How to Connect & Communicate with Your Partner," at wwww.wholefamilynj.com/webinar
- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat! Register at www.wholefamilynj.com/workshop
Episodes
69 episodes
The Empathy Trap in Relationships: How Understanding Your Partner Can Keep You Both Stuck
What happens when empathy helps your partner feel deeply understood… but quietly keeps both of you stuck?In this episode, I explore what I call The Empathy Trap in Relationships, a dynamic where understanding your partner...
Showing Up Imperfectly: When Perfectionism Looks Like Overachieving
What if perfectionism doesn’t make you shut down… but makes it impossible to stop pushing?In this episode, I explore the overachieving side of perfectionism, the version that looks productive, driven, high-functioning, and constan...
Showing Up Imperfectly: One Way This Perfectionist Is Learning to Trust Herself
What does it actually look like to build self-trust, not when everything is going well, but when it’s not?In this episode, I share a real-time experience from a physically challenging week and how it brought me back to something I...
The Empathy Trap: When Feeling Understood Doesn’t Create Change
What if empathy may help you feel seen, but may also be keeping you stuck?In this episode, I explore what I call The Empathy Trap, a subtle but powerful dynamic where empathy focused only on the story can create connectio...
The Conscious Crash: How Doing the Work Changes the Struggle
What happens when you have the awareness, the tools, and the language, and still find yourself crashing into dysregulation?In this episode, I share a deeply personal experience I came to describe as a conscious crash, a m...
Relational Safety and Repair: Moving from Dysregulation to Connection
What does it actually take to move from dysregulation to connection, especially in the moments when repair feels hardest to reach?In this episode, I expand the conversation on relational repair by exploring what happens when confl...
Repair in Real Life: What We’ve Learned About Creating Relational Safety and Reconnecting
What does repair actually look like in real life and what makes it possible for two people to reconnect, even after years of disconnection?In this episode, my husband Ben joins me for a real, unscripted conversation about what we’...
Repair in Relationships: How to Do It (and Why It Can Feel So Hard)
Is saying “I’m sorry” difficult for you or for your partner?In this episode, we look at why that can be true, even when you care deeply about your relationship and what repair actually requires.Building on the last two epis...
Rupture and Repair: Why What Happens After Conflict Matters Most
What if the most important moment in a conflict isn’t when someone gets hurt — but whether repair happens afterward?In this episode, I explore why conflict itself doesn’t determine the health of a relationship. What matters ...
“I Didn’t Mean To”: Intention, Impact, and Repair in Relationships
“I didn’t mean to” can be true — and still not be the same as “I’m sorry.” In this episode, a small moment at the breakfast table with my children opens the door to a deeper conversation about the difference between intention...
Communication for Connection Part 3: A Real-Life Imago Dialogue
What if the conflict isn’t the problem — but the speed, the stories, and the nervous system state you’re in while you’re trying to communicate?In this episode, my husband Ben joins me for our first ever real-time, recorded demonst...
Communication for Connection Part 2: How the Imago Intentional Dialogue Changed My Relationship
What if a single conversation could shift the trajectory of your relationship — not because the problem disappeared, but because you finally felt understood?In this episode, I share the personal story of the moment I used the Imag...
Communication for Connection Part 1: The Imago Intentional Dialogue Process
What if the way you’ve been trying to communicate is actually preventing the connection you long for, even when your intentions are loving?In this episode, I introduce the Imago Intentional Dialogue process, a structured communica...
Know Your Worth, Know Your Impact: How Embracing Your Relational Power Shapes Social Change
What does it really mean to know that you matter — and how does that shape the impact you have on your relationships and the world?In this episode, I explore how reclaiming a sense of worth can be a powerful source of energy, agen...
What It Means to Be Relational: Safety, Connection, and the World We Can Create Together
What does it really mean to be relational — beyond simply having relationships?In this episode, I explore what it means to value connection, belonging, and collective safety in a world that often prioritizes hierarchy, control, an...
Introducing My Husband: From Behind the Scenes to Sharing the Mic
This episode marks a meaningful milestone for the podcast — the first episode of its second year, and the first with my husband, Ben, joining me on the microphone.For the past year, he has been an essential part of this podcast be...
Becoming Someone I Can Trust: ADHD, Depression, and One Year of Nervous System Healing
What does it mean to become someone you can trust — especially when living with ADHD and depression?In this one-year anniversary episode, I reflect on how understanding my nervous system changed my relationship with effort, consis...
When Depression Was the Clue: ADHD Misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder
A personal story of neurodivergence, school struggles, and how effort was misunderstood at 17.For years, I believed my struggles with focus, energy, and motivation were simply part of my depression — or evidence that I wasn’t tryi...
This New Year, Stop Striving for a New You: Choosing the Pace That Lets the Real You Bloom
The pressure to reinvent can feel loud in January, but nature tells a different story: winter is for conservation, repair, and preparing the ground for bloom. We explore how to trade the exhausting “on or off” cycle for nervous system flexibili...
A Conscious Christmas Story: Choosing Connection When the Holidays Got Me Down
When the holidays don’t match the picture in your head, the gap can feel like grief. This year brought fevers, cancellations, and a quiet house that amplified old patterns of shutdown. I share what helped me move through the heaviness with care...
Let It Begin With Me: Embodying Peace Through Nervous System Regulation
We explore how two opposing beliefs—“I have to do everything" and "I can't do anything"—grow from different nervous system states and how peace begins by shifting our state toward safety and connection. Using Polyvagal Theory, we offer practica...
Writing New Stories: How My Brain Healed After Holiday Depression and Beyond
The holidays can feel bright for some and unbearably heavy for others. I open up about a Christmas that nearly ended my marriage and trace how those memories slowly softened—not by accident, but because the brain can change and grow when it fee...
Grief, Gratitude & ADHD: What’s Been Coming Up for Me This Holiday Season
Holidays have a way of pulling old feelings to the surface. This time, two truths came up at once: the enduring ache of losing my dad five years ago, and a quieter grief I call “ADHD grief”—the gap between the cozy, orderly home I imagine and t...
Ketamine Isn’t the Fix—It’s the Opening: How Intentional Integration Turned Insight Into Healing
We explore how ketamine-assisted psychotherapy can quiet an overactive alarm system, reopen access to rest, and create a window where new habits take hold through integration. We share the science in plain language and the personal practices th...
From Cautiously Curious to Confident: What I Learned Before Starting Ketamine Therapy
Healing doesn’t always arrive as a lightning bolt. Sometimes it looks like a short, supported window where defenses soften and your nervous system finally has space to reorganize. That’s the potential of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy: not a s...