When Depression is in your bed

Should I Stay or Should I Go? 7 Questions for Making a Conscious Decision About Break-Up, Separation or Divorce

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Caught in the mental tug-of-war between staying in your relationship or finally walking away? When depression complicates an already difficult decision, finding clarity can feel impossible. Drawing from both professional expertise as an Imago Relationship Therapist and deeply personal experience navigating a 20-year relationship affected by depression, Trish Sanders offers a transformative framework for making conscious relationship choices.

This episode introduces seven powerful questions designed to help you move beyond indecision and into clarity. You'll discover how to identify the obstacles keeping you stuck, recognize unconscious patterns from your past that might be influencing your choices, and assess both your willingness and your partner's willingness to do the necessary relationship work. Trish compassionately guides you to examine relationship strengths that might still exist beneath the struggle, while also honoring what your body and nervous system are telling you about what path forward feels right.

The framework isn't about finding an easy answer or placing blame. Instead, it's about developing the awareness needed to make decisions that honor both yourself and your relationship's reality. Whether depression is affecting you, your partner, or your relationship dynamic as a whole, these questions provide a roadmap for navigating one of life's most challenging crossroads with intention and self-compassion.

No matter where you are in your decision-making process—just beginning to question or already leaning toward a choice—this episode offers valuable perspective on how to approach relationship decisions with greater consciousness. Subscribe to the podcast for weekly insights on navigating relationships when depression is in your bed.

- 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,".

- 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!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the when Depression is in your Bed podcast. Have you been stuck in a mental tug of war, going back and forth between the decision to stay in your current relationship or finally leave? If this hits home for you, please know that you are not alone. I have been there before and I know that this inner battle can be absolutely exhausting. It's a major life decision and I totally understand that you don't want to take it lightly, so I have come up with seven questions to support you in making a conscious decision for whether it makes more sense for you to stay in your current relationship or if it makes more sense for you to go.

Speaker 1:

I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I look forward to sharing today's episode with you. Let's get started. In the last episode, I talked about the early days of my relationship with my now husband, then boyfriend Ben, and I referred to this period of our relationship as our love story. As an Imago relationship therapist myself, I would also call that the romantic love phase of our relationship, in which we felt connected and engaged and joyfully alive and passionate, and it was just an absolutely delicious and really enjoyable, wonderful time in our relationship. I also talked in the last episode about how, within just a few short months, things shifted very drastically and in Imago theory we would say that Ben and I entered the power struggle and there was a lot more tension, a lot more disconnection, dissatisfaction with the relationship, and things were sort of generally just much more unpleasant compared to the romantic love phase. Now, imago theory does say that the vast majority of couples go through a romantic love phase and it is eventually followed by a power struggle, so in that respect we are not unique as far as relationships go. However, ben and I did continue to go back and forth between what were usually shorter periods of that connected romantic love phase and what were usually much longer chunks of time in that tense, disconnected power struggle, and I don't know if that made us unique exactly, but I do know that depression was frequently present in our relationship and it definitely contributed to this dynamic and, as a result, we have had a very challenging relationship for much of the last 20 years, and certainly given that there have been times when I was in a place of questioning whether or not I wanted to continue in the relationship I had with Ben, and since I have had so much experience in this area, thinking if I wanted to stay in a relationship or not, and what it meant to make a conscious decision around that. I came up with some questions that I think are helpful in being able to make such a big decision in a conscious way. So today I wanted to share these seven questions that I created, and I invite you to ask yourself if you are considering if you want to stay in your current relationship or if you want to end it.

Speaker 1:

I will say that anybody in relationship can certainly get to a point where they might be considering a breakup or separation or a divorce, and these questions are not exclusive to relationships in which depression is being experienced by one or both partners. But I will focus on some points that may be more relevant to those affected by depression, and the reason for this is because when you're living with depression in your relationship, it is possible that the struggles that you might be facing may be more severe. They may be more persistent or more frequent than when compared to relationships where depression is not present, or at least not as present as much of the time, and this can really add a level of challenge for someone trying to decide whether they wanna stay in the relationship or not, and they also may get contradictory advice, whether it's solicited or not, from people they trust friends, family members, even a therapist. Some people might insist that you end the relationship, saying that you deserve better or you deserve something more or you've tried hard enough, and other people, for their own reasons, might encourage you to hang in there or saying things like. All relationships take work, and so it might be very difficult or confusing when trying to decide what you should do. But in truth, only you know how much work it makes sense for you to do, how much effort it makes sense for you to put in and how long it makes sense for you to continue in a relationship, especially if it's taking a while for you to see some positive changes from all the work that you're putting in.

Speaker 1:

So, to help you gain as much awareness as possible and as much clarity as you can about what really makes sense to you, I will share these seven questions for you to ponder and think about for yourself. So, just so you know what to expect. These questions are not multiple choice type, and you won't get an absolute, definitive answer by the end as to whether or not you should get separated or end your relationship. It won't be like if you answered a lot of A's, then that means you should stay in the relationship, or if you answered a lot of C's, you should end the relationship. These are really things for you to think about, for you to increase your level of awareness that you have about yourself and your relationship and your partner.

Speaker 1:

And these questions are also not intended to measure how good or bad your relationship is, because the truth is is that if depression is in your relationship and you're thinking about whether you should end the relationship or not, there probably are pretty significant things that are going on right now that don't feel very good to you, and you already know what those things are and that they exist. And the truth is is that, even if a relationship measured as being very quote-unquote bad or being very high conflict even the big conflicts that can sometimes come when depression is involved is not necessarily the problem, because conflict exists in all relationships. It's totally inevitable. Whenever you have two people, at some point there's going to be some sort of conflict. So, as I said, the purpose of my questions is really to help you develop that conscious awareness about why you're in this relationship and also to determine as best as you can if this is a relationship in which you can really grow through. Like I said, conflict is inevitable, and in Imago theory we say conflict is growth trying to happen. So from my perspective, when deciding to continue in a relationship, it's important to try to figure out if the relationship can be an environment in which growth is possible.

Speaker 1:

So today I'm gonna go through the questions and then in the next few episodes I will talk in more detail about things to consider, things that might be helpful to think about as you process the questions for yourself, and I will also share my own experience of answering these questions over the years and how they led me to continue to choose to stay in my relationship. Although you may have a very different experience when thinking about the questions, and that's okay. If these questions lead you to decide that ending your relationship is what makes sense to you, then they have done their job, because you figured out what makes sense to you, even if it's something different than what made sense to me, because we're two different people and we have two different relationships. So the first question that I invite you to ask yourself is what are the real or perceived obstacles that come to your mind when you think about leaving the relationship, and then I would invite you to think about what ways you can find to address these obstacles.

Speaker 1:

So this is for somebody who may be leaning towards ending your relationship, but you have some things in the way that feel like insurmountable barriers so that you can't leave, and I want to help you begin to notice and name these things and begin to create a shift so you can move from seeing these as insurmountable barriers to seeing them more as things that you have to figure out or work through, and that you're capable of doing that. So the way I think about this is to complete this sentence I would consider ending my relationship, but I can't because dot, dot, dot. And you might answer something like I can't end my relationship because there's financial constraints, or I can't leave my relationship because it would have a negative impact on my child or my children, or I can't leave because I've already invested so much time in this relationship, or I can't leave this relationship because it's better than nothing and I don't want to have to go through being single again. So these are some common answers to this question, and some of them are definitely thoughts that I've had myself, and again, I'll dive into more detail about that in future episodes, but for today, I will look at how we can take one of the things I mentioned and begin to think about how it could be addressed in such a way that there would be a shift away from seeing it as this complete barrier that blocks our path of choosing to end a relationship, so that we can really see it as something that we're able to work through. So, just for the sake of talking it through, I'll think about finances, which is very common when people think about ending a relationship. So you might start to think about how to manage your finances in a different way. You might make a budget, you might look for ways to help increase your income or look at how you could reduce expenses or consider temporary options like moving in with a family member or reducing the number of activities your child participates in, and you can start to look at where things stand now. And if it feels impossible in this moment to end your relationship today, you can start to think about what you can shift so that ending your relationship might be more accessible in the next six months or in the next year, or even two years or beyond, and the point of this question is to help you shift from seeing something as insurmountable like a total no-go and to be able to see the challenges in front of you for what they are, something that you may have to figure out and grow through. It might take some time, but it's so important to allow space to create this shift, because you'll be able to explore things in such a way that it increases the amount of awareness you have of the choices that are actually available to you.

Speaker 1:

Feeling trapped and powerless in relationship not only feels completely awful, but it also usually keeps us stuck in our survival mode, and then we usually act in ways that are really unhelpful to the relationship. So not only do we feel like we can't get out of it, but we're also not able to contribute to the relationship in a helpful way. So when we start considering the choices that we really do have, it can really help us to stay regulated and be able to maintain the clarity that we need in order to creatively problem solve or figure out things that we can do, and whether we end up using that problem solving for how to get through these obstacles that feel like they're getting in the way of us choosing to end a relationship, or whether we are able to actually gain clarity on things that we can do to support our relationship. We can stay in it in a way that feels good. It's really a win-win. So helping you to feel that sense of choice and see that you do have options available is really important.

Speaker 1:

And one last thing that I will mention here that may be significant for those who might be considering separating from a partner who is struggling with depression. I have to say that it is not unusual for a person to feel like they can't end a relationship because they fear or worry that their partner may do something such as self-harm or even attempt suicide if they leave, and they can't imagine that, if something like that were to happen, the amount of guilt that they would have. And so sometimes they choose to stay in a relationship, and I will definitely address this further. It deserves more time than I'm going to give it now, but just for today I want to say that shifting this experience may take some deep work and some time. I also want to say that no one adult person can ever be responsible for another adult person's life, and sacrificing your own wellness in hopes that you can support your partner's well-being is likely to end up having a negative impact on your relationship in the long term and even possibly in the short term, and so, even though these are very, very challenging things to figure out how to work through, it's really really very important.

Speaker 1:

So, if this feels like an obstacle to you about ending your relationship, I really would strongly encourage you to get some support around this, and I also want to say that the purpose of naming these obstacles whether they are real or perceived meaning that maybe they really are something that is going to get in the way, or, in actuality, they wouldn't get in the way, but at this moment, you're perceiving that they would. So, either way, the purpose of naming these is to be able to start to figure out a way to go around them or through them, as opposed to allowing them to totally block the choice that you have in relationship, because, of course, ending a relationship is always a choice, and if there's things that are getting in your way, it's really important to address them. So the second question that I invite you to ask yourself is what are the unconscious factors at play that may be keeping you in your relationship? And, again, how do you get support to work through those and even to identify what those are. And when I say unconscious factors, I am talking about things that you may or may not be aware of. Being that they're unconscious, they usually start as something that we're not aware of, but as we do more self-work, they may come into our conscious mind. But, regardless whether you're aware of them or not, they are powerful forces and they're often determining factors in our behavior, and they're also connected to our past experiences, so they come from what was imprinted on us as we were growing up.

Speaker 1:

So, in regards to you being in a relationship in which depression is present, I really invite you to think about your early life and the relationships that you had with your early caregivers. Perhaps that's mom and dad, perhaps it's other people in your life, and the relationships that those caregivers had with each other. Did you experience anyone as disconnected or withdrawn or shut down or numbed out, even some of the time? It doesn't have to be all the time, but did you have experiences like that? Did you witness experiences like that? Because those experiences, particularly with our early caregivers, become part of our definition of what familiar love looks like and feels like. So, in your conscious mind.

Speaker 1:

In your current relationship you might be thinking, oh, my partner is so frustrating, I'm not happy, my needs are never met, they don't listen to me, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. But something in your unconscious may be sending you a different message that somehow keeps you tethered to this relationship that your conscious mind feels like maybe it doesn't want to be in anymore. And these unconscious factors may be telling you that this kind of relationship is familiar to you. And when something is familiar to us, it has a sense of safety around it, even if it's not healthy or actually something that our conscious mind wants. And this familiarity can really feel like home and it can be really hard to separate from that, even if you consciously want to. Another unconscious factor that may be common when it comes to initiating a breakup or divorce is that some people hold a message that if they end the relationship, they've failed in some way, and this can be very much connected to the messages that they receive from their family, their culture, their society. It can be a powerful obstacle that keeps someone really stuck in a relationship. So if that resonates for you, then I would really encourage you to talk to a therapist or someone who can really help you work through that.

Speaker 1:

And lastly, another thought that might arise when considering whether to end a relationship or not is the thought that you don't want to be a bad person for being the one to end a relationship. And this may be a conscious thought and it often has roots in the unconscious that I won't go into in any detail right now and it also can apply generally to anybody thinking about ending a relationship. But if you have a partner who's depressed, it can really take on a different level or a different meaning, because a person might really start to question if they're a bad person or if it's mean even to end a relationship with somebody who's depressed. It's like, is it okay to kick somebody when they're down, sort of feeling. And the short answer is that you are not mean or bad for wanting to end your relationship if it's not meeting your needs and if it doesn't feel good to be in. It is not mean or bad to not want to sacrifice your own well-being. The longer answer that I won't go into the whole complete answer is to say that staying in a relationship for this reason is really not conducive to creating a better relationship. So if you're just staying because you feel like you should, or you don't want to be mean, or you don't want to be the one to blame for ending the relationship. I really encourage you again to get some support around these factors so you can make a clearer decision about whether you really truly want to stay in the relationship or not.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you're the person in the relationship living with depression, or if both you and your partner are living with depression, I think it's really helpful to acknowledge how our nervous system is related to our lived experience. So what I mean is the interpretations that we make about ourself or our relationship or our partner. It's all connected to the state our nervous system is in. So if we're feeling depressed and we're in that dorsal, disconnected, collapse state, that shutdown state, we also may have really negative interpretations of ourselves, like we're unworthy or undeserving or unlovable, and we might be interpreting our relationship as being hopeless or our partner as not caring about us, and so there's a lot going on here that may feel conscious, because it might be thoughts that are in your head and that would make you have a certain level of awareness about those. But to really understand where that's coming from and kind of going deeper into the nervous system. Experience and where that's rooted from is really quite important, and so, again, I recommend getting some support here to process through that and any things that come up around it. The third question I invite you to ask yourself is are you willing to do the work of relationship?

Speaker 1:

In Imago Relationship Therapy, we look at how each partner is contributing to the nightmare of the relationship. That's one of the phrases we use contributing to the nightmare. And doing your work means looking at how you contribute to the nightmare. If your partner is the one who is identified as being depressed, it can be very easy to focus on them, to place the blame on them, to say that all the relationship troubles are because of them, to say they're the problem, and there certainly might be some truth to that perspective, because both partners are in fact somehow contributing to the nightmare. But a very important shift to be able to make is to begin looking at ourselves. Continuing to blame your partner gives them all the power and if they're not at a place where they're able to change at the moment, or they're not able to change in the way that you'd like them to change or in the timeframe you'd like them to change in, then the relationship has no other choice but to feel bad and then you and your partner are likely to stay stuck. But if you look at yourself, you can actually really become empowered and you may start to notice that there are places that you might be able to shift and change. That will help yourself and help even improve things in the relationship.

Speaker 1:

Now I will say that sometimes people understandably have a hard time with this because it can feel like the responsibility for taking care of the relationship is on their shoulders and that they're the only one. Whoever does the work, the responsibility for making the change is all theirs. And I certainly understand that and you may have to process through that because it's totally valid. And at the same time, what I'm talking about is really moving to a place of empowering yourself to say, hey, you know what? If I'm in this relationship, what can I do to grow and heal myself and this relationship? Because I can't control my partner and where my partner is at or what my partner chooses to do. So I will share some things in my experience which can be immensely helpful when you think about doing your own work. I would say one of the most helpful things that I've ever done and I highly encourage everyone to do it.

Speaker 1:

I think it's our human responsibility actually to do this, but to look at how you can regulate yourself more, how you can get to a more grounded, connected place, because from that place you'll better be able to take care of yourself and you'll better be able to respond to conflicts in your relationship. And self-regulation can go a very long way towards improving things in your life and in your relationship and focusing on yourself and how to support yourself and being more okay, essentially less in survival mode, regardless of what's happening in the relationship, which, admittedly, can be difficult. It can allow you to have more clarity on how you respond and what you choose to do, and this approach can also really help you gain clarity on whether you wanna continue in the relationship or not. Another important way to think about what you can do in your own work is how can you communicate with your partner in a way that's more helpful, more effective?

Speaker 1:

Perhaps you're either not communicating at all because you think that your partner won't respond well, or they're not in a good place and you don't want to put more on their plate, and if this lack of communication is happening, you're probably likely at some point if not immediately but eventually to start building your own resentment, which really can be debilitating for the relationship. On the flip side, you may have tried to communicate, perhaps many, many times, but it just doesn't seem to land well a lot of the time. Or perhaps because of your frustration, your approach has become increasingly aggressive or even desperate as you try to express your needs because you really want your partner to be able to respond well so you can address things and you can save the relationship. And so either way of communicating can be really unhelpful and they're both really survival ways. One is sort of like shut down, not communicating at all, and one is really reaching out, really kind of being in a place of something needs to happen, because that feeling around, that demanding you might not be demanding yourself, but it might land as demanding for your partner, which tends to awaken survival and reactivity in your partner. They both tend to be unhelpful and I really do think that figuring out how to communicate effectively is an art form, but it's really worth it. And so, in line with that idea of being demanding, someone might threaten divorce in hopes that their partner will sort of be like scared into changing or doing something differently, or they might not say anything in hopes that their partner will eventually change on their own. And neither of these are really recommended approaches, though I have absolutely done both of these and from that place of experience I can tell you that they're really not effective.

Speaker 1:

A potentially more helpful way of communicating might sound like. I really love you and I really want this relationship to work, and it's also really hard for me a lot of the time and I'm experiencing a lot of pain in this relationship and I'm just not quite sure what else to do. But I want to talk with you because I really hope that we can work on things together and what I'm longing for is to be able to make things better, and I want to try to have the chance to figure it out with you Now. Of course, there's no guarantee that your partner especially if they're depressed, by the way will respond well to this in real time, and it may take a very great deal of self-regulation on your part to be able to even come to your partner in this way, especially if you have been dealing with a lot of frustrations and challenges and conflicts for a while. But the likelihood of you getting a positive response is better.

Speaker 1:

So, after thinking about if you're willing to do your own work, it makes sense that question four would be is your partner willing to do their work for the relationship, and especially if they're dealing with depression? I would also ask if they're willing to do their own individual work, which, in turn, supports the relationship as well. Now, this can be very tricky, because your partner may be willing to do their own work, or they may be actually doing their own work, but they may not be doing what you think they should be doing, or they may not be working as fast as you would hope that they would be working. The progress may seem slow, and being depressed does, in fact, complicate this, because it is very easy to get stuck in depression, even when you don't want to be stuck in it, and moving out of it can, in fact, take a long time. So when you think about the question, is my partner willing to do the work of relationship?

Speaker 1:

I do invite you to think about them when they're in a less depressed state or when you feel more connected to them, and you can talk about some of these things in a more helpful way, where you kind of really see more into what they really want and how they really feel. So in those kind of moments, do they express hope for things to be different for themselves and for their life and for the relationship? Do they express a willingness to try to figure out how to do something different? Are they able to take steps, even if they're seemingly small and slow? Are there times when you express your needs and they are able to respond in a way that makes you feel heard? And is there a desire for some sort of change, even if they don't know how to make the change actually happen? Is there a curiosity there like what can be done? Also, it's important to look over the time of your relationship. Has there been some work done? It might be seemingly small, but has your partner been able to do some relationship work and have you seen some improvement? Again, even if it's small, I often refer to what I call microscopic progress in the relationship. So, again, this can be tough to assess accurately, but getting a sense of your partner's willingness and desire to do their part in the relationship is really quite important.

Speaker 1:

And, as I stated earlier, conflict is inevitable. It's actually necessary for growth to happen, so it's not a problem that conflicts occur. So it's not a problem that conflicts occur. The problem really happens or begins to show up when one or both partners aren't able to address the conflict in a way that they can grow and learn through them. So please keep this in mind Relational and communication skills usually need to be taught, and our parents and grandparents may not have taught us because nobody taught them. This is not a parent or grandparent bashing thing. It's kind of just the way it works. We just didn't know how to talk about things as a society or that mental health was actually important. So the question really becomes about your partner's willingness and curiosity to figure out how to do things in a different way from what we grew up doing or what we grew up witnessing. And when someone is depressed, they may not feel a willingness or curiosity in that moment, but when they become more regulated, you may see something different start to emerge, and sometimes that is just where the work can begin. And if you don't ever have this experience with your partner, where you can see their curiosity or willingness, that can certainly be very telling.

Speaker 1:

The fifth question that I invite you to think about for yourself is what are the strengths of your relationship. Now, this question is different from what are you getting from the relationship, because the answer to that might involve things like financial support, or it might be connected to some unconscious factors like you feel needed in the relationship. Or you may answer that you don't feel like you're getting very much at all from the relationship, which may not be a surprise, especially if depression shows up regularly for you and your partner. Asking what are the strengths of your relationship is also different than asking if your needs are getting met in this relationship, because, again, while I try not to make assumptions, if depression is present and you're considering ending your relationship, it is likely that at least some of your needs are not getting met. So I'm not even asking that question here. I'm inviting you to think about the strengths of your relationship.

Speaker 1:

What are the things that drew you to your partner, into this relationship? What led you to choose to commit to this person? What are the things that help you feel connected to them or, in the past, have helped you feel connected to this person and caused you to invest time and energy and effort into them? And it's really important to think about this, and it also could be potentially sad to think about this because you might be thinking well, I used to enjoy things and I used to be able to talk about the strengths of my relationship and we used to have a great relationship, but things have changed so much since then, and so if you haven't experienced each other in a positive way in a long time and it brings up some sadness, that's okay.

Speaker 1:

I invite you to think about it as much or as long as you're able to, and pay attention to what still exists and may be there that maybe you're not noticing, especially if depression is present in the relationship, because it is really easy to pay attention to what's painful and we often forget to look for the things that are positive. And considering why we're in this relationship, why we got into it in the first place, why we're even entertaining the idea of staying in a relationship that may be really difficult, is very helpful to think about. So I will also tell you that I have heard people say that they do not want to think about. So I will also tell you that I have heard people say that they do not want to think about the positives that exist in the relationship, because it can make the decision to end the relationship harder. And if this is true for you, perhaps you are already well into your decision making process, and if you feel significant resistance to thinking about the positive aspects of your relationship, I would honor that. And if you, at a different time, want to explore it and you feel moved to do so, then you certainly can. But I don't want you to feel like you have to think about this. If there's something in your system telling you, don't go there.

Speaker 1:

The sixth question that I invite you to ask yourself is can you deeply love and care for yourself and continue to be in this relationship? The answer here can provide you with incredibly valuable information about what you really need to do next, and I don't mean to say that if you say no, I can't love and care for myself and still be in this relationship, then that means that you should absolutely end the relationship. What I actually mean is that, if you realize that you're not able to deeply love and care for yourself while you're in this relationship, what really needs to happen next or, at the very least, what you need to really start thinking about is how to prioritize your own needs, and maybe even figuring out what it means to deeply love and care for yourself, and if that's where you're at today, that you're not even sure what that means for you, that is totally all right. It's really important information to have because it indicates that it may be time to start thinking about that and stretching into that space and knowing what it means to take care of yourself in that way. And this can truly take some time. But from my own personal experience, I would have to say that no matter how much time or effort it takes for you to grow into this, it is well worth it, because, let me tell you, it is not in any way selfish to take care of yourself. In order to move beyond just making it through the day, just getting by, it is necessary To move from a place of surviving to a place of thriving. It is absolutely required. Starting with deep love and self-care will cause a ripple effect in your life and you may find a way to grow through your partnership and you may find clarity on knowing that it's time to end it. But either way, you will have paid attention to the most important relationship you have in your life, which is the one you have with yourself.

Speaker 1:

And there's this amazing quote by Prentice Hemphill that, I think, really encompasses this concept in just such a beautiful way, and the quote is boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously, and I just absolutely love this, because there's a lot of information on boundaries out there and, in my opinion, the information can sometimes be a little misleading or confusing or rigid. But this quote really sums up the mutually beneficial need for boundaries in a relationship that both partners need to be able to have space to love themselves and each other, and it gives some insight on the impact of healthy boundaries that when you have healthy, flexible boundaries that consider your needs and your partner's, then both of you can experience love, being loved and receiving love at the same time. It's incredible. Part of the reason I love it so much is because I do think that there is an idea out there that real love means some sort of sacrifice, and I myself have held that perspective for many years, and so I invite you to really think about this question and make a decision about what works for you and how you can move towards greater self-love and deep self-care.

Speaker 1:

The last question I will invite you to ask yourself is to ask what do you feel in your body, in your system when you think about ending the relationship, and what do you feel in your body and in your system when you think about staying in the relationship Now? You may already have a practice. You feel in your body and in your system when you think about staying in the relationship Now. You may already have a practice of tuning into your body and your nervous system, or this may be new to you and either way, that is totally all right. I invite you to try this out.

Speaker 1:

It is so important to tune into our body experience because we get so much valuable information from our systems and we're often taught to ignore what's happening in our body and what our body is communicating to us. What our nervous system is communicating to us is vitally important. So when you ask yourself these questions, when you think about leaving the relationship, maybe you notice your chest feels tight and you can just notice that. Or maybe, when you think about leaving the relationship, you may feel some openness or perhaps some relief or some release, and you can be aware of any meanings or interpretations like oh, I feel tight, that must mean that I'm scared to leave the relationship. Or, oh, I feel openness, I feel some release. That means I really should get out of this relationship and you can just notice the interpretations. You don't have to say that they're right or wrong or accurate or anything.

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Right now it's really just about tapping in and noticing your body experience and what's happening in your system. Do you have sort of a sense of moving towards your partner? Do you have a sense of moving away from your partner? Do you feel against, like sort of like you're feeling aggressive energy coming towards you and you kind of want to fight against it? Do you feel a bit detached in your system when you think about your relationship? And so just to start to notice these different experiences that you may have, and then you can start to notice these different experiences that you may have, and then you can start to notice what does your body feel like when you're in a conflict with your partner? What does it feel like when you're not around your partner at all, like when they're at work, in your home or something like that? What does it feel like when you're hanging out with your friends or family members? Is there a difference in your body experience? What's coming up in your system Then?

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In polyvagal terms, we would say that this is a process of beginning to befriend your nervous system and to really start to work with it. Our bodies and nervous systems truly know what we need, what helps us to feel grounded and regulated, what feels safe, what feels like safe connection and what helps us move towards safe connection, and, if we start listening and tuning in, our system can really truly help guide us in lovely and powerful ways. So these are the seven questions that I have for you, and, after you spend some time sitting with these questions, allowing whatever answers there are to emerge, I want to say that if you feel like you still don't know if you should end your relationship or not, that's okay. I told you you may not have an absolutely definitive answer after processing these questions, and if you haven't made a decision to leave, then I really invite you to perhaps consider yourself as having made a decision to stay, even if it's by default right now and this doesn't mean that you have made a decision to stay forever. You can certainly decide to leave at any time if that's what makes sense to you, but deciding in this way sort of deciding to decide can really help support focusing your energy on taking care of yourself, getting the support you need and figuring out what your next steps are, instead of keeping yourself stuck in indecision Because being stuck in a decision really can be paralyzing. And if you can say, hey look, I've decided to decide right now, I'm staying in the relationship you can actually use that energy to continue to do work that brings more consciousness, more awareness, more clarity.

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And regardless of whether you ultimately decide to end the relationship you're in or continue in it, things do often get harder in some ways before they start to feel better. I think it's Robert Frost who said that the only way out is through, and I think that that is often true in life and relationships. We do have to go through the hard stuff in order to get past it, to get to that better feeling place. So, whatever you choose to do with your relationship, any path will take some amount of work some of the time, and I hope that in thinking through these questions, you did get some more insight about what kind of work makes sense for you to do. And just in case you need the reminder today, let me just say that you are absolutely deserving of a healthy, connected, loving relationship that is filled with passion and joyful aliveness, that feels safe and supportive, and just right for you. I hope that after listening to this episode, you have some new information to help you make the most conscious decision that you can for yourself today, a decision that supports how you want to feel, who you truly are and the relationship that you want to have.

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In summary, here is a list of the seven questions I reviewed in today's episode. Number one what are the real or perceived obstacles that come to your mind when you think about leaving the relationship and can you find a way to address these obstacles? Two what are the unconscious factors at play that may be keeping you in your relationship? And, again, how can you get support to work through those? Three are you willing to do the work of relationship? Four is your partner willing to do the work of relationship? Five what are the strengths of your relationship? Six can you deeply love and care for yourself and continue to be in this relationship? Seven what do you feel in your body, in your system, when you think about ending the relationship, and what do you feel in your body when you think about staying in the relationship?

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I said it throughout the episode, but as you sit with these questions and answers start to emerge, I do recommend finding a trusted person, a friend, a family member, a therapist, a wellness practitioner, a healer or someone that you can truly confide in to help you process and support you on this journey. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments, because I want to thank you for showing up today and I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be. The path may seem long or unclear or unknown, and I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride, and that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one, any type, any size, in any direction.

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It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action, or towards rest, or connection or self-care, or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today, because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today, is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. If today's episode resonated with you, please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trishsanderslcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.