When Depression is in your bed

Your Problems Aren't The Problem: Why Understanding Your Relationship's Strengths Are Key to Change

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Are you caught in relationship limbo, seeing all the problems but unsure if you really want to leave? The very focus on what's wrong might be precisely what's keeping you stuck. 

When we're in pain, we develop what I call "stubbed toe syndrome" – one part hurts so badly that we forget the rest feels fine. Similarly, in troubled relationships, especially those affected by depression, we become fixated on problems while neglecting the perfectly good connecting parts that still exist.

In this illuminating episode, I continue exploring my seven-question framework for making conscious relationship decisions by delving into Question 3: What are the strengths of your relationship? As a therapist, I've noticed how couples frequently struggle to answer this question during their first session. Some couples have been a place for so long in which they focus on their programs that identifying strengths can feel almost foreign.

Understanding relationship strengths differs significantly from assessing what you're currently getting or whether your needs are being met. Strengths represent the foundation upon which all potential growth can be built – feeling truly seen, sharing values, experiencing honesty, or finding joy in common interests. I share personal examples from my 20-year marriage, including how my husband recognized my desire to be a writer before I'd ever mentioned it.

We also explore Questions 4 and 5: Are you willing to do the relationship work, and is your partner? Through my personal journey with Imago relationship therapy and meditation (my "secret keys to relationship success"), I discovered that sometimes doing the work means stepping back rather than trying to fix everything. My well-intentioned "fix-it" approach was actually a fight response that sent an unintended message: "you're not capable."

Most of us never learned proper relationship skills growing up. Our parents didn't have these tools to pass down, and when we're triggered into survival mode, we can't access our best communication abilities. Learn why "conflict is growth trying to happen" and how developing self-regulation and communication skills creates opportunities for healing.

Take a step today toward clarity in your relationship decisions by looking beyond the problems to the foundation that still exists, and determining whether it's worth building upon.

- 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. Are you struggling in your relationship? Do you only see all the problems that you and your partner have, yet you're also not sure that you really want to leave. If this sounds familiar, listen today to find out how focusing on your problems may be exactly what's keeping you stuck. Making a shift to focus on the strengths of your relationship and what relational repair work actually needs to be done can help you move forward in making a conscious decision about whether you really want to stay or end it for good.

Speaker 1:

I'm your host, trish Sanders, ready to hear more. Let's get started. Today. I'm going to continue to explore the seven question framework that I developed to help somebody make a conscious decision about whether or not they want to stay in their relationship. I developed these seven questions through my own experience of making a decision about whether or not I want to stay in my own relationship.

Speaker 1:

As I've talked about before, I've been in the position of trying to decide many times if I wanted to continue in my relationship or not, and I think that the short reason that I have thought about breaking up or getting a divorce so many times in my relationship is because, even though I have always felt deeply connected to my partner and have always had a lot of love for him, our day-to-day relationship has proven to be very difficult for a lot of the time, over most of our relationship, and that's in part due to the fact that depression and anxiety has been very present in our relationship, and also because relationship tools and communication skills are really mostly learned, and the truth is that most of us did not grow up learning the tools that we need to be able to communicate and really be in healthy connection or in healthy relationship, and that's because our parents had no one to teach them and our grandparents had no one to teach them, and generationally going back and back and back, there's just sort of like an absence of knowing that these are things that we need to learn. When the focus is on survival or just getting through the day or just getting food on the table, things like how to create a meaningful, safe, connected relationship don't feel like a priority. Yet I would say that as a society, as a country, as a world, we need a pretty significant shift, because creating healthy relationships is, in fact, how we create a healthier, happier world, and without these communication, relationship skills. Relationships can feel really bad and on a grand level. We can look at what's happening in our country and in our world and we can see how polarization and conflict runs rampant. That can happen in a really grand way and it certainly can happen in a smaller way, just between two people. And essentially that's really what has happened over the last 20 years with my husband that we have really had a lot of conflict because we come from two very different places, because we're two different people, and so we have two different approaches in this world.

Speaker 1:

So, anyhow, today I'm going to pick up with question three. In the last two episodes I talked more in depth about the first two questions, the first question being what are the real or perceived obstacles that come to mind when you think about leaving the relationship and how can they be addressed? And the second question, which I addressed in the last episode, was what are the unconscious factors at play that may be keeping you in your relationship and, again, how can you address those or get support working through those? Today I'm going to start with question three and share my own thought process as I worked through these questions in the past, when I was making my own decision about whether or not I wanted to continue in my relationship. So question number three is what are the strengths of the relationship? So I want to say, as a relationship therapist, when a couple comes to my office for the first time, in a very first session I start talking to them about the strengths in their relationship, and it is not uncommon for people to sort of not be very quick to come up with a lot of answers to that question.

Speaker 1:

Or they look at each other or stumble through sort of questioningly, looking at me, like does this count as a strength? Part of the reason I think it's such a hard question is because we often don't think about the strengths of our relationship, especially when the relationship doesn't feel like it's going very well. And so when people come into me for couples therapy, oftentimes they're in a pretty high level of pain in their relationship, a high level of dissatisfaction, and they haven't really been thinking about the strengths of their relationship for some time. But it's really important, especially when making a conscious decision about whether you want to stay in your relationship or not, to really think about those strengths, the reasons that you were drawn to this person and why you committed in the first place, because it's really from that grounded place that you can have a bit more clarity on the current conflicts and be able to make a decision of like okay, is this a relationship that it makes sense for me to continue to do the work for, or is this a relationship that it makes more sense to end.

Speaker 1:

So I also wanna share, as a part of this question, that what are the strengths of the relationship is a different question from what are you getting from the relationship? Because, quite honestly, if you're at a place where you're thinking about ending your relationship and if you and or your partner is dealing with depression, then you might feel like you're not getting a whole lot from the relationship and that might be a current experience, even if it's been lasting a while. Whereas when I ask about the strengths of the relationship, that's a very foundational question and it really goes back to the initial connection and why people got together in the first place and why people continue to make a decision to increase their level of commitment. Looking at the strengths of the relationship is also a different question from are your needs getting met in this relationship? Because, again, especially if depression or disconnection is present often in the relationship you're probably not feeling like your needs are often getting met. Again, if you're considering leaving a relationship though I try not to make assumptions it's probably a good guess that you're not getting your needs met a lot of the time, and that also may have been going on for a while. But the strengths of a relationship I see it as the foundation. It's the base off of which everything else, all relationship growth, all relationship work, can be built.

Speaker 1:

So for me, there were many times in my relationship with my husband when I was on the brink of considering breaking up or getting a divorce, where I really felt like there was nothing good left in our relationship, and of course it was a little bit like a horse with blinders. Maybe I wasn't seeing the good that was there at the time. Or it's what I call stubbed toe syndrome, where when you stub your toe it hurts so bad you forget that the whole rest of your body feels okay, and so my toe was really in a lot of pain in the relationship, and so I really was only paying attention to the parts that were hurting and I was definitely neglecting a lot of the good feeling connected parts of our relationship, so they weren't flourishing or thriving by any stretch during those really hard times. But when I slowed things down and started to think about, well, why is it such a hard decision for me to leave the relationship? Right, if so many things are awful, then it should be a pretty easy decision for me to leave, but it didn't feel so easy. So one of the questions that I kept coming back to was why do I want to stay here?

Speaker 1:

And for me, I can tell you that one of the deepest strengths that I would say as a part of my relationship with my husband is that I have always felt like I could be myself around him, certainly in times of conflict and if I was feeling dysregulated and going into a sympathetic fight or flight response and I was either going into fix it mode or some sort of attack mode what that looked like in me or if I was in like a dorsal shutdown mode, I wasn't being authentically myself, because when we're in survival mode we're not connected to our authentic self, we're just trying to protect ourselves. But from really our first date, I can remember such a feeling of ease with Ben. If I think back to our early days together, I can feel a shift in my nervous system just thinking about it, what it was like to talk to him and feeling heard and feeling like I could say anything and he cared about what I had to say and he valued me, and it was something that just really came across very strongly for me and I just didn't feel like I had to hide parts of myself from him, and I think that that's a really important part for me, certainly, of relationship is our ability to be ourselves, and I really truly felt seen by him. I actually remember very early on in our relationship I don't even remember exactly how we got into the conversation, but we were talking about something and he said oh yeah, like I see you in the future writing a book, being an author. And I looked at him and I said, really, why, why do you think that? And he's like oh, I don't know, he's like it just seems like that's something that you would. And in truth, though, I had never shared with him, I've always wanted to write. I love writing. I've always wanted to be an author. I've actually wanted to write children's books since I was a child. I used to have a series of books that I wrote, and even now still, I hope to be published one day.

Speaker 1:

But when he said to me that he saw me as being a writer and saw me as an author even though he did not see me writing and I had not shared that with him, shared that with him I felt so deeply seen Like, wow, this guy gets me, he really understands me, and I still feel that that's something that's been consistent. And again, when times are hard and when we're feeling very disconnected, that experience is not in the forefront, but the fact that it exists when we are connected is something that I consider to be a true strength for us and I definitely feel like I can be totally honest with my husband and I feel, with a pretty high level of confidence, that he is also honest with me. That can be a little tricky because lying and dishonesty can also be very present in a relationship and I'm not going to talk a lot on it. But if you're in a relationship where dishonesty is present, that's a whole other piece. It's certainly something that needs to be worked on, but I just want to address that if lying is happening in a relationship, or deceit or some sort of deception, it just calls to the type of work that needs to happen to be able to repair that kind of relationship rupture.

Speaker 1:

But coming back to my experience, I also trust not only my ability to be honest with Ben and for his ability to be honest and open with me, but I also trust that he really wants what's best for me and for himself and for our relationship and for our family, which also feels very comforting for me. I really see Ben as this loving, warm hearted person, even though we have absolutely emotionally hurt each other in pretty deep ways over the last 20 years. I've always known that it's not his intention to be hurtful. I've actually said that to him before because he'll say but I didn't mean to hurt you or I didn't mean to upset you. And I've actually said to him like, if that's your thought process, you can just take that part out, because I know that you're never meaning to hurt me. I believe that if I was hurt by something that he did or said, I knew it wasn't because he wanted to hurt me. I knew it was because he was dysregulated or hurting himself.

Speaker 1:

And also, I think, some strengths from my relationship with Ben and this maybe sounds funny, but we have similar tastes in music and we actually were born in the same year, which has also just sort of been a cool thing about our relationship Because even though we grew up in two different areas, we listened to a lot of similar music and when we think back to a certain time in our life we'll be like, oh yeah, like we were 16 years old and we can kind of go back to a similar time and place, even though, like I was in New Jersey and he was in Maryland in 1996. We could pull up that memory of what it was like to be 16 listening to that music and it has always just been a very connecting thing for us. And we go to a lot of concerts. Music is something that is deeply connecting for us and it's also something that we have a lot of fun doing together. And we also like to go in mosh pits.

Speaker 1:

And again, that might sound silly to some people, but for me I don't think that 20 years ago I would have said like, oh, I have to have somebody who goes in mosh pits with me or who likes the same music, or that is my age, but it just has worked out that that has been such a really awesome ongoing connecting thing for us. And then, beyond that I wanna say that we've always had a similar vision, which is a little bit tricky because I'm usually very future-focused and have a lot of vision about my plans, what I wanna create, what I wanna do, and my life is always planned out years in advance. And Ben is not like that, which is not uncommon. This is sort of like an Imago match Partners who often approach the world very differently find each other, and so this is kind of an example of that. But we've been on the same page about some major life decisions. We've also been on different pages or on different timelines sometimes as well, but I think that we have enough similar values. That has really been another connecting part of our relationship.

Speaker 1:

And so, again, it's really important to think of the strengths of a relationship, because when I was able to come back to some of those pieces and say, hey, look like this is what exists in our relationship, I don't think it's a helpful thought to say, oh well, I have all these things in this relationship and I might not find that anywhere else, so I should stay in this relationship. I hope that that's not the framework that this elicits for you. I wouldn't say at this point like, oh well, I don't know if I'll be able to find anybody who likes the same music I like. If I left this relationship, that wouldn't necessarily be a deciding factor, but to be able to look back and say, hey, this is what's important to me about this relationship, this is what attracted me to the relationship in the first place, this is what felt meaningful and significant to me. And from that place, given all the other context of all these other questions that I have in this framework, does it make sense to continue to do the work in this relationship? Which brings me to the next two questions, which I will talk about together. Question four is are you willing to do the work of relationship? And question five is is your partner willing to do the work of relationship? And this really, for both of you, also would include doing your own individual work, because, of course, individual work can really support relationship work or couples work, just as couples work can give you a lot of information to bring back to your own individual therapist. And the reason that these are really important questions is because every relationship takes work.

Speaker 1:

There is no such thing as being in any kind of relationship where a conflict will never occur. And if you're in a relationship where it doesn't seem that conflict is occurring. The conflict may be that both people are avoiding conflict, which sometimes happens, because when there's two people, they are different and inevitably they're going to have some sort of difference of approach, opinion, perspective, feeling, interpretation. And it's not that all conflict has to be this enormous, huge blowout, but just there's going to be some tension somewhere right, some hurt feeling somewhere, something like that. And so you have to really think about if this is the relationship that you want to do the work for.

Speaker 1:

In Imago, which is the type of relationship therapy that I do, we talk about love being an action more than a feeling, and I think that's so true because saying I'm with them because I love them, or I'm staying with this person because I love them, I understand that feeling. And yet there's also songs and movies and whatever about like. Sometimes love just isn't enough, right? We know that as a society, that love is not always all that you need. So the feeling of love is often not enough. But the action of love, what does that look like? And that's what these questions are about. Are you able to look at yourself and move from a place of perhaps blaming your partner or waiting for your partner to take action so that you can take action to take care of the relationship, because if nobody takes care of the relationship, then the relationship is left sort of out in the cold and uncared for.

Speaker 1:

There is a lot of information, which I think is accurate, out there about how one person's change can change the dynamics of a relationship, and I do think that's true. I will talk about this at length in another episode. But I also want to be very careful to say that a healthy relationship that feels really satisfying and connected and safe for two people really does require the work of two people. Certainly, one person can get the ball rolling and make a step, and that's what this question is about. Like, are you willing to take a step for this relationship? And you also want to know that your partner is willing to take a step too. And again, when depression is present, depression is something that really makes things difficult.

Speaker 1:

And just to talk about my own experience with these questions, I have always felt very, very willing to do the work of relationship with my husband. However, before we got separated, I saw the work of my relationship as helping him do his work, and I didn't realize it at the time, but that was hurting our relationship in such significant ways. And after we got separated and we dove into Imago relationship work, we found an Imago therapist and we went to the Getting the Love you Want workshop that is, an Imago couples workshop. I started to understand my role and how I was contributing to the nightmare. This is going back 10 years, I don't think that when we actually got separated, ben was in therapy. He had been in therapy previously and he certainly has been in therapy since, but at the time he was pretty severely depressed and it was so easy to say're not doing enough. This is about you not doing your work. You're hurting our relationship. If you just took care of yourself, then everything would be better. I had such blinders on to my role and what was happening.

Speaker 1:

After we found Imago and I really started to understand what I was doing to contribute to the nightmare, which is what we call it in Imago. I also started to see what I could do to contribute to the dream, how I could take care of the relationship and take care of myself. A lot of it was by self-regulation. I often say that Imago and meditation were my secret keys to relationship success and that's because Imago gave me the communication tools along with the knowledge and the relational skills that I needed. That I didn't have.

Speaker 1:

Because, again, who of us grew up with relationship and communication skills? I think it's very common for us to have not gotten that growing up for so many reasons including, of course, that our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents and beyond didn't have somebody teaching them those skills, so it didn't trickle down for us to learn. But also the way our brains work can really get in the way, because when we're in survival mode we're not going to be effective communicators and we're not going to be good connectors and be very helpful in relationship. So I really learned that I needed to work on my own self regulation and that me being in fix it mode was really a survival response. It was actually a mobilized fight or flight response. It was a fight response, like I feel threatened.

Speaker 1:

So I have to try to fix this relationship and when I started to pull back, that was part of what my work of the relationship looked like that less is more, that me being so active was actually hurting the relationship and certainly me blaming my husband was not helping the relationship because I wasn't presenting. I believe in you, you got this. I know that it's hard, but I love you and we're gonna figure out a way through this. That was not. I mean, I think sometimes I held that message, but it was not the primary message that I was sending to my husband, consciously or unconsciously, but when I was trying to do it for him, I was sending a message of you can't do this, I have to do it for you. You're not capable. That was not in any way my conscious thought, but that was definitely some of the messaging that was unintentionally going along with the actions that I was taking the idea of being willing to do the work of the relationship.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes it means stepping back and trusting your partner, which is definitely what it meant for me. For me, that was a huge part of the work that I had to realize that I needed to do, and for your partner, it's really important. Like I said, yes, one person can change the dynamics in a relationship, but two people create the relationship and it really needs to be tended to in different ways perhaps, but I really strongly believe that a relationship does need to be taken care of by two people. It is true that one person can take a step when the other person can't. I call it stand as you are able. If you are at a place where you can take care of your relationship and it doesn't make you feel resentful, then I highly recommend taking that step towards caring for the relationship. If you feel resentful or angry about it, then that's a different thing and then doing something to take care of the relationship probably will backfire in the long run, because building resentment is not helpful.

Speaker 1:

If you're able to take a step but you don't want to because you're not seeing your partner take a step, that might be something different and then in that case it could be helpful to think about what's hard about taking a step, or what comes up when it seems like you're doing all the work, which, of course, I definitely know that feeling, because I have absolutely felt like I'm doing all the work in the relationship and that's why it was so easy to blame Ben and say, hey, I'm doing all this work, what are you doing? And I realized that there was a really big shift in how I needed to approach that and to be able to see Ben's efforts and what he was actually doing to take care of himself to take care of our relationship, and it didn't always look like what I thought it quote unquote should look like, but understanding that he was on his own process, his own journey, and it was in fact going to look different than what I might think it should look like, was such an important thing for me, and me learning how to express my hurts or frustrations in a helpful way, being able to set limits that helped create an environment where I could love myself and love Ben were incredibly important for me, and they're things that I needed to learn how to do. That created these opportunities for growth and healing in our relationship.

Speaker 1:

To close on that, in Imago we say conflict is growth trying to happen, and so the fact that conflict exists in a relationship is not problematic. It's what you do with the conflict. We don't know how to heal and grow through conflict. We either avoid conflict because in our childhood experience we learned that conflict should be avoided. It was scary. Feelings are scary. Or we jump on conflict or, you like, let's handle that, let's take care of that, let's address that right now. There could be something good about wanting to address things, but sometimes the energy comes from more of a fight response actually and then it cannot be so helpful. So we a lot of the time we just bring unhelpful skills into conflict. Like I said, we're either kind of like aggressively going after it or maybe avoidant, and then we're very hands-off and neither of those approaches allow us to really grow through the conflict.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes what is needed for someone to actually make a conscious decision about staying in a relationship is actually having the opportunity to build the skills to communicate and grow through conflict, which is absolutely the case for me, because had I not found Imago and had I not started meditating, I can't imagine that Ben and I would have been able to stay together, because our relationship was just too painful too much of the time and we didn't know really what relational work was. Mind you, I was a therapist for many years but I was a kid therapist and I worked with trauma and attachment and kids who had been abused or witnessed domestic violence, and I was a play therapist and I did sand therapy and my relationship skills and my communication skills that I used and needed at work with my clients were really different than the skills that I needed at home with Ben. So getting clear on what relationship work even means and then being able to find out if you and your partner are willing to do it. That's maybe the second step. So we're down to the last two of the seven questions and I don't want to rush through them. So I think we're going to wrap up for today and I will pick up next time, as our time comes to a close.

Speaker 1:

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. 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.

Speaker 1:

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.