When Depression is in your bed

Can You Love Yourself Deeply and Still Stay? The Question That Could Change Everything

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 13

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What happens when your relationship requires so much of you that there's nothing left for yourself? For two decades of my marriage, I poured everything into caring for my depressed partner, losing myself in the process. But a profound shift occurred when I finally asked: "Can I deeply love and care for myself and continue in this relationship?"

This question emerged during a perfect storm in my life—turning 40, my father's illness and death, pandemic isolation, and the mounting responsibilities of motherhood and my therapy practice. I reached a breaking point where I realized that unless I fundamentally changed how I treated myself, I simply wouldn't be able to continue functioning, much less thriving.

My journey toward what I call "deep soul care" wasn't just about occasional self-indulgences but establishing daily practices that honored my needs. Learning about polyvagal theory revolutionized my understanding of my own depression and anxiety, showing me how to recognize when my nervous system was in survival mode and how to return to a grounded state of safety. Prentis Hemphill's boundary wisdom that "boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously" became my guiding light.

This transformation wasn't easy on my relationship. My husband initially felt abandoned as I redirected energy toward myself after two decades of focusing primarily on him. Yet through honest conversations and mutual growth, we discovered something beautiful—as I became more whole, I showed up as a better partner. His willingness to support my journey, even when difficult, revealed that we both wanted a relationship where neither person sacrifices their wellbeing for the other.

Whether you stay or leave a relationship affected by depression, remember this: you deserve to love yourself deeply. Your life shouldn't be spent feeling depleted, disconnected, or diminished. Take one step today—any step—toward honoring yourself. Because caring for yourself isn't selfish; it's the foundation upon which all healthy relationships are built.

- 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 with taking care of yourself because so much of your time, energy and attention is going towards taking care of your partner and your relationship? Is breakup, separation or divorce feeling like more and more of an option? If so, join me today as I explore the vital importance of deep self-care and self-love, even if this means having to take some attention away from your partner or, ultimately, having to leave. Being able to balance taking care of yourself and taking care of your relationship is absolutely necessary in order to have a healthy, meaningful and satisfying partnership. Regardless of what choice you make for the future of your relationship, I hope that listening to this episode today moves you to take better care of yourself and treat yourself the way that you deserve to be treated. I'm your host, trish Sanders. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Today is the fifth episode that I have been talking about how to make a conscious decision about whether or not you want to stay in your current relationship. I did not plan to make five episodes in a row about this topic, but in the first episode, I started with my seven question framework that I developed over the course of my own relationship and the questions that I used to determine if I wanted to continue in my relationship or not. And then, after I reviewed the questions, I felt it was really important for me to talk about my own thought process and how I worked through those questions when I was using them for myself. I hope that sharing my own experience could be helpful, even if the way you work through the questions for yourself is very different than the way that I work through them, and even if the ultimate decision that you made about staying in your relationship was different than the conclusion that I made for myself, because in my case, I have decided to stay in my relationship with my husband and we've been together for almost 21 years at this point. But the questions are really intended to bring clarity to whether it makes sense to stay in a relationship or not. It's not to encourage people to stay in relationship, or encourage them to leave, for that matter, but really to be able to make that conscious decision. So, after that first episode where I reviewed all seven questions, I spent the next three episodes talking through the first five of those seven questions.

Speaker 1:

From my perspective, and just to recap, the first five questions that I covered were. Number one what are the real or perceived obstacles that come to mind when you think about leaving your relationship and how can you address them? Number two what are the unconscious factors at play that may be keeping you in your relationship and how to get support around those? Number three what are the strengths of your relationship? Number four are you willing to do the work of relationship? And number five is your partner willing to do the work of relationship?

Speaker 1:

And so here we are today, and I'll be covering questions six and seven, which I will talk about in a moment, but I have to say that I'm pretty excited and this feels like a special episode. First, because it's my 13th episode, and 13 does happen to be my lucky number. When I was a little girl, I actually felt bad for number 13, because everyone said it was unlucky and people seem to favor lucky number seven. Being someone who roots for the underdog, I adopted 13 as my favorite number and have maintained that ever since, and so, in addition to this being the 13th episode, the questions that I'll be talking about today also feel particularly special to me. I think all seven questions in the framework are important, and they certainly cover the process that I've used, but these last two questions really are the most recent questions that I've worked through and just have a special value. They really represent my own individual growth and healing through my entire lifetime and certainly over the course of my relationship.

Speaker 1:

So, without further delay, I will begin to talk about question number six, which is can you deeply love and care for yourself and continue in this relationship? This may be a question that people out in the world don't struggle with, or it may seem fairly obvious that to be in a healthy relationship, that means you have to be able to care for yourself while you're in that relationship. But to me, even though from an intellectual perspective I certainly understand that and certainly as a therapist, I absolutely understand that being in a healthy relationship includes taking care of yourself as well and not just taking care of your partner or the relationship. However, I think we live in a society particularly for women, although I think this can absolutely be true of men too but there is often a value on self-sacrifice, and I hear it in so many different places when people talk about what they appreciate about their partner is that they appreciate how selfless she is and how giving and how generous, and of course, these are positive qualities to a point, but to be selfless, to be without a self, is really not a positive thing, and I think that it's so easy to feel valued for giving and giving and giving, and that can really become a part of your identity, that this is who I am.

Speaker 1:

I'm someone who is generous, I'm someone who gives, I'm someone who puts other people's needs first, so it's really easy to get stuck in a place where you lose touch with your own self-care and self-love, and I think that, unfortunately, is rather common in our world, and I do think that was at play for me. In addition to all of that, though and I've talked about this in previous episodes already, and I'm sure I'll talk more about it in the future as well, but I've carried a lot of very negative messages about myself in my unconscious that I brought into my conscious mind over many years of therapy and self-work, and when I'm under emotional threat, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, my nervous system protects me by going into the state of shutdown, the state of withdrawal collapse depression, collapse, depression. And when you're in that state, you see the world through what I call depression goggles that I've mentioned before, and you see the world and yourself and your relationship and your partner, and the possibilities that can exist as really negative. And so, from this place, of carrying negative messages about myself and who I am, what I deserve, and being in this dorsal shutdown collapse so much of my life, I truly didn't feel deserving of self-care and I certainly didn't have a deep love for myself. So, even though it could be easy to say, oh well, I've spent so much of my relationship taking care of my husband or tending to his depression or his anxiety or his needs, and that's why I didn't take care of myself or I identify as a helper which I definitely do identify as a helper. I'm a therapist, right like I became a therapist. I'm a mom, so I'm very steeped in the helping world and that's definitely true and definitely a part of my identity. But this is truly such a multi-layered, deep-rooted challenge for me that taking care of myself hasn't seemed familiar or natural for most of my life. I can feel sadness coming up in myself as I say that and I certainly have talked through and processed in therapy and other places about that sadness, that sort of loss for what I wish I could have given myself when I was 16 years old or 24 years old, or 35 years old, but it really wasn't until I turned 40 that things really started coming together for me.

Speaker 1:

It wasn't exactly because I turned 40. It was a variety of factors that came together just around that time. I do think that turning 40 contributed to it. When I hit 40, it was like wait a minute, am I always going to be so unhappy? This can't possibly be it. I've been waiting to turn the corner and feel better for so many decades now, so that definitely was present. So also during that time, I had a lot going on.

Speaker 1:

So right before I turned 40, I had my daughter, and then we moved, and then my dad got diagnosed with leukemia, and when we moved into our new house, he ended up coming to live with us because he had to retire, because he was in chemo one week out of the month, and then the pandemic hit in March of 2020. Then my son was being homeschooled and my husband was working from home, and so I got to this point where I felt like, wow, I feel really miserable and overwhelmed and if I don't start taking care of myself in a really significant way, I'm just not going to be able to manage all of these things. Of course, I had a private practice that went virtual and had to figure out the whole virtual world overnight. Like so many other therapists and so many other people in the world, I really started to value self-care in a new way, because it wasn't just this indulgent thing of like, oh, let me get massages and pedicures which I think are wonderful parts of self-care but it was deep self-care, deep self-love, and it was almost about survival, like if I don't figure out how to take care of myself, I'm not going to be able to get through this. I'm not saying that I felt suicidal I didn't but it was a sense of I'm not going to be able to keep going on unless I take care of myself.

Speaker 1:

And then, at the end of 2020, my father ended up dying from the leukemia, which was a little bit unexpected because we didn't think that it was a very aggressive leukemia and things looked like they were improving for a bit and then they took a really sharp turn and his transition became a turning point for me, because my dad was a really wonderful person and he carried a lot of trauma in his heart and in his soul and I really got to see how, even though I think in so many ways he had a wonderful life. He loved me and my sister and his grandkids, and he had really amazing friends and he had really beautiful parts of his life. There was so much that was lacking, like I could see, that he didn't ever live his fullest potential. He never was fully his authentic self, because there were parts of him that he really hid, because it was so traumatic and so painful and, in addition to seeing how his life was limited in some ways, he also had been a huge cheerleader for me and loved me so unconditionally and supported me with such love. But when he passed and when he was physically not there anymore to cheer me on, there was this hole that I recognized in my life and I knew that nobody could fill it besides me, that I had to love myself, because if I didn't love myself, it didn't really matter what was happening outside of me, because it would never be enough. No matter what I got, it wouldn't fill the hole.

Speaker 1:

So I started to have this new relationship to me, loving myself and this new feeling of gosh. I absolutely deserve to love myself. I have to love myself. It became almost a matter of life and death. Like I can't emotionally starve anymore. I can't settle for this life where I'm limited in these ways, especially when I have a really beautiful life. I mean, I have these two extraordinarily beautiful, wonderful kids who I adore. My husband, for all of our problems, is a wonderful person and my best friend. I have friends and family members who love me so much and who support me and want the best for me. I love the work that I do, I love being a therapist, I love supporting people and I've somehow created this life that's really wonderful. And yet I was only able to be present and enjoying my life a small percentage of the time, and so it really became a now or never feeling I have to do this.

Speaker 1:

And then, all of a sudden, through this process, this question emerged am I able to deeply love and care for myself and continue to be in a relationship with my husband? And again, as I said before, this may seem fairly obvious. Maybe, looking at someone else in their relationship, I would have been able to identify this, this, but being that I was in my own life, in my own relationship, this felt like something that I uncovered, even if there were pieces of it that I'd been thinking about for many years or had considered before. So I really started to look at this. What does it mean to love and care for myself? And again, I love a good massage or a good pedicure or time out with my friends. Those are all fantastic things and I do consider them to be under the umbrella of self-care.

Speaker 1:

But I started to move into what I would consider deeper soul care, self-care with a capital s, and for me that was how do I take care of myself every day? How do I create daily habits that support my wellness? How do I create time for me, just me as a person, separate from being a mom or a wife or a therapist or a friend or a daughter or a cousin or a niece or whatever, like all of my other identities that are important to me? But how do I create space for me? How do I prioritize my needs? How do I create an environment for myself in which I can grow and expand and learn? And how do I recapture, how do I reconnect with that passion and that joyful aliveness and that zest and that excitement that certainly I have had access to over my lifetime, but not nearly as frequent access as I really wanted to have.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to be able to wake up and feel happy, to be alive, instead of waking up and, before my eyes were even open, feeling like ugh another day I got to push through. I didn't want to feel like I had to push through anymore and I realized that in the context of my relationship that for so many reasons and I've mentioned some of them already I was really putting a lot of energy into my relationship and I felt really drained in a lot of ways because I wasn't necessarily getting back the energy or the care and that doesn't necessarily mean that my husband wasn't caring for me, but I think that the dynamic that he and I have created over 20 years was that he was the sick one, so to speak. We have to take care of him, and so a lot of our energy both of us has gone into him in an unhelpful way, but I'll let him talk about his own self-care and his own deep self-love. But for me, I realized that I needed to pull back quite a bit, which was hard for me in many ways, because I was changing a dynamic that had existed for my entire life, predating my relationship with my husband. Certainly, again, I'm a therapist.

Speaker 1:

I went into a helping profession because I'm a helper. So pulling back from helping is not an easy thing to do. Certainly wasn't easy for me, especially when it's part of your identity. So who am I if I'm not helping? That was definitely something I had to work through. I realized that the more I take care of myself, the better I am at helping others by the way, including my husband. I'm certainly a better wife. I'm absolutely a better mom, I'm definitely a better therapist and I'm just a happier person. But more than happy, I'm more myself, which of course makes me happy, but I'm more fully me. I'm more whole as a person.

Speaker 1:

Because of the steps that I took and it wreaked a lot of havoc in my relationship because it was a huge change I pulled back so much and a lot of the time when people try a new behavior they sort of like overcorrect, and I definitely pulled back so much from my relationship that it created confusion and, I think, a sense of abandonment for my husband, like I gave up on him, I gave up on us and I was just focused on my own self and I wish I could have communicated that to him a little bit better in real time. I think I did try to communicate as best as I could about what was going on for me, but I think that it was just a tough process that we went through and it caused a lot of major conflicts between us, although he was also very supportive of me taking care of myself and growing and healing and feeling better. So it was complicated, to say the least, but I realized that if I couldn't figure out how to care for myself and again consistently care for myself every day, little things that are not so little like for me, meditation practice is absolutely one of the things that I just must do every day. I start my morning being able to have this special, sacred time for myself, and there's lots of other things that I do. I think how I talk to myself was huge, really noticing when I was beating myself up or being so very unkind to myself, and a lot of this was really able to shift in a hugely significant way when I discovered polyvagal theory, which is the theory about how our nervous system is connected to our lived experience and how we show up in the world every day, and then I started to understand my nervous system states and then I really started to see in a very clear way what I would have called reactivity before which is still reactivity was really my nervous system being in a survival place so much of the time and I either was in that dorsal, depressed, collapsed, withdrawn, avoidant. I can't handle life. This is too much for me. So I'll do the bare minimum to get by, but I certainly wasn't thriving by any stretch or my system would be in this sympathetic space, which is this much more energized place, so that could kind of feel better than feeling collapsed in dorsal. However, for me, which is this much more energized place, so that could kind of feel better than feeling collapsed and dorsal. However, for me, sympathetic is extremely overwhelming, chaotic. I'm too busy, I have too much to do, there's never enough time. Do this, do that. You know waking up in the morning and just going from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing, crashing at night, and then doing it all again the next day, which is also not thriving.

Speaker 1:

And so when I started to understand how this was connected to my nervous system, it really brought all of the work that I've been doing over three decades. I mean, I've been in therapy on and off for over 30 years and done so much healing and had so many healing experiences. But polyvagal theory really brought all the pieces together, like I had all the pieces, I just didn't have them arranged exactly. So I was able to see the picture clearly and then I started to really shift. And then I started to have this other piece of deep self-care, which is how do I anchor myself? How do I anchor my nervous system in ventral? And the ventral state of our nervous system is our grounded, centered, safe place.

Speaker 1:

And this gave me a daily practice of self-care and self-love that was profound and more clear in so many ways for me at least, than it had ever been before, like what do I need to do every day to be my fullest self? And the short answer was I need to recognize when my nervous system leaves that ventral safe place and when I go into a dysregulated survival mode, self-care is taking action to get back to that ventral safe, connected place, because from that place I can handle whatever's going on. I could do the things on my to-do list. If there's a problem that needs to be addressed, I can address it, I can problem solve, I could be creative, I could figure out things, whereas when I'm in survival. That's not the experience, and so I really started to have these significant shifts and I mentioned this in the should I stay or should I go? Episode when I covered all seven of these questions.

Speaker 1:

But I heard the definition of boundaries by Prentice Hemphill, which is boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously, and it hit me in such a deep way, and that really is when I started to understand that, for me, making the choice to stay in my relationship or not had to do with all of the questions that I reviewed thus far. But the answer to this question gave a whole new level of insight as to whether or not I could stay in my relationship with my husband. Because if I was able to take care of myself and love myself and create this space for myself that I desperately needed, if I could do that while being with my husband, then there was possibility that I could stay. But if I found that I couldn't create that space for myself, if I couldn't love myself, if I couldn't deeply care for myself every single day and be in this relationship, then I knew that I had to leave, and I did talk to my husband about that and I did explain this to him.

Speaker 1:

We've had many conversations in many different ways, sometimes because of a conflict or sometimes just because I really was at a place where I was able to share with him what was happening for me. There's been some really beautiful conversations around that. So far, I've been able to cultivate this practice of self-love and care and continue in my relationship with my husband, and again, it has caused conflict, because it was a huge change from how I used to move in the world honestly and how I used to be in my relationship. But through the bumps we've been able to learn and he's been an incredible support, and that has also been something that has really strengthened our relationship for me, because knowing that he supports me even when what I'm doing may be hard for him not that he should be sacrificing himself, but me focusing more time on me does, in fact, take away some time from him, and so we've had to really negotiate that like.

Speaker 1:

What does that look like? As in the Princess Temple quote how do I also love him at the same time, and we've been figuring that out and I think we've been doing a really beautiful job, and it has absolutely been what has given me a great sense of hope in the future of our relationship and also immense gratitude for what we have together, because the relationship I have with my husband feels like a place where we both want both of us to be loved and cared for in a very real way. And the truth is is that, as people who have lived with depression for our lives, as people whose nervous systems are often in that collapsed, withdrawn, dorsal place, it's not always easy to love and care for ourselves or feel deserving of that love and care, and so it's been huge places of growth for both of us and I think we'll continue to grow in those places. I certainly hope we'll continue to grow in those places. I'd love to see my husband even be able to stretch into more of those places for himself, and I think he is, and so this question is really really powerful and special.

Speaker 1:

And if you are somebody who, for whatever your, your reason, is struggling in the ability to take care of yourself and love yourself I wish it were easier. I wish that everybody could just love and care for themselves in this significant way, but if you're somebody who's struggling there, please hear me. I know I'm just one person in this world, but I hope that you can hear that you deserve this kind of self care and you deserve to love yourself, because struggle and pain is inevitable and when you love and care for yourself and you bring your whole self into this world, it's just a much better experience. And I don't know if we get another lifetime. I don't know if we get another chance, I don't know if we come back, but to my knowledge, I'm only going to be here in this physical body once and I have decided for myself that I want to make the very best of it, and that's why I decided to do this podcast, because I have a message for everybody, and my message today for you is to love all of yourself exactly how you are today, and the more you love and care for yourself, the better you'll feel, the better your life will be, the better your relationships will be, and you won't choose to stay in places that hurt in the same way as you used to.

Speaker 1:

Because I have found the more that I take care of myself, the less I accept feeling bad. And again, struggle and pain, hardship those are inevitable parts of life, but most of the time now I am so much more motivated Like, hmm, I have to figure this out. I have to work through this, which is very different than how I used to be, either feeling like, oh, it is what it is, or I don't have the energy to do anything about it, or I've tried already and I didn't get anywhere. So, anyhow, I can go on and on, obviously, about this, but it's really important. For me, it's a real game changer. I think that this is the transformational question and, again, loving yourself might cause hardship in your relationship initially, and through the process, through the conflict, you will also have an opportunity to see if this is a relationship that you can grow and heal and continue to be in or not. I thought I would finish all the questions today, but I'm very passionate about self-care and self-love and I do want to talk more deeply about the seventh question as well, so I think I will continue that in the next episode.

Speaker 1:

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. 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 Take care of yourself and take a step.