When Depression is in your bed

Tuning Into Your Nervous System: Relationship Guidance Through Body Wisdom

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 14

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Faced with the crucial question of whether to stay in or leave a relationship? Your body holds wisdom your mind can't access. This episode completes a seven-part journey through conscious relationship decision-making with arguably the most powerful question: What does your nervous system tell you when contemplating staying versus leaving?

Many of us live disconnected from our bodies, missing crucial guidance hidden within our physical responses. Even those drawn to somatic practices may struggle to maintain this connection. Drawing from personal experience, I share how tuning into my body revolutionized my understanding of my relationship needs. When considering staying during conflict periods, the physical sensation of pulling back wasn't necessarily a sign to end the relationship, but crucial information about boundaries needing attention. Similarly, feelings of relief when imagining leaving provided important data without dictating a specific action.

Through two transformative exercises, you'll learn to access your own nervous system wisdom. The first practice helps you identify whether your body moves toward connection, pushes against in resistance, has an urge to get away from or detaches completely when considering each relationship path. The second, "Leaps and Landings," acknowledges that both staying and leaving involve stepping into the unknown, and helps you recognize both fears and hopes associated with each direction.

These exercises aren't designed to deliver a definitive "should you stay or go" answer. Rather, they establish communication with your nervous system, allowing its wisdom to inform your decision-making process. Whether you're new to somatic awareness or an experienced practitioner, these exercises offer valuable insights cognitive approaches alone cannot provide.

Connect with me on Instagram @trish.sanders.lcsw to share your experience with these practices. Remember that meaningful change doesn't require seeing the entire path at once – just take one step, any size, in any direction. Getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, and more connected is possible for everyone, including you, even when depression is in your bed.

If you are interested in checking out the "Leaps and Landings" exercise referenced in this episode and more information about how the nervous system is at the heart of our lived experience, check out Deb Dana's Anchored.

- 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 ready to tune into the wisdom of your nervous system to receive some guidance about how to move forward in your relationship? If so, join me today as I walk you through two different exercises to support you in making a conscious decision about whether or not you want to stay with your partner. The first is a simple notice and name exercise intended to help you to begin to get acquainted with your nervous system and its brilliant messages. The second moves into beginning to stretch your system, preparing you to move into the unknown, whether that is the unknown of what you and your partner may be able to create by staying together, or the unknown that comes along with you choosing to move on. I'm your host, trish Sanders. Whether you're new to befriending your nervous system or if you regularly practice this kind of self attunement, I'm so excited to share these exercises with you and I hope that they provide you with some insight, as they have provided me. Let's get started. Today is the last episode in what has become a seven episode series about making a conscious decision about whether you want to leave your relationship or stay in it, though it was not my intention to spend so many episodes on this topic all at once. I felt that it was necessary after my first episode to really go into some more details because in that first episode should I stay or should I go? I reviewed the seven questions that I myself have used over my relationship to make a conscious choice about whether I wanted to stay in my relationship with my husband and, as I did the review of the actual questions, it just felt like it made sense for me to share my own thought process with anybody who might find it helpful. I have already reviewed the first six questions in greater detail over the last several episodes, but just a quick review of those questions. The first had to do with the real or perceived obstacles that come to mind when thinking about leaving a relationship, and the second question was about the unconscious factors that may be keeping you in your relationship. The third question was are you willing to do the work of relationship? And then the fourth was is your partner willing to do the work of relationship? The fifth question was what are the strengths of your relationship? And the sixth question in the topic of the last episode was can you deeply love and care for yourself and continue to be in this relationship. And the seventh question is what do you feel in your body, in your nervous system, when you think about ending the relationship you have with your partner, and what do you feel in your body and in your system when you think about staying in the relationship? I'm going to talk a little bit about why this is such an important question and my own experience, and then I'm also going to walk you through two different nervous system exercises to help you tune into your own wisdom that may emerge from thinking about this question.

Speaker 1:

I myself have been very disconnected from my body for most of my life, which is not a terribly uncommon experience for many people. However, even as a teenager, I knew that there was something important about my body. I was very attracted to yoga practices. I remember I was 19 when I first did a body work exercise with a therapist and it was a very positive experience. But there was also something in my own experience of my disconnection from my own body that, even though I had this real strong draw towards this work, there was also something that really kept me quite distanced from it and I really was never able to connect in a very deep way or maintain any type of regular body practice, and it was not something that I chose to study directly or get more training in over my professional career for many, many years. However, in the last several years, I have really been on quite a journey, and I'm still on a journey of reconnecting with my body and tuning into the wisdom and brilliance of my nervous system, of my body, the information that is stored there and how to work with it to really tune into what my needs are and what safety is, and how to find safety and how to cooperate, work in partnership with my body and my system in order to consciously move myself into a life that truly feels aligned with who I really am. So I really started to play with this question and notice what was happening in my body and in my system when I thought about staying in the relationship with my husband just over the last I would say probably five years maybe and I started to notice that different things would come up in my body at different times and I would just be curious about what came up.

Speaker 1:

So, for me, sometimes, when I thought about staying with my husband, sometimes I had a very strong feeling of wanting to get away. If we were in a place of a lot of tension, a lot of high conflict, I sort of could feel a pull back in my body, and I knew that that pull back was indicating that I needed to protect myself in some way. That didn't necessarily mean that I had to end my relationship, but I knew that I needed to take care of something in my relationship. It wasn't a place that felt safe enough for me to be, and so that was really important information. I also noticed a lot of the time probably for longer than the last five years, and then, when I thought about leaving my relationship, there were oftentimes when I felt a sense of relief, a sense of ease, and that didn't necessarily mean that I should leave my relationship and should, as I've said before and I'm sure we'll say again, is really a judgment.

Speaker 1:

My experience of doing this practice was not to get a definitive answer of whether I should stay or go, but rather to tap in to what my needs were in this really powerful way of tuning into my body and into my system, and there's many different ways to do this. I can talk further about my own experience, and I would be happy to do so, but I do think that talking about nervous system work or body work or somatic work is a very different experience than actually feeling the experience of nervous system work or somatic work. So I really wanted to be able to share with you today an experience that would allow you, if you so choose, to be able to tap into the wisdom that is in your own system. This question is not designed to get you to an absolute answer, although I do hope that the whole process brings you much closer to clarity and being able to make a decision for yourself that truly makes sense. But this question is intended to open up a line of communication between you and your nervous system in a way that may or may not have been available to you before, so that your system, essentially, can really weigh in and help guide you in the decision-making process.

Speaker 1:

And if you are not familiar with a nervous system practice or with tuning into your body, that is totally okay. You may have even been taught to ignore cues from your body in your nervous system, so this may feel very unfamiliar and therefore it might actually feel threatening or dangerous and you might not be interested in doing it at all. And if that's where you are, that's totally understandable and okay. You're welcome to stay tuned in and listen and not participate in the activity directly, or you're welcome to shut this off right now and come back another time when you're feeling safer and more curious, or do whatever makes sense to you. But this is an invitation, as always, for you to pay attention to what makes sense to you. But this is an invitation, as always, for you to pay attention to what makes sense to you, and it's an offering of a practice that has been helpful for me and that's why I'm sharing it with you. And if you are more familiar with a practice of tuning into your system and tuning into your somatic experience, then you're also welcome, of course, to participate in this activity and see what comes up for you. And, as always, please feel free to participate in whatever way makes sense to you at any time during either of the exercises. So I'm going to take you through two different types of polyvagal exercises that essentially tap into your nervous system and the wisdom that is stored there. So just a brief review.

Speaker 1:

Your nervous system can be in one of three different states. The first state is a state of safety and grounding, connection, balance. It's a state of feeling okay enough to be able to move through the world, problem solve, connect, and it's called ventral vagal. And then the other two states are survival states. The first survival state is called sympathetic and it's also often referred to as your fight or flight response. And so this is a mobilized state of defense I'm sensing threat and I have to do something about it, I have to take action. And then you also have a second survival state which is called dorsal vagal. It is essentially your freeze response and it is a state of shutdown and collapse and being withdrawn in order to protect yourself.

Speaker 1:

So for this first exercise, it's a very simple check-in to notice what comes up in your system when you think about staying in the relationship or leaving and having that sense of that ventral energy moving towards wanting to connect or something more of a fight or flight energy, wanting to kind of attack or run away or some of that dorsal flavor of shutting down, withdrawing, being disconnected or detached. So I want you to just first take a moment, take a breath and get settled wherever you are. If you're driving or doing something where you can't quite get settled, then perhaps you can listen to this exercise now or you can pause and you can pick it up again later when you're somewhere else, or you can try it in a way that makes sense for you wherever you are. But if you're sitting down, or even if you're standing, if you're able to tune in, just to take a moment, see if you can ground into either where you're sitting, feel the support of the chair or whatever is underneath you, and you can feel the support of your feet on the ground, on the floor, wherever you're standing, and just take this moment to tune in, drop down from the experience of your mind and move down into your system and think about staying in this relationship with your partner. Think about the way things are now.

Speaker 1:

You can think about how you'd like them to be, perhaps, or the relationship work that may need to be done in order to get where you would like to be or to have the relationship that feels the way you'd like it to feel, and just notice what comes up in your system. Is there a sense of moving towards? Is there a sense of moving away or fighting against, pushing against? Is there a sense of detachment or disconnection? Are there any other body sensations that emerge or any emotions that you notice, any thoughts that come up Perhaps there's an image or a color and just take a few breaths, just let yourself notice what comes up when you think about being with your partner, staying with your partner in this relationship. And now take a cleansing breath and let it go. And now we'll do the same thing. But now think about making the choice to end your current relationship so you no longer have the same type of connection that you currently do with your partner.

Speaker 1:

Try to imagine being in that space of having broken up or separated or divorced and again check in to your system, notice if you have a sense of moving towards this experience or moving away, if there's more of a pushing against feeling or again a detached or disconnected feeling. What body sensations come up any emotions, thoughts, images, colors. And then just take another deep breath in, perhaps shake it out, shake your arms and your legs, sort of do a little reset and just take a moment to see what came up and see what you noticed. You might want to pause here, take notes, journal, document, dance, move, paint, draw, write a poem, take a break perhaps and again, this is not designed to give you a final, definitive answer about whether you should stay in this relationship or leave it. But this practice of checking in with your nervous system, not just about decisions that you make but as you're experiencing your relationship, is a really powerful practice, and I will talk with you so much about how polyvagal theory in particular has transformed my relationship with myself and with my partner, also even with my children, and really just changed how I move in the world. So I will talk much more about that in future episodes, but for today it's really just this beginning invitation to tap into the wisdom that you have, that you may not even know you have, but it is absolutely there. If that feels like enough for now, then you are welcome to end there.

Speaker 1:

But I also wanted to share another special polyvagal exercise about making changes in your life and heading into the unknown. Whether you stay or go, there is a quality of unknown, because if you choose to stay, you don't really know what your future looks like or the work that needs to be done, or what six months from now will really look like, or a year from now, and if you choose to leave, you don't know what that looks like either. So both choices have an element of the unknown, even though, of course, staying may have more familiarity because this is the space that you've been in and you know so. This exercise is called leaps and landings and you can find it in deb dana's book anchored, which I've mentioned before and I'm sure I will mention again and I will leave a link for anchored in the show notes if you're interested in checking it out, which I do highly recommend. So this is a slightly adapted version from what's in the book to explore the future of your relationship.

Speaker 1:

If you're willing and interested and it makes sense for you to do this exercise in this moment, I invite you to start by just taking a deep breath. If you want to take another couple of breaths, you're welcome to pause me here and I invite you to observe where you are right now. Think about the patterns in your relationship that you are engaging in or creating or reacting to that do not feel nourishing in your system, and I invite you to hold compassion for yourself about this pattern that no longer feels like it's serving you, that's no longer nourishing you, to know that this pattern showed up in you and in your partner and in your relationship in order to protect you. Its initial purpose was for survival. This pattern did not emerge to cause you hurt and pain and make you miserable. It was designed to take care of you because our nervous system and our brain is designed to protect us. So take a moment to acknowledge this.

Speaker 1:

This concept that there's unconscious patterns, or that the things that are causing so much trouble for us in our relationship now actually are rooted in protection, might be a new concept to you and it might be confusing or hard to believe or hard to hold on to. And if that's where you are, or anywhere else that you are, for that matter, just acknowledge that whatever thoughts come up right now. If you're curious to learn more, this is certainly a topic that I will cover and talk more about, but for now, you can just know that our patterns of protection do emerge because our nervous system is actually doing its job, and our nervous system and our brains do tend to do a very good job of protecting us. They are just responding to cues of danger and cues of safety, as they're meant to do, and there's nothing wrong with us for having these patterns of protection. And sometimes we can make decisions to work with those patterns in our relationships or we can make choices to work with those patterns outside of our current relationship. So, whether this idea is new to you, or if you're familiar with it, if it's confusing or hard to hold on to or you're curious about it, whatever is coming up for you, you can just notice that. For now, we will just acknowledge that these patterns that are causing such trouble for us, creating such conflict for us in our current relationship, were, in fact, designed to protect us. So just notice what's coming up for you in this moment, thinking about these patterns that exist for you. Notice your body, sensations, your feelings, thoughts or images, colors or anything else that comes up for you. If you'd like to pause here and journal or paint or draw or dance or take a break or do anything else that makes sense for you, you're welcome to do that. Next, I invite you to consider what it would be like to let go of this pattern in your relationship. In this case, the two paths that we'll think about would either be staying with your current partner and creating a relationship that feels better together, or the other path would be choosing to end your relationship and moving on to the next phase without your partner. I will walk you through both of these so you can explore what comes up for you First imagine stepping out of your current pattern by staying with your partner and figuring out what the work of relationship means to the two of you and what that could be to do it together.

Speaker 1:

And, as you see yourself doing that, look for any worries or fears or concerns that come up. And complete this sentence. If I stay with my partner and step out of this pattern then and allow yourself to identify and notice anything that comes up that feels like it may get in your way, do try to quiet your mind and actually tune into your nervous system's answer, this can be quite a magical experience that words just appear for you. And now let's look for hope by completing the same sentence. If I stay with my partner and step out of this pattern then and again notice what's coming up in your system the sensations, the emotions, thoughts, images, colors. You're welcome to pause, to take more time here, to document in a way that feels like it makes sense, or to take a break.

Speaker 1:

And next we'll do the same process, exploring the experience of letting go. But this time imagine stepping out of your current pattern by ending the relationship with your partner and, as you see yourself doing that again, look for worries or fears or concerns that come up by completing this sentence. Worries or fears or concerns that come up by completing this sentence. If I ended the relationship with my partner and stepped out of this pattern, then and listen to whatever comes up that feels like it could get in your way Again. Tune into your nervous system messages and give space for whatever needs to come up to come up and allow space for whatever needs to come up to come up and allow space for whatever needs to be heard to be heard. And now let's look for hope by completing the same sentence If I ended the relationship with my partner and stepped out of this pattern, then, and once again notice what's coming up in your system right now, the sensations and feelings, thoughts and images, colors and anything else that may come up. And again, you're welcome to pause here for whatever reason and do whatever makes sense for you.

Speaker 1:

Now I invite you to consider what it would be like to take one step out of your familiar pattern into the unknown. Imagine this experience of actually taking a step, and if you're a visual person, maybe you'll see a bridge or a mountain or a path through the woods. If you're not a visual person, that's perfectly okay, just imagine taking one step and notice whatever comes up for you, and remember that you don't know yet where you are heading. What you know is that you're ready to step out of an old adaptive survival pattern, a pattern that emerged initially to protect you and is no longer serving you. You may notice that the unknown evokes a sense of danger or threat in your nervous system, and if you notice this, if you notice impatience or judgment or fear or wanting to stop, or feeling angry or anxious or anything that feels dysregulating, see if you can reach for something that feels a little more grounding and safe and regulating. Take a breath, move your body. If pausing this exercise makes sense to you, please do that. If you're able to ground yourself and anchor in some of that ventral energy and you're able to feel safe enough to continue, see yourself taking the leap that will lead you to somewhere new but not yet known.

Speaker 1:

Now I invite you to see yourself landing in a new place. You don't have to be able to see everything in this new place. You don't have to know everything about it yet. Tune into your system and just notice that you are held safely here in this new place that you do not yet know. See if you can allow yourself to be curious and know that it's okay to be in this place of not knowing. Look around this new place and notice anything that there is for you to notice Again, the sensations or the thoughts, the feelings, images, colors. And again you can feel free to pause or document and if you're still here with me, you can take a breath and again, maybe shake it out and just notice what that activity was like. Notice if you were able to have enough cues of safety to actually be able to imagine yourself taking the leap. And notice if any insights emerged, any messages, any learnings, any information. And that's what this all really is. It's about getting information from your nervous system. It's about tuning in and asking the getting information from your nervous system. It's about tuning in and asking the questions and allowing your nervous system to give you the answers that'll help to guide you.

Speaker 1:

I hope that these experiences were helpful. To be honest, I do not know how they will translate through the podcast. I'm very open to feedback if you loved it or if you didn't like it at all or if it didn't feel great through a podcast, but I felt strongly that the best way to understand nervous system work and somatic work is to actually do it and to experience it, and I didn't want this episode to be a purely cognitive exercise where I just talked, exercise where I just talked. I wanted to invite you to tune in and maybe try something new, or to do something that you already practice, maybe in a new way. But I have finally made it through all seven questions and, again, I hope that they have been helpful for you. I invite you to connect with me on Instagram, at trishsanderslcsw, and let me know what this experience was like for you. I'm so very curious and I look forward to completing this series of episodes. For now, I'm sure I will talk again about making conscious decisions, about staying in challenging relationships, but for now we will wrap up and I look forward to connecting with you next time.

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 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.