When Depression is in your bed

Step Towards Hope and Safety: Creating Your Path Out of Depression

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Depression can trap us in an exhausting cycle of waiting for better days that rarely last. We feel stuck, disconnected, and increasingly hopeless as we search for the magical formula that will finally break us free. But what if moving forward doesn't require having it all figured out first? What if the key lies not in grand plans but in learning to take one attuned step at a time?

Your nervous system holds profound wisdom about what you truly need in any moment. When we feel depressed or detached, our biology is signaling that we're in a protective survival state called dorsal – the freeze response. This isn't failure or weakness; it's your body's brilliant adaptation to perceived threats. Understanding this connection between depression and your nervous system removes shame and offers a compassionate pathway forward.

Hope itself emerges naturally when our nervous system feels safe enough to imagine positive possibilities. Rather than forcing positivity, we can gently move along what I call the "steps of hope" – from simply wondering if change is possible to eventually feeling confident that good things are coming. By tuning into what your system actually needs right now – whether that's rest, safe connection, movement, or a manageable action – you empower yourself to take steps that feel authentic rather than forced.

The freedom comes in realizing you don't need to have the whole journey mapped out. Each small, attuned step creates safety, builds confidence, and gradually illuminates the next part of your path. This approach has transformed my relationship with depression, replacing struggle with understanding and compassion. While it won't eliminate all suffering (we're still human!), it provides a reliable way to respond when you feel stuck, detached, or overwhelmed.

I invite you to experiment with this "take a step" approach. Listen deeply to what your nervous system is telling you. Honor its wisdom rather than pushing through based on "shoulds." With practice and compassion, you may be amazed at how this simple framework can help you move from that stuck place toward a more hopeful, connected life – even 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. Are you feeling lost or stuck in the monotony of your day-to-day? Do you often find yourself feeling kind of numb or checked out, like you think there must be more to life than this, but you just don't know a way to get there? If you relate, please join me today in talking about how to take steps that can move you and your life into a more hopeful, connected, satisfying place. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I am so glad that you're here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Whether you identify as being just a little depressed, or maybe more than a little depressed, if you know what it feels like to be in that stuck, detached, disconnected place, you may also know how hard it can feel to get out of that place, and if you're like me, maybe you've spent a lot of time waiting for a better day, things to be easier, or maybe just for the stars and the planets to align in a particular way so that you can really start to feel better. In my experience, though, waiting like that can end up taking forever, or what feels like forever, and you can end up feeling pretty stuck for a really long time, and it can be really disempowering, and when that better day finally does come which inevitably a better day does come at some point it often doesn't last long, or it doesn't feel like it lasts long enough, given how long you had to wait for it, and then it can be a quick and painful fall from feeling okay enough to feeling not so okay at all. That's why leaving it to chance may not be the best strategy, but if you don't know another way, then you're very likely going to stay feeling stuck. Through my own experiences, I have found that tuning into myself and into my nervous system and actually asking what do I really need in this moment has really been helpful in guiding me about what direction I need to go and what step I need to take to be able to get me out of that stuckness, that numbness, that detached feeling. And so I have been practicing taking a step of any size, in any direction, in any way that makes sense to me, and you can take a step towards rest or safe connection or playfulness or movement or some type of action that may feel more manageable for you, and empowering yourself to figure out what is a step that you actually connect to, what's a step that your system and your body and your authentic you really wants to do, and figuring out what kind of step actually makes sense to you can empower you to be able to actually begin moving from that stuck place, and it can be a truly transformative experience. And that's what I've been talking about over the last few episodes and I will continue talking about today, and I'm going to start off with the idea of taking a step towards feeling hope, and if thinking about feeling hopeful feels hard in some way, like you find yourself feeling hopeless, or hope doesn't really feel like an option for you, I really invite you to stay with me and see if you connect to anything that I share. And I do want to start off by just talking briefly about your nervous system and why hope can feel so out of reach for some of us sometimes, and so I've talked about this before in other episodes and you're welcome to go and dive back into some of that or research it on your own.

Speaker 1:

But the short mini nervous system lesson is that our nervous system has three states that it can be in. One is a state of safety, and that's called ventral, and the other two are survival states. One is called your sympathetic state, which is your fight or flight response. It's mobilized response to threat. Something threatening is happening to me, so I have to respond, I have to do something about it. And we also have dorsal, which is the freeze response, and it is something is happening that's threatening, but I don't have the resources or the ability to fight it. I can't do anything about it, so I have to shut down in order to protect myself. I have to collapse or withdraw or hide or be invisible for safety, and so when someone's nervous system is in dorsal, they also may be experiencing what we might call depression or that feeling of being detached or going through the motions, that kind of thing. And here is something that I find to be completely amazing. But how we experience the world is connected to the state of your nervous system, so that means the way you perceive things is totally dependent on the state your nervous system is in. If you're interested in more information on that, you can check out one of my earlier episodes, including Beyond Diagnosis and Understanding Depression Through the Nervous System, and there's also a lot of great information out there about polyvagal theory, which we'll also talk about this as well.

Speaker 1:

So the feeling of hope is what's called an emergent quality of the ventral state of your nervous system. So this basically means that we can only experience hope when our nervous system feels safe, and this is because having hope requires us to have a sense that things are possible, particularly in a good, positive way, and it also means that we have the ability to think about the future, again in a positive way. And in order to be able to do this, our nervous system needs to be able to feel safe, so we have access to our thinking and feeling abilities, because when we are in a survival mode, we lose access to those abilities because our nervous system is only concerned with survival, and survival is about what do I have to do right now, in this moment, in order to survive this threat? And it is not helpful to imagine a positive outcome in a future that we haven't yet experienced, because it can actually be a distraction and end up threatening our ability to survive, and our nervous system is very good at surviving, and so it doesn't allow us to think and feel in this kind of hopeful way. So if you think about driving a car down a highway, and if a car cuts you off, it's not beneficial for you to really be thinking, oh, I hope nothing bad happens or I hope everybody's okay, because then you would be distracted by the thought of wishing that things will be okay rather than being able to act very quickly and being able to turn the wheel or jam on the brakes. And so this is how our survival response works and it's very effective for survival. And it's important to understand this, because you might not be able to convince yourself to be hopeful using your thoughts, but if you understand your nervous system, you can begin to gently and compassionately get your system into a greater feeling of safety. And then, because our perception of the world is attached to our nervous system state, when we have more of that ventral, safe, connected, calm experience in our nervous system, hope may start to emerge, and that's what I mean by emergent quality. Hope can emerge when our nervous system feels safe.

Speaker 1:

In previous episodes I have talked about the steps of depression, which is what I call the spectrum of depressed feelings, from the deepest, darkest depression that someone can experience, all the way up to going through the motions, being mildly disinterested in life or just not really feeling engaged or joyfully connected day to day. And so there's a spectrum of all those different steps, from the most severe depression to a much more mild depression or disconnection, and I think that, using that idea of the steps, the continuum or the spectrum of depression, I think that concept can be really helpful when we think about how to take a step towards hope, particularly when it feels really hard. And so I invite you to imagine what I would call the steps of hope. And so I invite you to imagine what I would call the steps of hope, and perhaps the top of that staircase would be fully expecting that things are going to go well or good things are coming your way, they're just around the corner, and feeling really confident in that experience. And that might feel totally unavailable to you, like a total fantasy, and that's totally okay if that's not the step that you're on.

Speaker 1:

But if you imagine coming down a step, maybe it would be optimistically hoping that things will get better or believing that it's possible for things to get better. And then maybe, if you go down another step, perhaps it would be wishing or longing for things to improve in some way. And maybe, if you went down another step, perhaps that would look like curiosity, that asking yourself could things ever be better? Is that an option for you? Is that something that's possible for you? And maybe towards one of the lower steps on the staircase, it would just be wondering if change is possible, if change really happens in the world, kind of thing like. Is change something that is accessible to you, and just sort of wondering about it and for your staircase of hope?

Speaker 1:

Each step might feel a little bit different. It's unique to you, but just to give you an idea of what the different steps of hope could look like the different spectrum of full hopefulness all the way down to even just a desire to feel hopeful, I would say. And so if you think about it, you can tune in and see if any of those concepts resonate with your nervous system right now, in this moment. So it doesn't matter what you've felt before, because it's a common experience to think oh well, I felt hopeful before, I just don't feel hopeful now. And it doesn't always feel particularly helpful to think, oh well, maybe I'll feel hopeful again one day. It depends how you're feeling right now.

Speaker 1:

So if you tune in to where you are right now, can you access any of that curiosity, any of the wonder, any of that longing, maybe some hopefulness, maybe even if your nervous system is feeling safe in this moment, maybe you can have a sense of expecting things to be good and, no matter where you are, no matter what step you're on, you can just notice and name it, without judging it or thinking that you should be on a different step, because should, as you'll hear me say many times, is really just a judgment. So if you allow yourself to just be where you are and if you're on one of the lower steps, know that this is one way that your nervous system is communicating to you and all it's communicating is that it's not feeling completely safe. If hope is not present, that just means that your nervous system is under some kind of threatening feeling, and it might be a real threat or a perceived threat. It can get very complicated when we don't know why we're feeling like there's a threat going on, like we might cognitively know oh well, I'm not really in danger right now. So what do you mean? But our nervous system is perceiving something and so we just need to know that. Okay, it's just not safe enough to feel hopeful at this moment. It does not actually mean you are hopeless. That could be the story in your head. That could be the story you tell yourself, like I can't feel hope, I feel hopeless, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's the reality. The reality is is that that's just where your nervous system is at right now, and we can really pay attention to that and use that as a sign to say, oh, actually, now that means I might need to take a step towards feeling some sort of safety, which I think is another really valuable step, and that can mean a lot of different things to every different person. It could even mean different things to the same person in different moments. So thinking in terms of the nervous system can be really powerful, and I will also say that in this episode I'm focusing on the individual being able to take steps and what steps might be helpful. That's sort of been the focus of my last few episodes, but I will be talking in the next episode more about how the idea of taking a step can apply to partners in relationships. So if you're interested in that, of course you can tune in next time.

Speaker 1:

Over the last few episodes I have shared different types of steps that can be helpful and I have determined the steps in part from my own understanding of the nervous system and also how, given that understanding of the nervous system, how I have experienced and been successful with using the idea of taking a step on my own. As a matter of fact, I actually had a bracelet made that says take a step, and I wear it every day as a reminder to help me move forward. When my nervous system is in what I would call a sympathetic spiral, which means when I'm in that fight or flight mode and I'm feeling overwhelmed or chaotic and time is moving too fast and I'm really stressed out because I can't get everything done, or when my dorsal dwelling shows up that's the dorsal experience of my nervous system when I go into that detached, disconnected, avoidant shutdown sort of place. And I've been using this idea of take a step for a while and it's been helpful for me and so that's why I'm sharing it with you.

Speaker 1:

Consciously doing things in these small ways that are not just small steps but they're really attuned to the needs of my nervous system in a given moment has really helped to take a lot of pressure off for me and that has created a lot of safety in my own experience, which contributes to my increased ability to take other steps. So the reason it takes pressure off is because I know that I don't have to have the whole plan figured out. Yet I will tell you that I am a planner and for many things I do have a whole plan figured out. That's really true. But that's only for certain things that don't spark a cue of danger for my nervous system, because there's a lot of things in my life that I find either challenging or overwhelming or I don't feel like I know how to do or that trigger some part of me feeling like not good enough or incapable and those things really are huge cues of danger for me and my nervous system ends up often going into this hiding and avoidant place, this dorsal state, this detached, shut down kind of place, and for that reason I don't have a plan and thinking about even making a plan can feel really overwhelming and again trigger that going into avoidance.

Speaker 1:

And so not having to figure it all out and knowing that I don't have to figure it all out can feel really freeing and again is like a cue of safety for my nervous system that allows me to take a breath and say, okay, I don't need to know at all, I just need to know what the next step is. Because for me there are certain things where, if I feel like I have to figure out everything before I even get started, I would be totally frozen in paralysis, and that can still happen for me in my nervous system now. But I've learned to notice when that process starts happening and I've gotten much better at saying hey, I'm feeling a cue of danger here, and I noticed that I'm avoiding something that feels overwhelming or hard, and I've been able to take steps that feel safe and manageable towards being able to break those things down, and it's been really, really liberating for me. So I love the idea of taking a step because it allows me to move without having to know everything, and it also allows me to have a sense of agency and I can feel capable, like I'm doing something, which a lot of the time, when you're depressed, people are saying like why don't you just do something? Just do anything. Doing something is better than doing nothing, which is true.

Speaker 1:

But a lot of that comes with a side of judgment, whether it's judgment from other people, even if it's loving people or self-judgment, and this take a step idea again with understanding of the nervous system behind it really takes out the judgment. It's like well, my nervous system is receiving a cue of danger. So I have to honor that. I have to do something to help me feel safe, and thinking about the whole big thing feels like too much. So let me just see what part of this feels accessible, what part of this feels safe and doable.

Speaker 1:

And if you're a person who feels safe having big goals and making objectives and having big plans, then that's awesome and there's nothing wrong with that. That's actually wonderful if you have that skill and sometimes I can access that skill. But it all depends on the state of my nervous system. And if something lands as something safe for me, then I can go ahead and make that big plan and I can follow through and often it feels like there's a lot of ease, like I feel like I'm in flow, like oh, I'm doing this, it feels good, I feel productive, I feel proud of myself. But when something lands as a threat for me, then that capacity that I have sometimes sometimes is not available to me. So if you're somebody who does feel overwhelmed by looking at the whole big picture and it feels like too much to have it all figured out, know that you don't have to. It can actually be far more helpful to tune into your nervous system and think what do I really need here, what is the step that feels accessible to me? And to move one step at a time. And if you stay attuned and you stay compassionate and you don't judge the size of your steps or the type of step that you take, and things like that, you can actually start to piece together a whole little path in time by taking one step and then another and then another and then another, and compassion and love and understanding and the absence of judgment really can allow that path to be created for you.

Speaker 1:

The potential downside of the taking a step idea is that when you want something done or you want to feel better, often you want it done quickly, like you want it done yesterday, and we often want to take big steps to get it over with and just make it happen already, and chipping away in small steps doesn't necessarily feel rewarding or exciting. It's not that dopamine hit that we might be wanting. So it's very easy to give up and the challenge here is that when you give up you often slide back into a deeper dorsal, detached, disconnected, avoidant place and you might feel more depressed and more incapable and more hopeless and you might find yourself getting stuck there, and I've talked about in previous episodes that there is a biological reason actually why it can be hard to move quickly out of a dorsal experience. So once you slide back down, it can take some time to be able to gain your resources to move back up. Then you can start telling yourself these stories like you tried, but it didn't work and you're a failure and you're not good enough and there's too much to be done to take little steps, and the stories can go on and on and it can become really disempowered.

Speaker 1:

However, if you are at a place where you are sick of the struggle my first podcast episode is called Struggle is so Last Year, because that's very much the place that I got to and I was like I've been struggling for decades, I'm over it, I'm going to figure this out and Take a Step eventually did emerge from that experience and that commitment to wellness and feeling better, and so if you are also ready for something new, even if there's just a little tiny part of you that believes that things can be better, I invite you to listen to that part of you, even if the voice is small right now, and compassionately try taking an attuned step. So that doesn't mean a step that somebody else tells you to take. That's a step that you tune into your own system and your own experience and decide what is the next right step for you. I also want to add that if the take a step framework still seems like too much for you, like you really want this to work and so you sit down and you close your eyes. You don't have to close your eyes, by the way, but if you sit down and close your eyes and you think about it and you say, okay, what do I need right now? And there's crickets, or you think I have no idea what I need, and then it's like, oh my gosh, I don't need one thing, I need a hundred things. This is too stressful, or whatever it is that comes up or doesn't come up. Just know that beginning to check in again with some compassion compassion is key, understanding that this is a process. This might be tricky, this might be a new skill, it might take a little bit of time and just know that there is an answer in there and whatever comes up or again doesn't come up is just where you are right now and if you can say, okay, this is where I am right now and not judge it again. Not judging is key. And continue the practice, ask, ask yourself later, ask yourself tomorrow and continue to be gentle, as gentle as you can. And I do encourage you to think about dropping down from your mind and your head space and your brain and your thoughts and really allowing your questions to sort of come into your nervous system.

Speaker 1:

Experience, which might feel weird or new to you, but our nervous system functions below our consciousness, so that means that it functions without thought. It's actually called neuroception how our nervous system perceives information from inside of us, from outside in the world and also in relationship between people, between nervous systems, and it happens without thinking. So it's not even unconscious, it's actually non-conscious. And making the non-conscious nervous system experience into a conscious experience that you can attach thought and say, oh, what's happening here? Oh, I understand what's happening in my nervous system.

Speaker 1:

Experience is absolutely a skill and it's something that you really have to practice and it takes time. Something that you really have to practice and it takes time, but it doesn't have to take a lot of time if you can do it with compassion and non-judgment. So if you could just let it be what it is and keep at it, then you actually might be totally amazed about the wisdom that starts to come from your nervous system. I myself have been blown away when it's like a whisper of an answer comes seemingly out of nowhere and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's what my nervous system needs. But it's because I quieted down and I gave it space and I asked and I asked with kindness and compassion and love, because the struggle got real easy for me. It was easy to stay stuck. It was easy to stay detached. It was easy to stay detached. It was easy to stay avoidant. It was painful, it was awful, but it was easy.

Speaker 1:

Doing this sometimes can feel hard until it doesn't. The more you practice it, the more you cooperate with your nervous system, the more amazing it becomes. And I'm not telling you that it's a switch. We're still human. Things are hard. Sometimes we have feelings. Suffering is a human experience. But it's not that you won't ever have a bad feeling again in your life. It's that you know how to respond to it and understand how your nervous system is reacting to it. And then you can support your nervous system and giving it what it needs, and then you can be free to move forward and creating the rest of your life. It's a really good system. I have to tell you if you know how it works.

Speaker 1:

And again, if this feels overwhelming, check out my previous episodes, because I've been talking about this take a step idea for a little bit, and I talked about the simple two question choice that I started with when I started experimenting with this idea of taking a step, and it sometimes was helpful because it felt less overwhelming, like it wasn't like, out of all the things in the world, what do you need? It was much more direct and much simpler and it was just a question of does your system need to take a step towards rest or do I need to take a small step towards action, towards doing something that feels manageable? And again, I've talked about that in a couple of recent episodes. So, if you're interested, you can go back and check those out and, if I may be so bold as to share a piece of advice, you can take it or leave it, depending on how it sits in your system, but I really would encourage you and tell you that honoring your nervous system is so much more valuable than pushing it to do what you think you should do.

Speaker 1:

You have likely been being pushed by yourself or others, even well-intentioned, loving others. As I often say, this isn't about judging the people in your life. A lot of the time, people want you to feel better, so they try to push you to feel better, but it doesn't always feel very supportive or helpful, and so this is a huge shift to be able to move from what I think I should do or what I think I'm supposed to do to what does my nervous system actually need from me right now, and because our nervous system is all about feeling safe and protecting us, we can respond in this way. That, I feel, gives us a lot more possibility. It certainly has given me a lot more possibility and a lot more clarity about what action I need to take, and that's really what the take a step approach is all about for me, and I have found it to be really quite helpful, and I hope that if you choose to experiment with it, you will also find it helpful. Please feel free to find me on Instagram, at trishsanderslcsw, or anywhere else on social media there are links below in the show notes because I'd love to hear about your experience with taking a step, and I will also just close saying that this episode and my recent episodes are obviously geared towards somebody who's feeling more stuck in depression or disconnection and they themselves are looking to take some steps, and if that's you, then I truly hope that something resonated with you today or in my recent episodes. And being that this is the when Depression Is In your Bed podcast, and it's about relationships, I also know you might be interested in how taking a step can work in your relationship with your partner, and I will talk more about that next time. So stay tuned and I look forward to connecting with you next week.

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.