When Depression is in your bed

When Life Keeps "Lifing": Choosing Conscious Connection Over Chaos

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 30

Share episode

Have you ever caught yourself thinking your relationship will never change? That moment of hopelessness is precisely what makes breakthrough moments of connection so powerful—when something shifts and you glimpse what's possible through conscious partnership.

In this vulnerable and insightful episode, I share a recent experience that validated years of relationship work with my husband. After two chaotic weeks dealing with a flooded basement, a sick child with pneumonia, missed family visits, and the stress of upcoming travel plans, my nervous system was completely dysregulated. I felt disconnected, overwhelmed, and caught in old interpretations about my relationship.

What happened next demonstrates the profound difference between unconscious and conscious partnership. Despite my dysregulation, I chose to reach out to my husband with honesty about my emotional state. His response—warm, understanding, and exactly what I needed—not only provided immediate relief but also showed me that our years of work with Imago therapy and polyvagal theory were bearing fruit.

This episode explores the fascinating connection between nervous system states and our interpretations of reality. When we're dysregulated, our thoughts become dysregulated too, creating stories that often aren't accurate. Learning to recognize this pattern without automatically believing those thoughts is a cornerstone of conscious relating.

While conscious partnership requires effort, I've discovered that unconscious relating demands far more energy and creates much more suffering. Even in the midst of life's inevitable chaos, we can make choices that align with the relationships we truly want to create.

Join me for this exploration of real relationship transformation, and discover how even small moments of conscious connection can shift your partnership in meaningful ways. Subscribe for weekly episodes that offer practical insights for navigating relationships, even when depression is in your bed.

- 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 One Depression Is In your Bed podcast. Have you ever had that hopeless kind of feeling in your relationship when you start to believe that things will absolutely never change? Honestly, I've had that thought more times than I can count, which is part of the reason why it feels so incredibly awesome when some positive, welcome, desirable new thing happens between my husband and I, and that is exactly the kind of moment I'm going to share about today in this episode that is a part of my series on conscious partnership stories. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Being in a relationship can be really hard at times, especially if you and your partner are caught in unconscious self-protective patterns, and my husband and I have definitely been caught in those kinds of repetitive traps for probably the better part of our two decades together. However, we also continue to do our own individual work and our own relational work, and things have absolutely improved, particularly over the last 10 years, when we really started to dive into Imago, relationship theory and therapy, and then also, we got a real boost over the last few years that we've been working with polyvagal theory, which is an approach that involves our nervous system, and so, essentially, the two together gave us the ability to understand the underlying processes underneath that unconscious stuff that was happening in our relationship, and then the communication tools to talk about them. That's what Imago therapy is all about, and polyvagal theory gave us that vitally important piece of how the nervous system is a part of all of that, and so, with this continued work and commitment to each other and ourselves and to our well-being and the health and happiness of our relationship, we've really been able to get to a place where, more and more, I am in awe of being able to have experiences that are new and that feel connecting and joyful and are much more the kinds of experiences that I've been longing to have for a very long time, and our relationship is feeling more and more like the relationship I want it to feel like, and the reality is is that life keeps lifing and there's stresses and hardships and twists and turns in the road, and we can't always anticipate them, and no matter how much meditation I do which, of course, I think is very helpful is not going to stop things from having an impact on me and my relationship and, of course, on Ben himself, my husband, and that's going to affect how we respond to each other and how we handle our day to day. But the more conscious I've become, the more I've been able to expand my awareness about what's really going on and the more I understand my own reactions and of course also Ben's reactions or my interpretations about what Ben's reactions are the better I'm able to respond to life when the twists and the turns get to be particularly challenging. And over the last two weeks I've had quite a winding, twisty road and it's been quite challenging. Actually, it's probably been the most dysregulated and the most unbalanced I've felt in quite some time, certainly for such a long stretch, because a lot of things have just kind of been happening sort of one after another over the last two weeks and I haven't had a lot of downtime, which has also been challenging.

Speaker 1:

I mentioned over the last couple of episodes that my basement flooded two weeks ago, so that I think sort of was the start of it. I had a lot of feelings, I had a grief experience that was activated through that and then just the chaos and the upheaval of ripping out the basement and having my whole house be in disorder, in more disorder than usual, and that was sort of the beginning of what felt like a really chaotic time. And then we went on vacation, which was wonderful. We went up to Niagara Falls, but we drove up six hours. We had a beautiful day at Niagara Falls, that was amazing. And then we drove home back six hours the next day and we realized that my daughter was sick. She had a fever when we were coming home and the fever went into what became pneumonia and that week she was supposed to be in camp but because she was sick, of course she didn't go. And I had plans for that whole week of all the work that I was going to get done, because I knew that she wasn't going to be in camp for a couple of weeks and we still have a month or so before school starts that whole week, as far as my work went, was totally a wash, and then I ended up getting sick and having a fever for a couple of days in there.

Speaker 1:

Then my sister and her partner and my nephew came to visit from overseas and I was so excited about their visit. But my daughter was sick and had a fever and so we couldn't participate in some of the plans. And then my mother-in-law came to visit for the weekend and she was supposed to stay with us but because of the flood she couldn't and our house again was super crazy and my husband of course was going to spend time with his mom, so he was busy a lot with her while I was home a lot with our daughter and I felt super overwhelmed because we were supposed to have other plans and we are also going to California with my sister and my nephew to go see the Redwoods and I just felt wholly unprepared for all of that. Given everything. That just felt like a very chaotic couple of weeks and perhaps in different circumstances or if those things were spread out, maybe I wouldn't have been thrown so much for a loop.

Speaker 1:

But realistically I was pretty dysregulated Because, like I said, it just kind of felt like I wasn't able to catch my breath. It just felt like there was like something else going on or some other disappointment or let down Because again, I was so excited about my sister coming and I was really quite heartbroken that I wasn't able to do certain things with her and my nephew. And of course I understood my daughter was sick and obviously that was my priority, but it didn't change the fact that I felt really sad about missing out and I just felt like I couldn't get ahead of myself. I couldn't get all the things that needed to be done for the house and the basement and the trip that we had coming up, and my daughter was not responding to antibiotic and I had to keep bringing her the doctor, and that feels really challenging as well, and I was again run down in the middle of that. So my head was spinning and even though I was definitely using some of my tools, like my meditation and my breathing, it doesn't change that these things are happening, although it does help my body respond and I was able to keep myself much better anchored than perhaps I would have in the past. However, I was still pretty dysregulated and feeling pretty off balance for most of the last couple of weeks, and also because of where our focus needed to be.

Speaker 1:

I think I also ended up feeling pretty disconnected from my husband, ben. I did want to connect with my husband, but I also had a lot of dysregulation happening and when you're so dysregulated, the interpretations that you're making about what's going on in your life are also dysregulated. So I had a lot of dysregulated interpretations and stories going on in my head and I felt very powerless and hopeless and very drained and disconnected and it was quite challenging for me but I was able to anchor enough in that grounded ventral energy, that nervous system state of calm connection. Not completely, I definitely was leaning towards dysregulation, but I still had an anchor, kind of rooting myself a bit, and it was really helpful, even though it was also still really difficult. I kind of felt like I was on that tilt-a-whirl ride, if you know that ride, and I felt like I was in the little car and I was spinning and I couldn't slow down the momentum of the ride because I wasn't controlling that. That was like all the things that were happening for me and so I was definitely spinning and that's very much what it felt like.

Speaker 1:

My head was spinning but because I was rooted enough, I was able to not spin that wheel to make myself spin more and make myself more dizzy or sick, which I think could be figurative or even literal, because I think that when we're spinning out of control like that, we can feel emotionally or physically ill. So even though I wasn't able to make everything better magically or quickly, I was able to keep things from getting worse, which is sort of one of my keys in how to deal with depression that you can't always make yourself feel better, but you do have quite a bit of ability to not make things worse. And so that's kind of where I was at for a lot of the last couple of weeks really being able to maintain the level of challenge that I was experiencing without making it worse. I also was trying to really hold on to the idea that this is temporary and I was able to remind myself that it will not last forever, even though there were definitely moments where I was fearing that it would last forever or things would never get better or things would never end. They kind of just felt like they kept coming.

Speaker 1:

And again, when your nervous system is dysregulated, your thoughts are also dysregulated and the interpretations that you make about what's going on is dysregulated. They're linked to the state of your nervous system. So when I was in that swirling spinning place, I was very chaotic, feeling very overwhelmed, very frantic. Again, I was able to stay just rooted enough that I didn't totally spin off into the most overwhelmed I could feel. But there was also moments where I went into that more shut down dorsal state and was touching on that hopelessness and feeling very disconnected from my sister because I was missing out seeing her and disconnected from my husband and even very disconnected from myself. And my thoughts can get pretty dark, even now still not nearly as frequently and not nearly as dark as they used to.

Speaker 1:

But when you're in that dorsal, dark place, your thoughts just sort of reflect that and I was able to notice that and not believe the stories, not believe the hopelessness, not believe that this was going to last forever. And that was really helpful because those served me in helping me to not make things worse and I was also able to talk to myself with compassion as much as I possibly could. Maybe not in every moment, to be totally honest, but in many moments I was able to say hey, look, a lot's happening right now. Of course you're missing your sister. Of course it's never fun when you have a sick kid or you're sick yourself. Obviously no one likes a flooded basement, but it's going to be OK eventually in one way or another in the end. And I just need to sort of like ride this wave and transition through all of these things that were feeling difficult, and I was able to do that enough that I was able to sort of stay afloat, no-transcript, dysregulated, and then that will escalate and make me become more dysregulated. And then up and up and up we can trigger each other very well.

Speaker 1:

So part of me was feeling pretty pessimistic about connecting with Ben. But another part of me was like well, hey, what do you really want to do here? Do you really want to stay stuck in this? And I did not want to stay stuck in that. So I decided to reach out and try to connect with Ben a little bit.

Speaker 1:

But again, I was super dysregulated and definitely not at my best. So when I went to Ben it sounded something like me saying to him listen, I'm really dysregulated. It sounded something like me saying to him listen, I'm really dysregulated. I have a lot of feelings going on right now. I'm not sure how well I can connect, but I would like to connect.

Speaker 1:

And I sort of braced myself a little bit because I kind of was waiting for that old story, that old expectation that I had going on, to happen. But Ben actually just looked at me and said, wow, that really makes sense. I know you've had a lot going on and I totally understand. I also want to connect. Do you want to hug and I was like wow, I mean it wasn't the first time that he was supportive in response. But compared to that old story that I was holding, that felt totally new and refreshing and wonderful. And I immediately noticed that my nervous system calmed down a little bit.

Speaker 1:

But I wasn't quite ready to connect that fully and because, again, dysregulation just means you're in self-protection mode and I was still a bit in that self-protective place, I wasn't yet in a place where I felt safe enough to be vulnerable for a hug and I was able to tell him that I appreciated his response and that it meant a lot to me and that I felt really supported and that I looked forward to being able to connect more when I felt more available. And he handled it beautifully and responded beautifully and I was so incredibly grateful for that. Not only in that moment was I grateful for it, because I was consciously in that moment very aware of how wonderful that felt, but it really set the tone for me to feel calmer and more connected for the entire rest of the day and my nervous system definitely calmed down and I was able to feel closer and more connected to Ben in a way that had I either not talked to him at all, or had I gone to him and things went in one of our old patterns where we kind of triggered each other and dysregulated each other more and more, there would have been more rupture, that would have happened and I would have felt more and more disconnected from him. But instead the total opposite happened and it was really reassuring and really validating for all the work that we've been doing. And since that moment that was a couple of days ago that we had that conversation, it's still been challenging.

Speaker 1:

Just, life has continued to be a little hectic, but that is life, and we've continued to make the best of it and try to figure out how to connect and how to self-regulate, each of us on our own and then also co-regulating together. We're preparing to leave on a trip to California in a couple of days, which also feels a little bit overwhelming at the moment, because usually I'm more prepared for trips and right now, with all that's been going on, I am not nearly as prepared as I would like to be. But I also know that it's going to be a really wonderful trip and that's my intention and so I'm able to choose behaviors that support that intention. And I know that being chaotic and overwhelmed and feeling frantic will not help that at all. And so I'm figuring out how to slow down and do what needs to be done, knowing that it's going to get done. And it's either going to get done with me feeling crazed and overwhelmed or it's gonna get done with me taking a breath and slowing down. And knowing that I'll figure it out, because I always have and I always will, and Ben and I together definitely can be an excellent team. And that feels pretty awesome to say, because it's definitely what I want, that's the relationship I want to have, and I think that's the relationship I do have. And if I can act consciously and make choices that are in alignment with the life and the relationship I want to have, then I'm much more likely to have that life and relationship Right.

Speaker 1:

And it does take effort to be a conscious person and be in a conscious partnership, and sometimes it's hard and it doesn't mean that life is perfect all the time, because that's not how life is but being unconscious and letting my thoughts go wherever they go and believing the interpretations that are in my head, which, again, this is amazing information that I've only learned in the last couple of years. The stories we have, the interpretations, our thoughts about what's happening in any given situation are connected to the state our nervous system is in. I have other episodes about that, if you're interested in checking that out. It's amazing, and for me to know that I can tell myself okay, this thought means something, but word for word it's not accurate. So I could be curious instead of just believing the thoughts that are in my head, and I think that that to me, is key to know.

Speaker 1:

As a conscious person, I can choose to either believe the thoughts in my head at face value or I can choose to be curious about them and what do they mean and what are the needs underneath them and what do I really want and how can I support that. And thinking about your thoughts and being curious about your thoughts is really powerful and it has served me very well and this was a delightful experience for me where I was able to see the real benefit in my actual relationship with Ben. And, like I said, I think that it can take a lot of work to be a conscious partner, but I know what it's like to be an unconscious partner and it's a lot more work actually. It's a lot more draining, a lot more painful and a lot more unhappy. Lot more work. Actually. It's a lot more draining, a lot more painful and a lot more unhappy, and I feel really confident that we're going to have a beautiful trip together and it's going to be a delightful family experience and I'm going to be able to share a wonderful time with not only Ben, but also our kids and also my sister and my nephew, and I think it's going to be a really magical experience. And had I not been able to take care of myself and stay just anchored enough, I think I probably would have spoiled the trip in some way, because I would have brought some of that dysregulated energy into the trip in a way that I think I'm not going to. So I will probably update you after the trip and let you know how it went, but I'm hoping to bring my conscious, imperfect, as regulated as possible self to the trip, and I think that that's the best I can do. So stay tuned and I will update you next time how everything went.

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. 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.

Speaker 1:

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.