When Depression is in your bed

From Car Conflict to Regulated Road Trips: A Nervous System Approach to Creating a Smooth Ride

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 31

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Why do so many couples fight in cars? After a breathtaking but occasionally tense family road trip along the Pacific Coast Highway, I discovered something fascinating about car conflicts that completely changed my perspective.

Driving requires a unique blend of nervous system states - we need both calm groundedness (ventral vagal) and energized alertness (sympathetic) to navigate safely. But this delicate balance can easily tip toward dysregulation when fatigue, hunger, time pressure, or danger cues enter the picture. What I initially misinterpreted as my husband "being jerky" during our vacation was actually his nervous system working overtime to keep us safe while managing multiple stressors in an unfamiliar environment.

This revelation transformed my response from judgment to compassion. Rather than creating stories about why he was "ruining our vacation," I recognized what was happening physiologically and maintained my own regulation. This rippled through our entire family system, allowing us to navigate challenges more smoothly. When multiple nervous systems share a confined space like a car, they continuously communicate below consciousness - one person's dysregulation can quickly affect everyone else.

Understanding these patterns doesn't just improve road trips; it transforms relationships. By approaching behaviors with curiosity rather than criticism, asking "what makes sense about this reaction?" instead of "why are they being difficult?", we create space for connection even in stressful situations. Whether you're planning your next family vacation or just driving to the grocery store, this perspective shift might be exactly what you need to turn potential car conflicts into opportunities for deeper understanding.

- 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.

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Hello and welcome to the when Depression is in your Bed podcast. Have you ever been on a road trip with your partner maybe a long drive, or even just a ride around the corner to the grocery store and things got a little heated. Maybe there was a comment about how fast or slow the car was going, or maybe there was some concern about how close your vehicle was to the vehicle in front of you. In this episode, I'm getting curious about some of the reasons why partners are so prone to having car conflicts, and if you're curious too, please join me for this episode. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I am so delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

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In my last episode, I talked about how I was preparing to go on a vacation to the California Redwoods and I shared how I had had a few weeks of very turbulent times for me, at least, that's how it landed in my nervous system and I was really actively working to reground myself and rebalance and feel centered. And I clearly and consciously set an intention for my vacation with my family, with my husband, also with my sister and my nephew, because it was something incredibly special and I was so excited for it and I didn't want to bring a dysregulated nervous system into the trip, because if you bring a dysregulated nervous system into the trip, you can think about that as being reactive, being on edge, being tense, being a little irritable there's a lot of different words you might use to describe that. But I know if I bring that energy into my trip, there was no way that it was going to have a positive impact. Maybe at best it would have a neutral impact, but I would really lose some of the opportunity to enjoy myself. And so I talked about that on the last episode and I told you that I would catch you up to let you know how things went. And so here I am today doing just that, and honestly, so many things happened that I could talk to you about, and the trip overall was absolutely extraordinary. I was in awe for most of the time just appreciating the Pacific West Coast and the ocean and the mountains and the California redwoods and the forests, and everything was just really quite extraordinary.

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But the trip itself actually had quite a few bumps along the way, really throughout, from day one all the way to the end or the last day coming home, and so there was a lot of things to talk about. But one thing that stood out very clearly to me first, just after the vacation itself my own experience. I was like, wow, I think that this is an important theme. But then I went into the office and I actually had two couples that week who had their own unique versions of a story, but similar stories to me or similar areas of conflict that I had had on my vacation. And this theme that came up from my trip and also from the two couples that I work with was about car conflicts and I really started to think about it. I said, gosh, let me get curious about this. And there's probably so much here and there's a lot of things I'm already thinking about, but I want to just talk about my trip firsthand and really some of the important things and takeaways that I really learned from this experience. And perhaps in other episodes I will continue to talk about car conflict and how to have regulated road trips, but for today I just want to share about, like I said, what I learned from my experience.

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So my husband and I are no strangers to car conflict. The truth is we have had many conflicts and even today we can joke about car trips that were nightmares that we had, like 20 years ago, like, oh my gosh, remember that trip that we took to you know, here or there, and we can mostly laugh about it, I would say I think. But I know that sometimes in cars myself and my husband included, absolutely but couples can really have a lot of conflict, whether it's about the driving experience itself, like the speed, like how fast or slow someone's going, or the directions, or an argument about the event you're going to Like are you running on time, are you running late, that kind of thing, or it can be when you're in the car. A lot of conflict and tension emerges. There's a lot of reasons for all of that and I can really dive into some more of those pieces in a different episode.

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But in our road trip, this time to California, I noticed something really fascinating. At least it was fascinating for me because we were driving in such an extraordinarily beautiful place. But it was also kind of terrifying because when you're driving along the Pacific Coast Highway, there are places when you're on a pretty narrow road, on the edge of a pretty significant cliff, you know, or drop down to the beach, to the ocean. Also in the forest, same thing there were cliffs, that we would look down and we're like whoa? My sister was with us and you know the two of us were passengers and my husband chose to do all of the driving, which I think my sister and I probably both were pretty grateful for. We both had thought we would do driving on the trip but I think that the conditions kind of just led to my husband doing all the driving and again, I think that we were appreciative of that, given the circumstances of the driving. It was just very unfamiliar territory and I will speak for myself I was definitely downright terrified at certain times not the whole time, and I think I could have done it if I had to, but I was also grateful that I didn't have to and it was really nice for my husband to be able to take on that responsibility so that my sister and I could take care of the kids and kind of tend to directions and, you know, help navigate and different things like that. So it really worked out well and we were super appreciative of my husband taking on this responsibility and we were both very verbal to him in recognizing our appreciation of him.

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Especially on the first night it kind of got a little bit crazy. A three and a half hour trip turned into a five and a half hour trip, which was really long, after our whole morning of flying into California from the East Coast, and so it was really a challenge to do all the driving, but my husband did it. And what I also noticed is that there were times that my husband was really on edge and this, of course, made sense to me in different moments of the trip. Again, when he was doing a five and a half hour drive that we thought was going to be a three and a half hour drive, that made a lot of sense. When we were driving on the Pacific Coast Highway in the dark when we had expected to be at our destination before sundown. That was also a pretty stressful situation.

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I understood that he was a little on edge, although in that particular trip he was pretty focused and he was really a rock star on that particular leg. But there were other times when a little bit of his edginess caught me off guard and I was like why is he reacting that way? And I felt confused and annoyed and aggravated in different moments of the trip and I started to think about this like what is going on? He felt almost unfamiliar to me, like in many moments we were sharing this awesome experience together with our family and it was just so extraordinary. And then, in other moments, he was acting the story. I told myself he was acting a little bit jerky and I didn't understand why.

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And then I started to really think about it because I got curious. I was like what's going on here? Because this doesn't seem to make sense to me. But I believe as is part of the Imago theory and it's something that I hold as a personal value and personal truth is that everything that everyone does all the time makes sense, which is a pretty bold statement, and I'm sure talk about that in another episode as well. But if I believe which I do that everything that everybody does makes sense all the time, I was like what makes sense about this? How is this making sense? What am I not understanding? So I got curious and I realized that in order to drive, especially for the extended periods of time, this was a road trip. It was, you know, five days of driving. We went to multiple locations, there was a few stops every day, plus driving to a different hotel every night, and in order to be engaged and alert and have the energy to drive and the motivation and even some of the focus to drive.

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That is a combination, if we talk about our nervous system, a combination of states, and if you don't know a lot about nervous systems, this may sound confusing, but it's incredibly valuable information. So our nervous system can only have three states. One of them is calm, safe and grounded. That's our ventral state. And then the other two states are states of survival and that sympathetic, which is our fight or flight response, and dorsal, which is our collapse, shutdown, freeze response. That's kind of like the short version of our nervous system state experiences. And we can also have blended states and also we can have regulated states, versions of our survival states. Again, this might feel a little complicated, but basically we can have a sympathetic state that is in that fight or flight to protect us, or we can have sympathetic that gives us energy and helps us take action.

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And in this case that's what my husband needed. He needed some of that healthy, sympathetic, regulated energy to join with that ventral energy. So the blended state would be ventral and sympathetic, but again, not in a dysregulated, self-protective way, but in a. This is how our nervous system is miraculous and can come together in such a way to help us meet the needs of a situation, and in this particular situation, the need was he needed to be alert and engaged and focused and have the energy to be able to make these long drives. So his nervous system came through, you know, he did it. He did what he needed to do, he got us everywhere we needed to get to and that was pretty awesome and, again, my sister and I were like so incredibly thankful for that.

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However, because we were doing a lot of driving every day and we were very busy doing a lot of activities throughout the day, we were also tired Not so tired that my husband was not safe to drive, but you know he wasn't as well rested and taking a relaxing, easy kind of vacation. It wasn't that kind of trip, and so that, combined with probably lots of other factors, I'm sure lots of other little cues of danger and even some historical cues of danger, my husband does have some childhood experience about being in cars that I won't go into right now because it's his story to share, but I do know that that's part of his experience in cars and my guess is is why he felt really most comfortable being in the driver's seat, literally. So there were a lot of things going on. All of these things created an experience where sometimes my husband shifted from being in that really lovely blended nervous system state of ventral and sympathetic, that really helpful sympathetic to give him that energy to do what he had to do and stay engaged in driving, and he kind of sometimes tipped over into that dysregulated sympathetic state. And I wouldn't say he was super dysregulated most of the trip at all, but he would get a little bit of that flavor, a little bit more of the irritability or kind of a little bit more of that little fight response, not big fight Most of the time.

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We did have some challenges on the last day at the airport, but that was another situation that was separate from this and perhaps I will maybe invite him on to talk about that experience because I think it was really fascinating. But I'd love for him to share his perspective on it as well in addition to just hearing mine. But except for that last day in the airport, which was unique, he really just kind of got into these little flavors of sympathetic dysregulation, a little bit of that edgy kind of like friction kind of place. But I started to realize like, oh, he needs this sympathetic energy in order to be driving and doing what he needs to do and what we need him to do right, what we want him to do, state already when he's a little tired, when he's a little bit hungry, when we've been driving for several hours in the day, or when some other cue of danger comes up, it's real easy for his nervous system to kind of tip a little bit more into that dysregulated, protective, sympathetic, fight or flight experience. And so when I started to view it that way, I had what in polyvagal theory, which is about our nervous system and how it creates our entire lived experience, how we experience the world.

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We would say that I got context, I had more of the picture, I had more of the understanding of what was happening. It wasn't that my husband was going from being awesome and fantastic and fun and great to being a jerk. That wasn't really what was happening. His nervous system was responding. In certain moments it was a little bit more prone to being dysregulated, which made sense, and I was able to have a lot of compassion for that because I really understood what was happening. So I didn't talk to him about this hardly at all on the trip because we were really go, go, go. There was not too much downtime. As a matter of fact, I would do the whole entire trip again, but I would do it in at least double the amount of days so that we could have more downtime. But being that we only had five days to be able to make this trip, it was pretty amazing and I'm really grateful that we were able to have that experience. But, again, not a lot of downtime at all, and so I was able to use this context to be able to see more clearly and regulate my system enough so that, to the best of my ability.

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I certainly wasn't perfect in my self-regulation, but I was able to self-regulate far better than I would have been if I was telling myself a story like oh, why is he being such a jerk? This is our family vacation. We should be enjoying each other. Why is he so on edge? I'm not doing anything wrong. I offered to drive. He said that he was good driving, so why is he complaining? He wasn't complaining about driving, but just, you know, whatever the story, plenty of dysregulated stories that I could have made up had my nervous system been in a dysregulated state, because, if you remember your stories, follow your states. So whatever nervous system state you're in, I call it goggles. You have goggles that color your experience and so if I was in sympathetic, I would have had some sympathetic, fiery goggles.

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I would have had some fight response in me, like I don't even want to be on this trip anymore, let me get out of here. Or I would have had. I often call them depression goggles, but dorsal goggles of shutdown, like sitting quietly in the car, feeling disconnected, and I really didn't have that experience at all because, I mean, sometimes there were like little moments of friction, but for the most part I was really able to use my intention that I had set before I went on the trip which I talked about in my last episode of of. I really wanted to be present and I wanted to truly enjoy this vacation as much as I could. One because, of course, I was going to this really beautiful part of the United States that I've never been to and I really wanted to enjoy that and appreciate it.

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Even more than that, I was going with not only my family, my husband and my kids, who I adore, but also my sister and my nephew, so I really had a car full of some of the absolute most important people in my life and I wanted to truly enjoy that privilege and that gift and, in order to make the best of it, that really translated for me to me regulating myself and me finding my grounding and my balance and doing what I needed to do so that I could hold space for my husband and for everybody in a way that felt good for them and felt good for me and truly I think it made a huge difference in our trip because, like I said, even though there were several challenges along the way, we really were able to get back on track, not just between Ben and I, but just overall with the trip. So, even with the challenge of the first night driving so long, we were really back on track by the morning and that's kind of how it went the whole time. We were not literally off our schedule again in the same way that we were the first night, but there were other things we had little metaphorical detours because of and we were able to deal with them and get back on track again, literally and figuratively. Deal with them and get back on track again, literally and figuratively. But I know that if I would have been dysregulated, and unconsciously dysregulated, and I would have gone into a self-protective response. I would have felt pretty justified and been telling myself all of these stories that would have contributed to us probably not being able to get back on track as quickly as we all were able to, and this includes my husband, my sister and all three kids in the car.

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Nervous systems communicate with one another, so we had five different nervous systems in one small space in the car, constantly communicating with each other, and there were so many different cues of safety and cues of danger and there was a lot of regulation and moments of dysregulation going on, because this is part of the human experience. This is true for everybody. And when we came home, my husband and I were able to start really addressing it and diving into it, and I think that we will probably continue to really dive in and pull apart different moments of this trip. And the way I think about it is that we've had a lot of great vacations in the past. I think we it is that we've had a lot of great vacations in the past. I think we've gotten better at vacationing. We had really nightmare vacations early in our relationship because we didn't know how to vacation together, but we've also had a lot of challenging road trips, both short and long, and I really feel like this experience was super valuable in helping us be able to have what I'm thinking of as more regulated road trips that can feel better for us as a couple, but very much us as a family and whatever other nervous systems are traveling with us in the car, because, like I said, sharing space with nervous systems, they're going to be communicating at a level below consciousness.

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I've talked about this on previous episodes and I will absolutely talk about this more in future episodes, but I just wanted to share today, really, my takeaway of how driving in many different ways and again, we can talk about this in a more comprehensive way in future episodes but driving is something where there is often needed that blend of ventral and sympathetic energy in order to drive safely, to be alert, to be engaged, to have motivation to drive a long distance or something like that, and, depending on all the other factors going on, it can be really easy for the driver or the passenger to become dysregulated, and I think that that's a really big reason why a car can be such a source of conflicts for so many partners. Again, two of my couples, on the week that I came back from my vacation, both shared stories of car conflicts that they had on their vacations, and I just thought that it was really fascinating, and that's why I wanted to talk about it with you today, and I look forward to exploring it more with you in the future, because I think figuring out how to have a regulated relationship in such a way that works for me and my family is a priority, and it's also a priority for me to share this information with others, because I think that that's how we improve the world by having regulated relationships, and, of course, that also means, in part, having regulated road trips. So I look forward to talking more next time. As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments, because I wanna thank you for showing up today and I want to leave you with an invitation.

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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.

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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.

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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, it 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. 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.