When Depression is in your bed

From Gratitude to Growth: How Appreciation Can Transform Relationship

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Episode 32

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Gratitude might be the relationship superpower you're overlooking. In this heartfelt exploration, we dive into how deliberately practicing appreciation transforms relationships from the inside out.

Your brain naturally fixates on problems—it's biology, not a character flaw. This negativity bias served our ancestors well for survival but wreaks havoc in modern relationships. When something upsets us, our nervous system responds as though facing physical danger, triggering fight, flight, or freeze reactions that derail connection. Gratitude serves as the antidote, consciously redirecting attention to what's working.

Sharing appreciations does something remarkable: it signals that love remains present even during conflict. Many of us carry childhood wounds where caregivers withdrew love completely when angry. By maintaining appreciation alongside frustration, we break this pattern, showing our partners "I see you positively even when we disagree." This creates the emotional safety necessary for vulnerable conversations.

Through personal stories about concert mishaps and upcoming retreats, I reveal how holding deep appreciation for my husband transformed how I approached recent conflicts. Rather than spiraling into "inevitable misery" thinking, gratitude provided perspective and motivation to address issues constructively through dialogue rather than silent resentment.

The magic happens not just when you feel grateful internally, but when you express it specifically. Your partner might be doing dozens of things they think show love, but only certain actions truly resonate. When you highlight these moments, you're providing a roadmap to your heart.

Ready to transform your relationship? Start today by noticing one thing you genuinely appreciate about your partner and share it with them. Then watch as this simple practice begins shifting everything from how you communicate to how quickly you recover from disagreements. Your relationship deserves this gift.

- 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. Join me today for a conversation about how gratitude can be an invaluable tool in relationship. Not only can sharing your appreciation support your partner in feeling good, but it can also do wonders for you and how you show up with your partner, which, in turn, can go a long way to improving your relationship. To hear more, keep listening. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I am so delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

As we move towards the end of summer and we begin to transition into the fall, I have been reflecting on the last couple of months and everything that has happened, and I have been finding a lot of gratitude and a lot of appreciation for everything the wonderful things and the beautiful things, and also the really challenging things and hard things and it struck me that I don't think that I've talked about gratitude or appreciations in any length on the podcast yet, and at this point, I do have a daily practice of appreciation, both sort of formally every night I go through gratitudes but also informally, as I notice things throughout the day and I share with my kids or my husband even gratitudes that I share with myself, things that I appreciate about myself and a few significant things sort of came up and I could really follow the thread from how the appreciations that I was holding and also sharing were really shaping my experience, and it struck me that this would be a good thing to talk about on the podcast this week. Sharing positives in general and being positive even to a certain degree are really important tools in relationship, because it's very easy to get focused and stuck on the negatives, which is in part because we are biologically wired to pay attention to the things that are negative, because those are the things that are potentially dangerous and we have to pay attention to in order to survive essentially. But in relationship there's not usually a lot of actual life or death stuff happening. But because of how our nervous system and brain work, we do have a tendency to respond to emotional cues of danger in the exact same way that we would respond to a physical cue of danger, and so when something is upsetting or frustrating, we can go into that survival place, that fight or flight place or that collapse withdrawn avoidant place, and that totally makes sense. However, if we want to move towards having a conscious relationship where we start to act in ways that really get us closer to having the impact we want to have in creating what we want to have in relationship, then using gratitudes is really essential. Because of our negativity bias and how we pay attention to the things that are painful or upsetting or potentially dangerous, we really need to consciously put in effort to pay attention quite a bit to the things that feel good and it's important for us to do that for ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Again, I mentioned appreciating myself, which is sometimes harder to do than appreciating my husband actually, but it's a really important and beautiful practice and the more you do it, the more you reap the benefits of the practice. And in my office, when I'm working with partners in relationship, at the start of every single session we begin, after a little centering, with sharing appreciations, and I tell the people I work with when I first share with them about our appreciation practice that inevitably there's going to be a session where they show up, where they have just had an argument, whether when it's in person, it's in the car, and when they were driving or, for my virtual sessions, just before they signed on they had some sort of blowout and when they sign on, they're going to be likely in that survival place feeling a little defended, a little self-protective, and they may not feel very open to sharing appreciations. And yet we always still will, and so I kind of give people a little heads up on that, but I explain to them really the importance of why that is. And, of course, if they need time to self-regulate or co-regulate, they need to take a moment. We of course do that so they're in a place to genuinely share an authentic gratitude and an appreciation might vary, they might not share a super deep appreciation that touched their heart, maybe that feels too vulnerable in the moment. But partners in my decade of working with relationships have really almost always been able to come up with something to appreciate and it really starts to create an intentional space in which to do really good relationship work because it conveys hey, even if I'm frustrated or mad right now, or if we just had a fight, I still see positives in you.

Speaker 1:

It can be very powerful to help us see that it's not a black or white situation. It's not an either or Either my partner's mad at me or they love me, which is very common in the childhood experience, because when parents are mad at their kids or when caregivers are mad at their kids. They may not intentionally do this, but a lot of the time the love is totally withdrawn, the love is gone. They are no longer available to their child when they're mad. And so a lot of us carry this early wounding from our childhood that when our partner is mad, the love is gone, just like when we grew up. That may have been our childhood experience, and so this is a way of saying hey, even if I'm mad, my love is not gone. I still see you, I still hold you with positive regard, I still see positive things about you. And it really can be very helpful to serve as a co-regulating experience that two people in relationship can regulate, begin to feel safe, begin to feel connected more, even if there was just a recent conflict, so that they can go on and address the conflict in a helpful way. Because if you're feeling defended and angry, then you are very well either on attack mode or you're ready to run, or you're ready to shut down and hide, and none of that is very helpful to having productive relationship conversations. You're not going to be able to problem solve with your partner and understand what happened in a particular conflict.

Speaker 1:

So this is a large part of the reason why I start sessions with appreciations, and another really wonderful benefit of sharing appreciations with your partner is you start to let them know the things that they do that really land for you as loving or helpful or important. Because a lot of times partners are doing many things, maybe many small things or maybe medium or even large things that they want their partner to feel loved as a result of them doing, but they're not necessarily things that land as so wonderful for the partner. And so then you might be I don't mean this quite as harsh as that, but you might be wasting your time doing lots of things that are not quite landing. But maybe it's just one or two things that you do, and often they're not really necessarily terribly hard things to replicate or redo or do again, and those are the things that your partner deeply appreciates. And so sharing this information also starts to transform a relationship, because you start to really share with your partner the things that they do that land so beautifully and supportive for you, and vice versa.

Speaker 1:

So I think that having a regular practice of appreciations with your partner in a little bit more of a formal sense, like sharing appreciations before bed every night or sharing appreciations together over breakfast. I do think that that's a beautiful practice, but what I'm going to talk about today is actually a couple of specific appreciations that I've had in my reflection of the summer. One is an appreciation about something that just happened between Ben and I, and one is an appreciation about something that is coming up and I really have been able to see over the last few days how me holding those appreciations has shaped how I have been able to respond to Ben in moments of conflict. So first the one that is about to come up, that hasn't happened yet. I'm holding a lot of appreciation for my husband, ben, because next week I am going away all weekend to a wellness retreat and then I'm coming home on Sunday. I'll be home on Sunday evening and then on Monday morning I'm going to hop on a plane and go away for another five days to a polyvagal training.

Speaker 1:

If you're not familiar with it, polyvagal theory is about how our nervous system is at the heart of our lived experience, how we experience ourselves, others, the world, and it's an approach that I work with quite a bit in my practice and all that I do and also in my personal life, and this is a training I've literally been looking forward to for a year, because it's a very experiential training and so I'll be doing a lot of my own nervous system work in a really supported place, and so the whole week it'll end up being about eight days from the wellness retreat into the polyvagal retreat is a huge, deep, profound time of self-care for me, as well as learning and expansion, and of course, I'll be able to bring that back and I'll be able to show up better in my family and I'll be able to show up better as a therapist and as a coach, and so it will definitely have a ripple effect outwards. And it is absolutely starting with myself. And, of course, in order for me to go and do this, I need the support of my husband and also my mom and her husband, because I have two kids and they have school and they need to eat and all of those things, and so I have a lot of support in being able to go and do this really special thing next week and I feel immense gratitude for being able to do that, and so I've been holding on to that gratitude since I registered for the wellness retreat and for the training and it's something that I feel really, really fortunate to be able to do for many reasons, but specific to Ben, he is so incredibly supportive and he knows how important these things are for me, and again, he also sees the ripple effect how I show up when I come home. But he has to make his life a little bit more challenging next week in order for me to go away and have this experience, and so I feel immensely grateful for that, and of course, I've also shared that with him. That's not just something I'm keeping to myself. And the second appreciation that I've been really holding very close to my heart is something that just happened a couple of days ago.

Speaker 1:

Ben and I and our son went to a concert. Ben and I go to a lot of concerts, and now our son, who's 13, has started coming to several of the concerts. He's been coming to concerts over the last few years, but every now and again and more recently he's come to several with us, and it's just been a really special thing to share as a family. Our six-year-old also actually has come to a concert before, but she is not quite ready to come to all the concerts that we go to. She's not interested in coming quite yet, and it doesn't quite make sense for a six-year-old to be at all the concerts that we attend. Not quite yet, so she has a few more years to go. But again, this is a really special, exciting thing for all of us. Ben and I enjoy it immensely and our son enjoys it as well. It's something really special that in and of itself. I have a lot of gratitude for being able to share that experience with both of them.

Speaker 1:

So at this particular concert my son's friend was also there, but in a different section. So we had thought we knew what time the band was going to start, and so my son was trying to get up to see his friend, just to say hi. They were really excited to be at this concert, seeing this band that they really wanted to see. And I said to my husband and my friend also, who was with us you guys go down to the floor, we're just going to run up into the other section and say hi to the friend and we'll be right down. And so we were running. My husband and I were laughing, we were having a good time, let's do it, you know like, let's make this happen. And we ran and then all of a sudden the music starts earlier than we were expecting. We were like, oh no, like like the music's starting, we're like it's okay, we're almost at the friend, Like we'll just say hi and we'll take a picture together and we'll run back downstairs. And so we tried to do that, but it ended up because the music started, we decided that it was too much and the friend went back to his section and we ended up going back downstairs.

Speaker 1:

But we were laughing and it was okay, but what we ended up missing, I mean we heard. And so my son was disappointed and my son also didn't get to see the band performing it because, again, we could hear it but we couldn't see the stage. And so my son was like, oh, my gosh, like I missed the song. And I said, oh, I know that's such a bummer. You know, let's enjoy the rest of the show. I wanted to be able to support him and feeling disappointed, but also I don't want him to get stuck in disappointment, right? So it was that balance of validating and also let's enjoy the rest of the show.

Speaker 1:

When he was able to transition, it was like yeah, yeah, like let's get down there. So we got down there. We were able to find my husband. Then it took a few minutes, but we got there and when he first came over to me he looked really angry and he was like we missed the song together and I'm so mad. And I said to my son I said I know it's a bummer, also really love that song I was really bummed out. It just didn't work out. Things got a little crossed. They started earlier than we anticipated. Let's try to enjoy the rest of the concert.

Speaker 1:

And my husband walked away from me and I was like oh my gosh, is he so mad that he's walking away? And I have to tell you just little tiny background information it hasn't happened in quite some time, but going back probably 15 years or so, give or take a few years, there were concerts that my husband and I went to, even before our son was born, where we had a conflict and we ended up being really disconnected for the whole time. And so I kind of had like this nervous system and brain flashback like oh my gosh, is this happening? Like is he walking away from us right now? And it ended up that that was not at all what was happening. He actually came right back, but with my friend who was also there with us because he knew where she was standing and he brought her back and we ended up having a fantastic night.

Speaker 1:

The four of us my husband and my son and my friend and I we just really had a blast. We had a general admission ticket and so we were on the floor and we were just like dancing and having such a great time and we ended up having a really, really beautiful night. And it really struck me that I was so grateful, because not only my husband's ability to process his emotions and self-regulate because it was disappointing, I also was disappointed. We missed that first song. It was a really good one and it would have been really cool for us to all have been together watching them perform and also we were trying to have my son meet his friend, which was important to him too, and so it was like both things were important and we made a decision which, in the end, didn't work out, but it didn't take away that we were still at this really cool place doing this really cool thing together, and so I was so grateful that we were all able to self-regulate and co-regulate and be able to have this great night together, were all able to self-regulate and co-regulate and be able to have this great night together, but also it was such an illustration of the progress that we've made.

Speaker 1:

Again, going back many years. There were lots of experiences that Ben and I had that, because of our conflict, because of an argument, because of our dysregulation, because of our reactivity however you want to describe it we were not able to enjoy certain things because that got in the way, and so it was really beautiful to have an experience where it didn't get in the way, where we were able to have this, and it also supported my son because, again, he was also disappointed not hearing that song and moving through that, you know, feeling like, oh yeah, that was in fact disappointing and we still have so many more songs to hear, and so we were able to really navigate that, I think, really beautifully together and it was really exciting for me to see, and so I also really was able to express that appreciation to Ben as well. So, in addition to having these very warm feelings of both recognizing our progress and how much work we've done over all these years and having all this gratitude for having this wonderful shared family experience, as well as having so much gratitude and appreciating Ben supporting me in my own journey which again does affect my journey with him and my entire rest of my life experience with everybody in my life I really had a lot of warm feelings that were very top of mind Over the last couple days. We had a couple of conflicts that perhaps I will get into another day and I can share with you what happened and how we processed it.

Speaker 1:

But what I really noticed was, even though I definitely had moments of pretty intense dysregulation, feeling like oh my gosh, like why is this happening again? That's an old story of mine, like this inevitability. I think that dealing with depression, by the way, just as a quick side note that that's a very common story that you're feeling good, things are going well, and then you feel depressed again and you're like what? Again, I thought this was done or I wasn't going to get back here. Now that I'm back here, it's inevitable and I'll never be able to be happy again, and that's a very old feeling for me. It's also something that shows up for my husband as well quite a bit, and it can be really hard.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to get stuck in that place of the inevitability of misery. I think is how I think about it, and so I touched that place a little bit over the last couple days a couple times, but I was able to acknowledge that and notice, like, okay, I'm feeling dysregulated and let me remember that I'm holding these really significant gratitudes for things that just happened, brand new things, not distant past, things like this one time Ben did something great but like, actually a lot of wonderful things are happening now, as evidenced by the concert and as evidenced by the fact that I'm going on these really special trips next week, and I was able to really use those gratitudes to self-regulate and get myself to a place where I was able to have more clarity about what was really going on and then could make a much, much more well-informed and conscious decision about how I wanted to handle it and how I ended up handling it. Yesterday we were busy, we had a lot going on. I made a choice to just contain myself and sit with it for a little bit, just so that we could do everything else that we were doing. And then this morning, when we had time, I was able to go to my husband and ask him to have a dialogue about it. And much like polyvagal theory I talk about Imago relationship theory quite a bit, but if you're not familiar with it, it is the approach to relationship work that I am trained in and certified in and what I use with the couples that I work with.

Speaker 1:

I also live it and the dialogue is the primary communication tool that is used in Imago relationship therapy. So, without going into the details of how it's used, it is, like I said, a specific approach to communicating and it's how Ben and I really do work through our challenging moments so that we can share what our feelings and experiences are, as well as the interpretations we make and the longings that we have, how we like to change things and we are able to really work through conflict so we can really grow through it. And it ended up being a really beautiful dialogue because I felt super heard. Ben was really supportive, really welcoming, he actually shared which I thought was really sweet that he was so grateful that I came to him with a dialogue request to ask to talk to him about what happened yesterday instead of sitting on it forever, which I definitely, historically, have done many times.

Speaker 1:

I'm very good at silent resentment, so I don't even tell Ben what I'm mad at, I just build resentment inside. It's something I've done many, many times over many, many years, but it's something also, of course, I've been very aware of for a long time, and I know that doing that is really destructive and unhelpful for myself and for my relationship, and so doing something like asking for a dialogue and talking about how I feel in a helpful, honest, open, appropriate, compassionate way really works far better for us, and it was so clear to me how I was able to do that because, or in large part because, I was also really aware of these deep appreciations that I had for Ben, and so it's kind of like it's much easier for me to tell myself the story which I also think is a much more accurate story that nobody's perfect, conflict happens in relationship, and I have all of these wonderful examples of things that are really meaningful and that I deeply appreciate about my relationship, and also that makes me feel really much more motivated to work out the hard moments, and so, while sometimes it might not feel like you have a lot to be grateful for or you don't want to share gratitudes, you want to talk about the hard stuff, you want to talk about the frustrations. How can you feel grateful until you work out some of the stuff that's going wrong or something like that, which I know. That feeling too, even if you start out with little tiny gratitudes, paying attention to what's going well in a relationship really serves to enhance that and it really supports you because it helps you really strengthen the foundation of your relationship so that you can take risks like being vulnerable and having deeper conversations. Because if you're talking about conflict and hard stuff all the time, that gets old pretty quickly and it can get frustrating and you can get caught in quite a loop, feeling like you're talking about the same thing over and over and over again and getting nowhere which probably many other podcast episodes that I can talk about that on.

Speaker 1:

But gratitude is something that can truly be a transformational practice. So if it's something that you do in your life perhaps maybe not in your relationship, but maybe in other places you are able to hold gratitude I encourage you to bring it into your relationship. And if it's something that you do think to yourself in your head that you like oh yeah, of course I appreciate my partner, they do so much for me, but maybe you don't share it as often as you could then that could be a space for you to stretch into and beyond that, any way that it makes sense for you to share gratitude for your partner and, again, as I mentioned, for yourself. Noticing what you appreciate about yourself and how far you've come will really help you continue to grow and stretch more and more into the person and partner that you really are and that you really wanna be.

Speaker 1:

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 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.